Coming up is my LAST first day of school ever!! My baby is a senior!! Hard to believe! I can remember asking a good friend whose children were all in school what she did all day. I couldn't imagine what it would be like to be a stay at home mom with no children underfoot for 6 hours each day. I soon learned that there was still the same amount of grocery shopping, laundry and cleaning to do for 6 people as there had always been, I just didn't have children clinging to my legs while I was doing it! I also found that I was home A LOT LESS in the evenings, so it was even more important to get all of my work done during the day so I could enjoy the time with my kiddos when they were home.
NOW, however, I find that there is NOT the same amount of laundry, grocery shopping, cooking and cleaning to do. My oldest has been living here for the summer getting ready for grad school, but she leaves in September. My 2nd and 3rd children are both away at school (DS started his second year of classes yesterday) and DD will be home early next week for a few days before heading off for year 3 of classes. My husband travels regularly on business, so that will leave a lot of time where it is just me and baby girl at home. I still manage to stay busy, but my list looks much different than it did 15 or 20 years ago!! These days I spend a lot of time looking after our parents! This week I traveled to Huntsman Cancer Institute in Salt Lake City, Utah (about 5 hours from my home) and stayed there for a few days while my mother-in-law had surgery to remove a tumor. Now that we are home, I stop in and check on them and help with their tasks daily while she recovers from the surgery.
My parents are in relatively good health. However, my Dad is a planner, so he wants to make sure my mom is taken care of when he passes. A large part of their retirement income is generated by his daily investing (which my mom has no interest in or stomach for - not sure which!). So, my Dad decided that he needed someone to shadow him each day as he goes through his finances and makes investing decisions so that someone would be prepared to take over in the event of his death. Guess who has been nominated?? Yep! ME! It turns out that this has been fantastic. I love having an excuse to talk to my Dad every day, and I love the opportunity to learn about investing. This is something that I think a lot of us know a little bit about. We know some general terms, but we really just know enough to get ourselves in trouble. Like the time when my husband got paid a huge chunk of money for a piece of software he wrote and we put it all in mutual funds right at the top of the dot com bubble. We should have taken a nice trip. It would have cost less. But I digress. As I have told a few of my friends what I was doing with my Dad, some of them have said, "Can I sit in?" or, more often, "Can my husband sit in?" Ladies! Take an active role in your finances!! I decided that sharing what I was learning through my blog would be a great way to help others who want to learn some basic investing strategies. It is not meant to be comprehensive. You can take a class if you want a really comprehensive, expert treatment of the subject. However, if you want to get your feet wet and maybe you are in the same situation as me and have a little extra time - follow along!! You might learn something!! My Dad and I limit our discussions to 45 minutes each day. It's not a ton of time, but it's enough that it's adding up and I can now talk about options somewhat knowledgeably. I even suggested something to my Dad this week that netted him $1600! I'll get to that. But we'll start with the basics. Right now though, I need to go check in on my mother-in-law. Stay tuned as we go BACK TO SCHOOL!!
