Amy Currioman

Scholarships are the hands down best way to reduce the cost of attending college or trade schools. When I was expecting my first born, I did a lot of reading about parenting issues, and one of the things that I was most interested in was how to be able to afford to send my children to school. Back then the Internet wasn’t even invented yet, so most of my research was done by reading magazines; most notably a magazine named “Parents.”

One of the more interesting suggestions that some of the articles in that magazine seemed to be making was to NOT save a lot of money for college, as the families that scrimped and saved for college were the ones that would get less financial assistance. The argument was made that financial hardship would actually benefit the students in the long run. What do you think of that advice?

When I was younger I had hoped to have two children, one girl, and one boy. Life had other plans for me, and I ended up with two wonderful boys. Every now and then, though, I tease them that one of them was supposed to be a baby girl! They just roll their eyes at me and laugh; they know that I love them dearly. When my niece had a baby girl last year I was very excited to be able to go shopping for new baby girls clothes for her baby shower present. There are so many adorable outfits available on the market today!

To be perfectly honest, that is probably one of the biggest reasons why I wanted a baby girl way back then; the outfits for baby girls are always so adorable! The outfits always bring back memories of my childhood when my sisters and I would play with dolls and dress the dolls up in frilly outfits. Sometimes I wonder if playing with baby dolls was brain washing us, or simply appealing to our maternal instincts. Seems to me that I was just as happy playing with toy trucks and building blocks when I was given them to play with. That’s probably a good thing, though, since I had two sons and I ended up spending many hours with them playing with toy trucks, building blocks, trains, and action figures!

As much as I tried to avoid it, I finally arranged to have texting enabled on our family’s cell phone plan. Up until now I had ordered it blocked because I think texting is dangerous and rude on many occassions, and people don’t seem to have the common decency or sense when to use it or not. But my son told me that his boss really wanted him to have text messaging enabled, so I went ahead and enabled it.

So I had to have my son teach me how to use it, and he laughed at me because he thought that I should already know how to use it! It was easier than I thought it would be, and I have used it a couple of times. I wonder how much I’ll use it in the future. I can’t imagine doing it while driving. That would be dangerous and dumb.

When I was a lot younger I decided to invest in the stock market. The reason that I decided to do that was because my employer was offering a 401K plan where the money was invested solely in the company stock. Several years later I decided on a whim that I wanted to buy Disney Stock because I had just gone to Disney World and had a great time. I wanted to own a piece of Disney! At the time Disney Shareholders got special discounts (not anymore!) and a really nice magazine that came out a couple of times a year (again, not anymore!)

And a few years after that I read in the local newspaper that a Wal-Mart was going to build in a nearby town and the Motley Fool column in the newspaper suggested that Wal-Mart stock would be a good investment.  So I bought some Wal-Mart stock.  Not a lot, but I still bought some.

For the most part, the stocks that I have purchased have done relatively well, but a couple of months ago I met a financial advisor that suggested that I take some of my 401K money that was largely in the stock market and roll it over into an IRA that is full of annuities.  I really did not even understand how annuities work, but he sat down with me for about an hour and explained them, showed me some great Annuity Rates and convinced me that moving some of my money into annuities would be a smart thing to do at this point in time. I sure hope he’s right!

When we arrived at Monhegan we had to walk up a short hill,  The hotel we were going to stay in was the first building on the right.  I was grateful that we didn’t have to walk very far because there were no motor vehicles on the island except one truck and that was used to shuttle people’s luggage around the island.  Monhegan is a small island and the people there get around simply by walking or riding bicycles. I know that sounds like a quaint and romantic idea.  But I was really surprised when I learned in the wintertime the children of the island have to be sent to the mainland for school.  They stay with relatives during that time, but I just can’t imagine as a parent sending my young child away to live on the mainland with someone else for the entire winter.