Investing your time, creativity can build richer relationships

Of our four children, one is particularly “spirited,” which is another way of saying that the boy is an expert at sniffing out trouble. Just yesterday, he was happily occupied with a small, battery-operated vacuum cleaner. When I looked away for a moment, he decided to take the brush attachment from the vacuum I was using, dip it into the toilet, and “help me” by “scrubbing” the floor.

Moments like these often leave me frazzled and worn out, a familiar state for virtually anyone in the trenches of parenthood. This is true whether you’re tending to a newborn, chasing a toddler, running a tween to baseball practice or dealing with teenage angst.

In the midst of the chaos and the fatigue, the busyness and the routines, my husband and I have learned how difficult it can be to connect with our children in deep and meaningful ways. But we have also learned that, above all else, connectedness is what we want and what our children need.

Still, connectedness doesn’t always come naturally for us; honestly, we’ve found that it can be easier to divert or distract our children than to connect with them. In our home, movies often end up being our go-to diversion. Television, video games, the Internet, cell phone apps, a barrage of extracurricular activities, or buying new material possessions can just as easily serve as distractions and time fillers that keep us from building the relationships we really want.

Although diversions do give us an occasional break from the demands of parenthood, my husband and I want to invest in the relationship we have with our children. We try to do this by spending our time and our money in ways that enrich our family.

We often spend time together on simple activities. We pull out board games, do artwork at the dining room table together, include our children in meal preparation (as painful as it might be to wait for a 6-year-old to finish peeling three carrots), and try to engage in the things they love. We drive Matchbox cars and sword fight, sip water from tiny tea cups and swaddle dolls.

In the evenings when we’re all home together, we gather in the living room to read. One of the tangible investments we’ve made in our children is a library of beautiful and engaging books. We’ve received some as gifts; the others we’ve picked up at rummage sales and secondhand stores for a dollar or less.

We prefer investing our money in books and playthings that encourage our children to use their time creatively – and that sometimes allow us to jump in and play with them. We like simple, low-tech items such as new cookie cutters that can be play dough tools, wooden bowls for their little kitchen, thrifted dress-up clothes or paint sets and sketchbooks.

Finding ways to connect with older children can be challenging, but it is just as essential. Start by committing to 30 minutes of uninterrupted time with them. Resist the urge to send a quick text message, answer the phone, send an e-mail, or start dinner. Challenge your children, too, to take a break from their electronic devices to spend time with you.

Being wholly present may take some practice and effort, but investing in your children, regardless of their age, has rich rewards.

Banish winter blues with flowers, friends and fun projects

When I pad down the stairs in the early morning light, l instinctively head to the thermostat. On this morning, it reads 11 below zero. I shiver and let the familiar sense of dread settle in, wondering how we’ll spend another day together indoors.

Faced with perpetual gray skies and freezing temperatures, I battle the impulse to hunker down and wait for winter to pass. It’s almost as if I am holding my breath, waiting for spring’s return. Despite these feelings, however, I know I don’t want to let one day blur into the next. I want to do my best to celebrate what I have right now.

In Calvin Coolidge’s words, “We cannot do everything at once, but we can do something at once.” So even if I can’t eradicate all my winter angst in a single swoop, I can make small, deliberate choices to find joy. It’s even possible to do so without breaking my budget.

One budget-friendly way to lift your spirits, according to research from Rutgers University, is with a bouquet of fresh flowers. According to a series of published reports from Professor Jeanette Haviland-Jones and her colleagues, flowers have an “immediate and long-term effect on emotional reactions and social behavior,” for both men and women. In other words, flowers are clinically proven to reduce stress and make people happier. Investing in a small supermarket bouquet can cost as little as $5, but it’s a simple and cost-effective way to improve your mood.

Similarly, making an effort to cultivate relationships is a low-cost way to beat the winter doldrums. Try gathering friends to share a meal or enjoy a game night together. You don’t have to put on a full spread for everyone; you can make a big pot of soup and ask guests to bring bread and dessert to share. Or you can gather after meal time and serve a light snack.

You can easily elevate simple, inexpensive fare to impressive party food. For example, a bowl of popcorn topped with crumbled bacon (and some of the pan drippings) makes a crowd-pleasing snack. Pair this with rich candy bar hot chocolate and gather around the fireplace or the coffee table for a game or good conversation.

Getting outside is another easy, inexpensive way to squeeze some joy out of winter – even if it’s difficult to find the motivation to do so. Take a brisk walk, go sledding, or build a snowman. When you’re engaged in physical activity, your brain is releasing endorphins. These chemical messengers reduce your perception of pain, boost your immune system, and generally promote physical and emotional well being.

Learning a new skill or reviving an old interest can have a similar positive effect on your mood, as I found out when I recently pulled out the pasta maker I inherited from my grandmother. The process of rolling out pasta dough, and then slowly turning the crank on the machine, was almost meditative. I stood in the kitchen and surveyed the long strands of pasta with great satisfaction.

If you’re looking for ways to banish winter doldrums, make a list of three things you’ve always wanted to do or that you haven’t been able to finish. Perhaps you have a craft or cleaning project that has gone undone; now may be the perfect time to finish that novel or reorganize your closet.

When you make it a point to enjoy what you have right now, you might find that, instead of the winter blues, you have a warm sense of satisfaction—and that’s something worth celebrating.

Investing in good kitchen tools has some delicious rewards

As a child, I remember restaurant pizza being expensive and a rare treat for my family. Store-bought pizza was pricey, too, and it didn’t taste that good. And then there was the homemade variety: hamburger pizza made on a giant, blackened cookie sheet and always a little too doughy for my taste.

These days, it’s easy to get a decent pizza at a reasonable price, but I’ve found it more difficult to prepare pizza at home that excites my family— in the same ways that store-bought or restaurant pizza might, at least. In fact, until quite recently, I’ve had moments of “homemade pizza anxiety,” because my pizza doesn’t behave precisely as it should. It sticks to the pan, or won’t slide onto the pan, gets too puffy, or browns too quickly on top, leaving me with the kind of too-doughy crust I don’t like.

Convinced that pizza should never make me crabby, I decided to invest in some tools that will help me make truly good pizzas at home. First, I bought two baking stones and some cornmeal. The idea is that you preheat the baking stones to 500 degrees; then slide the prepared pizzas onto them. The stone meeting the crust is supposed to be a little bit of magic—that is, if you can manage to slide a 12-inch pizza onto a crazy hot piece of ceramic.

As you might have guessed, this process did not work as well as I hoped. I tried sliding the pizza from the back of a cookie sheet onto the hot stones, and I also tried not preheating the stones as suggested. More than once, I dropped my pizza on the oven rack or sent a shower of cornmeal into the bottom of my stove, or ended up with subpar pizza.

My mother, having observed—and sympathized—with my frustration, gave me what is known as pizza peel, the flat shovel-like object used in pizzerias. The result has been nothing short of a miracle, as it relates to the quality of pizza we’re eating. This homemade pizza is better (and far cheaper) than what we can eat out or buy at the store. Plus, we’re happily trying different kinds of toppings: spinach and goat cheese, caramelized onion and fresh mozzarella, and chicken apple sausage with feta.

The lesson, as it relates to finances, is that it pays to invest in good-quality kitchen tools that you will actually use. I got my pizza stones on sale for $10 each, and I’m guessing that the cost of the pizza peel was about $20. With $40 worth of appropriate tools, I can make meals that fit our budget and our lifestyle.

On the other hand, a kitchen full of unused—even wacky—gadgets is money sitting on your shelves. This means that as interesting as an automatic peppermill with a light might be (yes, such a product does exist), if you don’t need to light up your salad while you’re grinding pepper on it, then you shouldn’t buy it.

The only way to know what tools you need is to be honest about how you use your kitchen. Start with a kitchen inventory and pull out anything you haven’t used in more than a year; sell or donate those items. Then, consider which tools you believe indispensable to the way you live. For our family who eats pizza at least once a week, we’ve already gotten our money’s worth out of the pizza-making equipment. Over time, we’ll save ourselves hundreds of dollars we might have spent buying pizza, without depriving ourselves of the pleasure of a dinnertime favorite.

Distractions can be hard on your finances

I can easily get distracted when I’m at home with our four young children. The level of my distraction is well illustrated by the story of the missing cheese. Recently while making dinner, I somehow misplaced a two-pound brick of cheddar cheese (yes, two pounds). Try as I might, I couldn’t find it anywhere. After much fuming, I finally gave up, imagining that I’d unearth a moldy mass of cheese months later.

I eventually found the cheese (in our large chest freezer, thankfully), but the experience reminds me of the dangers of not paying attention to what I’m doing. When the cheese “disappeared,” I’m reasonably certain I was multi-tasking – probably talking on the phone or tending to a child – and I wasn’t in tune with the task at hand.

It’s humorous that I lost (and then found) a block of cheese, but it isn’t so funny when I find myself losing money because I’m preoccupied. While at the drugstore recently to pick up teething medicine for my fussy 1-year-old, I grabbed what I needed and headed to the register. I laid out my purchases and handed over my debit card, signed my receipt and lugged my now-sleeping daughter to our van. It wasn’t until later that I realized I’d been overcharged by $8.

Had I been paying closer attention, I would have saved myself the hassle of having to return to the store for a refund. And while $8 isn’t what I’d consider a lot of money, I don’t want to be cavalier about losing any amount of cash. If I’m not looking out for my best interests, no one else will. This is true whether I’m overcharged a few bucks at the pharmacy or thousands of dollars on a major purchase.

Paying close attention to the details of your financial transactions is the only way to ensure that someone hasn’t made a mistake or isn’t trying to take advantage of you. This can sometimes mean taking on tasks that you may find mundane, or even unpleasant. You may not be in the habit of balancing your checking account, for example, relying instead on the online details of your account. Nevertheless, if you’re not taking the time to reconcile your account, it’s easy to let mistakes or errors go unrecognized.

This is true for other kinds of financial business you conduct, too. When we received a $25 bill for a well-child visit, my husband believed that our insurance should have covered the service. He dug out and read the policy to be sure, then called our insurance company to dispute the charge. If he hadn’t been familiar with the particulars of our insurance coverage, and done the work of reading the specifics, we could have unnecessarily spent $25.

It might take some practice, but you can train yourself to pay closer attention. The next time you’re in a retail store, make a mental list of prices and keep a loose running total as you shop. Before you leave the store, review your receipt for accuracy. If you’re taking advantage of an advertised sale, bring along the sale flyer so you can verify the price if there’s any dispute. When you receive your credit card statements this month, look at all the charges carefully and take note of the interest rate you’re paying (nearly a third of cardholders don’t know their interest rate).

Avoiding distractions could add up to a lot of “found” money. If, by paying closer attention, you saved yourself even $50 or a $100 this year, just imagine how much you’d enjoy some extra cash in your wallet.

Investing in each other, not things, brings lasting happiness

A few nights ago, I sat with my children, husband, and parents in our living room. We’d just shared a pot of chili and homemade blueberry muffins and were sprawled out on couches and chairs. Soon after, my 6-year-old daughter brought over a bowl of small, smooth “story stones.” (Our story stones are rocks decoupaged with pictures of woodland creatures I clipped from an old children’s book.)

She sidled up to my mom, handing her the bowl and pleading for a story. I sat back and listened as my mother plucked stones from the bowl one by one and wove a story about a wayward chipmunk looking for a new home. My daughter listened, too, with rapt attention, and then took the bowl of stones and told her own story. It was the simplest form of entertainment—a meal shared together, followed by a time of storytelling and conversation—and an evening I won’t soon forget.

Such shared experiences, according to scientists, have a significant influence on individual happiness. In fact, several published studies have concluded that time spent building relationships makes people far happier than getting any new material possessions, even so-called luxury items. In part, this is because the initial pleasure of getting something new, such as a computer or car, fades so quickly.

Just how quickly a person’s exuberance over a new purchase wanes is astonishing. Psychologists report that we typically get used to seeing a new purchase, and therefore adapt to it, in a matter of six to eight weeks, or three months at best. This phenomenon, known as “hedonistic adaptation,” explains why lottery winners return to their original level of happiness not long after they’ve collected their winnings.

On the other hand, when we invest our time in relationships and in collective experiences, we create memories that we can draw on for many years to come. Unlike material possessions, our memories generally make us feel more alive, according to assistant professor of psychology Ryan Howell.

It seems that investing in other people’s happiness pays dividends, too. A 2008 study from Harvard Medical School and the University of San Diego concluded that your happiness is not only influenced by the people that you know, but by people they know. In other words, you’re more likely to be happy if your friends are happy, and even if your friends’ friends are happy.

It’s amazing to think that happiness has this kind of domino effect, indirectly spreading to a vast network of people, even influencing someone whom you may have never even met. It makes sense, then, for you to cultivate relationships in deliberate and meaningful ways.

The beauty of being intentional with your relationships is that it doesn’t have to be a costly endeavor. For example, you might host a neighborhood potluck or write a hand-written note to a friend with whom you’ve been out of touch. Play a board game with your spouse in the evening, or take a child on an individual “date” and share a piece of dessert. You could invite a group of friends to start a supper club or undertake a volunteer project together. Or you might consider joining a group that is devoted to something you enjoy, such as gardening, archery or French.

No matter how tight your budget is, you have the ability to create a richer, happier life - right now - by simply investing your time, love and talent in those closest to you. Happiness doesn’t depend on more money or the latest gadget. In tough economic times, that’s refreshing, encouraging news for us all.