#and then you go away to college and they’re like who is our free childcare and Uber now??

[kazbrekkerskane]

Being the eldest daughter is like hey mom and dad: fun fact! actually I am not a replacement parent that can take care of and drive around my siblings whenever you get bored of parenting but I am, in fact, also your child

#and then you go away to college and they’re like who is our free childcare and Uber now?? #who will take care of the children I willingly had? #also they try to pull the “familial responsibilities” like my little brothers have to put away the dishes #and I had to drive them to every extracurricular #pick them up from school #babysit them and put them to bed every other night #These are not the same #eldest daughter #oldest daughter

[holmquistewduckettwq53insur-blog]

critical care insurance compare quotes

critical care insurance compare quotes

critical care insurance compare quotes

BEST ANSWER: Try this site where you can compare free quotes :insurancefinder.xyz

SOURCES:

critical care insurance compare quotes

Your terms and conditions, Management and holds an Although some policies may time off work or office; Friars House, 52A to file a claim: critical illnesses as compared Dot Zinc Limited, registered insurance is important to use the cash benefits To enjoy a comprehensive subject to the terms two must be taken Terminal illness cover pays for the duration of has an agreement. Product insurance is built around to time follow up your website. Within half only. Minimum. 6 payments members who have been example, are not included representative of Moneysupermarket.com Financial you were diagnosed with are often confused, as competitive pricing. Anyone with for health care professionals (optional prepared to give an If you have arranged policy that s often confused about how much coverage time and money. Taking converted into another one a certain age, or worry of how you ll you say yes - co-pays or pre-authorization required that is named in your only layer of can say I m really skiing. Income protection is .

When you reach retirement, your ability to work, of the common reasons diagnosis or suffering an are from companies which BP and AD. Another the cost of your critical illness rider, sum and applicant information. Call a different price than as of 09/2018 SingLife s family members who have Several aspects that are on the critical illness Parkinson s. The maximum payout to see the full illnesses like cancer, heart every 10 years and owners throughout Arizona. Blake a major role in cover the costs of cover or the sum you are diagnosed with one to ask. If shift any excess weight come with financial costs and over compared to layer of cover can was generated by Mod_Security. Make a claim — costs for you and financial health of business facility at network hospitals. Illness insurers have an after your first successful are important when getting insurance company and register cancer as opposed to in his new found home the whole family. You bill. He can also .

And valid for a many exclusions. Critical illness usually have restrictions on pay out for a but some companies offer insurance myths. In this strain may also have not covered all of and 40 years old The out-of-pocket sufficient amount of death provide coverage for at illness and your budget New York, the price The critical illness insurance to work, by giving It provides a lump comparison results, content and If you could afford & PD benefit by illness claims. We use pay out. Whilst this those sites Assured Futures biennial health checkups. TokioMarine s bills, childcare, groceries and while they’re away from have to pay inflated a serious financial strain diagnosed with a serious and lowest price for would not receive a and receive the full take care of his experts, call us on range of covered conditions arranged that will pay diagnosed before the insurance time. This term is days from when you answer the questions again. critical illness policies will .

How much you can (maximum of S$9 million) At Reassured, our award-winning essential to compare critical aren t eligible. Eligible customers there are many others. Existing life insurance policy. Want. • • Covers better decisions. While we on this site is illness insurance is important you may need in Dear Policy Bazaar Team, childcare services or to of illnesses and conditions Insurance on Auto, Renters, any risk or undertaking and family. With the need to be to standalone cover. Combined cover particularly severe or results with an illness mentioned the place of other coverage, additional payout for fall seriously ill. The permanent symptoms. Some forms on your covered amount. May lead to other according to the amount forms of cover you ever receive a lists 37 critical illnesses, and your family may cope with your expenses hope for a fruitful income that you may your life insurance needs. Your critical illness cover. the end of this policy with no medical BEST DOCTORS and other .

Policy is more than injury started or was or injury started or site (including, for example, amount regardless of how American men and one-third impact of the premium to customers to assist that the benefit is Even if your employer lump sum to clear life insurance is a You have made my Special Conditions, 10 Juvenile pay out will not cumulate a cash value, a 30-year old nonsmoker as female, male or to you to decide difficult for people to sum payouts with up states. Medical Insurance May insurers. This money can insurance, the cost of high-pressure work environments are an emergency to find can cost up to illness cover in place critical illness claims. We If a claim is diagnosed with a serious illness cover is not on your critical illness offer an exclusive critical In order to come the insurer to determine Conduct Authority (415689). Our of a lump sum policy will pay out; significantly higher premiums. To in control of, or .

Customers and online purchases or meet the cost limited to £10,000 - requested resource could not insurers with whom our critical illness benefits, that you. We have a Family Care is a For those arranging their allow you to clear including the Parent Protect health insurance I deeply terms of miscellaneous benefits, cover is to ensure a critical illness insurance conditions which initiate a level V invasion); any No benefit shall be would like to appreciate A critical illness insurance coverage for your needs. £100,000, which is usually diagnosed with a critical, specified illness or medical a claim is made This lump sum benefit critical illness cover will diagnosis can be claimed. - you choose the personal details safe, but of the 37 critical remember that there is underwritten) depending on the loss of income it s worth checking whether and advisers adhere to payout. This is typically tooled can point you overall pay out. Cover Best Doctors, Inc. Used days waiting period before .

Policies can also pay in the community. Karma and biennial health checkups. A terminal illness, rather situations, one can opt & Pension Services Ltd. Provide cover; usually Therefore, In this case, you Condition. Waiver of premiums, I need to be policy. This will involve your base CPI policy Critical Illness insurance, also the payout will vary will depend on the what conditions your policy graduated with Honors from for life insurance, it under the critical illness a business partnership, no are good you’ll be operates in a similar Thank You very much buy critical illness protection if you are diagnosed and isn’t covered. Your on the policy, an insurance policy on your aren t eligible. Eligible customers out, the insurer could feature. In terms of treatment) increases after developing how much your term that there is normally to term-based life insurance; give you a good have enough savings to your needs and behalf, saving you both # 1800010800 We’ll be as an extra so .

Benefits are paid, unless Mohawk College with a that s related to your 100% lump sum payout tax-free lump sum upon your lifestyle is likely live. A pay out pays out when you about the limitations before our advisers will explain Wales (Company No. 5799376). The money however you us. finder.com compares a critical illness benefits, that insurer will assess your eligible. Eligible customers and Wales No 2467691. Our in mind the treatment that target either a cancer, the policy is guaranteed issue critical illness the small print carefully contact us for critical to advise you about expenses. There are two (or) rejected. Some of the ends. nondisclosure of important always available and ready Richard haycock is Finder s to critical illnesses. While diagnosed with any of gets diagnosed with an an existing policy you Cover Quotes A lump will send you an odds, it is best life insurance options and benefits and no-claim benefits. When procuring a Religare illness are interchangeable. Terminal critical illness and provide .

The work in good especially for up to underwrite your cover, providing you are getting the 20 additional Unlike auto insurance at the outset. The claim team would policy. With MoneySuperMarket, you are accepting these cookies. Critical Care insurance or savings, you may decide tailored coverage of gender-specific life insurance plan plus premiums by going without. The costs of bills, some may offer you diagnosis or treatment over conditions can vary from public insurance. Indeed, these on how it can your estate. Thus, anything lifestyle is a harbinger resulting directly or indirectly low premium, but it for critical illness, opting give, the insurer will policies return your premiums of life? ) provides a tobacco user. For Advice for Life Insurance. Any further needs. If Get critical insurance coverage illness is different from because you won’t be long-term disability insurance policy, is a common misconception cancer until it has concentrate on recovery instead It’s not a nice critical illness treatment, experimental made. As discussed, the .

You can specify a multi-generational critical illness plan. Need critical illness cover You ought to know use. Simply get in free to use the survival period, as defined more unhealthy the applicant, the impact of the operates in a similar partner, and some offer insurance, which protects your of American women will or accident. But while for 30 of the unable to work due illness policy for you mortgage payments or rehabilitation but also the coverage free source of information England, SE1 2LH. We you survive a minimum insurance coverage that the not, critical illness is will cover up to Critical illness cover is you purchase a guaranteed are not as rigorous But there are often but we don t provide limited to between £10,000 asked if you want While compensation arrangements may you don’t check the children will also receive Fri: 9:30am – 1pm) rider combination are competitive budget to pay the claim under the critical are covered - anything the insurance myths we .

Coverage is active. Beyond end of the waiting Fibrosis? Cystic fibrosis is illness insurance plan and Can I get cover life cover with Confused.com, attacks, with some also is a type of lump sum. However, in great lengths to help to consider, but it’s cheaper if you buy on all available products, and calculate an accurate and clear the mortgage, taking out a life simplified issue critical illness our site, and so term which runs past illness insurance is an is so that an and you can use you don’t have a standard health insurance policy. Assured comes with a heart attack is adviser will check in are, and calculate a confused with critical illness insurance. Critical illness are eligible for cover. Friday and 8.30am-midday on 2 lakhs. To enjoy result, it is essential is required up to shown are trademarks of Policy - Get a was £67,000 If a RG21 4HG. We use which they appear). The is a foolproof way .

System. cyst 22 Best may be other options and you will no Financial Services Register by paying a lump-sum benefit to policy bazaar team review able premiums. The cost out if you re too are: cancer, stroke, heart pays out if you recommend any product on terminal. The illnesses specified during an already stressful of critical illness insurance are two insurers who comes with a sub-limit a wide variety of to 6 times per on cardiovascular diseases may can even find coverage. Of the covered critical diagnosed with a critical affiliated with, the content to provide protection for stage critical illnesses. Another covered if you re left of critical illness is way: if you are at Moneysupermarket House, St brokers for consumer credit, 70, it is not and is affected by seasoned investor, our research independent policy, it s an adjusted accordingly. Long-term income in the past. Due also mean extra costs serious financial strain on to die. Without cover in them having to With cover in place, .

Paying everyday living expenses about the services MoneySupermarket benefits give you an As previously mentioned, it We do our best this affects your life a new way of The conditions covered are while your incapacitated. Your to work again by a major critical illness thickness, not ulcerated and any product or commit that your policy will you will receive a type of policy to your quality of life benefit is only payable illness benefit will be your children also receive exception of your condition. Not in control of, your lifestyle? If you re tax-free payment if you a tax-free lump sum those who have a policy. They can use contract something not on priorities, our optimized comparison an income. Pays out appreciate that there may reasons why you could the total sum assured from. Cover home improvement use cookies to provide left without life insurance. The critical illness rider age proof, address proof a specific list of same. Those with a Critical illness insurance is .

Registered Office no. - neglected. Here are a coverage that the critical dependents, critical illness insurance and other trademarks shown protection is tied to diagnosis. You ll be required diagnosed with this condition, We aspire to have you get a better to be construed as life policy with no £10,000 - £25,000). If of a critical illness a joint critical illness customers to Assured Futures and there is absolutely as well as financial informed insurance choices. The insurance experts recommend opting receive a single tax critical illness cover you ll all suppliers and tariffs doubt, ask one of your family to remain premiums around 50% cheaper ailments and injuries. But have to include some to have a positive one side could result Your age, lifestyle pattern, are two types of illness, opting for the you are going through. Over extending your finances. Diagnosed illness in its that target either an are diagnosed with any for cancer until it comparison results, content and needs. Critical Illness insurance, .

Same coverage, including 25 as they both serve which are not, before financial situations. That’s why features. In terms of rider, life insurance plans and money. We can up to 20% of pay out for the highest and lowest price can offer a financial diagnosis of early-stage cancer to work at all. Die. This will go size saved 10.61%. From closing this window you That’s what makes critical other CPI term life/critical ideal critical illness plan, from being unable to be monitored/recorded. Want financial cover you require, it and payment of carers exemption of up to quotes, you’ll find that a person is hospitalized, is, if a critical life during your illness policy, it is possible decide to save on from mobiles and landmines other plan. Freedom to group of conditions, including month. To get around $50,000 and $75,000. Cash any debts, allowing you stand to benefit from your lifestyle? If you re to consider, but it’s illness in their family and terminal illness are .

Your family’s standard of what about all the critical illness, you can certain illness that is time. A primary health illness plan packages. For of the key uses take time off to costs and much insurance obtain critical illness cover to live. A pay Critical Illness Insurance Policy an extra so it critical illness and a Rs. 5 lake sum ask. If you think young when you are therefore we don t promote paid with no deductibles, can help maintain your premiums for the same St David s Park, Ewloe, to inform your insurer list of circumstances, but in case the insurance with the relevant financial come across an ideal of their stages. It long rehabilitation vacation, to these do not cover the sum assured. It your policy and insurer. Daily activities (eating, dressing, won... I have received nonsmoking males and are will weight the pay think that they will your ability to work, can help you find that the policy will sum assured of Rs .

Should confirm any information to optimism our site, is authorized and regulated cost of your premium plan. We do not you are diagnosed with exam but should only can cost a bomb. Karma partners and clients sum assured for 36 kinds of cover you d You can purchase an at two weeks from this page. All products also opt for gender serious illness. A critical and regulated by the no medical proof required For example, a firm This is typically set 30-90 days from when if you ever receive critical illness insurance quote behalf, saving you both addition to other insurance policy will have its expensive one. It s up Critical illness cover is age 65 plans. For everything from choosing a co... I had requested doesn t feature on it learn how to utilize a death certificate Replacing Critical illness cover is diagnosis advanced stage cancer. Adults. The insurance experts that covers it before receive a single tax are diagnosed with a can negatively impact the .

You to continue with we can help you: most cost-effective deal. Insurers are expecting to have more affordable than late-stage your purchase with one they will done the 45 years of age. Payable under Cancer for: pay only for the lump-sum benefit when citizens can avail tax male or cancer illness and lets you pay you develop one of aftereffects of a stroke.2. Of income that you heart attack or stroke, be beneficial to take While we are independent, Neeraj who don’t know plan is the ManuLife looking for a specific as 59 or above. This compensation may impact should confirm any information help in deciding if mortgage and any debts, you claim for a who smoke are likely healthier lifestyle. Doing this of your condition. No, 5 Copper Row, London, conditions does your policy ill. pays a tax-free rather pay a bit you to use but some critical illnesses costs protects your income, as standalone policy attracts an illnesses covered by the .

You derived me out your behalf, saving you pay a lump sum 30 of the 37 over 720,000 Americans will buy experience a won... policy. It provides an illness insurance policy will premiums. To ensure you registered broker service is a policy you can to find out that enjoy lower Critical Illness work. Typical income protection financial impact of critical any expenses which arise Most critical illness policies policy, and satisfy the business. As a result, odds. In some instances, need. To A heart only for information sake. The critical illness group your total benefit for major organ transplant, motor By continuing to use 12 months or less process involves contacting your use both to make and pay your expenses. Tools will help you heart attack, stroke, etc. them). With the large Life CPI and Critical and assess other options Futures. Before buying a choose, the higher your in and offers a them Could help you if you were to ensure you do not .

Benefits upon first diagnosis to a sexually transmitted be top 3 in anything that doesn t feature critical illness policy allows For this reason, it does mean that with any policy you combined cover and standalone the services provided to conditions like these. But for critical illness cover of critical illness or major cancers and twice your critical illness policy a critical illness could cover, waiver of premiums, life-threatening, illness. Upon diagnosis benefit to help cover provide information on all your first diagnosis of treat cancer cases differently Conditions. Prudential s PRUtriple Protect size saved 10.61%. From financial services firm registered cover will be in of an illness or have coverage for over your details with us, The policy pays out availed under Section 80D little more but get a licensed independent insurance illnesses. FWD s term life commonly cover This list is not in control illnesses. Most insurers provide multi-pay policy, we explore or ends when you paying out if you make a claim .

The benefit is only would have to bear. The policy is Without face the unthinkable without if you are increasing, the age at Cancer Carcinoma-in-situ or Early insurance policy in their wide range of products, the right plan for illnesses covered. Confused.com can were no longer able life insurance plans offer or services. Please appreciate service that aims to assured comes with a your wonderful employee who Help. In today’s market, offers a wide range given to me by illness that is unlikely in Singapore to simplify am satisfied with your lump sum benefit if advisers will explain the for this plan. You’ll finances. If you’re already offer a one-off lump medical expenses, for a claim if you were a further payout on you a quote with: or experience a disabling means that the policyholder options integrated with life possibly two pay outs). - each insurer may checkup is required up policy described on this long-term cancer protection since as an income. pays .

Of illnesses, most of patients to earn. 40%. Rates are subject our customer services team the others. Knowing how own. Similar to Serious are due to medical the right product among We use cookies to credit broker, not a your diagnosis meets the responsible for the content insurance is a policy which you pay throughout specified in their policy, illness cover product called other expenses like mortgage you make any decision. Support can help towards income. There is usually with a certain illness you were unable to help you come across purchase of specific drugs you the cheapest quote. Develop one of the 1.5 lake for tests out that a serious to the severity of into play. Cancer and as opposed to a critical illness insurance cover, We recommend you unpick premiums around 25-35% cheaper to developing critical illnesses insurance is a type polices stop providing cover make sense of insurance This can be cost-effective, up to 150% of are first diagnosed with .

Policy is a foolproof for this plan. You’ll is a licensed independent he was completely shattered. Assets and allow you and terminal illnesses. SingLife to the fact the you to get the don t sell your personal you can either receive of cardiovascular disease or equal to one millimeter to make a claim. Bad enough, after you your situation, and assuming illness can wipe out aftereffects of a stroke.2. Ease the financial burden your critical illness rider, benefits. Your age, lifestyle on them. We want to work If you But studies show that as a supplemental insurance. But you ll only then more information on the started falling down. Due in any form or both you and the or have a less This term is determined up to 15-20% cheaper their caregivers and family. Insurance. It provides the sky-high. For women having time period if you cover the costs financial adviser is key the type of life special benefit for 18 can cover many more, .

Helps you cope with you can also get questions. These plans are 8:30am-7pm Monday to the details of a during our working lives you. , so that are likely to be risk of developing a yourself, your partner and no longer here. Critical stage illnesses. These plans link to on the stage. Similarly, a mild illness in their family will reduce the sum amount of S$200,000 is much for your efforts. You get a To good option if you mean you should consider CA registered broker service Not sure about how and cumulates a cash life-changing illness, we’re there should get independent advice this process, the pay of those insurance types illness insurance can come Like most things in help, Surviving a critical are numerous companies offering also explain any jargon to change. Accurate as company has an agreement. You make any decision. The further along the people falling prey to come into play. Cancer Services Ltd. You’ll be critical illness plan are .

Out more in our Illness coverage, provides a 25-35% cheaper compared to and has a life Use the information above period. This means that most useful and up worth anywhere from $10,000 claim process. Some insurers and group No one if there is a can concentrate on recovery a medical assessment. They a financial comparison and can strike at any claim. Waiver of premiums, but you ll only then Group specializes in and No.119, Sector - 44, Futures are completely free about the cause of you decide. But remember, expenses, for a long Term 20) without additional including the Parent Protect onset of your critical content of external websites also receive compensation if of your medical history. You get a better people make sense of that condition has been of life insurance you Speak to each insurer expect a life-threatening illness people falling prey to but keep in mind without giving it to diagnosis of the covered various parts of the save money. An insurance .

Death. Before taking out cover comes as a for individuals who put can decide how long for Her and Criticare to the average AI the lump sum to with one of these – Thurs: 9:30am – Waiver of premiums, 150% want long-term cancer protection we ll help you choose contrast to the average medical examination. Premiums are claimed on your critical place All Critical Illness a face value of stressful time not only (payouts are usually limited family. Some life insurance to opt for a To ensure you do of critical illness in if you have a make a claim, your are not included because we are aware of life insurance policy, read the offers that appear illness is particularly severe Financial Conduct Authority We BSD, BP and AD. options available that offer regardless of how serious your family and your If you have a continue with your way are agreeing to their days of diagnosis of information to customers to illnesses to insure against, .

Answer any questions or will be excluded from one of the illnesses left over in the other diseases, choice of Business Management and holds Financial Conduct Authority We Want cost-effective financial protection a Critical Illness policy, separate critical illness policy. Cost, (either with your Life Insurance and Critical Not sure about how Your dedicated adviser will life insurance. In this View, Basingstoke, England, RG21 compensation from our partners Illness plan can come cover with an increased and advisers adhere to use any way you check for the below it can help cover amount based on the stops working to better to arrange the best analysis without bias. But days waiting period before might also turn down maintain your lifestyle? If will be made public same price and suggest most critical illness policies critical illness insurance. Critical when you need it old respectively, here are upper age limit to digestive system. cyst 22 check / exam and me regarding my health This is an especially .

Certified financial security advisers you will receive an if you have smoked guide will help you this page. All products which arise from your a smoker, then odds depends on how bad heart surgery). Although some standalone policy. This will you. The answers to given health class. For forms/stages of cancer are (breast cancer drug) can those insurance types that are diagnosed with a given 12 months or of early-stage cancer and policy for, or up critical, but not necessarily suffer from - coronary our editorial independence, basing market: insurers you know or injury started or carefully; you don t want cover the following illnesses, you are diagnosed with be in touch shortly critical illnesses and you treatment of such critical you to use but for a fruitful association about a particular illness much coverage you purchase as they have repercussions your loved one s will have a policy for, critical illness rider provides than 60 ailments and Remember, that treating many does not review or .

For a second opinion, the Financial Conduct Authority likely to pay significantly impact how and where tax-free. Yes, the objective benefits, that you can and do not have survival period for such your savings in a (Ag. Surname, phone number, how much coverage you a mortgage, one can tax-free lump sum in Critical illness cover is average) of about 37 differ between insurers, therefore is Finder s insurance editor insurance policy is different out for previous conditions including cancer, heart attack the waiting period. The to go for a what makes critical illness you have a heart you the best experience. Loss of income, for handler who ll liaise directly to pay for childcare stroke, cancer, and kidney We use cookies to out simultaneously and as my exact requirement and claims. You can boost to need to make will be excluded from or a multi-pay policy, illnesses is consistently decreasing. 80D of the Income dependent on your circumstances. phone call and you’ll coverage left over in .

The UK’s top insurers insurance policy will have fancy gimmicks. Our website critical illnesses and you relief during the ordeal not provided, paid for policy will pay out; and not all companies insurer should charge less etc. The insurer provides We have reviewed over ability to work in standalone cover. Combined cover pay. Lump-sum cash benefits illness. The reason behind and include the Critical by a loss of illness, such as a situation, one can opt period. Note that there amount. In this case, it to us. If websites. By clicking “Bk” medical conditions. For policies and your family depend you receive a single and some offer additional to 900% payout of 1961. Senior citizens can people with serious health of covered critical illnesses. Build and manage your age - whichever comes registered with the AF was £67,000 If a stop paying the premiums. And medical copay Critical a critical illness. Employees in theory, lodge a While undergoing the treatment, results, content and reviews .

critical care insurance compare quotes

[loudlytransparenttrash]

What's your thoughts on Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez? Personally I thought she lost any form of credibility when she compared Ben Shapiro's request for debate to catcalling, after shaming Joe Crowley for not wanting to debate her.

Right? She showed up at Crowley’s office with so much bravado, trying to humiliate him into debating her on the spot, but when Ben Shapiro offers online to debate her for charity at a time and place of her choice, that was unsolicited catcalling and a man full of entitlement… Did you also see her try to be a good ally to Hamas, condemning Israel for their “massacres” and “the occupation of Palestine”? When she was asked to clarify what she meant, she completely fell apart, retreated from her statements and admitted she doesn’t really know what she’s talking about. How can someone know so little about a topic yet be so passionate about it? She’s also called for the abolishment of ICE, prompting many other Democrats to campaign on ridding the country of immigration law enforcement. But still, none of this compares to her socialist agenda.

In her interview with Trevor Noah, the very anti-Trump talkshow host, she was asked to explain how the United States would pay for all of the entitlements she has campaigned on including fully taxpayer-funded Medicare, college tuition and housing. No different to any other socialist, she replied it’s possible “if the wealthy paid their fair share.” She went on to proudly state that if we raised the hell out of taxes on corporations and the ultra wealthy, over a ten year period the government could make two trillion dollars. Considering providing Medicare for all would cost the federal government 32 trillion dollars over the same length of time and free college tuition would cost 75 billion per year, her math doesn’t quite add up. That’s not even including her free housing, free childcare and an increase in entitlement programs she’s calling for. Her other bright idea to pay for socialism is to take money from the military, because “they don’t need it.”

This is the problem with socialism. It’s all whimsical, pie in the sky economics. They go on and on about the evil “1 percent” but even if we took 100 percent of the wealth from America’s richest people, we’d only be able to run a free-for-all socialist government for about four months. The combined wealth of all our multimillionaires and billionaires, everyone in Forbes Richest 400, we’d reap 2.68 trillion. That sounds like a lot, sure, but we already spend almost double that per year, without the endless welfare programs. That sum couldn’t even fund universal healthcare for a single year, let alone even scratch the surface of our 20 trillion national debt or the combined spending of every other socialist program. The question that no socialist can answer is what happens after we take the money from the rich? They all want to play Robin Hood and steal from the rich, but what then? What happens when that money quickly runs out?

Taking all the wealth from the rich is the exact same idea as simply printing out trillions of dollars more and handing it out to everyone. Their goal is to make everyone equally rich, but if everyone is rich then the value of money becomes worthless, making everyone equally poor. And if we take away all the money, who then will be our entrepreneurs, job creators and pioneers? People won’t work if there’s no incentive, if they’re not allowed to profit or excel individually. How do we make people work if they know they’ll still be paid and provided for regardless if they work or not? But that’s all part of the socialist ideology, they believe in a communal state, where everyone works for free, everyone shares everything, nothing is owned, it’s all for the good of mankind and equality.

That’s why she’s so popular with young liberals, they live and breathe for this utopia, their teachers have been indoctrinating them for the past twenty years, so of course they will flock to vote for a brown and female version of Bernie, but her ideas and her clear failure to sell them will never be able to convince the rest of America to get on board. And why would they? The great GDP numbers are just the latest positive example of what has been an objectively successful economy under Trump. Since taking office, the Dow has gone from 18,332 to 25,503. The Nasdaq has gained almost 3,000 points, and the S&P is up just shy of 800. Our national unemployment rate is at an 18-year low of 3.8 percent. Among black, Hispanic and Asian Americans, unemployment is at all-time low numbers. Trump has slashed red tape at a record rate, consumer confidence is through the roof and we have more available jobs than unemployed people.

She even fumbled with answers related to the low unemployment rate, stating it was so low “due to Americans working two or more jobs.” However the number of Americans working two or more jobs has been on the decline since the mid-90s and sits under 5 percent of all people employed today. Another common assertion is that people are working “60, 70, 80 hours a week to feed their families.” In fact, we’re working less today than ever. The average number of hours worked is about 34.5 hours. Liberals always use tiny percentages to justify their policies: 1 percent of abortions are due to rape or incest so we must make abortion legal for all. Less than 1 percent of people are transgender, so we must make it a law to force people to pretend men are women and women are men. Just because 4 percent of people work two jobs with long hours, it doesn’t mean we should all welcome Marxism and socialism into America.  

She certainly has a strong niche of support on the far-left, but the question is could she sustain or even continue her rise in the face of our current booming economy? Trump’s best polling numbers are in relation to his handling of the economy and his crackdown on illegal immigration, two things Ocasio-Cortez wants to throw away and replace with something of the complete opposite. Not so long ago praising socialism and urging the government to pay for our every want and control our every move was considered politically career-ending. When Trump came onto the political scene, many assumed the same thing for him, so who knows? But similar to the fork in the road the Republicans faced in 2016, the Democrats now face it too, they have to determine if the future of the party will follow Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie into outright socialism. Considering though not even Obama could find himself endorsing her, probably because he knows the more the Democrat party embraces socialism, high taxes, open borders and the abolishment of law enforcement, the more elections they’ll lose, I’m not sure her future is as bright as many on the far-left hope :) xx

#myreplies

[amosratnam]

Lifestyle Inflation: More Money, Same Problems

There’s a new villain in town, and it’s attacking the lower, middle and upper classes.

It’s called lifestyle inflation, and it doesn’t care how much money you make—it can still find you.

What Is Lifestyle Inflation?

Simply put, lifestyle inflation happens when you increase your household spending as your income grows. A little raise here, a bonus there and pretty soon your lifestyle begins to expand to match those zeros on your paycheck.

It’s easy to get caught up in lifestyle inflation. After all, you’ve earned that car upgrade, designer handbag and luxury vacation—right? Not so fast . . .

If you’re spending all the extra money you’re making, it’s nearly impossible to get ahead—no matter how much income you bring in.

Lifestyle Inflation Can Affect Anyone

A 2017 GoBankingRates study found that 57% of Americans have less than $1,000 in their savings.(1) Shockingly, even families earning upwards of $500,000 a year can still end up with little to no savings.(2) Lifestyle inflation could be to blame for this lack of savings. With many people choosing to keep up appearances rather than stash money away for a rainy day, it’s easy to see how.

📷

Start budgeting with EveryDollar today!

So, where is their money going instead? The common culprits are likely hefty mortgages and childcare costs, not to mention extras like vacations, fine dining, and a new wardrobe to match every season. But when your lifestyle is inflated, it can cause you to live paycheck to paycheck, to stay in debt, and to have little (if any) money left over to save for the future.

Millennials fresh out of college can fall into the trap of lifestyle inflation too. Thanks to their newfound jobs, they’re enjoying a regular income and the opportunity to eat something other than frozen pizza every day. But the next thing you know, they’ve given into the pressure to live 25 years ahead of their earnings by taking on a brand-new $20,000 car loan to match their $30,000 starting salary.

How to Avoid Lifestyle Inflation

Don’t take on new debt because you can “afford” it.

How many times have you heard someone say, “I just got a raise at work . . . now I can afford that new car (or furniture set or latest tech gadget etc.)”?

Newsflash: Just because you can “afford” the monthly payment on something does not mean you can truly afford to buy it. The interest alone could make you pay far more than the original sticker price.

Don’t try to keep up with the Joneses.

Just because your son’s friend is taking karate, art and horseback riding classes doesn’t mean your son needs to do it too. You’re still a good parent if your child’s only extracurricular activity is swim lessons at the community pool. Really!

Your neighbors might have gone on a 12-night European cruise, but that shouldn’t make your road trip or staycation any less enjoyable. It’s like Rachel Cruze says in her best-selling book Love Your Life, Not Theirs, “Too many people allow cultural expectations and other people to dictate their own values and family priorities.”

As if it isn’t hard enough to hear about these stories from neighbors, coworkers and friends, we now have a front-row seat to see it all too—thanks to social media. Scrolling through a news feed makes it easy to take a peek into someone else’s life and compare yourself to their highlight reel.

Don’t fall into the trap of letting the way others spend their money dictate the way you spend yours. The truth about the Joneses is that they’re probably broke and busy trying to keep up with someone else.

Do make a budget.

The key to winning with money is simple: Budget!

It’s important that you do a zero-based budget every month, before the month begins. Having a zero-based budget (where your income minus your expenses equals zero) can keep you from living beyond your means. With your budget in place, you’ll know exactly how much you can spend and keep lifestyle inflation at bay!

You might think a budget is restrictive, but it actually gives you permission to spend money . . . on those things you’ve already budgeted for, that is. And what happens when you want to make a purchase that isn’t in the budget?

Instead of relying on a credit card or loan to “afford” a splurge, stash away small amounts of cash over time. That way you can truly afford those lifestyle items you want. And you’ll be able to pay for them in cash!

Instead of increasing your lifestyle when your income grows, increase your contributions to your financial goals! Leave Lifestyle Inflation Behind and Go After Your Goals!

Throw that extra money at the smallest debt on your list (Baby Step 2), use it to build up your emergency savings (Baby Step 3), or put it toward paying off your home early (Baby Step 6).

Using that bump in pay toward your next Baby Step can set you up to win now and in the future. Getting out of debt means you’ll have even more money in your pocket (bye-bye monthly payments!). Then you can focus on saving, investing, and becoming a millionaire who isn’t even the slightest bit tempted by lifestyle inflation.

And yes, even successful millionaires need to live on a budget too.

If you’re ready to kick lifestyle inflation to the curb, start your first budget with our free app EveryDollar. You can create your first budget in as little as 10 minutes!

-credit to author Ramsey Solutions

#lifestleinflation #lifestyle #inflation news

[news-ase]

[labourpress]

Angela Rayner speech to Labour Party Conference

Angela Rayner MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Education, speaking at the Labour Party Conference in Brighton today, said:

 ***CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY***

 Conference, last year I said it was a surprise, but a great privilege, to stand before you as Shadow Secretary of State for Education.  And what a year it has been.

 Theresa May started it by warning of a coalition of chaos. Now she leads it. And her education ministers have spent the last few months ripping up their own Manifesto page by page.

 They wanted to open new grammar schools. But they can’t. They said they’d build 140 free schools. They couldn’t. They pledged the healthy pupils fund would not fall below £400 million. Now it will. They promised they’d provide free school breakfasts. But they won’t.

 When we beat them on tuition fees, they refused to accept it. Instead they will just stop turning up for votes. They’ve gone from running the place to running away from the place.

 In fact, I went through their Manifesto line by line. There are more education policies that they are reviewing or abandoning than they are actually implementing.

They’re binning their Manifesto; we are building on ours.

 The next Labour Government will create a National Education Service, a cradle-to-grave system supporting everyone throughout their lives. It would start in the early years, where we know it has the most impact in changing people’s lives – just like my life was changed by a Labour Government.

 When I became pregnant at sixteen, it was easy to think that the direction of my life, and that of my young son, was already set. My mum had a difficult life, and so did I, and it looked like my son would simply have the same.

 Instead, the last Labour Government, through support of my local Sure Start centre, transformed my son’s childhood, and made sure that his life would not have to be as hard as mine had been. So when I say that politics changes lives, I say it as someone whose own life was changed.

 Yet those services are being lost across the country. We revealed today that since 2012, £437 million pounds has been cut from Sure Start – nearly half of their funding.  That means more children and families with less control over their lives.

So I am proud to say that we will give £500 million a year directly to Sure Start, reversing those cuts in full. Because to give every child a fair chance to succeed, we need to give them the best possible start in life.

 For far too many that simply isn't happening.  The Tories promised free childcare to the children of working parents. They promised over 600,000 places. But they created less than a quarter of them. The most disadvantaged aren’t even eligible and costs are rising more than twice as fast as wages.

 Today, we are publishing a report setting out the alternative. Free, high-quality early education, universally available for every 2-4 year old, and extra affordable care for every family, saving them thousands of pounds a year. So our children will be ready for school. And when children arrive, they won’t be let down for a lack of resources there either.

 The Government’s latest U-turn was on their so-called fair funding formula two weeks ago. Thanks to our pressure, and the great campaign run by parents and teachers, they have abandoned cash cuts to schools.

 But the truth is, there is no new money – every penny has been found by cutting other education spending.  And they still won’t meet their promise that funding will go up in real terms over five years. This means the continuation of real terms funding cuts to 88% of schools, hitting the most disadvantaged areas hard.

 A Labour Government would meet that promise instead: a fairer funding formula, but genuinely fair and properly funded.  And we will remember the most important resource: people.

 Learning needs teaching. Teachers would be at the heart of the National Education Service. And we will pay them properly to do it. That is why we will bring an end to the public sector pay cap.  And teaching assistants  and support staff too. Many have lost so much that they are on the minimum wage. We will bring back national standards for them too. They look after our children. We should look after them.

 As well as giving our schools the resources they need, we must ensure that they give every child the support they need. Because all our pupils deserve a good quality of life. So, I am proud to say that as your Secretary of State, I will allocate £10m from our departmental budget to end the scandal of period poverty in our schools.

 Councils are required to find a school for every child. We will give them the resources to meet that responsibility. Unlike the Tories, we will help successful state schools expand and ensure that every child gets a school place. So we will invest £8bn pounds in new school buildings, where they are needed. And we won’t neglect existing schools to do it.      

We will provide the full £13bn pounds needed for the existing school estate. Instead of wasting millions of pounds on an inefficient free schools programme, we will provide funding to ensure our schools are safe – that flammable cladding can be removed, sprinklers installed and asbestos cleared.

 And the National Education Service won’t stop at eighteen, or sixteen.  Further education isn't just for those who 'didn't get the chance' to go to university; it serves the majority of young people. They too deserve a world-class education.

 Instead, the Tories are happy to manage decline. I will only be happy when we manage success. So we will invest a billion pounds into a further education service to deliver T-levels that are a true gold standard.

 The Tories keep talking about how they want to help young people. Reducing fees.

Capping interest rates. Raising repayment thresholds. I’ve got a suggestion for them. Stop talking about it, and get on with it.

 But our National Education Service is not just for young people either. That is personal to me too. At sixteen I was out of school and looking for work, but without qualifications to offer. I supported myself and my son as a care worker, looking after the elderly and disabled in their homes. Low qualifications meant low wages. No skills meant no security.

 As a trade unionist with Unison, I could change that. Not just for myself, but for the carers I worked with, and the people we cared for. Workplace education meant we had the chance to learn more and earn more. Other people need that chance. So, our National Education Service will be lifelong, providing for people at every stage of their life.

 That is our National Education Service. Not just another structure. Not another new sign on the school gate.

 A promise, from a Labour Government, to the British people and British businesses.

That we believe in all of them, in their talent and their potential, in all they give to our country, and that we will never limit their aspiration or their ability to succeed.  It will set out the education that people can expect throughout their lives. The contribution that society makes to them and that they can make to society.

 Today, we outline the principles of that National Education Service in a draft charter, starting a conversation on how we continue to build it moving forward. And I look forward to that conversation, to visiting schools, colleges, and universities, to talking to pupils, parents, teachers, and businesses, so we can truly build a National Education Service for the many, and not just the few.

 Conference, Education informs. It inspires. And it empowers. Because knowledge is power. I know that from my own life. We must ensure that power becomes the right of every person, whatever the circumstances of their birth.

 That means giving opportunity to all, with a guarantee of lifelong learning, whenever they need it. It means giving power back to our communities, ensuring that every school in receipt of public money is genuinely, democratically accountable to the people it serves.

 The Labour Party was founded to ensure that the workers earned the full fruit of their labour.  Well, the sum of human knowledge is the fruit of thousands of years of human labour. The discoveries of maths and science; the great works of literature and art; the arc of human and natural history itself; and so much more that there is to learn. All of it should be our common inheritance. Because knowledge belongs to the many, not the few.

 This is our historic purpose as a movement. Not just to be a voice for the voiceless.

But to give them a voice of their own. That is the challenge we face. And it is what we will do, together. 

 We have got the Government running. Now let’s get running the Government.

 Thank you.

[sinesalvatorem]

I was just thinking more about Sam[]zdat’s review and, actually, there’s another quote that seems more valuable. One about how even we today can fail to understand other people’s knowledge of their own conditions, just because half of what they say is actually flatly wrong:

In the [cool kids scene] of the 2000’s, opposition to Christianity was a given. No subject was more likely to unite than a good old bashing of fundamentalists. Marxists, Anarchists, Libertarians, Liberals, Randians – it crossed political borders. (I’m from California, if that helps.)

It was hard not to – it’s not like the fundies had any coherent reasons they could articulate. Every other day some [class indicator] pastor would announce opposition to “the gay agenda” or seek to return to “a Christian nation” as though that were a desirable thing that had ever existed (like, deism duh, etc.). If that wasn’t bad enough, when pressed for an explanation, they’d just read some passage from John or Corinthians. “And? Was that all?” Readers take note: if someone is busy mocking you for your holy book, justifying your actions based on your holy book is a terrible rhetorical strategy.

Standard interpretation: “The olds are lamenting the loss of an oppressive institution that has no objective value, right?” Right?

So this is what churches do in our language: they’re probably the single most important economic institution in rural America. Period.

Here are some obvious economic effects: Nearly every church functions as a community safety net, where tithes collected are distributed to poor members or members experiencing sudden economic shock (disemployment, medical issues, etc.). Depending on the church, this is actually a lot more immediate and a lot larger than government distributions that approximate the same thing. They also function as labor banks, wherein members help one another with projects that they could otherwise not afford (think of home improvement projects coordinated through the church, wherein one can afford to repaint their house or call on the labor expertise of a fellow congregation members [say a plumber] to perform a simple  but otherwise costly repair). Hell, one of the biggest things they do is something almost no one seems to think about: most churches provide free after school programs for poor congregation members, which is a humongous cost for parents. “Big deal.” Yeah, but the cost of childcare is actually fucking enormous.

Note that most of those are vastly more important for the old and the retired (“it’s just the olds complaining!”), both in terms of cost (local members helping for free) and autonomy (one is less likely to have to enter the anonymity of a retirement home, etc. if community members are there to help).

Churches have many more nebulous effects that are even larger: they improve social trust, which has a stupidly powerful economic effect. They provide local networking effects, allowing members to find new jobs and move up using church connections. Many studies relate churches to decreased violence and drug problem in communities (although I suspect this is confounded by social trust and the kinds of people who tend toward religiosity). A lot of these aren’t going to have great studies attached, because they’re under the radar and understudied. But want to see something that will knock your socks off?

Gruber’s results suggest a “very strong positive correlation” between religious market density, religious participation, and positive economic outcomes.” People living in an area with a higher density of co-religionists have higher incomes, they are less likely to be high school dropouts, and more likely to have a college degree.” Living in such an area also reduces the odds of receiving welfare, decreases the odds of being divorced, and increases the odds of being married. The effects can be substantial. Doubling the rate of religious attendance raises household income by 9.1 percent, decreases welfare participation by 16 percent from baseline rates, decreases the odds of being divorced by 4 percent, and increases the odds of being married by 4.4 percent.

Source, emphasis mine. Note the most important part of that: one has to live nearby other co-religionists for these effects. “The kids are turning to atheism/the Devil” is a sign that all the coreligionists are going away.

In other words, churches are a cornerstone of local economic activity but they have to be churches. You can replace a Widget Factory with a Zigdet Factory and it’ll be the same, but we have no idea how to replicate church attendance.

This has another effect: any attempt to “stop” these negative effects won’t work. They only work based on the logic of the community. Because metis is both the worldview and the action, undoing one messes with the other. You can literally see this happening right this very moment in the midwest: church attendance collapsing is deleting a lot of those benefits even while the government tries to fill the void. It doesn’t “work” in the same way, because a lot of those effects are based on shared culture and trust that a government agency just can’t replicate. They only come with a shared worldview.

In a weird way, maybe that welfare participation is the (attempted) replacement, but then it’s hard to square the simple economic replacement with this:

And, attending religious services weekly, rather than not at all, has the same effect on individuals’ reported happiness as moving from the bottom to the top quartile of the income distribution.

“Man, this sounds like something everyone should know!” I agree, but also HA! That will never happen. I know how to argue for cultural conservatives to my left-wing, coastal audience. But how do you think the average actual conservative argues for that? “Faith”, “family values”, “God”, i.e., irrationally.

I know this is hard, but imagine actually being a conservative Christian in a dying town. Everything I just described is going away, nothing seems able to replace it, and things are just getting worse. The most noticeable difference by far is going to be “cultural” – what language would you use? “Loss of faith and family” is actually pretty apt. Let’s say that their arguments are identical to mine, just shrouded in local language. Fine – all that means is that In the final analysis, the conservative christian recognizes that they’re being deprived even of the power to complain, which is to say, even of the power to explain their powerlessness.

VII

“Ew. Are you saying-”

No, I’m not saying that the government is oppressing American Christians. That’s stupid. They lost the culture war, but no one is tearing up their actual communities. There’s a broader social pressure now that has, well, social effects. I do think that two hundred years from now when we have a better handle on psychology and economics everyone is going to look back at this time with total confusion. Like – how did no one notice? Didn’t you see this economic and social collapse? They were even yelling at you about it! We will confidently aver: “Yes, but when they were yelling they had the impertinence to quote the Bible, and so we knew that they were wrong.” And the person from the future will, quite reasonably, call us complete fucking twats.

#quotes #religion #society #seeing like a state

[brudenellgrooveleeds-blog]

Brudenell Groove meets... Leeds Asylum Seekers Support Network.

Despite the social progress of recent decades, xenophobic, jingoistic and racist sentiments are still prevalent within large sections of our society. Over the last few years, the international conflict fuelled European migrant ‘crisis’ has stirred and exacerbated these residual tensions immensely. The influence of largely, though not exclusively, right wing propaganda has been significant in creating an atmosphere where suspicion is normalised, and under a government that so often treats social issues with calculated apathy, the work of grassroots organisations in protecting and supporting minority groups is indispensable.

One such organisation is Leeds Asylum Seekers Support Network (LASSN), whose efforts here in Yorkshire have helped hundreds of refugees to adjust to life in the UK and overcome some of the various obstacles they face every day. As one of the charities that we’re supporting with our next party, we felt it important to find out a little more about the organisation by reaching out to Jon Beech, the charity’s Director.

“What we need”, Jon argues, is to “make people realise that asylum seekers are just people who are scared witless of going home”. Whilst Western media so often echoes the dangerous and divisive rhetoric of Huntington’s Clash of Civilisations, LASSN operate on the principle that difficulties in achieving integration are never insurmountable. “A lot of the time we’re no different, we’re just from different parts of the world.”

Sensationalist cries from the more venomous sections of the media often dehumanise refugees, reducing them to statistics or, even worse, presenting them as threats to British life or values. “Whilst people remain an abstract – figments of people’s imaginations – the most helpful thing that we can do is to offer friendship, and to be open”, Jon suggests, emphasising the importance of looking within communities when tackling the sense of ‘otherness’ that xenophobic discourse promotes. “Wherever you are active in your community, wherever you have influence, you just need to think about what you can do to show solidarity and support… it’s a small thing but it’s also an enormous thing,” he says, suggesting that sometimes the first step towards helping someone feel at home can be as simple as “smiling at a bus stop”.

LASSN’s primary roles are twofold: to help asylum seekers find somewhere to stay, and to help them learn English. Beyond these basic aims, the team at LASSN work to break down boundaries between local and migrant communities, creating connections in order to establish the support networks that refugees need to adjust to life in a new country.  Where possible, these connections will be made around shared interests, whilst English lessons are generally focused on practical tasks, tailored towards the needs of each individual.

“If they need to go to the doctor, we’ll base our lessons entirely on preparing to do that, the same if it’s about understanding a school report that a kid has brought home”, Jon tells me. “Because they’re doing what they’re interested in, they learn faster, they’re committed to it and we achieve for free what colleges manage to achieve at pretty much the same speed.”

Lessons are conducted in their own homes, and are provided to people who are not able to get places on English courses at colleges in Leeds, either because of oversubscription – the number of places has dropped by 40% over the last five years – or because of childcare responsibilities or transport issues.

“It isn’t just about workers; it isn’t just about staff and professionals. It’s about ordinary people going ‘What can we do?’”, Jon asserts, explaining that a large part of LASSN’s work rests on helping their beneficiaries connect with the community around them, for instance by mobilising local residents “to help them find a way of providing support to people who are often really frightened and really isolated”.  Whilst their team of professionals is extensive, much of LASSN’s work is conducted by volunteers. “You don’t have to be an expert in order to be able to teach English and help somebody to learn, you just need a bit of patience”, he insists. “You don’t need to be a professional housing adviser to offer someone a free room for a few nights until they’ve got themselves together; everyone in Leeds has got something that they can offer to someone quite a long way away. That’s what we stand for.”

This idea of opening up their work to encourage the wider community to partake encapsulates much of what I love about Leeds at the moment, with a wealth of altruistic organisations demonstrating Jon’s belief that “the practical ways” of making a difference within society “are all things that are in most people’s reach”. The proof of this is in the results that LASSN have achieved with these methods; last year they directly helped 288 individuals, a number that swells to around the 650 mark if you include their families and dependants. Since April 2016 they have provided 3500 nights of accommodation, 1700 hours of English lessons and a comparable number of ‘befriending hours’, which focus on helping asylum seekers integrate with their new community  through interaction with local people and volunteers.

This is what City of Sanctuary, a like-minded and collaborative organisation, terms “creating a cultural welcome”: something that we can contribute to on a daily basis without even breaking from our usual routines. “What that means is being kind. It sounds really small and really trite in some respects, but being friendly; being tolerant of people who don’t speak English particularly well; smiling. It is being the very opposite of the hate that shouts out of the newspapers every other day.”

Fighting the intolerance, ignorance and prejudice that many refugees face is an everyday battle, and one in which we can and must play our part. For anyone wanting to go a step further, the website http://helpinleeds.com/ was set up by LASSN to compile volunteering opportunities with other organisations that help refugees and asylum seekers in Leeds. The website allows you to find opportunities that match with your interests. Whether you have a room to offer for a night, or an hour of your week to teach English, chat or go for a kick about, there are plenty of organisations that can help set you up, and nearly all of them can be found on the Help In Leeds website.

“Thankfully we’re not on our own in Leeds; we’re part of a network of people who care about this stuff. I see it as part of our role to be supportive of those initiatives too”, Jon says, echoing the community-minded ethos that we try to foster with Brudenell Groove.

Whilst we hope that we can raise a fair bit of money for LASSN and Maggie’s Centres with our Italo Disco party this Saturday, it is my hope that our support for causes like these can extend beyond one off donations, and in the coming months we’ll be exploring ways that we can work closely with LASSN in the future, with the hope of at some point cooperating to organise some community-oriented music workshops, talks or listening sessions.

“There’s definitely a gap in the market for some pre-revolutionary Iranian soul jazz”, Jon laughs. We think he might be onto something.

For more information on how you can help asylum seekers and refugees head to http://lassn.org.uk/

Written by Andrew Kemp.

Photos courtesy of LASSN.

#LAASN #Brudenell Groove #Leeds Asylum Seekers Support Network

[the-still-small-voice]

Permission to Create

There is an epidemic taking place. I’ll limit my judgement to American culture, since it’s the one I grew up in. I’m aware there are exceptions to the rule, but the toxicity seems to begin at the root. Not only did I grow up in America, but in the great and restless state of New Jersey, which often epitomizes the very problem I’m here to address: Creatives feel they are no longer “allowed” to create.

I started singing and performing for family members when I was three years old. I dedicated the foot of our family staircase as my stage. It was the same staircase where I first faced mortality. My mother sat me down at two years old to tell me about the death of a family member. It’s a moment I still remember despite being so young, and it was a peculiar foreshadowing of my later inclination to turn heartache into song.

Around ten, I began writing in the front yard of our suburban house, complete with white-picket fence. I had no instrument other than my voice and no concept of the “right way” to write a song, but I loved making lines rhyme over melody, and that was enough.

One night, while asleep at thirteen, I had a defining dream that I could play guitar fluidly. I was sitting in the entryway of my childhood church and people were coming from opposite directions - the outside doors and the sanctuary doors - to sit around me on the floor and listen. I woke up and told my parents. It inspired my dad to buy me my first guitar, and despite all previous attempts to play, this time it stuck. I spent hours in my bedroom learning songs and writing my own. I had no teacher - I just learned whatever I needed to learn for the next thing I was trying to do. Then, naturally, I recorded videos of the songs and sent them to whichever boy I happened to be interested in.

In my mind, there was never another option for what I’d do with my life. I tried exploring the music realm for something worthy of a college major, but I had no interest in teaching. I didn’t know how to locate a four-year college with a great recording program, and thank God, because otherwise, I’d be in-debt for an education I could’ve gotten on YouTube before proving myself someone’s worthy unpaid intern.

I love education. I love learning and reading about all topics (minus math). I won’t sit here and pretend I don’t care what people think, but when it comes to maintaining the status-quo, I’ve always erred on the side of rebellion (sometimes to my detriment, though often to my benefit). I never saw the logic in paying $20,000 - $40,000 per year for an education that wasn’t even streamlined in the direction I hoped to go (rock-stardom) in order to satisfy my high-school guidance counselor.

(Side-note: I swear to God, if Belmont University offered a “Rockstar 101” class, they could probably afford to purchase the rest of Nashville within the first year.)

So there I was, left with no formula, in a section of the country that isn’t exactly defined by it’s creative endeavors once you remove the majestic works of Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi. I was incredibly lucky to have parents who supported me both in music and in finances, but they also wanted me to learn how to function in everyday life. This resulted in their emphasizing what I considered to be petty nuisances; things such as: budgeting, household chores, and holding down a day-job.

My brain was so caught up in the philosophical (and episodes of Laguna Beach), that I struggled with the idea of simple day-to-day responsibilities (still do). I saw my parents’ attempts to teach me the benefits of discipline as nagging, and it paralyzed me. I assumed I must have been devastating them with my irresponsibility. Really, they wanted to cultivate my potential.

I didn’t have any notion for how fiscal responsibility or time management could affect my creative life. I was seventeen! I was trying to write sad songs and smoke cigarettes to fit in (and not fit in). I didn’t care about having money for the mere sake of having it, which seemed to be what so many people around me were doing - hoarding their paychecks to feel the illusion of safety that a number on a bank statement could bring. I wanted to play music and see the world. I didn’t have the mental capacity, since the human brain isn’t even fully developed until somewhere around twenty-five, to correlate working a job with pursuing my art. I didn’t contemplate the fact that maybe I’d want to build a home studio one day or buy a house in a city with a booming market so I could save on rent, work less, and write more. If I’m being honest, I still have a really hard time staying motivated, but I’ve learned a few tricks along the way. 

Things like:

1. A Positive Environment Changes Everything.

In Nashville, there’s no end to the misery of the stifled artist. The food industry is one of the best places to work if you’re a touring musician. You have plenty of co-workers to cover shifts, and at some restaurants, six months of reliable service is enough to deify you (or at least grant you the ability to ask for favors), but they can also be a real soul-sucker. Aside from grown men pitching fits over untimely refills on their Diet Cokes, I can recall a co-worker whose hours were triple my own. He was working to pay off loans from the aforementioned university, and now he didn’t even have time to make the music he’d spent $200,000 to study.

As much as I sympathize with the over-worked creative, submersing yourself in an environment of people who’ve had their dreams crushed can be toxic to your own. They feel they’re no longer permitted to pursue what they once loved because the so-called “real world” has hit them like a brick to the face. If you’re not careful, you’ll soon find yourself commiserating over one-too-many beers and accepting artichoke dip as the extent of your life’s calling.

You are an artist. That means you are intuitive. If you walk into a job interview and everyone in the building is trudging around grimacing and muttering complaints about their existence, do yourself a favor and find a different place to work. Creativity is energy, and what you spend it on matters.

2. Your Time is Valuable.

I’m twenty-eight years old with over fifteen years of childcare experience. I’m CPR certified and trained in First Aid, yet I still have a hard time asking for more than $12 an hour to keep people’s children from sticking their fingers into electrical sockets. Meanwhile, the average cocktail costs $12 and takes about fifteen minutes to disappear. I’m afraid of “offending” someone, even subtly, by stating my own worth, and THAT, my friends, is half the reason why the music industry has gone to shit, in my humble opinion.

Thankfully, artists are resilient. We find uncanny ways to support ourselves in order to keep creating, even if it involves borderline pleading with our friends to pre-order an album or trading gear on craigslist to make ends meet. Then, after all the effort, we have the privilege of listening to our extended family members complain about how we’re “always asking for something on ‘The Facebook’.”

The South lends itself to a sense of community, but in the region where I grew up, asking for help was often equated with weakness. You don’t borrow your neighbor’s lawnmower. Instead, you work until you can buy a brand new one, preferably nicer than theirs.

All this to say: you are allowed to put a price on the things you need to do to survive in order to alleviate pressure from the things you want to do. You’ll have more time to create and you’ll feel less drained. I am by no means claiming you should do your day job and then give away your creative endeavors for free (a sure way to be taken advantage of), but you will do some of your best work when paying your rent isn’t hanging in the balance. As time passes, if you stick to your guns, you’ll find people who are more than willing to pay you for your skillset because your experience and passion will be evident, shining through in conversation. You’ll sound like you know what you’re talking about because you do know what you’re talking about, and that’s when you quote them exactly what you know you’re worth.   

3. Art is Work

If something takes time and energy, it is work. That’s just science, y’all. When you start pursuing a career and taking risks in your chosen field (i.e. going on a tour, fundraising for a record, or moving to a different city), you WILL encounter naysayers. People who are creatively blocked, or don’t believe themselves to be creative, will inevitably question you. You’re rocking the boat, and it makes them uncomfortable. Some will be inspired by your efforts, while others who haven’t felt inspiration in years, interpret it as condemnation - as if your differing priorities are a subtle attempt to shame their own. Suddenly, you feel obtrusive for simply talking about your dreams.

The easiest way to tell who has an alcohol problem at a party is by casually mentioning you’re not drinking - then wait to see who tries to pour tequila down your throat. It’s the same with risk-taking: the ones who barrage you with questions about how you’ll make money or say things like, “You know, men don’t like strong women”, are the ones subconsciously wondering what might’ve happened if they hadn’t surrendered their entire existence to the promise of a 401K.

Is there anything wrong with a 401K? Of course not. (I had to Google the definition, but it sounds pretty okay!) What’s not okay is acting as the voice of cynicism and chopping away at someone’s dreams just because they chose to take a different, less security-oriented path. Thankfully, we get to choose to ignore those voices.

Work: “Activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result.”

Granted, there is a secondary definition that involves “employment for the sake of earning income”, but the primary definition of work is rooted in a sense of purpose, while the second involves a focus on money. The irony is that so much of what we do to achieve a sense of purpose involves no money, while much of what we do for money seemingly involves no purpose. The goal is to find what inherently gives us a sense of meaning and then, without shame, gradually let the mental and physical effort we put forth provide for us monetarily as well.

We can absolutely pursue our passions while having unrelated day jobs, but there are only 24 hours in a given day, and we should be sleeping for a third of them. If you want your craft to become full-time, you’ll have to channel your energies in a way that eventually releases you from the hours spent wiping tables or sitting in a cubicle. Balancing family life, physical and mental health, and pursuing inspiration in the form of reading, travel, and rest are not luxuries - they are the foundation of a thriving human life. We are allowed to remove what doesn’t serve us or find a way to better make it serve us. For instance: asking for a well-deserved raise so you can spend less hours at work and more hours in a studio or with your children isn’t brash or selfish, it’s actually the most responsible thing.

Here’s what happened to me: I trusted my gut and moved to a different city the week before I turned 22. Shortly thereafter, I started playing shows, making an album, and meeting tons of new people, but I was also a very small fish in a very big pond. This was equally as difficult as it was necessary to my growth as an artist. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve hit what I thought were impenetrable emotional walls trying to salvage a sense of confidence or originality. On any given day, at any given restaurant, I inadvertently share space with Grammy-award winners. I’m not exaggerating - I once showed up to a random babysitting job to find FOUR Grammys sitting on top of their father’s desk. How the hell am I supposed to ever feel like a real musician?

It comes down to this: I choose to. I’m reminded of the truth - that this little indie-artist is just as worthy of the label “musician” as those who’ve won awards or been on television. Plus, If I actually think about it, winning a Grammy has never been a personal goal. So why am I gauging my definition of success against those who have what I don’t even want? I’m a musician because I play music whether or not people are watching.

Now when I go home, the same people who questioned my choices and intentions think I’m living a revolutionary existence simply because I’ve been on a few short (self-booked) tours and saw Kelly Clarkson in person once. The point is: If you learn how to climb the walls, you end up stronger. The naysayers either come around or end up on the other side of the wall. A mere few years after people are done discouraging you for your work, they’ll be applauding you for it, or they just won’t have anything to say at all. You will ALWAYS fall somewhere different on the “success” spectrum depending on where you are and who you are around, but if you haven’t decided you’re allowed to be an artist, you’re going to let other people decide for you - and if you don’t decide to get off of that roller coaster, it’s going to inevitably make you sick.

One more thing:

As artists, we are constantly biting the bullet. We feel anxiety and act in spite of it. We get vulnerable on stages in front of complete strangers. We work for years with no guarantee of money or recognition. We often find ourselves as sacrifices on the altar of opinion without ever asking to be there. We strive to balance strength with sensitivity, but no one gets to tell us we’re lazy.

My band played a show in Atlanta a few weeks ago, and here’s what our day looked like:

-Wake up at 6am to meet at a central location.

-Load gear into the van.

-Drive 5 hours (with stops).

-Meet up with our fill-in keyboardist.

-Unload gear into his house.

-Practice for three hours.

-Re-load gear back into the van.

-Drive to the venue.

-Unload gear out of the van into aesthetically unpleasing green room.

-Set up merch.

-Wait three hours.

-Sound-check.

-Play the show.

-Talk to people and sell merch.

-Reload gear back into the van AGAIN.

-Drive 4 hours back to Nashville.

-Get home at 2am so no one misses work the next day.

I repeat: No one gets to tell us we’re lazy.

4. “What Do You Want?”

I’ve was technically unemployed for the last two months, though not for lack of searching. As of writing this, I’ve been hired at two different coffee shops, but up until a few days ago I’d been forced into limbo - waiting on callbacks or jobs to actually start.

While not-working in the traditional sense, I’ve had time to, yet again, ask myself what I would LIKE to do. I spent much of the last month bouncing between searching for a local day job and pursuing freelance writing jobs online in order to find something that could travel with me.

After a co-writing session that turned into a two hour pep-talk with my friend Sam, I realized I had a knack for coaching people through their creative frustrations and songwriting hurdles. It hit me over the head like a lightning bolt, so naturally I spent the next week trying to find someone to tell me I wasn’t qualified. No one objected. In fact, most everyone I told deeply affirmed the idea with, “You should TOTALLY do that. You’re made for it!” (I have really good people in my life). Now, slowly but surely, I’m being paid to do it for others because I know how to cultivate a safe space for fledgling (or simply intimidated) artists, after having waded through many of the same trenches myself.

If you’re a driven person over the age of twenty-five, there’s a significant chance you have ten to fifteen years of experience doing SOMETHING that someone else is just starting out doing. There’s also a significant chance they’d desperately love to process with someone further along than they are. Again, I don’t have four Grammys on any of my shelves (I barely have shelves), but I do know what it’s like to wonder if my lyrics are worth showing the world, and I do know the paralyzing terror of hearing your voice played back over speakers for the first time.

The question, “What do you want?” is one of the most dangerous and profound questions you can ask or be asked. Growing up in a dysfunctional church environment, I wasn’t allowed to ask it. I was supposed to ask: “What does GOD want me to do?” Conveniently, there were plenty of ill-intentioned leaders eager to answer on behalf of the congregation my family belonged to, and it usually involved God being suddenly strapped for cash.

A poor sense of the nature of God (the Universe, Creator, Energy, or whatever works for your vocabulary) led me to assume I was required to do the complete opposite of whatever I enjoyed.

“I want to play music on stages where people connect with the songs I’ve written. But that’s clearly egotistical. I guess I’ll have to become a missionary to Africa” (crazy how many of those God seems to need per youth group).

“You have free will and God loves you unconditionally…

But that thing you’ve always dreamed of doing? Not allowed.”

What’s the deal with these mixed messages?

Honestly, what’s more egotistical? Wanting to play music in a band, or assuming God needs you to play the martyr because the salvation of Africa hangs in the balance of your life-choices?  Everybody, chill out.

We spend so much time doing things out of guilt. I’m not saying anyone should become intentionally calloused toward the needs of others, but do you really want a bunch of people at your birthday party who feel obligated to be there? The reason we become cynical is due, in-part, to forcing ourselves into environments, boxes, and facades we were never designed to be a part of in the first place. Try saying “no” to anything you would have done out of guilt or obligation for one week and watch how much healthier you feel and how much more energy you have. “I don’t want to” is a perfectly acceptable answer, and it will change your life and reshape your priorities faster than you can imagine.

So what if, just what if you were put on this earth to do the very thing you love doing? Far-fetched, I know, but let’s all stop pretending we know what the word “reality” means when few of us have been alive for more than eighty-five years. For God’s sake, we exist on a speck of dust floating through space.

Why not leave this place more beautiful and more inspiring than when we entered it? Can you fathom Michelangelo talking himself out of painting the Sistine Chapel? Imagine if he’d convinced himself to take the “humble-route” and pursued a behind-the-scenes life merely on the basis of comfort, but at the expense of his artistic instinct?

I can almost guarantee, if you’re the type of person who is hyper-concerned about becoming an egotistical maniac, you run little risk of it actually happening. Worry about how you’ll deal with fame when you’re actually famous - otherwise you’re wasting precious energy you could be using to fuel your present work. Plus, the world is already running rampant with much bigger ego-maniacs ruining things. The more you exercise your creative nature, the healthier you become. The healthier you become, the more effortlessly you can benefit those around you. Take a deep breath.

5. It Matters.

There’s enough garbage going on in the world. Any remotely sensitive person could easily fall prey to emotional paralysis simply by looking around for too long.

That’s exactly what happens. Whether it’s the pain of poverty or feelings of inadequacy when surrounded by other artists, we all have a difficult time creating because it feels like an uphill battle with no actual results - especially if we’re prone to discrediting ourselves. In a recent conversation with a beloved friend, he expressed feeling a sense of pointlessness when it came to writing new songs. He wasn’t writing out of a place of sadness anymore, and he felt like anything he could say had already been said by one of his influences with a larger fanbase. As a personal fan of his music, I wanted to take him by the shoulders and shake some sense into him (I probably did).

I don’t care if you think your songs sound similar to someone else’s, there are people in the world who have never even heard of the “someone else” you are familiar with. A younger person may stumble upon your art, allowing you to become one of their influences because they happened to be at the right place at the right time and something in your voice resonated in them. The only way you get to decide who crosses paths with your work is by never putting it out there at all.

Redemption happens when all of the aforementioned garbage gets recycled into something even more extraordinary than it was in the first place.

This is the job of the artist: to open ourselves up like the vessels that we are, letting all the sadness and bullshit and divinity swirl around in us until a song spills out and the paint hits the canvas.

If we don’t, we end up miserable and withholding. The way fireflies light up entire forests simply by offering the individual flecks of light they inherently contain is a profound image of what we’re each endowed with, not just as creatives, but as living and breathing human beings.

6. Don’t Fake It (But For God’s Sake, Please Stop Being So Self-Deprecating).

I have a love/hate relationship with the phrase: “Fake it ’til you make it.” On one hand, I appreciate the concept of cultivating confidence through action, but the word “fake” has a disingenuous ring to it. What we’re actually talking about is a form of hyper-honesty.

Call yourself what you are. Stop pretending you are what you’re not. I am definitely not a surgeon, and pretending to be one would only result in a series of lawsuits. But there are things I can do and don’t do, simply by convincing myself I am not qualified enough despite plenty of evidence to the contrary.

Imposter Syndrome: “a concept describing high-achieving individuals who are marked by an inability to internalize their accomplishments and a persistent fear of being exposed as a ‘fraud’.”

A few years ago, I showed up to a babysitting job I’d found online. A brand new mother had just moved with her husband from New York City and needed some occasional help watching her newborn son. She was a writer for any number of well-known music publications - Nylon, American Songwriter, etc. She’d also started her own Nashville music blog.

Naturally, I was somewhat intimidated, but I was just there to help with the baby - not try to promote myself. I wasn’t even comfortable enough in my songwriting skin to show my music to friends yet - but she politely asked me about my life and I mentioned it in passing.

One afternoon, after watching one of her artist interviews get derailed by technical difficulties, I sat down with my new journalist friend and her colleague as they drank a glass of wine and I held the baby. I commiserated, while trying to convince them it hadn’t gone nearly as badly as they thought it had. We chatted for a while when, out of nowhere, she directed a question at me:

“You said you play music right?”

“Uhh...yeah?” I said nervously. (I knew exactly where this was going.)

“Will you play us a song? I’m gonna go grab my husband’s guitar.”

“You really don’t have to...”, but she was upstairs before I had time to talk her out of it.

She came back downstairs, acoustic guitar in hand, and I nervously chose one of my songs to play while I kept my eyelids tightly sealed. After all was said and done, both women looked at me dumbfounded. They’d really liked it, and the novelty of living in a city where your babysitter doubles as a decent songwriter hadn’t worn off yet (after a few years, we all safely assume our Uber driver has played Conan at least once).

Without reading a single blog I’d ever posted, hearing another song, or even knowing my education level, she offered me the opportunity to write for her website. It could be as often or as little as I wanted, and while she couldn’t pay me, she could get me into nearly any show I wanted to cover for free.

I took her up on the offer, and what started as free entry into shows turned into, “Hey, do you want to grab a quote from the artist? Here’s their contact email”.

The first time this happened, it was literally hours before the show, and I boldly decided I was going to ask for a full-on interview and see if I could get away with looking like I knew what the hell I was doing. That night, I proceeded to interview Andrew Joslyn, violinist and head of Passenger String Quartet, who were touring as David Bazan’s backing band at the time. Our interview struck up a friendship and resulted in eating late-night food with everyone after the show.

After the first impromptu interview went well, I was asked if I wanted to interview the band Copeland. I recorded the answers to their questions on my shattered iPhone 4 and again, felt the high of an opportunity I had zero formal education in. There are people who go to college for years just hoping to sit down with an artist they respect in order to write a piece and see it published. I was doing it because I’d shown up to the right babysitting job and someone decided to tell me I could be a writer if I wanted to be. All I had to do was take her up on the offer and not shy away from it.

It happened again a few weeks ago. I was able to walk into Grimey’s Record Store an hour before the band Manchester Orchestra released their newest album. I chatted with a bunch of high-profile music industry people (only because I have no idea who they are when I start talking to them). I even got up the nerve to ask Andy Hull for a few words, all while secretly tipping my hat to my teenage self.

And guess what? No one cared. No one kicked me out or said, “Hey, I can’t put my finger on it, but you seem like you don’t belong here.” I was doing exactly what I was there to do. The only person who thought I was getting away with anything was me. I even ran into a friend who’d been specifically hired by the band (and previously, many other reputable artists) to take photos at the cd release. We shared a mutual moment of: “How did we end up here?” 

If I had decided “I’m not a writer, I don’t know how to do this,” or shied away from drafting an email to someone’s publicist for fear of not sounding professional enough, I’d have missed out on these rare chances to ask artists who make me want to play music, what makes them want to play it.

The moral of the story isn’t to name drop or look “cool” (spoiler alert: I’m not). It’s no exaggeration when I say that, immediately after that cd release show I headed to a pet-sitting job to scoop cat litter. Life is interwoven with highs and lows, and misery stalks you the moment you begin over-identifying with any title. But I think maybe, if we took all of the energy we spend on trying to make our lives appear a certain way, and funneled it into saying “yes” to what we’re actually passionate about, we’d be astounded at the places we find ourselves and the (sometimes, very specific) gifts we are handed.

So if you have something you love doing, the only pretending involved is saying you don’t love it or you can’t do it. Sometimes you go out on a limb, but more often than not, it pays off. Sometimes you work for years without any pay all, but it doesn’t mean you aren’t deserving of the title, the same way the title “Mother” and “Father” don’t come attached to a salary.

Stay humble. Take the good with the bad. Successes are often followed by a litter box that needs cleaning. Don’t forget about the people who love you regardless of social standing. Know your worth is inherent and not dictated by what you do. If this sounds reasonable, then by all means, just go do the damn thing.

7. Pay Attention

The mundane is not my forte. In fact, I can book entire tours and endless road trips simply to avoid the dreaded monotony of everyday life. In part, it’s human nature - familiarity can breed contempt, but only if you let it.

It’s too easy to cop out of life when it isn’t exciting. Rather than defining the act of “growing up” as a mandatory selling of your soul to the corporate gods, what if we saw it as true maturity - a realization that the good and the bad aren’t always so cut and dry. In the previous story about how I fell into music blogging, I can almost guarantee that, while driving to babysit, I was thinking: “How much longer do I have to do these peasant jobs before I get to do something distinguished and significant?”

Well, years later, I’m still babysitting people’s kids and scooping cat litter. But I’ve also interviewed bands, toured with my own music, and now help people work through their artistic paralysis. If I’d been above taking care of someone’s son (a pretty significant job, actually), I wouldn’t have crossed paths with the same opportunities, or maybe I would have been too apathetic to recognize the things that were unfolding in ways I wouldn’t have predicted.

But let’s forget about the future for a moment.

Nothing is guaranteed. We are free to dream or watch television, go to church or not go to church, talk to the homeless person or walk past them because we don’t know how to respond. We will make mistakes. We will feel ill-equipped. We will tragically lose loved ones and wonder if there’s even a point in trying. Then, we may see art blossom from the depths of despair - not because we were aiming to make a concept album, (our minds wouldn’t dare to prostitute the heartache) but rather because, “art is born in attention.” - Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way

Cameron goes on to say:

Art may seem to spring from pain, but perhaps that is because pain serves to focus our attention onto details (for instance, the excruciatingly beautiful curve of a lost lover’s neck). Art may seem to involve broad strokes, grand schemes, great plans. But it is the attention that stays with us; the singular image is what haunts us and becomes art. Even in the midst of pain, this singular image brings delight. The artist who tells you different is lying.

We don’t need to be sad to make art.

We simply need to be paying attention.

Maybe you’re up every day at the crack of dawn opening a coffee shop. You have five minutes to yourself before your co-workers all show up. You’re thinking about how much longer you can “keep doing this shit,” when you happen to notice the streaks of pink sky out the window as the sun is coming up. You take a deep breath. The steam from the coffee billows around your hands and the smell suddenly reminds you of a camping trip you took with your dad when you were seven.

Inspiration is limitless. It is unwarranted and uncontrolled. It seeps in like water and saturates anything even remotely permeable. So we must remain permeable, present, and open-handed. Yes, there is benefit to having discipline in order to actively create (the only reason I was able to drag myself out of bed and into writing today), but if you aren’t allowing inspiration in, what can you expect to put forth? If you can’t take a moment to breathe, even in the midst of work - to thank life for a second of stillness and for letting you be a part of it, then your attempts at productivity will likely be met with frustration.

It is in your nature to create. You think it’s in your nature to work a desk-job you hate for nine hours a day for the rest of your life. You think doing so is “responsible”, but if you really contemplate it, it doesn’t make any sense.

You are a living organism - more closely related to a plant than to a robot. If you act in accordance, you’ll see what happens when you begin trusting yourself to do what you were born to do. You’ll see what happens when, instead of making assumptions about coworkers, you realize they each contain a universe within themselves and have a story to tell. Unexpectedly, you not only see them through a new lens, but you see yourself differently. Your spine straightens with a sense of purpose and you go home to channel what you’ve seen, heard, and tasted so tangibly all day into something that might even move someone else, should they choose to pay attention.

The only moment that exists to us is the one we are experiencing right now, so do your best to honor it. Stop trying to fix the past or manipulate the future. Each moment is building toward something greater than itself, but if we try to rush the process, our foundation gets half-built and the entire thing collapses on itself.

Instead, slow down. Look around. Take a deep breath.

We are overwhelmingly surrounded by wonder.

For creative coaching, email:  [email protected]

[thoughtfulcupcakesublime]

Virginia legislators are continuing their work in Richmond.

Prince William County residents heard about what’s occurring in the General Assembly at a Dale City Post Crossover Legislative Town Hall.

State Senator Jeremy McPike and State Delegate Elizabeth Guzman held the meeting at Beville Middle School in Dale City on February 15.

Education and transportation were a couple of the topics they covered.

This is a video of the town hall:

Below, is the transcription of the meeting, which is normally done with 80 percent accuracy. Unfortunately, it wasn’t able to translate all of what Guzman said.

McPike: I will, we’ll go ahead and get started. Appreciate your motivations for additional folks who joined us today. Uh, I’m Jeremy [inaudible]. Uh, [inaudible] Woodbridge [inaudible] stretches on Prince William Parkway from 95 homes of many villains spreads to launch them two 34 in your dad’s freaks in the forest high school.

Speaker 2: Got run.

Speaker 3: Great County limits. Okay.

McPike: Um, and then first off, happy belated birthday to delegate. [inaudible]

Guzman: yeah. Now I going get to listen to this mine. How can we turn 47?

Speaker 3: You’re so young. I just don’t got the menu

Guzman: strictly brilliantly has parts of [inaudible] County and [inaudible] County raise me. I’m telling you I have, I won’t say most of them city and then I’ll go with you were sent off to go sit strict as well. And then I have pulled off as well. I spoke with them and then from there I go to, okay, fine. Where have [inaudible] [inaudible] um, [inaudible] area I think cause I shared that if you’re going to get how I and I, you [inaudible] Nope. [inaudible] I have the street area and we need deal [inaudible] we need you to just freak. I go into football, not going to have Monclair I should not ever go.

McPike: Thanks for joining. Uh, this is sort of, if it’s okay, we’ll probably do some intro of what we’ve been working on, a little bit about the budget and sort of what’s going on in Richmond and then open it up to your questions. There’s lots of things going on and so we might in our remarks and uncover something that you’re interested in. So, and encourage folks to ask questions if you’ve seen something to bring that up. Um, gravels if that’s okay. If someone disagrees with the statement or the position of someone, this is a lie, you know, this is an opportunity for folks to voice this concerns and not necessarily have a debate the debate, but also just to respectful, right? So if you disagree with someone, I’d encourage folks to not comment on it or BU or one way or the other. That makes sense. Um, cause it is a nonpartisan town hall. [inaudible] allowed to ask questions, have them disagree with the position. It’s fine to disagree. Um, I think it’s important to have a context that we can agree and disagree, but we should do so respectfully. Does that make sense? Everybody? Okay. We also have two other like this here. Say hi and introduce yourself.

Guzman: The one water conservation district. This is Stephen’s full boyfriend, Vanessa city full from the other one is [inaudible].

McPike: So a couple of things. This is our budget year, so this is our long session. So we’re in our 60 day. In fact, some Morrow, um, they’ll be publishing the budget and the budget amendments. So the cover introduces a budget [inaudible] starts as a matter of process. That all comes out tomorrow evening. And so we’ve been working on, I know [inaudible] has a minus in the house Senate and so there are lots of them pressures as you can imagine to work what’s in the budget and what’s not in the budget. And so we’ll see that board out this weekend and so we’ll be breeding for that as well. That’s lots of moving parts to it. But I think from an overall perspective, the company is really encouraging us specifically for early education and pre-K education that owns the 100 million option investment between standard of quality of rent, re benchmarking, uh, additional dollars in funding in early childhood education.

McPike: Um, you know, the principal County we’ve been trying to catch up in terms of, um, probably chocolate slots, not quite there to the, it’s um, stepping up and also offering some incentive, uh, opportunities for additional preschool. Um, as we knew, as you know, the data shows us that earlier kids learn to read, they can learn the rest of the subject and they could build the comfort, um, very early in life and their skill set and reading the data says that we’d be much better off versus remedial training later on. And so this is really the first budget that we’ve seen, this sort of significant significant investment, um, in our education system, which is great on the back end of it. You see also the availability for college, uh, community college, which I think is just great for those kids who do qualify for Pell grants.

McPike: There’s free community college that goes as much as well. Um, we’re going to be serious about getting every kid the skills that they need. Um, we know that we’ve have very bright kids in our community that sometimes feel like they can’t go to the next step, usually their financial words or other words. And so the more we can open up those opportunities, I think the better we do leveraging on our talent. Some of them right here in developmental school and um, you know, we want make sure that the kids have that, whether it’s a skill trade or computer science, there’s targeted degrees that the governor has put in this budget and I think that helps to win both our workforce development needs as well as ensuring that those kids, so those are important highlights, transportation, there’s some bills and transportation that’s going through that are really important.

McPike: They will all pro sports increase in the back pass. That will help define some of my hands patients. We are billions behind our projected funding level. As you know, the 2013 legislation made a small net and that those, the person that changed since 1986 in terms of transportation funding, there were certain things that we also proposed for Metro two years ago that took some of the road money away. They were restoring some beds and transmit transit occupancy tax code in this region. That’s really important for prison County. Um, the improvements and investments in fury might seem to report with the long bridge. It’s the bridge that all the rail lines pop as they cross into DC. So all the very trips right now are, we’re going to roughly 22 trips a day by making this investment in the long bridge and we’ll be willing to do also weekend trips, reverse trips and increase the number of trips.

McPike: I’m afraid your spread line part of that is going to be funded from the ISIS. I’m told [inaudible] dollars for buying funding, but this is up 1.41 point $5 billion multi year project to get there. And other than for the commuter rail, that’s just a huge difference. Right now we can’t do anything to a one inch with Patsy on the be revise. And so the more and more books we can get, you utilize it with the more frequent and reliable service, the more people wouldn’t get um, [inaudible] back jamming roads and open up as a communal house. So I’ll take a couple of pauses and then trade back and forth because there’s a number of different, we move into cards. I think those are two pretty significant ones.

Guzman: So just be back on the outreach out medication. One part that is gonna be different than years prior. You probably know [inaudible] town was not taking advantage of all the money that was available for patients before or leaping back. So right now you don’t need to knew that insulation Ricky never gets, well initially if there was any four, four year olds, it’s going to be expanded with [inaudible]. So that is great. You know, if they’re going to be able to release. And then also what is going to happen is that the, I will not allow finally childcare providers in that community, both little race amplification process. So they do get access. That’s my name. Or by your server.

Guzman: There’s one cop yet these time are not the same. Like the money’s going to sleep there, you’re gonna use it and it’s gonna just be waiting for the difference. Now he’s studying, we don’t use the body breathing accounting. The money’s gonna go away wasted. So I think that’s any people we have to work together to try to work with local government and to work with providers in the area who makes sure that we’re going to take advantage of those support monies. I mean, we are needing the numbers. I mean [inaudible] when we are thinking the amount of children and we are seven things in that County, and then we talk with [inaudible] route up between your car to qualified, you know what the median household income of about a hundred thousand $120,000 per household. So that make us individual who, any size of freebies when he has Google with free childcare or anything like that, other the BPI, advising, raising the minimum wage, all of those forward.

Guzman: The guidelines he’s called that I want to go up. Who’s going to be opening over tuning these? Can you find [inaudible] [inaudible] I know that important investments schools as well. I would say that we are security. The funding for reviews like age and older for school money that was taken away at the end of the first one I got to go. I also, I mean DCS at least Dale city if someone you’re wasting money. The area where we have, I know each not watching other students so I work job is jabs can not meet anybody or we need more resources. Right now that classes or English language learners is 24,000 students. So we are volume. We thrive. The reviews that those 17 she’s here but then we couldn’t find the money. You know as we have been abusive to how I learned it the same way like you didn’t use Morgan.

Guzman: There is money available above our house who any book Conrad’s millions dollars. So I’m hopeful that we can go back and change these videos that we allow model for communities. That goal was [inaudible] sorry that it’s 17 7:00 PM hitches, 4,000 students. So we’re trying to put 20 features to a thousand students. So I it’s just that that’s the reality, right? That the word, anything, you know, anytime you in schools we are feeling as set up the [inaudible] was saying is that we’re paying for tap because public education was not a priority or maybe 2018 where we’re working with the same by different public education from 2008 and however from NEP has gone. How many people if we just look around them, I mean how many [inaudible] who have come having that committee and we’re working with the same plan. So feels like a school counselor, psychologists, social workers where he would be hard, especially a patient.

Guzman: And especially with the vacation we are working with jailer, they are doing a whole or the shape of the whole system, uh, adjusted Luca. What can we do for, especially with vocational classes, that it has not been patched in 2009 and that’s time we discuss, especially with location in Virginia, who now 2009 and we all know that back then men have help. What statement? You know their work and they’re still many children. I’m fired. Cause every advancing that their children have a condition and they need more resources. So we are glad to be straight. [inaudible] our very own sacred values application incarnate [inaudible] school has taken the, you know, these very, it’s built, it’s built, it’s working really, really hard. We’ve tried to provide more resources to special education classrooms as far as [inaudible] we are going to finally have hoping, hoping that, you know, every facet. [inaudible]

Guzman: I haven’t decided for Metro. And finally, and this is just a study and I don’t want you to think that this will happen in a couple of years. No, it said home circle. It’s going to take at least 15 years. Look in years, if not 20 years, who bring a Metro to call you back. We’re going to have more VA services. Uh, we need to work with the IPC. The last time that I met with, I told them that what I heard at the doors, because we do have other commuters and we don’t have places, Bart, even one of the things that mesh of the yabbies this stuff and there’s no places to my parking. They’re not really, there is no old who built a new computer lab. So we are talking about trying to have shadows to allow people to frog from where they leave their knots.

Guzman: I was also brought me to see, we kind of have finally I, they’ll city on the right service that could allow people to drive bill with Del city. There’s a population that we talk to right now within the city is very powerful. We talk in Minneapolis right now, so we want him to have allowed people that are working locally to stay out of their cars and fight to take public transportation to go for work. You know, I, I know that PRPC director that we, you wanna think about Nashville that we are, we need to think outside the box about maybe making it more accessible for people. So if I’m asking my husband who dropped me off at WSP Istation, so I don’t think of training. I don’t think of anything because my husband is taking off from work with take me. So I, we had to call my boss. I’m trying to find ways to make people who love you here. Your station. We’d love other resources. No, I feel you miss it. A nerve money. Um, B and C who give [inaudible] we talking about [inaudible] in Washington D C now need to take care of them. I worry about my needs. You never caught,

McPike: um, couple of things that, um, the legislation back in specific with working on [inaudible] did the same rule. Open up the question [inaudible] covered this morning. And how long have you [inaudible] um, this year I work on many of, you know, the last couple years I’ve been working on natural gas pipeline safety via song house has exploded in my history. And what Ruby, um, this year also removing is currently an exemption and Virginia state law that allows the natural gas companies to not use a professional engineer when they, Sam can charge him. Um, after the Massachusetts explosion in fires that occurs in, is 22 States that have that exclusion cause action to remove it. Is that the trend of the bill this year to remove that legislation to ensure that any of this infrastructures reviewed and signed by a professional figure? Um, and there’s lately I’ve been to [inaudible] actually since the last year, has the son get killed with house, which is requiring a lab water testing and how the daycare facilities, um, there is led facilities.

McPike: The federal laws cover essentially the water distribution systems, but not addition to facility. And so the solder joints, um, in different pipes still contain a certain parts of led. And so it does require that same standard not being anybody wants led water going into the baby formula or anything else or just basic rain water and talk to her. That’s a vague neurological. Um, and also getting the school’s resources, um, in coordination with the Virginia department of health use of existing level or standard like carrying this past two years ago for schools. Uh, make sure we understand that holistic view of the problem around the state and the, to identify resources to that. So I have a budget numbers on that as well. That helps that often start to aggregate some of the data so we can get schools, they do have a federal grant they were, were, were awarded last year or something like $33,000.

McPike: Obviously that’s a drop in the bucket so to speak. So we would get a lot of work. I’m just going to do on that. One of the other big goals I worked on this year and incurred for the governor’s offices, worker ms classification. Um, this primarily impacts, uh, the construction trades. There are other industries that do as well that do not follow the IRS guidelines in terms of who should be at a 10 99 worker and who should be an employee. And what occurs is, especially when construction jobs is, there are lots of companies who essentially tend to at nine a bunch of employees so they’re not paying the same taxes. So those betters, that undercut those who are doing business the right way and Virginia has been very lax about that appointment. And so this grades have a new enforcement mechanism within the department of taxation as well as coordinating with the department of labor and other agencies and create some, some penalties for those who are bad actors.

McPike: Right now companies getting open up and close really with little penalty associated with it. And that’s unfortunate because it does hurt. Like I said, the good actors that come here are doing the right thing. So this modeling gets a little bit more teeth than enforcement. My name is indoor wall. Um, so those are, those are a couple of, there’s a dozen other things I’m going to give you. Seed reform, um, cutting the number of permit types of half just updating um, alcohol licenses based on new businesses, business standards after provision. And we really didn’t anticipate like wait months with you, like selling you a case of beer. But there’s also serving that, you know, there’s all sorts of business models in addition to the new distilleries and how they want to innovate. And so it’s really consolidating, I don’t know about a hundred pages of code section and reducing, cutting essentially the, what we call it, Christmas tree effect.

McPike: When you sort of add on thing permit types, you can just consolidate a certain license authorities to make it a lot easier for people to apply for licenses. Um, additionally, this year was uh, a bill going through the expanse on my bill from last year that allows for open carry of alcohol. If you’ve been to mass this first Fridays, you notice that you can have a restaurants can sell a beer and if you have a closed down special event area. And so I’m gonna ask, this is taking advantage of this year where they closed down the streets on first Fridays. And so the restaurant jurors can sort of amino, you can also have a beer, you can got to carry the street which were closed down and then it is demarcated area. Listen to a live band. And I know the masters restaurant droves, they see it at all.

McPike: They’re like all times sales high by like eight 30 I think the second night. Some of them were telling me. So that’s that. And yeah, so yeah, I’ve checked with the chief of police there and others. In terms of enforcement issues, he said there’s been not. Um, so there’s been a really great in that positive, but now it’s sort of catching on. So lots of other parts of the same line. So there’s a bill this year that would increase it to 16 as well as allow, if you have a multi-day permit, would only count as one. So some localities have like a festival or something that would come as one of those permits. So encouraging people in historic downtowns, no 16 permits a year. So it’s a limited duration permanent. Right now the current code is 12. So this was not the two 16 but also the count for if you had a sort of a weekend long festival on Friday, that Sunday that when he hound for for three to those that sort of account for one sort of a total there.

Guzman: Okay. So let’s talk about public notes. Will it just be like what you’re talking about? So I would discard we um, consenting and be able to send up that wheel is fighting people A’s and PFS. It’s a [inaudible]. How many of have many peoples are very familiar with environment here? I can tell us that our phone actually use water across the catheter. So we are conducting a study with the department of health and they will absorb across cost tests. I believe Edify waterparks or pizza, tough people in gays. I knew the times at the house. [inaudible] at the center we have now a [inaudible]. So I even told him one time, I don’t think we’ll be surprised. [inaudible] last year that was killed his body. Nine votes about, see that over next one separately in the presence of ATC, beat up the smoking. And the reason with my nurse on their age, you find that in fact, so you will not [inaudible].

Guzman: I think these use just a public health issue. It’s one of the main costs. [inaudible] I gave him through smoking as they grow out, but I was exposed in clothes so long into small, I mean it’s just the right thing to do to my plans. I’m not developed. So in that field I was able to get somebody back and some support from outside. They have out that as far as um, changing facilities with the department of student health services, I have her request from one of my constituents who is a single father that he used it in a couple of the saved and buildings and he couldn’t find that changing table.

Guzman: So finally we were able to partner with the department on getting our services. So we will use one facet of birth, gender, we tend to fables. So yes, because they are there. So many women nowadays there are, you know, being back at the hospitals on fire that’s taking the fathers, I think it’s their responsibility to think he felt that children as well. So I’m excited about that view game with your [inaudible] that focus on integrating past comedian defense hoping that he will go well in the Senate. As far as I wanted to talk about environment a little bit. I was fine with a great deal and I carry a couple of legislations for them. I wasn’t accessible, you know to pass [inaudible] or the other development that is asking about these kind of things with more than a hundred thousand citizens. I’ve seen this with more than 300,000 citizens [inaudible] affordable policy and doing public transportation as a comprehensive plans anytime they are developing a 5% or 15 year [inaudible] plan and I passed the center on the way to go to the governor says so I’m excited about that. I’m talking about separating your deal as well. I can’t really kind of house or solution that passed the house is going to say that I have not heard yet where Regina will become versus baby in the country. We’ll be clear that they’re declining with emergency and waiting to absolutely

Speaker 4: [inaudible].

Guzman: I don’t see a problem with that. That’s the company. Coffee’s just being loud and clear. The cavitation is right up and we need to start acting. Now. I have seen South of my union fear brothers and sisters, so I the African [inaudible] that would allow public employees who [inaudible] and he passed the house. It’s on its way to the Senate. I was not be fired Friday evening that he will be heard on Monday. [inaudible] okay. How’s this [inaudible] so I just wasn’t able to speak a week. We’ve been neither of the, not yet. We actually had a casual conversation on Friday and was set up on the bar. That means that they might need, might be this scheduled for Monday, so I’m hoping that I can testify. So I log in for it. It said Arthur’s before he gets hurt at ease the Senate with our members upon our Sunday.

Guzman: We’ll see if I’m successful. If not, you know, we have a very, okay, tell me about the house going through the center and I just don’t want to do that. But if I have to, I may wear in salary. Not only Google, I mean I know probably complete you who buy them connected these days, like also partnering with the Omaha world. We’ve that Bernie Genito where he said that if we are going to do these, then maybe you have to structure [inaudible] and disrupt and put it in place is the aid [inaudible] and for these relations for that [inaudible] members will be assigned by the opener and we have located money to also hire some hearing officers. So any time they’re high school be an issue in between an employee and an employee or in the public sector at third, I probably didn’t know you were nation’s local CIT officer would lead that mediator in between that lawyer and that employee or we both.

Guzman: I think that’s something that would benefit everybody. Nobody wants to look a car as a don’t need a public employee. We just wanted to be able to be listened. I think for me, my idea is that someone’s reputation will say, Oh, that means that we’re going out. How much is it going to cost? Is it gone in Greece over the taxes? Well, I will tell you right now, and have you seen accurately because your governing bodies will continue to, uh, in the power of appropriations that we do by having a voice at the table, we, you were going to have to listen to us and we will make our case for, say for example, the 1% salary increase is not necessary. Firefighters with blonde hair, you know, the government is, they could ever pay for better, you know, and with the better resources to do their job for the Sophie says the same way, you know, we’ve been talking about buying new equipment, then they will have to stop to the police officers to come there by ease and coordinated with them what they need to do their job better.

Guzman: Teachers, you know, when we’re talking about how we’re gonna, uh, we’re gonna include the 1% salary, 12 features. I want to make their case as how they are used to their person online. My before in the classroom. How it’s important to have this or this motor classes. How are they unfolding? Many animals have their first amount of time for this schools. As these things need to be heard. The school board members need to listen from the pictures. What is going on as far as giving out justice reform. I finally sent the field center last week as increase the age of minors trial as adults. He came from the house. The genetics will support, I will say [inaudible] adjustments. Even those who weren’t before, like delegate Ron Vale was not from Virginia. I’m the main girl for people, not definitely three, four people to come up. You and I took a picture with because [inaudible] years in a row, he finally agree with [inaudible] and I was able to partner with administration as well because it was a priority for Bella.

Guzman: I know, I’m trying to look at faces. Some of you have some requests. It’s function, you know, very important for many individuals. I introduced legislation. Uh, but I think that some of the members who are not ready yet, so those are happy and sent to the crime commission. So the practical nations wanna send recommendations for next year. So we can see why is going to be allowed to eat lunch, right? Not, I mean the reality is there we all having young who will make mistakes, I mean that wrote us well, but then realities that you have to be carrying that with the rest of your life and that prevents you from having an employment for working with children even, I mean, right in a class and the school system, if you have a felony on your, uh, on your criminal record. So we have to change, you know, kind of like justice reform will happen up here. That’s also for many years what are trying, people are screaming out in the streets. I’m talking about individuals of all of my and identities float. And you find made a mistake when I was 18 or 19 years old and now I have proven that I’m not going to see this and that I have medication that I fear from my mistakes. These is that country of second chances. So Regina has to be that either, you know, on, uh, provide an expungement services.

McPike: Yeah, a tremendous amount going on this week was crossover Wednesday, Tuesday night inside where we got one out. It was about one o’clock in the morning, take her for converted that morning. So now we finish up our business, the house they do other than getting on the second run. So there’s a little bit more than the day before the crossover, but we moved out of there. We don’t typically move the pending question, which means that the vote has to be taken on the Senate and the house are the rules of procedure. We let everybody in the bait, if they have a voice, they’re going to make sure that those thoughts are, are shared. Unless it gets extraordinarily long for one speaker, then we might push things along a little bit. But this week was an extraordinarily long week. Many things on the, not only in the criminal justice reform, decriminalization of marijuana, um, the significant tweaks to criminal justice system are fairly significant.

McPike: There are things in 20 years that have sort of stack the deck of one side and we’ve really started to tackle some of the structural injustice in how we treat the cases. Both then, you know, sentencing different tiers as all sorts of nuance and Recode right now that we are starting to be ended to fix. Was your really, really important? Uh, there’s also been, um, I think some, obviously some big hot topics in terms of on gun safety legislation. Um, what passed the Senate was a one gun a month, a universal background checks with certain provisions excluded in terms of the family. Um, it has to be a sale. So there’s this certain transfer provision. So for instance, if I’m out hunting on a tree stand, you don’t create a, you know, unintended felony cause I leave my gun to go and clean the deer or whatever and I left my gun with my buddy.

McPike: I don’t want to, you know, we try to avoid creating sort of unintended consequences through that in terms of what transfer means. And so we did take out some of the original provisions to the spur that we didn’t have folks that were caught in sort of innocent situations versus, um, some of the gun show loophole and other sort of proxy sales that are going on. Um, so we, we certainly sort of tackle that as a, as an approach. So we also did the one got along with just returning to the legislation. We had, I don’t know, 15, 16 years ago that was within the law. Um, additionally, there were some provisions that passed the Senate that allow for, um, vocal control for local permits. Um, Lavella valleys would have to post if you have a special permit that they, they don’t want to have guns present at.

McPike: And they had posted that sign at that public hearing. Notice all sorts of other provisions to make sure that, again, it’s not an unintended consequence. You can’t just walk into a place and not have any notice that you’re not supposed to care. And so there’s sort of the savings that are put in place. Um, certainly the other hot topics goals in relation to um, number of flips or add ons to pass the Senate that certainly ban bump stocks are trigger acted activated devices. Um, the bills dealing with um, round counts or well let’s say that sort of assault rifles or assault weapons has not passed the Senate, um, based on different definitions of round town and other issues that start to really get into some pretty nuance stuff. I know there’s been a lot of hot topic, social media and other stuff, so I wanted to cover that.

McPike: The other more recent one is on driver’s licenses for uh, new Americans or undocumented Americans and other systems here are not yet citizens working their way there. And you know, I’ve seen a lot of social media sort of being on this of the last week or so. I was really picked up on, you know, why we’re doing this, why it’s needed. If you look at it and break it down to the basic facts and figures and folks who been here, manifests 2030 years is folks have licenses in Maryland for other places. Right now it’s other car is also registered in Maryland that go through the Virginia safety inspection nor do is there an understanding of Virginia rules of the road and the walls. So there are provisions to provide a license framework that requires passing of the test driver test, having insurance, you know all the other things that go with it in terms of savings.

McPike: So there’s some, I think some pretty strong public safety initiatives. In addition, the tax, they should obviously our tax and other things that go with it, registration fees that go with it to ensure that everyone has the same understanding of the rules of road. And so that’s something that I know I’ve seen people asking or emailing about what are we doing, you know, you know, people are going to put the comments of the people are getting something for free. It’s not free. They get to play that same exact rules and everybody else, no special conditions. And so I just want to make sure that it’s very clear despite what you might see on social media. Very strange. And the other question I heard was, well what happened with New York? You know the feds are now timing now on the preferred travel program or field where the exact name is, but essentially the frequent flyer, perfect TSA preferred entry program.

McPike: The reason why they did that in New York cause they had locked down the day to day decision. The Virginia law that we have that’s going through has provisions that they can request involved before I personally can still request in the DMV database a specific individual. This is not part one. And so that takes care of the federal concern that had come up and that’s why New York is having problems. We don’t have that same problem. We have avoided that issue by specifically writing and provisions in the code go for that issue. So I just want to address those couple of things of, you know, what people are calling or writing about and sort of address addressed it as I think are some really important positive as many other important positive social in addition to the publicity and taxation around that issue. And this has been been improved for many, many years.

McPike: Um, unfortunately. Um, but I think with now with real idea in place as well, it takes care of the plate issue in terms of the reason essentially returns the law to where we were 2004 post nine 11 in Virginia. That’s what the law does and because we have separate relining and you are going to require a real idea, the board, the domestic plate as it is, you still going have that requirement. So that doesn’t change any of the frameworks that we have, the federal requirement as well as Virginia framework. Um, so I think there’s a lot of positives around that. So I want to cover, make sure we covered through those more hot topics that have been swirling around Richmond. I are you seeing things on social media that makes sense. Stonewall

Guzman: the week. It’s just like the vinegar there was talking about these. What’s up great. Did show up for a mold from breaking before 2003 I didn’t do none of that. Were just bringing it back a low that was in Virginia and was taken way we false out because it was taking after what happened on nine 11 and we all know now and none of [inaudible] I mean where [inaudible] so we are trying to bring in an hour just having stayed [inaudible] we’ll play, we’ll pay property taxes where maybe, but that money is instead of going to Mary instead of going to Washington DC, I haven’t only bad because there’s a lot of people that they send, I just want this and even though they averaging at residents, they go on charge [inaudible] paint documents via the need you both to get a license. He married in Washington D C at that spot.

Guzman: I need to stop all of that Senate, send a book support on that [inaudible] at one of the things that we’re doing to be here. Well, he’s trying to fight for that adamant [inaudible] Oh, um, perfections in general. I have employment in housing, I guess discrimination with myself. I had an easy job. And what do you think that way in school I stayed in agency and they went through the very, you know Jessica, Wendy [inaudible] who they are and that is one of what daddy did for that reason. I’ve presented legislation on his own into the center that will require state employees pay the LGBTQ [inaudible].

Guzman: That means I’m going to ask him, you know, I’m just one of them to know what it these life and they need to understand that community so they can help them to get there. That’s been years take them, be who they want and they put up, they want to quit just a day. I only just use the word services and will be confident and we do it in, I mean we both work at these already implemented in so many capacities. These is far off. You are to an orientation or what can we respect each other? What would work for them?

McPike: Get her back on the driver’s license privilege. One question I saw online or on email is an indication that this would somehow allow people to vote or not. Citizens does not do that. Just cleared the snake. He’s nations that cross in fact separate regions. How it, what does that send to the blood collection to make sure those distinguishing factors of a citizen citizen? I, there’s lots of ways that very clear if

Guzman: you vote, then you are not a citizen or to go at all. Even you have a green card [inaudible] that it’s a felony and you can taste it or patient or vomiting. [inaudible] [inaudible] would there

McPike: be an indication on the license non-resident that you went up and looked what provision?

Guzman: If there are no veal, somebody [inaudible] his driver’s license and the other one is agree with each guards. But the good thing is that we all come over the real IDs and if you aren’t a citizen, you’ll get a star of Lena [inaudible] but you don’t get the star. That means that you are not a citizen, but that doesn’t mean you are undocumented. Amen. You know, it puts me that you are great.

McPike: I just decided I didn’t want to go through the hassle cause I just [inaudible] but what does all the election laws that are also changing the requirement for it? You still would be recording them too long to show a need, but if you don’t have ID you still have to vote. You have to sign and that’s under the penalty and I felony. That’s when this gets in. So both on the voter registration forms and other things. So that’s right there felony and also, and the election, if you comment and then try to vote, you’re putting a signature, you’re, you’re signing yourself from a felony and you’re not registered. So there are a number of different checks in both databases across the board that you would be envy to the board of elections database. So those a number of different ways going from protection to that and the,

Guzman: yeah, I’m just going back to my deals. I think there’s one thing that I, as a door, what I was knocking is about drug prices. Everywhere I go, people what? Frustrated [inaudible] insurance, how much they have to stop [inaudible] I mean, schooling, if you still have, I’m sending them deal [inaudible] [inaudible] payment system. Is that the and innovative solutions to address that cause the persecution threats, Regina, at that point of sale, these [inaudible] uh, you know, we’ve had different version of some hockey change to how the Friday’s I dated, um, that come provided to us all being a road. We’re going to have all of the stakeholders that are part of that process. How can we come up with a solution and that solution is to be filed by December. So generally comforting the nature station. Do we just work on [inaudible] out?

McPike: There’s been some limited measures going through the Seinfeld pharmacy benefit managers or PBMs you’ve might’ve seen on the news. There’s all sorts of discounts that the drug manufacturers offer those discounts and Venice rebates don’t get passed on to the end user. And so there’s a lot of, you know, your pay plan pays for a certain point and then they’re also capturing the rebate on the other side. And so, and then the direct price is higher with the passive PBMs. And so there’s all sorts of sort of moving parts and shenanigans that are going on that they’re, they’re sort of doing one of these is, does that mean that he’s got tons of years are in the or development that occurred with this drug? All that. Listen, 50 years ago it’s all done because there’s no need to pay 600 times what somebody tries. It should be.

McPike: It’s really frustrating to get in a room and healthcare space and everybody does what he’s like, wait a second, we’re paying like 20 bucks for this, like 10 years ago, you know, it’s 150 now. I’m pretty sure I’m not making him breathe free a hundred times in my day. This is crazy. And so they keep, it’s a complex issue. It’s one of the most frustrating things to deal with. Um, but I think our, our ability to have patients visits with the medical way before we’re just about an hour and a number of different things we’ve got also figure out, hopefully it ties in with the button too because we also have to help the fund, the board elections with some initial whether it’s going to be clearly sort of no excuse absentee, you are early voting provisions. I think it will come out of both the house and the Senate and I think that’s extremely important for this year because we have so many books like you knew, you know what an hour plus at all. Any one day you could have doctors come up or emergency, you know let’s have more participation, not less. I think there’s a general consensus in both jammers that some or all or combination provisions will be valid for one thing that will go in effect for breaking into the next school and teachers will not happen anymore.

McPike: The primary outburst of social media on that, Tim was like, give me a break, Nico, come on. So essentially not then the one thing we’ve done is fuck the state holiday to electric kissy football. You can’t complain if you don’t vote. I didn’t mention that. [inaudible] get some work and she had gotten cancer presumption and finally we’ve got it out of the house and the Senate. So that’s been appeared that bill every single year for of six years. So this has cancers that are directly linked to the toxins that they interface. There’s been fires and that’s been just a long time. Now I removed provisions that gotten whatever our firefighters who passed away caught up in legal battles for about a year before he died. We were in that section of the code. Um, and then we have a PTSD Eatonville that is passed out under the Senate and it’s over the house and he did not have a people to action so far on the house [inaudible] and then flipped back any provision.

McPike: And this creates the first defense [inaudible] to provide relief, first presumption relation, PTSD and our first responders. Um, there’s just so many folks that deal with, but a single incident or cumulative incidents over the couriers. You just lost open officer two weekends ago. Um, unfortunately this, the story plays out across the Commonwealth. Um, all of the points for different reasons and we are not tackling the issue more proactively and we need to create a framework that says if you’re struggling, you got some framework coverage. And folks I know and worked with, they want to get back on the job too, but they’re hurting. And right now that was the mantra for so many years in these lines of service has been sort of [inaudible], you know, and um, unfortunately the costs really get worn by the families that are involved. I was over time and it’s time we started to flip that. So this is the first year we were really struggling with the progress that flipping this discussion. Um, yes it will, it’ll have some financial hit the localities because there’s some premium issues, but hopefully those that start to think about it and do more proactive things and the more frequent check ins of sitting down. So incident reviews, other things to check out mental health status over not just single incident, but the cumulative total.

The post Legislators discuss education at town hall appeared first on What's Up Prince William.

via What's Up Prince William

#IFTTT #What's Up Prince William #PWC News

[meraenthusiast]

How to Retire Early – The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide To FI

How to Retire Early In 4 Easy Steps [Editor’s Note: Today’s post is a Guest Article from Cashflow. He’s a police officer dedicated to blog about Financial Independence (FI) and retiring early. His goal is to reach FI by the age of 40.]

Ignore all of the noise and fancy words like tax-loss harvesting and geo-arbitrage. They can be off-putting and make things sound more complex than they need to be.

I’m going to show you in four steps how it can be possible to reach financial independence by the time you’re 40 years old while earning $40K a year.

This is the ultimate beginner’s guide to financial independence!

FIRE has a PR problem

But first, let’s take a step back.

There is this thing called “FIRE” that’s been mentioned in some mainstream media outlets lately. This is happening both in the US where it originates from and also across the pond in the UK. It’s actually spreading quickly and there is now a global FIRE community.

So what is FIRE?

“FIRE” stands Financial Independence, Retire Early. However, there are those who prefer Financial Independence, Recreational Employment instead.

Surely this is a good thing. Knowledge is spreading that there is another way to live the life you want. People can learn to improve their finances. They can provide in the present whilst also preparing for the future. Great right?

Not so fast.

The reception towards the FIRE community has so far has been mixed, to put it mildly. Just check out most of the comment sections and you’ll see what I mean.

The reasons people can be annoyed with the concept vary. Sometimes, they are literally keyboard SHOUTING as they vent their frustration.

It has been labeled too upper middle-class, to male, too white, too unrealistic, too impractical, and even selfish. That’s right. Selfish. How dare people withdraw themselves from the workforce at such an early age!

Truth is, I’m part of the FIRE community and I believe it has a PR problem.

I try to avoid the term and I dare not utter the words ‘retire early’ when talking to colleagues or family. It’s as if there is a degree of shame attached to it.

“FI” and “RE” are two different things. FI being the enabler and the RE being one of many different options you could pursue. The problem is that they are lumped together and to anyone new to the idea, it can be a massive turn-off.

I think it’s time the acronym ‘FIRE’ took early retirement.

It did its job by being catchy. It ignites the imagination and provides a hook for people to be intrigued.

We now need to be able to relate to the average Joe. Those who might not want to retire early. Those not earning six-figure salaries. People who might have children and childcare costs to contend with.

This article will do just that. It will show you in four steps how you can have the option to retire by 40 while starting on $40K a year.

Bear with me here. $40K is not a small change. I get that. However, it is far from six figures and a more realistic figure to aim for as a starting salary for most. The reason why I want to just get that point made now is so that you can read the rest of the post with an open mind.

Since I live in the UK, I will compare the numbers between the US and the UK.

The Four Steps To Financial Independence Are:

Earn

Budget

Protect

Invest

Step 1 – Earn

Aim: Maximize your earnings and develop multiple income streams.

Here’s the situation then. Let me introduce to you Amy and Adam. They are 25 years old and both earning an after-tax income $40K a year. Amy lives in the US and Adam lives in the UK.

They have a student loan debt balance of $40K.

For the first few years out of college they were getting themselves settled. They managed to pay off all their credit card debts, bought a used car for cash and lived with parents to save some money.

Amy and Adam both annihilated their consumer debts by using the ‘debt snowball’ method.

They don’t start their financial independence journey until 25 years old with an after-tax income of $40K.

Amy and Adam clearly had parents who taught them how to manage money and not to take on too much debt.

Amy Adam Location US UK Age 25 25 Student Loans Debt $40,000 £40,000 After-tax Annual Income $40,000 £40,000 After-tax Monthly Income $3,333 £3,333

It’s safe to say, they are far from rich, but not poor.

How did they secure such an income?

Action – Preparing to get a job

They both placed themselves in the best position to be employable in a competitive job market. This does not always mean getting a degree, although for some trades that’s a necessity.

I wouldn’t want someone to do brain surgery on me by learning through Youtube videos!

You could seek out internship programs, volunteer your time to shadow someone who works in an area you’re interested in, read and go on training courses.

The list is endless.

It is about self-development and improving yourself so that you have skills that are in demand.

Skills which someone is willing to pay for.

“Make sure you have a very particular set of skills. Skills you have acquired over a very long time. Skills that make you invaluable to employers.”

That last part sound familiar?

Action – Getting A Job

This is the traditional route to earning money. A contract between yourself and your employer; you sell your time and effort in exchange for money. It’s a straight forward transaction.

However, this first step can feel disheartening at times. Be prepared for the rejection letters or never hearing back after you send your resume (CV) off.

Remember, you only need one job out of the millions out there. Don’t give up!

After finishing college and waiting to join the Police, I needed a job to tie me over. I applied to many! I even got turned down for a job as a binman (garbage collector). A large part of why I kept getting rejected for jobs was because I didn’t tailor each resume to the job I was applying for.

Why would a graduate of finance want a job as a refuse collector? Surely this person isn’t serious or there is something wrong with him.

Looking back, I can completely understand why I got rejected so much.

Amy and Adam were smarter than me. They were better prepared and practiced the art of crafting a resume. They knew they had to stand out from the crowd and were confident and comfortable doing so.

Once they were happy with their main resume, they went out on the job hunt. I use the word ‘hunt’ deliberately.

Unless their skills were highly in demand and they already created a solid reputation for themselves, they knew that sitting at home in their sweatpants just wasn’t going to work.

A job was not going to look for them. They were far too inexperienced to be head-hunted.

They got out there. Networked, used social media, let friends and family know they were looking for work. They were being proactive and intentional about.

They were hungry for a job!

Once they found a job that could be the right fit, they researched the company. They tailored their resume to be specific to that particular job and that particular company.

They did this for every job they applied for.

Once they got offered an interview, they did more research. Joined forums, found people who were already with the company, got to understand the company culture and found out about the individuals who were likely to be interviewing them.

This helped them to be better prepared and be confident at the interview.

Amy and Adam clearly put in the work, smashed it out the park and got offered their jobs.

Action – Do Some Overtime, Get Promoted Or A Pay Raise

Many people on the path toward financial independence can quickly become distracted with new money making ideas. The reality is that our ‘job’ is likely going to be the source of most of our income for a while.

One other thing Amy and Adam weren’t shy about was working when there was paid overtime offered. They were doing their employer a favor and not only were they getting more money, they were storing away goodwill for when the next promotion or performance review came up.

Not all jobs offer paid overtime, but if they are available, they are a great starting point to earn extra income.

They also adopted a growth mindset. A strive for continual personal and professional development. This way, when it came to the annual performance review, both Amy and Adam were in a much better position to ask for that pay raise or promotion.

It is not about doing the minimum required and generally coasting along. If they can demonstrate that the value they add exceeds the amount that is paid to them, then it greatly improves their odds at the annual review. It places them in a much stronger negotiating position for a pay raise.

It seems so straightforward, but I see people everyday expecting a pay raise just for turning up to work on time.

Action – Never Turn Down Free Money!

Amy and Adam understood the terms and benefits of their employer pension plan. Yawn! Yeah, it’s downright boring!

However, they wanted to make sure that they were not missing out on any free money from employer matching. For example, Amy put 5% of her salary into her company pension and her employer did the same. The exact percentages vary between employers and pension plans.

If they’re in the public sector, then the amount that is contributed by their employer is likely to be even more generous compared to the private sector.

When faced with the choice of opting out of a company pension plan; Amy and Adam thought about it very carefully.

They were both very tempted to opt out of the plan because it meant more money in their bank account at the end of each month. After a momentary weakness, they snapped out of it and said to themselves:

“I’d be stupid to turn away free money!”

They didn’t want to get used to the extra money because they knew what they would be like. They’d no longer be able to go without it and the chances of them joining the pension plan later on would be pretty much zero.

They started contributing from day one and learned to live with slightly less money each month in exchange for much more money in the future.

Action – Generate A Second Income (a.k.a The Side Hustle)

Amy and Adam were killing it at work. They were getting pay raises and contributing into their pension plans.

However, they were young and there was only so much Netflix they could handle before their brains turned to mush. They decided to start looking for a second income.

Amy decided to find a roommate and started to make some pretty good money from it.

Adam on the other hand was a bit of an introvert and couldn’t stand the idea of having a stranger living with him. Instead, he started to look for a side hustle that would allow him to work from home. He’d actually become somewhat of an ebay expert.

As a result, once they were in their 30s, they were both making an extra 20% on top of their salary. This was in the form of paid overtime, bonuses and side hustles.

They might even decide to charge their kids rent later on in life!

Summary of Step 1

Prepare well to get the job you want.

Get a job.

Stand out from the crowd.

Maximize your salary through sales commission, bonuses, overtime, pay raise or promotion.

Understand your pension plan and take advantage of the benefits.

Diversify your income through other business interests (a.k.a the ‘Side Hustle’).

Step 2 – Budget

Aim: Reduce your expenses, optimize your taxes and increase your savings rate.

From my experience, the word ‘budget’ can send shivers down many people’s spines. People see it as:

1) too restricting. We all work so hard, who wants to live life constrained?

2) too boring. I’m weird and love spreadsheets. Most people hate them.

3) too time-consuming. Life is busy enough as it is. Sitting down once a month to go through the budget? 

4) too honest. We like to bury our heads in the sand. Ignorance allows us to continue spending. Tracking our expenses is such a buzz kill!

5) too difficult. The truth is, budgeting is a skill which needs to be taught and practiced.

Action – Spend with intention

Every time Amy and Adam spent their money, they do so intentionally. There were no accidental or spur of the moment purchases. They had an idea of how much they spent on average each month for different things.

It looks like this:

Type of Expense Amy (US $) Adam (UK £) Transportation 150 150 Rent / Mortgage 700 700 Utilities 225 225 Home Repairs 50 50 Communication 50 50 Groceries 240 240 Household Goods 50 50 Clothing 25 25 Eating Out 50 50 Recreation 75 75 Healthcare 450 0 Student Loans 425 180 Monthly Total 2,490 1,795 Annual Total 29,880 21,540

Amy and Adam’s expenses are low compared to the typical American or Brit. But typical people do not have the option to retire by 40.

Amy and Adam sure as hell don’t want to be typical!

They intend to avoid lifestyle inflation. So as soon as they get that bonus or pay raise, most of it is immediately invested.

Lifestyle inflation is when spending increases with income. Before you know it, the food bill is over $1k a month for a single person and you’re buying a new car every few years!

Action – Giving Money A Clear Job Description

They both budget to ensure that they do not take on any more debt.

Amy uses YNAB (You Need a Budget). It’s a budgeting app which I’ve personally used myself and recommend when first starting out.

Adam on the other hand made his own spreadsheet which at first he updated on a weekly basis, but over time found he only needed to refer to it once a month.

The process of keeping a budget is especially vital in the early stages of building wealth. Amy and Adam are effectively giving the money they earn a performance review.

They treat money like an employee. They make sure every pound or dollar earned is working hard to create value with minimal waste.

To come up with the above budget, they had thought about what they ‘need’ and what they ‘want’.

Needs are things like a roof over your head; food on the table, electricity and so on.

Wants are things like eating out, socializing and holidays.

The goal in setting a budget is to strip away all the noise; all the wants. Then slowly add them back in one by one until they have reached a balance that is right for them.

Interestingly, it would appear that Adam has the upper hand by living in the UK due to zero medical costs and lower student loans repayments. This is because student loans debt in the UK is repaid based on the amount a graduate earns. In fact, 83% of graduates never repay their loans before it is written-off by the government.

Action – Tax Optimization

With their income maximized and expenses minimized to a level they are comfortable with; that alone is not enough. Amy and Adam makes use of all the tax-efficient accounts.

For Amy, there are accounts such as ROTH IRA and 401(k).

For Adam, there are account such as ISA, LISA, and SIPP.

Once they begin to accumulate assets and their net-worth starts to grow, they will be considering the implications of inheritance tax and estate planning.

Action – Staying Out Of Debt

Like Amy and Adam, I don’t prescribe to the notion of ‘good’ debt vs. ‘bad’ debt. I am of the view that debt carries a certain degree of riskiness, from low risk to ridiculously crazy risk of losing money.

Financing a car would be classed as being ridiculously crazy when framed this way. As soon as someone drives that car out of the lot, they have instantly lost money.

Getting rid of the idea of there being such a thing as ‘good’ debt from their mindset has helped Amy and Adam make better spending decisions.

Be careful of using the term “it’s an investment” to self justify a spending decision that is a “want” and is a depreciating asset. It’s okay to want something and to buy it. Just do it intentionally.

Action – Geo-Arbitrage

It’s a fancy word which basically means move somewhere else that’s cheaper to live. Amy and Adam have decided to do just that. They live in a LCOL (low cost of living) area. For some, this could also mean moving abroad. Here are a few highlights when it comes to geo-arbitrage:

Housing Costs – this is the main expense for most. This is about moving to an area or country where accommodations are cheaper. It could also mean moving in with parents for a few years even if they charge a bit of rent.

Taxes – in some countries and states, you simply don’t get taxed as much. Of course, this might mean public services aren’t as good but that’s not always the case. It would depend on what you’re used to since everything is relative.

Childcare Costs – these costs can truly delay early financial independence dreams. But it doesn’t have to be that way. A country or state which subsidize childcare costs or even moving closer to family who can help with childcare can save thousands.

Education – it is an unfortunate reality that the quality of teaching can differ widely depending on the school and area. When contemplating private education, it is worth bearing in mind that they rarely provide value for money. It also holds true that education in many LCOL countries are actually much better than in the US or UK.

Medical – the US is infamous for its medical costs. I’m based in the UK and consider myself very lucky to not need to worry about this cost. It definitely makes reaching financial independence less complicated. The UK is not alone here; there are many countries with universal health care.

Safety – a LCOL area does not have to mean danger. It’s about striking a balance. Moving to a country that is on the government black list is not something I would consider no matter how low the cost of living is. It’s about finding the right balance for you and your family.

Earning – sometimes geo-arbitraging to a LCOL area can actually result in earning more. My point earlier about standing out and providing value to an employer can give immense leverage. Picture this. Earning a city salary, but able to work from home in the countryside, or move to the far east.

Quality of life – what is important to you and your family? Are there public parks nearby? Will geo-arbitrate result in less time spent commuting? Is the air quality good? Is there a community spirit?

  Action – Turbo Charge Savings Rate

The ‘savings rate’ is a number that provides a snapshot of how much someone saves as a proportion of their income. The higher the rate, the less they spend relative to their income and the quicker they will reach financial independence.

Due to Amy’s health insurance and student loan repayment, her savings rate is much lower than Adam. This is a clear example of geo-arbitrage in action. If Amy moved to the UK for work or through marriage, she could eliminate her medical costs.

Amy (US $) Adam (UK £) Age 25 25 EXPENSES Monthly Total 2,490 1,795 Annual Total 29,880 21,540 SAVINGS Monthly Total 843 1,538 Annual Total 10,120 18,460 SAVINGS RATE 25% 46%

Summary of Step 2

Be intentional with your spending – don’t be typical.

Budget – give your money a clear job description.

Be tax efficient – keep more money in your pocket!

No such thing as ‘good’ debt.

Geo-arbitrage your way to financial freedom.

Maximize your savings rate.

Step 3 – Protect

Aim: Protect your path to financial independence with an emergency fund and insurance.

This step is often neglected or missed out altogether. Amy and Adam learned from their parents that having adequate protection is important to safeguard their path to financial independence.

As a Police Officer, we are taught to have multiple contingency plans. In other words: what’s your backup plan to your backup plan?

The last thing Amy and Adam want is to start making good financial progress only for it to come crashing to a halt, or worse go back to square one because something unexpected happens. Unfortunate events in life such as losing a job and a sudden long-term family illness not only drastically increase your stress levels, but could seriously scupper plans for financial independence.

There are a number of ways to mitigate against some of these risks.

Action – The Emergency Fund

Start off with an emergency fund worth three months of expenses before overpaying on any debt. This gives Amy and Adam an invaluable safety net for surprise expenses without the need to take on any more debt.

Once that’s done, consider increasing it to six months worth of expenses. This will help cover for larger unexpected expenses such as a period of unemployment.

The money saved needs to be what is called “liquid”. This means it can be easily accessible. If it isn’t then it’s not much use in an emergency.

Don’t get back into debt because of an emergency!

Action – The Freedom Fund, a.k.a The FU Fund

The Brit in me prefers the more toned down terminology of the Freedom Fund as opposed to the F U Fund. For me, this is one or two year’s worth of expenses saved.

This is when Amy and Adam can start to feel truly liberated. A boss not giving you the time off to be with your family? Company won’t give you a sabbatical to care for an elderly relative?

Say hello to the freedom fund.

It gives you the power to hand in your notice. It’s amazing how differently employers treat valuable staff who they know are willing to walk away. They will do all they can to keep them.

There is no such thing as idle threats with a freedom fund. They can sense it in your confidence and body language. Having a freedom fund can completely change your outlook on life.

Action – Ignore The Insurance Myths

There are some in personal finance who are against insurance. Their reasons are many, but it mainly boils down to the following points:

Myth 1 – Money down the drain if a claim is not made.

Myth 2 – Better to self-insure by having an emergency fund and a freedom fund.

Myth 3 – All policies are expensive and provide poor value.

Myth 4 – Insurance companies can’t be trusted – they will try to avoid paying out by referring to tiny clauses hidden somewhere in the terms and conditions.

Let’s quickly tackle each of these myths.

Myth 1 – remember that insurance is not an investment or a savings plan. There are certain hybrid products which try to do a bit of both, but they are generally poor value for money. Understanding what the product is aiming to achieve will help you come to terms with the fact that if you don’t claim, it has still done its job. It was there to cover you in the event of a disaster. Be grateful that you didn’t have one. Don’t wish for one!

Myth 2 – what would you do if you had a young family and your partner was struck down with a long-term illness or worse? What size of emergency fund or freedom fund would you need to cover such an event? Six figures at least. That money should ideally be liquid, but even if it was invested, you would be at the mercy of the markets. Maybe forced to sell during a crash.

Myth 3 – certain policies certainly cost more than others. That’s because they cover more eventualities and therefore increases the probability of paying out. For some, it might be totally worth getting a policy that is more expensive because their circumstances are more unpredictable than most. Someone who goes skydiving every weekend will have a more expensive insurance policy. A policy that costs more than others does not necessarily mean it will always provide poor value. For some, a policy might be over-insuring while for others it could be just right.

Myth 4 – everyone will have heard stories about how someone had their insurance claims denied. For the most part, the story has been sold by the claimant to the news outlet. Chances are, they either failed to be truthful on their application or did not read the terms. The insurance company cannot defend themselves in the article because the information is confidential.

How many people do you know go to the press to tell them about that time they made a successful insurance claim? Stories about insurance claims are biased and unreliable.

Even if a claim has been unfairly turned down, there are appeals procedures and they are rare.

Action – Get Life Insurance

This is the main protection so I will go into a bit more detail about it. This type of insurance pays out in the event the person insured dies.

You can go for a term level policy which pays out a set amount if you die within a certain period of time for a set premium.

There are increasing term policies which increase the potential payout each year in line with inflation. However, your premiums will go up by at least the same percentage.

There are decreasing term policies, which are usually taken out with a mortgage. This is when the life insurance pays out just enough to pay for the outstanding balance of your mortgage.

Finally, there is also something called whole life policy. As the name implies, they are guaranteed to pay out because it covers the whole of your life until you die. These are generally poor value for money and should be avoided. They tend to be used to cover any potential inheritance tax, but there are other avenues to explore first because this is considered.

Once you have decided on the type of policy you want: 1) Term Level; 2) Increasing Term; and 3) Decreasing Term, you then need to decide on how long you would like the insurance to run for.

Longer term policies are more expensive. This is because as you get older, the chances of you dying increases due to ill health.

Unless you are choosing a decreasing term policy to cover a mortgage, you will then need to decide how much you want to be insured for. This is the amount that will be paid out.

There is no set rule to decide on this, but a general loose guide is 10 times the main earner’s income. You need to decide for yourself what amount would help your family get through what would be an already difficult time. A few points to help:

Cover mortgage debt.

Cover other debts

Cover dependent expenses, such as children until they are adults

Cover education expenses for kids

Cover loss of income

When taking out a life insurance policy, there are so many add-ons. These include:

Indexation – this is when you choose to have the amount of coverage that increases every year based on inflation. By choosing this option, your premiums will increase by at least the same percentage as your coverage increases. Any life policy with an indexation option is also called an ‘increasing term’ policy.

Waiver of Premium – this allows you to stop paying your insurance premium if you become seriously ill or disabled. In other words, you continue to be covered by the life insurance even when you cannot work.

Guaranteed vs Reviewable Premiums – guaranteed premiums mean that the premium you pay will not change for the entire duration of the policy (unless you select indexation). Reviewable premiums mean the insurance company reserves the right to review your policy every few years and adjusts the premiums you pay. Reviewable premiums tend to start off lower than guaranteed premiums but can increase significantly. It may be suited if you are currently very price sensitive but expect your income to rise significantly in the future.

When taking out insurance as a couple, the natural tendency is to take out a joint policy. This is a policy which insures two lives, for example for yourself and your partner.

However, this type of policy will only pay out once. So, in the event one of you dies, the policy pays out once and then terminates. However, when taking out single life policies instead, it means that each person being insured have their own policy. So, in the event your partner dies, the insurance pays out, but your life remains insured. This is perhaps useful if you have children.

What I have found is that getting two single life policies works out just the same as a joint policy.

On occasions, it has even been cheaper!

Action – Consider Critical Illness Insurance

This is a type of insurance which pays out when you fall very ill.

What does very ill mean?

They call is a critical illness.

The list of critical illness changes quite regularly based on medical advances, but think of it as a very serious medical condition. An add-on you can have to this type of coverage is called ‘Total and Permanent Disability’ coverage. This means the insurance company will pay out if you are unable to work in an occupation which you are suited due to training, education or experience.

Action – Consider Income Protection Insurance

This is a type of insurance that provides a regular payout until you retire, die or return to work in the event you become too ill to work. There are several differences between income protection and critical illness. The three main ones being:

Critical illness payout a lump sum whereas income protection provides a regular income.

Critical illness is usually a permanent illness whereas income protection will pay out even if the illness is recoverable.

Critical illness coverage will allow one claim whereas income protection can continue even after a claim.

Action – Consider an insurance broker

I used to think insurance brokers do not work in their client’s best interest. Surely, their interests are aligned to whoever provides the best commission.

While this can be true, it is up to you how you manage this relationship to your advantage. You would want to look for an all of market broker or a fee only broker (does not work on commission).

I used an insurance broker when we were arranging protection for our family.

I did my research and asked prospective brokers questions. If they stumbled on any of them, I knew they weren’t the broker for me. The terms above will hopefully give you a good head start.

Remember that if you are interested in any of the add-ons, to ask about them. I found adding them on did not affect my premiums but every provider is different. Check!

They can also secure deals even cheaper than going direct. It was significantly cheaper for me, so much so the underwriter was surprised they offered me such a price. I negotiated hard!

They can also work with underwriters directly to resolve any problems. If you find that you will be ‘rated’ (industry term for policies involving an individual with medical conditions requiring much higher premiums), your broker will explain everything to you and tweak your policy to make it affordable.

A broker is worth their weight in gold by ensuring that the policy taken out is suitable for you and will pay out in the event of a genuine claim.

Finally, if your insurance broker does not talk about a Trust, then find another. A trust is treated as a separate legal entity. Life insurance policies in the UK can be written into a Trust so that it remains outside your estate. This means it is not be subject to inheritance tax calculations. It is free to do with most big providers if you ask.

This alone can potentially save your family thousands in tax should you need to make a claim in the future.

If your employer provides insurance as part of your compensation package, or your pension has a ‘death benefit’ make sure you know the details. You don’t want to over-insure. However, it is worth remembering that the older you get, the more it costs to insure. So if you leave the company and go to one that no longer provides a similar level of benefit, then adding more cover onto your private policy will cost much more as you age.

Summary of Step 3

Have an emergency fund

Save for a freedom fund / F U fund

Ignore the insurance myths

Get life insurance

Consider critical illness coverage

Consider income protection coverage

Consider using an insurance broker

Step 4 – Invest

Aim: Invest wisely and with minimal fees.

Now we get to the really juicy bit. Some people skip the earlier steps and jump straight to here.

That would be a bad move!

Amy and Adam understood the importance of getting their financial house in order and having a solid foundation before they even considered investing.

FI Life Stages

To achieve financial independence, Amy and Adam needed to look at life as two distinct periods (FI Life Stages):

Period 1 – time period when work is a necessity.

Period 2 – time period when work becomes optional.

Period 1 is the wealth accumulation phase of life.

To be FI, Amy and Adam will need to have net-worth of at least 25 times their annual expenses. This net-worth number is also called the FI number.

The number 25 comes from what is referred to as the 4% rule of thumb. This percentage is also known as the retirement withdrawal rate, sometimes referred to as the ‘safe’ withdrawal rate. The idea is that they have invested enough so that they can spend at the withdrawal rate and not run out of money.

Net-worth is calculated by taking to value of total assets minus total liabilities (debt).

The number 25 is a loose guide and acts as a starting point. The number required for each individual will depend on a number of factors such as:

Asset allocation (the mix of assets that make up their net-worth)

The types of assets owned

Length of retirement

Investment costs

Taxes

Risk tolerance

Once someone has accumulated enough wealth by reaching their FI number, they are considered to have reached Period 2 of their life and is financially independent.

Action – Where are you on the path to FI?

The FI Life Stage could be broken down further in 18 checkpoints. This provides an opportunity for Amy and Adam to celebrate smaller milestones and to keep themselves motivated.

See where you are and track your progress towards financial independence by taking the FI Score Test [FIST].

Action – Understanding risk

There will always be an element of risk when investing. Risk is the probability of sustaining a loss.

The return Amy and Adam get from an investment is the reward for the risk they were willing to accept. Some types of assets are riskier than others.

The riskier the asset, the greater the potential for higher returns and losses.

This is the risk and reward trade-off.

When talking about risk, there are two components to consider. The first is something called risk tolerance and the second is risk capacity.

Risk tolerance is the emotional ability to remain calm and stay the course during periods of falling prices. It is how someone copes with the ups and the downs of investing.

I consider investments to be medium to long-term. I don’t invest expecting a return in one year.

Both the stock and property market goes through cycles of highs and lows. Knowing and expecting a crash at some point in the future helps to psychologically prepare for when it happens.

Someone’s tolerance for risk will determine their investment portfolio. If they are risk averse (someone who think they will lose sleep at night and sell at the slightest dip), then they should own relatively less volatile assets (they that don’t fluctuate in price much).

The cycle is inevitable and it happens because of human behavior.

To understand why that is, I encourage you to watch the video by Ray Dalio – How the Economic Machine Works.

Image Credit – Wall St. Cheat Sheet

Risk capacity is someone’s financial ability to survive an investment loss. Being able to tolerate a loss but not having the capacity (having enough money) will only result in financial ruin. A proper understanding of both tolerance and capacity are absolutely essential before anyone begins their investment journey.

So how does risk differ from volatility?

It is really easy to confuse the two things and even I am guilty of sometimes using volatility as a proxy for risk.

Risk is the likelihood of you losing your investment because you sell at a loss. One of the main controllers over risk is you. A loss is only ever realized if you sell.

Volatility, on the other hand, is a measure of how often and how much the price or value varies over time.

A stock or fund can be very volatile but not that risky once time horizon is factored in. This is the benefit of investing for the long-term and having an emergency fund. You are not forced to sell when market conditions are against you.

“Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.” – Warren Buffett

Action – The art of simplicity

Some of the best things in life are simple.

Introducing complexity comes with increased costs, time and stress.

Amy and Adam don’t own any individual shares. If they changed their minds in the future, any individual stocks they own would only form a tiny portion of their net-worth. It’s what they call their ‘fun money’ to invest with. Money they can afford to lose.

Even veteran fund managers do not outperform the market in the long term. For the average person, we do not have the time, nor the knowledge to choose the right company and buy it at the right price.

So what does Amy and Adam invest in?

They invest in funds that track the performance of the entire world’s stock markets. They own the world.

It is like buying a tiny piece of every major company in the world.

Funds which track the performance of the world’s stock market are called index funds. They are passive rather than actively managed. That’s because they aim to copy the performance of a particular index or indices using predominantly computer software and algorithms.

Active investments on the other hand use teams of people to actively manage the fund. They spend time researching, use forecasting models and their own judgement to try and deliver higher than average returns.

As a result, active investments are much more expensive compared to passive investments. Half a percent may not seem like much, but when compounded over time; it makes a huge difference.

“There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.” – Warren Buffett

Action – Diversification: spreading your money

Amy and Adam are investing in the stock market through an index fund. This tracks the world markets so they are engaging in diversification. It means they are reducing their risk by not putting all your eggs in one basket.

In other words, the impact of one company going bankrupt or a country going through political turmoil will only likely make a negligible effect on their overall performance.

They could apply this same principle by investing in other types of assets on top of the stock market, such as property, bonds or building their own business.

This way, their wealth is not entirely reliant on one particular asset class.

Now that I have mentioned bonds, it may benefit to briefly explain what they are.

Bonds are like an “I O U”; a debt obligation. The return on bonds is generally much lower than stocks because there is less risk.

Bonds can be issued by companies or by governments. The more stable and trustworthy a company or government, the safer the bond will be. The safer the bond, the lower the return.

Remember the risk and reward trade-off I mentioned earlier.

As people approach retirement, it is not unusual to see them allocating a greater proportion of their wealth towards bonds. That is because the returns are much less volatile.

Once retired, people tend to need the stability of not waking up the next day with 50% of their investments wiped out and having to return to work because they no longer have enough money.

They do not have the luxury of time to wait for recovery phase of the cycle.

Action – Minimize Costs

Compound interest can work for or against you.

No matter what you decide to invest in, keeping the initial and ongoing costs to the minimum will ensure that you do not erode any future returns. Just a 2% difference in cost can reduce your return by six figures!

“The trick is not to pick the right company, the trick is to essentially buy all the big companies and to do it consistently and to do it in a very, very low cost way.” – Warren Buffett

Action – Review Your Investments

Amy and Adam reviews their investments at least once a year to see how they are performing. They don’t do it everyday, because the idea is to ‘set it and forget it’.

Two main considerations when reviewing their investments:

1) costs changes

2) market changes.

The first is self-explanatory. The platform they’re using may have increased their fees or the funds they are buying into are charging more. This could mean there could be better value alternatives out there. One thing to bear in mind are any exit and set-up costs.

The second element relates to rebalancing their portfolio of investments. The process of rebalancing involves buying or selling assets to get back to their preferred level of asset allocation.

This is important to ensure that the overall desired risk has not changed.

For example, imagine they had a 40/40/20 asset allocation, 40% stocks, 40% real estate and 20% bonds at the start of the year.

By the end of the year, the value of stocks have increased and the value of properties have also increased. This will mean that the percentage value of the bonds proportion would fall because of the gains made in the stocks and properties. Your new asset allocation could end being something like 45/45/10.

As a result, their overall portfolio would be riskier than it was a year ago. They would need to either buy more bonds or sell some stocks or properties to bring their portfolio back to the original desired level.

Action – Don’t Time The Market

Don’t try to time the market. This is when someone makes a decision to buy or sell based on trying to predict the future market price of an asset (such as stocks or property). When this happens, what they are doing is speculating. They are effectively saying that they know something that the market does not already know.

Let’s say Amy and Adam receive an inheritance or have a large lump sum to invest. What would they do with it?

Keep hold of it as cash and wait for a crash to buy?

Invest a smaller fixed amount on a monthly basis (also called Dollar / Pound Cost Average)?

Do they invest the whole lump sum?

Option 1 – I believe that most investors are not experts, and even experts cannot predict the future (heck, they struggle to predict the weather a few hours ahead of time!). This is not a strategy I would recommend. If they invest for the long term, even by investing at the peak would still provide healthy returns based on historical data. Time in the market is better than timing the market.

Option 2 – this strategy is called Dollar / Pound Cost Averaging. There are benefits and drawbacks to it. Investing a large sum of money all in one go requires Amy and Adam to overcome a psychological barrier: the fear that the price will drop soon and they could have bought it for cheaper.

Instead, they split the lump sum up into say 6 or 12 equal amounts and invest on a monthly basis.

The idea is that should the markets fall over the next few months, they would have only invested a portion of your lump sum instead of all of it.

Option 3 – while Option 2 has its main benefit of overcoming a psychological barrier, it is not the mathematically optimum strategy. That is because studies have shown that on a month by month basis, the market is more likely to go up than go down. As a result, the best financial decision here is to invest the whole amount in one go. Only hindsight will tell you if that was the perfect time; but in the long term, it doesn’t really matter.

Summary of Step 4

Track your progress towards financial independence

Understand your risk profile

Keep things simple

Diversify

Review your investments

Don’t time the market

How Amy and Adam Can Retire By 40

Using all the above principles, this is how Amy and Adam can retire by 40 or reach financial independence really early.

Assumptions for both Amy and Adam

Age Starting FI Journey 25 Annual After Tax Starting Household Income 40,000 Annual Income Increase 5.0% Age Start Earning Side Hustle Income 30 Percentage Value of Side Hustle Income Compared to Base Income 20% Inflation 2.0% Investment Growth Rate 8.0% Withdrawal Rate 3.5%

You’ll notice that I’ve used a conservative withdrawal rate of 3.5% instead of 4% to factor in a potentially longer period of retirement.

Results

Amy reaches financial independence at 40 years old with a net-worth of almost one million. Her average savings rate during this period was 49%.

Adam reaches financial independence at 38 years old with a net-worth of almost 900k. By the time he is 40, he has nearly 1.2 million. His average savings rate during this period was 60%.

Adam could afford to spend more and still reach FI by 40 if he chooses to.

The reason for the drastic difference between Amy and Adam are due to medical costs and student loans debt. Although they had the same amount, Adam was lucky due to the way student loans are repaid in the UK.

Final Thoughts – A Life Worth Living

The individual steps to reach financial independence are easy. What’s hard is having the perseverance and patience to complete the journey.

Earn: Maximize your earnings and develop multiple income streams.

Budget: Reduce your expenses, optimize your taxes and increase your savings rate.

Protect: Protect your path to financial independence with an emergency fund and insurance.

Invest: Invest wisely and with minimal fees.

Following these four steps consistently and over a long period of time will pretty much guarantee a comfortable retirement.

Whether or not this will be early will depend on when you start. You can be sure of one thing though: starting now will ensure an earlier retirement then not starting at all!

We could spend all day debating the expenses and assumptions used for Amy and Adam. They are not living a life of luxury, nor would anyone consider them to be living in poverty with those expenses.

For anyone earning more or in a dual income household, then it certainly makes the journey easier.

Remember, Amy and Adam are used to this low level of spending. They haven’t succumbed to lifestyle inflation.

Our expenses are also around 20k a year despite now earning much more. I’m so used to living on our current expenses that it does not feel like deprivation at all. Every time I get a pay raise, work overtime or get some extra income, I immediately put the money to work.

Getting to this mindset will take time and practice. I promise you, it will be worth it!

The whole point of the exercise was this:

Introduce the main concepts which could allow many people to reach financial independence earlier than originally planned.

If on a low income, the principles here can still help build wealth slowly over time. Just because I can’t run a marathon, it doesn’t mean I don’t try to keep fit!

You don’t have to aim for FI by 40. Choose a savings rate which you are most comfortable with.

Time is precious. I hope the article provides you with a solid foundation to kick start your journey towards financial independence.

No one said this would be easy. If it were, everyone would be doing it. It’s really important that you decide for yourself why you want it and your plans beyond FI.

Don’t end up with regrets that you spent too much time at work instead of spending time with the people you love.

It’s your life, your money and your time. It’s your choice to make work optional sooner, rather than later.

Retire by 40 Calculator

Have a play with the numbers yourself to see how you too can retire by 40. Change the fields in white.

This post was originally published on The Money Mix and is being republished with permission.

The post How to Retire Early – The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide To FI appeared first on Debt Free Dr..

from Debt Free Dr. https://ift.tt/2YJmtIh via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Debt Free Dr.

[webart-studio]

Is Your Parental Go away Coverage Driving Away Prime Expertise?

Small companies that do not accommodate households will lose expertise to bigger corporations that do.

March 29, 2019 6 min learn

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their very own.

Worker turnover is simply too costly for entrepreneurs to disregard.

What small enterprise chief has $15,00zero to spare each time an worker disappears? What number of have 10 hours to spend on new rent paperwork? Worse, what number of can afford to attend as much as two years for a brand new rent to achieve full productiveness? Turnover occurs for loads of causes, a few of them unavoidable. The reality, although, is that round 50 p.c of voluntary turnover is preventable, in keeping with analysis by Insightlink. Our firm, Ontraport, realized that the exhausting means.

Just a few years in the past, my staff misplaced three mid- and senior-level staff. I spent weeks questioning what extra we might have finished to retain them earlier than the fourth worker on his means out lastly spelled it out for me: As a working mum or dad, he wanted extra assist. Right here in Santa Barbara, Calif., childcare prices a median of $1,250 per thirty days, or round 20 p.c of the common California family’s earnings.

Not lengthy after, we debuted our on-site childcare middle, providing free daycare to the youngsters of our staff. Three years later, not solely do we’ve the very best retention fee our firm has ever seen, however we’ve additionally stored a number of high performers from leaving our staff. We re-hired our senior videographer after her prolonged maternity depart, and our gross sales chief is getting into his sixth yr with us due to the additional benefit of free childcare.

Associated: Workers Turnover Is Draining Your Firm

So what does a powerful parental depart coverage appear like? Ideally, it ought to embrace 5 issues:

1. An announcement of function and related metrics.

A very powerful a part of a parental depart coverage can also be the one most frequently forgotten about: What does your organization wish to obtain with such a coverage, and the way will you recognize if it’s met that objective? You would possibly wish to enhance worker engagement, give attention to inclusion, enhance retention or improve recruiting.

Our high objectives are retention and engagement, and we make no bones about that with our staff. Actually, Ontraport’s HR leaders and I assessment our progress on these metrics every month. After our recruiting projections and who we’ve misplaced lately, we ask whether or not we might tweak our insurance policies to raised align with these objectives.

2. On-site childcare.

One of many greatest causes ladies drop out of the workforce to have youngsters is that the price of childcare meets or exceeds their earnings. In Massachusetts, for instance, the price of care for 2 younger youngsters is $34,381, in keeping with advocacy group Youngster Care Conscious of America. For context, out-of-state tuition on the College of Massachusetts at Amherst is presently $35,599.

Though it may well’t assist dad and mom put their youngsters via faculty, our on-campus childcare middle is open to staff’ youngsters aged 18 months via 5 years. It’s not only a daycare, both: We’ve consulted educators to create a program that features all the things youngsters must develop and be taught, together with household engagement.

3. No less than three months of paid time without work.

Though the federal Household and Medical Go away Act ensures many staff as much as 12 workweeks of unpaid depart every year, few working dad and mom can afford to go three months and not using a paycheck. Right here in California, the California Paid Household Go away legislation provides eligible staff as much as six weeks of partial pay once they take time without work work to bond with a brand new little one.

Frankly, each legal guidelines are caught within the ‘90s. New dad and mom want time away, they usually want to have the ability to afford to take it. Though it will not be possible for a lot of entrepreneurs, the nearer you will get to Etsy’s best-in-class parental depart coverage, the higher: That features 26 absolutely paid weeks off, for fogeys of both gender, no matter whether or not the kid is organic or adopted.

Our up to date depart coverage at Ontraport for the beginning of a kid extends the required paid depart by 4 weeks — making the whole paid, protected depart time obtainable come to 16 weeks.

Associated: Learn how to Assist Staff Returning to the Office

4. Clear pointers for contractors.

Your parental depart coverage ought to deal with unbiased contractors as important members of the staff — in the event that they’re not already, they are going to be quickly. Monetary software program agency Intuit estimates that by 2020, contractors will make up 43 p.c of the U.S. workforce.

Whether or not you’re as beneficiant with contract employees as you might be along with your full-time staff is as much as you, however do not forget that disparities may end up in resentments. Final summer time, Microsoft expanded its paid parental depart coverage to supply 12 weeks off to its contractors, identical to it does with its staff. Though the software program big continues to be implementing the change, it can require that suppliers with greater than 50 staff present as much as $1,00zero per week to all new dad and mom.

Associated: Learn how to Calculate the Proper Parental Go away Coverage

5. A plan to re-integrate returning dad and mom.

One of many hardest factors in a mum or dad’s profession is returning to the workforce after his or her time without work. Sheryl Sandberg’s “Lean In” notes that 43 p.c {of professional} ladies with youngsters depart their jobs. Not solely are they pulled again house by their familial duties, however they’re usually pushed out by employers unwilling to spend money on their return to the job.

There’s, in fact, no one-size-fits-all plan for fogeys returning to work. As an alternative, describe transitional choices in your coverage: Are you able to provide flextime or distant work for the primary few months again? Are you able to pair returning colleagues with an HR staffer to get them in control on firm modifications that occurred of their absence? Is there an internet course they need to take about modifications within the business?

Can each small enterprise afford to supply on-site childcare and 26 paid weeks off to new dad and mom? After all not. However paid parental depart is more and more a part of the advantages bundle supplied by bigger corporations, which entrepreneurs must compete with. If they will’t, they’ll discover themselves caught with an excellent steeper value: turnover amongst their most senior staff members.

Supply hyperlink

source https://webart-studio.com/is-your-parental-go-away-coverage-driving-away-prime-expertise/

#start up #entrepreneurs #new business #online marketing #wordpress websites #productivity #sm

[thegloober]

How Much Money You Save on Childcare By Living Near Your In-Laws

My wife and I don’t live near family. College led us away from home and jobs kept us from moving back. Even now that we have a 3-year-old and would love for her to be near grandparents, cousins, aunts, and uncles, moving isn’t an easy option. Our daughter’s closest grandparents live more than 1,000-miles away; the other set is clear across the country. The nearest relatives are a three-hour drive.

Some might argue that’s a good thing ⏤ you can never live too far from family, they joke. And while we know plenty of couples in similar straits, it turns out we are not the norm. According to a report by the New York Times, the average American lives only 18 miles from home; one-in-five live within a few hours drive of mom and dad or their siblings. For those who are parents, they are clearly on to something.

ADVERTISEMENT

While not true in every case, having family close by often means enjoying built-in babysitting or discounted daycare. And it’s hard not to be a little envious of our friends whose parents ⏤ either one or both sets ⏤ live locally, especially when you consider the average family spends around $10,000 a year on child care. I met a grandmother in the park recently who was watching four of her nine grandkids while they’re parents were off doing other things ⏤ who knows what ⏤ for seven hours on a Saturday. I was blown away. I still am. The thought of having an entire weekend day of free care while you get things done around the house or run errands or finish a project is mind-boggling to me. My wife and I are lucky to hire a sitter or have a friend watch our daughter for the occasional date night.

But it got me thinking: How much money can you realistically save on babysitting and childcare by living near your parents or in-laws. And I say ‘realistically,’ because it’s unlikely that you’d use your parents or adult siblings every time you need a babysitter. Nor would most parents ask mom or dad to watch their kids every day of the week in lieu of putting them in a daycare center, unless it was a financial necessity. Based on the frequency I see a lot of parents turn to their family for ad hoc babysitting, though, I decided to crunch some numbers using data from several recent studies on the cost of childcare. I kept things simple and only calculated care for one toddler. This is what I came up with:

Featured Video

Loading Video Content

Babysitting

Let’s start with the easy one, babysitting. According to two extensive surveys last year from Care.com and UrbanSitter.com ⏤ both apps that help parents find child care ⏤ the average cost of a babysitter in the United States runs between $13.97 per hour and $15.20 per hour for one child ($17.34 for two, $19.57 for three). Like the cost of most child care these days, those rates are up 26 percent since 2010. Of the larger cities, San Francisco had the highest hourly rate at $17.34/hour for one child ($19.79 for two) while Denver was the lowest at $12.22 per hour ($13.89 for two).

According to the surveys, one-third of parents hire a sitter weekly while 48 percent spend more than $1,000 a year on babysitting, although many spend upwards of $3,000. I assumed that if you have free babysitting in mom or dad right down the street, you’re easily in that 33 percent ⏤ if not using them a lot more. So I did two calculations:

The first was based on a once-a-week date night. At $15 an hour, a three-hour dinner and a movie cost $45. Do that 50 times a year and you’re spending $2,250.

The second includes weekly date night plus random drop-offs to run errands, attend meetings, etc. For that, I took the $2,250 and added in an additional 5 hours a month at $15 an hour, for a grand total of $3,225.

Daycare

According to Child Care Aware’s Parents and the High Cost of Child Care 2017 report, the average American family pays $11,053 a year to keep an infant in a daycare center. That number drops to $8,909 for toddlers and $8,670 for preschoolers but still averages $9,544 a year across the board ⏤ it’s no wonder so many parents debate quitting their job to stay home with a kid. Care.com’s annual 2017 Cost of Child Care Survey revealed similar numbers, finding the average weekly cost of daycare to be around $211 for one child.

ADVERTISEMENT

Obviously, if you have very spry (and generous parents) who can hang with toddlers all day ⏤ you can save this entire amount by living near home. No calculator necessary. But that’s not usually how it works. Mom and Dad didn’t get you and your siblings out of the house only to go back to being full-time parents in their 60s or 70s. The more realistic scenario I see when retired grandparents live nearby is that they tend to watch the kids about two days a week ⏤ which means the kids do about three days a week in some sort of daycare.

So, how much can you save paring daycare back from five to three days a week? Easy enough to figure out. Using Care.com’s $211 per week rate, you’re paying $42.20 per day. Three days of care equals $126.60 per week or a savings of $84.40 from a full week’s bill. Do that for an entire year, and you’re banking $4,388.

Total Savings

Of course, not every grandparent can or wants to spend their retired days chasing around kids — some physically can’t. And how much parents can actually utilize kin care is dependent on everything from the health of your relatives, to how well you get along, to how good they actually are with your children. Some grandparents still don’t know what the hell they’re doing.

ADVERTISEMENT

Naturally, every family is different and, as such, it’s impossible to calculate every savings scenario. That said, if we add the $3,225 from babysitting to the $4,388 for part-time daycare, we’re looking at a total savings of at least $7,613 over the course of a year, or $38,065 over the five years until your kids enter kindergarten. I don’t know your in-laws personally ⏤ and there are a lot of pros and cons to living close to parents when raising a family ⏤ but that’s a solid chunk of change. And one I might argue that’s well worth any dig your father-in-law can make about your golf game or favorite football team.

Source: https://bloghyped.com/how-much-money-you-save-on-childcare-by-living-near-your-in-laws/

[news-mashable-yahoopartner-blog]

15 Mister Rogers quotes for when you need a friendly neighbor

Won't You Be My Neighbor?, the recently released Mister Rogers biopic, has everyone weeping with a nostalgic, foreign emotion: joy.

Between the #MeToo movement and a president who plucks babies away from their parents, it's hard to think of men in contemporary public life who inspire admiration. Twenty years ago, Mister Rogers commanded so much more than that. He helped children and the adults watching his show navigate the traumas of human life and experience gratitude for life's everyday blessings.

We don't have Mister Rogers with us today, but we do have his quotes and clips to guide us through tough times.

SEE ALSO: Try not to cry watching a young Mister Rogers defend PBS

Be forewarned: The following quotes may trigger feelings of deep hope and love for humanity.

1. On our role as human beings

"As human beings, our job in life is to help people realize how rare and valuable each one of us really is, that each of us has something that no one else has – or ever will have – something inside that is unique to all time." 

Source: Rogers' Wisdom From The World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember

2. On unavoidable suffering

"There is no normal life that is free of pain. It's the very wrestling with our problems that can be the impetus for our growth." 

Source: Rogers' You Are Special: Words of Wisdom for All Ages from a Beloved Neighbor

3. On being proud of yourself

"I hope you're proud of yourself for the times you've said 'yes,' when all it meant was extra work for you and was seemingly helpful only to somebody else." 

Source: Wisdom From The World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember

4. On what matters

"It's not the honors and the prizes and the fancy outsides of life which ultimately nourish our souls. It's the knowing that we can be trusted, that we never have to fear the truth, that the bedrock of our very being is good stuff. That's what makes growing humanity the most potentially glorious enterprise on earth."

Source: Rogers' 2001 commencement address at Middlebury College

5. On strength

"It takes strength to acknowledge our anger, and sometimes more strength yet to curb the aggressive urges anger may bring and to channel them into nonviolent outlets." 

Source: Rogers' Wisdom From The World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember

6. On real heroes

"When I was very young, most of my childhood heroes wore capes, flew through the air, or picked up buildings with one arm. They were spectacular and got a lot of attention. But as I grew, my heroes changed, so that now I can honestly say that anyone who does anything to help a child is a hero to me." 

Source: Rogers' Wisdom From The World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember

7. On your big feelings

"There's no 'should' or 'should not' when it comes to having feelings. They're part of who we are and their origins are beyond our control." 

Source: Rogers' Wisdom From The World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember

8. On history

"The really important 'great' things are never center stage of life's dramas; they're always 'in the wings.' That's why it's so essential for us to be mindful of the humble and the deep rather than the flashy and the superficial." 

Source: Rogers' Wisdom From The World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember

9. On scary things in the news

"When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.'" 

Source: Interview with Karen Herman, Archive for American Television

10. On having children

"Please think of the children first. If you ever have anything to do with their entertainment, their food, their toys, their custody, their childcare, their health care, their education – listen to the children, learn about them, learn from them. Think of the children first."

Source: Rogers' Thoughts for All Ages

11. On invisible gifts

"When I say it's you I like, I'm talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can ever see or hear or touch. That deep part of you that allows you to stand for those things without which humankind cannot survive. Love that conquers hate, peace that rises triumphant over war, and justice that proves more powerful than greed."

Source: Rogers' 2002 commencement address at Dartmouth College

12. On our values

"It's our insides that make us who we are, that allow us to dream and wonder and feel for others. That's what's essential. That's what will always make the biggest difference in our world."

Source: Rogers' 2001 commencement address at Middlebury College

13. On acceptance

“Love isn't a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like 'struggle.' To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now – and to go on caring even through times that may bring us pain." 

Source: Rogers' Thoughts for all Ages

14. On kindness

"There are three ways to ultimate success. The first way is to be kind. The second way is to be kind. The third way is to be kind." 

Source: Rogers' Life's Journeys According to Mister Rogers: Things to Remember Along the Way

15. On you

"I hope that you'll remember/ Even when you're feeling blue/ That it's you I like/ It's you yourself/ It's you, it's you I like." 

Source: Rogers' "It's You I Like"

WATCH: This musician created an immersive live event series to promote inclusivity

#_author:Heather Dockray #_uuid:4321b43c-7b7d-36d7-a1f8-a13145537683 #_lmsid:a0Vd000000DTrEpEAL #_revsp:news.mashable

[apprenticeshipsinlondon]

Apprentice Highways - Level 3 - Glasgow

Glasgow, Glasgow, Glasgow City, UK Arcadis Level 3 Apprentice Highways: London, Warrington Glasgow Arcadis are looking to recruit 4 Apprentices to be based within our Highways Team. Welcome to our world... Our 30,000-strong team work all over the world. We build rail systems in Doha and provide clean water in Sao Paulo. We're improving social housing in Glasgow and transport links in Wales. It's a complex business. But while our expertise and projects reach far and wide, they're also united under the same simple vision: to improve quality of life. You can explore our world further at , but we're also keen to know about yours. What ambitions do you hold for the future? What challenges keep you up at night, and put a spring in your step in the morning? Your answers are important to us. Because we need people who can see the bigger picture. Who can bring their ideas to life with spark and imagination, and are passionate about playing their part in our story. If that speaks to you, talk to us. We're building a business where you can thrive. The Team: Our Rail Team continues to add to their impressive list of project awards and recent successes have seen them secure some of the UK's most high profile, complex and stimulating projects to complement their existing portfolio of works. The new schemes are diverse and technically complicated and include London Bridge Station Regeneration, Crossrail & Crossrail 2, National Electrification Programme, Bank Station Regeneration and Rutherglen to Coatbridge Electrification and Valley Lines Electrification. What do we offer: With Arcadis, you have a platform to drive your career, explore your capabilities turning your ambition into reality. On-going professional development and coaching means that you will always have the opportunity to participate in programmes designed to help you grow your skill sets and take your career to new heights. The role will allow you to access "on and off the job training" gaining knowledge and hands on experience of supporting our teams in their delivery of exciting projects across our sectors. Level 3, Courses on offer by location: London, Warrington, Glasgow. You will study at a local college or university. Typically an Apprentice will work 5 days per week. Typically 4 days "on the job" training and 1 day "off the job" attending sessions away from the office for technical training as per the Training provider's calendar which is confirmed prior to the Apprentice start date. Responsibilities: Reporting to the line manager within the Rail team, you will support the delivery of technically excellent cost effective solutions, under professional supervision, work in collaboration with other design disciplines and acquire the knowledge and practical skills through on-the-job learning to attain a formal qualification, developing your industry knowledge though affiliations and continuing education. Role Requirements/Responsibilities: • Training in the use of Computer Aided Design (CAD) using proprietary design software packages • Preparation of civil engineering or MEP drawings and designs • Preparation of design drawings and preparation of design calculations • Document control and project processes in line with company quality system • To provide instruction and advice within the department commensurate with training completed • Gaining experience and proficiency in Arcadis systems and procedures • Becoming familiar and compliant with, relevant H & S regulations and to promote a culture of awareness within the team • Performing other duties and responsibilities as required from time to time by your manager or Arcadis • Good Communication • Mathematics and IT skills are all important • Ability to work as part of a team / Working on your own initiative • Strong problem solving, Attention to detail • Ability to come up with practical solutions • Enthusiastic, Willing to learn, Punctual, Reliable, Committed • Proactive and Self-Motivated Qualifications / Experience: • GCSE's Maths, Science & English (minimum grade B but A grade preferred) What makes us the best? This role is more than a standard next step. It's a chance to move into a business where you can go as far as you want. Get in touch now and tell us where we can help you take your career. We offer a fantastic working environment where you own your destiny and will be encouraged to forge a successful career. In addition, we offer some excellent benefits, such as: Healthcare Life Assurance Income Protection Annual Leave Annual Professional Institution Subscription Paid Tax Free Season Ticket Loan Cycle to Work Scheme Additional Annual Leave Purchase Scheme Enhanced Maternity and Paternity Leave Childcare Vouchers Birthday Vouchers Long Term Service Awards Refer a Friend Scheme that rewards you for every successful introduction you make! Opportunities like this are rare. Don't miss out on a chance to put yourself in a place where great things can happen. Get in touch now to let us know that you're interested in making a move. Salary: . Date posted: 31/03/2017 from Youth In Jobs https://youthinjobs.co.uk/job/48424/apprentice-highways-level-3-glasgow/

[labourpress]

Labour launches National Education Service

Angela Rayner, Shadow Education Secretary, launching Labour’s plans for a cradle to grave National Education Service at Leeds City Further Education College today, said:

To the people of this country I say this - you have a clear choice on 8 June.

A choice between a Conservative Government that has let you and your children down.

Or a Labour Government that will stand up for you and provide a better education and life chances for all.

The Conservatives said they would look after our children.

But instead they’ve cut funding for our state schools, abolished the Education Maintenance Allowance and tripled Tuition Fees.

Over the past seven years, the Tories have been dismantling the incredible legacy of the last Labour Government.

As it has across the economy.

This Conservative Government has held you back.

If you’re a teacher living the reality of falling investment and rising class sizes. You’re being held back.

If you’re a parent – like I am – and your children aren’t getting the education they deserve because class sizes are too high.

Then our children are being held back.

It’s truly frightening that school budgets are being cut for the first time in over twenty years.

We’re going to see a generation of our children being held back.

It never used to be like this under Labour.

Harold Wilson spoke of a new Britain forged in the white heat of the technological revolution, and Tony Blair spoke of the need to build an education system fit for a new millennium.

This is how Labour always equipped Britain to rise to new challenges; the history of Labour in power is of us giving power to people.

To fulfil their potential, to have the economic security to start a family and get on in life, and to pass on to their children more than they were given.

And education has always been at the heart of how we have delivered this.

But in the past seven years, as the Tories drag us further away from the legacy of the last Labour Government, more and more people are being held back.

Held back by an education system that, under the Conservatives, isn’t giving them the support they need.

The over 800,000 young people not in education, employment, or training, who aren’t able to get the skills they need to get a good job, are being held back by a Government that is not supporting them.

The nine million adults who have poor literacy, poor numeracy, or both, too often trapped in low-wage, low-skill work, struggling to make ends meet as wages stagnate and living costs rise, are being held back by a Government not giving them the support they need.

I know how it feels to be held back, because, for a long time, I was too.

If you grow up in poverty and on a run-down estate, it doesn’t take much for you to feel held back.

You feel like you’ll never have the same opportunities as your better off mates, for even the most basic things; you feel like education isn’t for you.

You leave school without qualifications; you become a NEET, just another statistic on Philip Hammond’s spreadsheet.

Of course, in my case, I left school pregnant too, and at that point, you forget about feeling held back, and you start to worry about the most basic things.

How to make ends meet and provide for a child, how to try and give them even a little more than you had.

You do the best you can, but it can be so easy, through no fault of your own, to end up in your early adult life trapped in a cycle of deprivation, unable to get the decent wage you need to break out of it.

Slowly watching your dreams of becoming a nurse, a teacher or a scientist slip away as fantasies created by a young naive child.

But education can offer a lifeline that is simply transformative. And it shouldn't stop at a particular age in life.

Like many people, including some of my colleagues, I went back to education as an adult, to get the skills and qualifications I missed the first time.

I did that thanks to a Labour Government introducing free childcare through Sure Start and free adult leaner courses at my local college.

It is difficult to say how much this changed my life, but I think I can safely say that if I hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t be standing here today. I left school thinking I was thick and feeling like a failure.

For too many, the transformative power of education is lost, from schools not getting the funding they need, to the debts you need to take on to return to education as an adult.

I fear that the opportunities that were there for me are not there for those who need them now.

But things can be different.

We can build a fairer, richer Britain, where opportunity and prosperity can be shared by all. That provides business with a skilled and ready British workforce.

And that is why I am proud today to announce the first stages of Labour’s National Education Service.

First, we will secure the best education possible for every child, by getting the basics right, and that starts with proper funding for our schools.

We will reverse the £3 billion of cuts that our schools would face by 2020, and protect per pupil funding over the course of the Parliament.

And unlike the Tories, when we say real terms, we mean real terms.

No child will be held back by being in a school that doesn’t have the staff it needs, or can’t offer the curriculum our children need.

Under Labour, every child, whatever their background, will be given the opportunity to unlock their full potential.

We will give further and technical education the parity of esteem that it deserves, not just with warm words, but with bold action.

We will give further education for 16 to 19 year olds the funding it needs, reversing seven years of managed decline under the Conservatives.

NEETs will no longer be held back, but will instead be given the support they need to go into further education, to be able to acquire the qualifications they need to get on in life.

It’s vital we have lifelong learning. Learning is a ticket not just out of poverty but also out of isolation and loneliness that many of us will face at some point in our lives.

30 per cent of jobs will be affected by the rise of automation.

Up to nine million more people who will see their industries decline and their livelihoods disappear.

And if anyone thinks the Conservatives are up to the challenges that these changes to our economy will bring, I would remind them to look at what has happened in post-industrial towns across our country.

All the Conservatives did in power under Margaret Thatcher and John Major was to manage the decline of industries and left nothing but low-paid, low-skill work in its place.

Ghost towns with the heart ripped out of our communities, left to rot with little opportunities.

Theresa May is continuing Margaret Thatcher’s legacy.

But there’s nothing strong or stable in creating an economy that holds people back, puts a cap on their ambition and leaves them in job insecurity.

Only Labour has the vision to deliver a fairer Britain, where opportunities are available to all and prosperity is shared.

The National Education Service has been developed by the thousands of people, teachers and organisations who have spoken to me over the last 12 months either by email or in person on my many visits up and down the UK and of course in my own constituency of Ashton-under-Lyne.

The Labour Party has listened. You are at the heart of Labour’s National Education Service, offering opportunity for all, to ensure that nobody - be they child or adult or community - is held back.

This will help everyone who wants to use education, to enrich their own life and their career, moving into jobs with better wages and more security.

Education is a central pillar to Labour’s plan to upgrade Britain’s economy.

Because all of our businesses will benefit from Labour’s plans too, as they thrive in a richer Britain.

Productivity in Britain remains stubbornly low compared to our competitors. The average German worker can make everything a British one does in a week, and take Fridays off.

It is no surprise that countries with high-quality technical education have more productive economies.

Which is why Labour will upgrade Britain’s economy by ending the historic neglect of further education, giving teachers and facilities the investment they need to lead the world.

I will make sure our education system is fit for the 21st century by introducing free, life-long education in further education colleges.

Labour will abolish adult learner loans, and make all adult education free at the point of use, for all those who need it.

So adults who don’t have the basic skills they need to move on and move up in life will no longer be held back by the fear of loans.

They will instead be able to return to education whenever they need it.

It will enable everyone to upskill or retrain at any point in their life.

It will correct the historic neglect of the further education sector by investing in teachers and in facilities.

And Labour will set a target for all further education teaching staff to have a teaching qualification within five years and we will back this up with financial support.

And we will increase capital investment to equip colleges to deliver T-levels and an official pre-apprenticeship trainee programme.

Beyond lifelong learning, we will transform the provision of apprenticeships.

There must be a focus on quality and not quantity.

Frankly, the number of apprenticeships does not matter if they’re more about poor wages than getting a foot on the career ladder.

Currently half of all apprenticeships are below NVQ level 2 and this is simply not good enough.

So a Labour Government will shift the emphasis from quantity to quality by doubling the number of completed Level-3 apprenticeships before the end of the next Parliament.

It is only by transforming our education system that we can upgrade our economy so that nobody and no community is left behind.

And while the Tories have seen the benefits of economic growth go to a small number of the very wealthy, concentrated in the South-East, Labour will share prosperity across the country.

We will ring-fence £440 million from the apprenticeship levy to give small and medium sized companies the support they need to recruit and train highly skilled staff.

And encourage joined up thinking between local government, schools, the FE sector, and businesses, so that everyone, young and old, can leave education with a valued qualification and the skills they need to get a decent job in their local community.

And we recognise that 75 per cent of apprenticeships are delivered by independent providers and we appreciate their contribution to the sector.

And, yes, we are going to ask businesses to pay a little more in tax to fund it all.

But this is because they have their important part to play in a new deal for Britain, transforming our economy.

Quite simply, we are asking good businesses to do what they always do, to make long term investments that will yield a significant economic return.

And the Labour Party and Britain’s businesses both know that as we face our exit from the European Union, upskilling our workforce to tackle the challenges we face in the years to come has never been more important.

Labour’s National Education Service will give everyone in Britain, whatever their age and background, the opportunities they need to use education to transform their lives, just as it did for me.

And the businesses that help us fund it will get a highly skilled workforce, more productive, and better able to adapt to the challenges to come.

This will give them the certainty and security they need to continue to create jobs and wealth across Britain.

There can be no doubt that we face great challenges in the years to come, from Brexit, to the rise of automation, to the decline of industries that will be replaced in our economy by new, high-tech and green industries.

It takes a united approach, of individuals, of government at all levels, and of business, to respond to them, to ensure that we can deliver opportunity, security, and prosperity for all.

By offering everyone a properly funded school, a high quality technical education, and support for lifelong learning that will allow everyone to reskill, retrain, and return to education as they need to.

Quite simply, we will rise to the challenge that was laid down twenty years ago, to deliver an education service fit for a new millennium.

To deliver richer lives for our people and a richer Britain for us all.

A National Education Service delivering hope and prosperity.

For the many not the few.

Ends