June 14, 2009 at 9:45 pm
Sean is done with elementary school and headed into middle school this September — 6th grade, here we come! They’re very organized in all schools these days. Both our kids came home before the school year ended and already had a list of the necessary school supplies for next year. That never happened when I was a kid.
Another thing that never happened when I was a kid was seeing this on the school supply list:
Yep, Sean needs a USB drive. For 6th grade.
Please see the title of this post.
December 25, 2008 at 2:12 pm
… to shop for yourself!
Actually, it wasn’t supposed to be that way, but I ended up buying myself a kinda-sorta Christmas present on Christmas Eve at Circuit City:
It’s like this: Sean’s computer monitor died a few days ago. So he’s been without a computer. My laptop died on Tuesday, and after spending a couple hours on the phone with Apple Tech Support, the decision was that I needed to get a new hard drive.
So, on Christmas Eve I went to Circuit City to get myself a new hard drive. Sean asked me to look for a monitor for him, and if I found one that he could afford (he has some money saved up), to buy it and then he’d pay me back.
Well, the hard drive was easy to find. But there were no monitors left in his price range. There was, however, this gorgeous, Samsung, 22-inch LCD monitor for $209. So I decided to get it … and if Sean wanted it, he could pay for half and the rest would count as a Christmas gift from mom and dad. Or, option 2 was that I would keep this monitor and give Sean my Sony 19-inch monitor.
He chose option 2. So, while I went out with the plan to shop for him, I ended up getting myself a sweet, new Christmas present!
Merry Christmas to you! I hope Santa brought you lots of goodies, and please also remember the reason for the season. Count your blessings. 
September 11, 2008 at 8:18 pm
I’ve been itching to go to a Seahawks game for a while now. Haven’t been to one in about 2-3 years, I think. My son has never been to one, and he’s been asking about it since at least last season, and maybe even the season before.
So out of the blue this week, I had this urge to find tickets for the home opener this Sunday. Ticketmaster had some tickets available, but they were the super-spendy Club Seats, minimum price about $225 per ticket. Found a few good auctions on eBay, and managed to win one yesterday morning! The tickets arrived today via overnight mail:
Gorgeous, aren’t they? We’ll be sitting up pretty high, but somewhere around the 40-yard line. These are from a season ticket holder who can’t make the game, and the final auction price was less than face value.
The Hawks might be lucky to score 10 points, but that’s okay. A day trip to Seattle for some NFL football with my #1 son is a guaranteed great day. Hope your Sunday ends up as good as ours will be!
August 6, 2008 at 11:11 pm
I don’t remember learning much about money as a kid. But I remember having it, because my dad started me working around the house and at his office building at around 10-11 years old. He paid me pretty well, and I spent it pretty well. Well, for a little while I did; when I decided I wanted to go to the prestigious, all-boys, private, Catholic high school — the one with a $2,000+ annual tuition — that’s when I learned to save money.
At Casa McGee, we’re not waiting for our son or daughter to tell us they want to go to some private school to start teaching them about money. It began tonight:
We’re using Dave Ramsey’s “Financial Peace Jr.” system, which basically works like this:
- The child has a list of jobs to do each week. Rather than “giving an allowance”, you’re paying the child for the work done. Just like real life, if you don’t work, you don’t get paid.
- If the child doesn’t do a certain job, does it poorly, or does something else s/he’s not allowed to do, the child gets “fined” and receives less money at the end of the week.
- The money earned gets divided into three categories: GIVE, SAVE, and SPEND. We’ve decided that our kids have to put 20% of their salary in the GIVE envelope, and 40% each in the SAVE and SPEND envelopes.
- The child can use the SPEND money, and some of the SAVE money, to purchase a desired item or experience. There’s a chart where s/he lists what the item is, how much it costs, how much s/he’ll put away each week toward the purchase, and how long it should take to have enough money.
I think this’ll be good. I’m hoping they learn financial discipline; the value of work; that money isn’t just for spending; that giving to the less fortunate is important; and that good money management has rewards.
The kids are excited. I think that’s half the battle right there.
July 17, 2008 at 7:23 pm
I was watching the MLB All-Star game with my 10-year-old son on Tuesday night, and somehow we got on the subject of the NFL. I said (as I always do) how excited I am for football season, and asked how soon it starts — a question I usually start asking about two weeks after the Super Bowl ends. (Seriously, shouldn’t the NFL season be year-round? How fantastic would that be?)
ANYWAY … that delved into a comparison of baseball and football, and I started doing the best I could to remember that old George Carlin routine about the two sports. Only remembered a couple lines, but I found it later that night on YouTube. How great is this?
Showed it to my son last night so he could understand what I was trying to remember, and he loved it, too. Nothing like George Carlin to help with some father-son bonding!
April 29, 2008 at 12:13 am
Lookie who got on the digg home page today:
That doesn’t happen every day, so pardon me while I gloat a little. (Here’s the digg story URL.) In fact, it’s only the third time I’ve put a story on the home page. But this an interesting study in headline writing:
I submitted the same article to mixx, but used the boring headline that came straight from the Dallas Morning News article: “White House candidates offer plans to curb high gas prices”. I changed the title when I submitted to digg, came up with something much more interesting — a better hook — and the thing took off like wildfire. So, next time you read about the importance of writing attention-getting headlines for social media … listen to that advice.
One More Thing…
Speaking of social media, I wrote a guest post today for the Social Media Mom blog. You can read it here:
Guest Post by Social Media Dad, Matt McGee from the Matt McGee Blog
If you read it, let me know what you think. Is 10-years-old too young to start blogging?
December 26, 2007 at 2:09 pm
My son, Sean, just turned 10 and is becoming as big a music fan as I’ve been since about the age of 12. Up until recently, Sean has mainly followed Dad’s musical tastes: He loves U2 and has even been to one of their concerts; he listens to Coldplay; and he’s taken a liking to some of the CDs on my shelf like Snow Patrol and Keane.
All of that is fine from a fatherly perspective because I know the music he’s listening to, and with only a couple exceptions, don’t mind his young ears hearing these lyrics.
For Christmas, he put several CDs on his list from artists that I know nothing, or almost nothing about: Nickelback, The Bravery, and even Blake Lewis (the kid from American Idol).
That’s the first sign I’m getting old: When my kids start listening to bands/artists I don’t know. A week or so ago, Sean asked me if Lupe Fiasco’s real name was Lupe Fiasco or that was a fake name? I had to confess I’d never heard of Lupe Fiasco. The shame.
Then comes the lyrics issue. Do I worry about what these singers are saying in their songs? Of course I do!
That’s the second sign I’m getting old: When I worry about what my kids are hearing in the music they listen to. Should I listen to every song first to make sure it’s acceptable?
After thinking about, I decided to go ahead and buy some of these CDs even though I don’t know the artist and don’t know what they’re singing about. Here’s why:
- It’s not realistic to think I can listen to every song my son wants to listen to before he does, and approve or disapprove it. Who has time for that?
- As he gets older, and as kids grow up faster than they did when I was young, he’s going to be exposed to a lot more in the schoolyard, at his friends’ houses, etc., and I have to accept that’s just part of growing up.
- Most importantly, he’s a Good Kid and I have to trust the job we did as parents and trust him to adjust and mature in an appropriate way as he experiences new things.
But that doesn’t change the fact that I’m getting old, does it?
