Financial education is a buzzword tossed around a lot today.  This whole subprime thing wouldn’t have happened if bankers hadn’t been so greedy and prospective mortagors so gullible (or greedy, too, in some cases).

We all need to do a better job of teaching our kids about money management.  The best we can hope for is that they learn from our mistakes.  Let us not repeat this misadventure — though I imagine that someday we’ll create a new one that will inadvertently run afoul.  (Think “Jurrasic Park” meets collateralized debt obligation.)

On this auspicious day, the Fourth Annual Blogging for LGBT Families Day (huzzah! huzzah!), I thought I would write about what it is that LGBT families teach their offspring differently about money than Ward and June Cleaver might have done.  As is usually the case with an us-vs.-them comparison, more is similar than is different.  It doesn’t matter where you’re from, what you look like, or how you define your “family,” we all want our kids to grow up to be happy, successful, and financially responsible adults.  While most things we teach our kids are the same as the Cleaver’s (delayed gratification, how to handle an allowance, how to save up for a big purchase…), my family is a bit different than average. Continue Reading »

My best investment is not the traditional sort of realized gain, but rather, the investment of time, love, and attention.

The investment was the decision that my spouse and I made before we started a family that one of us would stay home with the child until he was old enough for school.  Dana and I were each raised in families with stay-at-home moms, and that was what we both wanted for our child.  The problem, of course, was we both had careers, and since we started our family rather late in life, each of us had climbed halfway up the proverbial ladder.  Who would jump off?

And how would we live on just one income?  We had always had two, roughly equal, incomes.  Having one of us stay at home would mean a significant change in our lifestyle.  From “2 incomes for 2 people” to “1 income for 3 people.”  Hmmm… Not favorable math.  Continue Reading »

For 2008, the maximum that a child can make in investment income and not have it taxed at the parents’ rate is raised from $1700 to $1800.  Another change for 2008 is that it now also applies to 18-year-olds who do not have earned income to provide at least half the child’s support.  Likewise it applies to 24-year-olds (and under) who are full-time students and do not earn enough to provide half the child’s support.  As in 2007, it applies to all children under 18.

IRS Form 8615