The Mid Level Millionaire

A couple of years ago I started to write down what I was spending each day. After a few months I examined the figures and noted my spending trends. I was making a decent teacher's salary, and whilst the money wasn't exactly piling up I did have concerns that a substantial monthly income was decimated by the end of each month, leaving too little for the family ISAs.

The book I ended up writing detailed my successes in liberating 'my' money from the supermarkets, the internet, and our holiday destinations. By analysing my income I was able to figure out that with a little planning not only would I be able to ensure my children would never struggle financially, but i'd also be able to scale back my working life and spend more time with my children and my wife.

I'm in a very happy place right now. When I sit down at the end of the day i'm not overloaded with 'work stuff' that won't leave my head and let me relax. I'm sat at home today in a back room I have converted into an American Diner-something i'd wanted to do for years but never found the time to organise. We spent three weeks in America in September (when normally i'd have been working) collecting memorabilia for the conversion and spending quality time with the kids. I'm no longer marking all night- i'm using my evenings to play on the Playstation with my son, watching films with my wife, and researching the design and development of a home cinema room, something I want to build in the next year. Best of all, i'm going to pick my son up from school in half an hour. Being a teacher, i'd never done that before I found a way to work less. I hope the extracts from my book help you to build a better work/life balance, and I hope my steps to freedom help you to organise your finances, save money, and plan the future security of your children.

The Mid Level Millionaire

One milion pounds. £1,000,000. If your lifetime wage averages £25,000 per year and you work for forty years this is what you'll earn. If you could save £2000 a year you'd be able to retire with £80,000. With your pension, your paid off mortgage, and any small investments, you can live out your final years in reasonable comfort.

But this isn't what I want.

I'm no Bill Gates, but I want to leave a legacy. I'm just a Primary School teacher, but surely there has to be a way for me to leave my children a fortune when I die. I want to be able to buy them houses, show them that hard work can provide more than just a house, a car, a holiday a year.

No 'get rich quick' schemes for me. No second jobs- i'm tired enough as it is. If anything, i'd like to work less. I miss being at home when i'm stuck in the Monday staff meeting. I don't want to miss my kids growing up. I certainly don't want them to be frustrated in life because their routine becomes breakfast club>school>after school club>tea>tv>bed due to two working parents. There must be a better life for us somewhere out there.

If I had a million pounds, 5% interest would pay out £50,000 a year. No need for a pension then; that money would mean that both of us and both of the kids would only have to work part-time. Two grown up children with private incomes. What a dream. They'd be free to work voluntarily or train for sports. They could work full time for a year and travel the world for a couple of years on their savings. I need to do this for them. Heck, on £50,000 a year we wouldn't even have to touch the £1,000,000 capital. That would truly be money for life- for many generations. I need to do this. I need to secure our futures now.

The Rules

• To do this you need to earn £25,000 before tax. If you earn less you won't hit the £1,000,000 target but you will still be able to improve your life considerably.
• It will take the rest of your life to put away £1,000,00 but you will be benefitting all of your future children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.
• You will not have to work any extra hours. You'll use your skills, training, and knowledge in different ways.
• You will not behave unethically or profit from other people's misery. I urge you not to decide to become a landlord once you have put some money away. The short-term gains are offset by the fact that you have to charge minimum wage workers too high a percentage of their income to rent a house.
• Your children must become integral to this plan as they get older. They will learn many skills from their involvement, and will be likely to add money to the million as they get older, building a true family fortune.
• You will not pay me or anyone else any sort of money to be helped into financial security. This is your endeavour, and your successes will matter more than any advised to you. However, if you want to buy my book when it comes out... :)

Next time - the maths behind the plan.

The wrong way to earn money

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15256999

This is an interesting article. On the one hand the BBC writer is critical of the idea of seminars designed to show you how to become a millionaire, but although the article details people who have become addicted to attending the courses, it also sells them rather effectively. People are discussed who have made millions from renting out houses, and I guess the reader is left to draw their own conclusions on the judgemental statement as pictured above. The current Wall Street protests are aimed at the top 2% in America- those with ridiculous fortunes. Any business aimed at taking money from the state, especially the DSS, is surely in a difficult moral place?

Does the desire to join the top 2%, or the desire to see your children there mean that you have to abandon your humanity and care of your fellow citizens completely?

Tomorrow will see the serialization of my book "The Mid Level Millionaire" begin on this blog. Heck, read it- you will definitely save some money, you might make some too. And at least it'll be ethically acquired!

Teach your child how to spell

I've never had an eight year old in any of my classes who can spell. Yes, there have been a few who aren't far off, but not one who is really up to standard. This always amazes me.

Spelling is one of the easiest things you can help your child with.

http://db.tt/MLuQIQgp

This dropbox link will unload a worksheet I have been using for several years. It's simple to use.

1. Ask your child to think about all of their favourite words.
2. "Don't worry about your spellings, just write one of those words in each box, i'll be able to help you with your spellings if you do this"
3. Make it fun. When they get stuck, call out connected words to remind them. Look around the room- "Television, toys, sofa, curtains!". Get a laugh with this one- "Look at my clothes- shirt, trousers, socks, oops- underpants!"
4. Only spend five minutes doing this. Occasionally a child will love the challenge so much they'll keep on writing words for a full hour, but as is is the first step in a process, let them finish quickly if they want to.

Your job is to review and correct the spellings. Do this on your own, and make a list of misspelt words. Help your child to practice spelling them, to write sentences using them, and at the end of the week, test them and offer a fantastic day out as the reward.

(NB if you want me to upload more worksheets, help me to increase my Dropbox allowance by joining via my referral link http://db.tt/Mi0rvaf It's free to join, and you can host your own files there safely too. A great way to back up your family photos, perhaps?)


How it works

Children- and adults- have a set vocabulary. Every now and then we learn a new word, but otherwise we use the same list of words in our writing. Your child will only think of words they use in this task. If they try to write 'eliminate' it's one of their words and they need to learn it. If not, they'll write 'get rid of' instead, three words they can already write. Expanding vocabulary is something we'll look at in the future on Power Parents, but for now, help your child to be able to spell every word in their personal vocabulary. Do it yourself too- if you have always struggled to spell 'favourite', learn it today. The wonderful thing about spelling is that once you've learnt how to spell a word, and learnt what it means, you're never going to forget how to spell that word.

In school

So why are schools accepting bad spelling? We're focussed on content. The average eight year old will produce between ten and fifteen pages of writing a week, and whilst spelling mistakes are noted, pupils generally do not correct them- at least in any of the classes i've audited. This means that unless pupils pick up spellings naturally, spelling levels at the end of Y6 are often atrocious. Spelling tests do not work; children are so different nowadays that providing three different lists of spellings for three ability groups will always alienate a third of the class- those who work at home and thus already know the spellings they've been given, and those who will never practice spellings at home and so are turned off learning after a few weeks of getting 1/10.

The solution

If you follow this plan, your child will be a fantastic speller in just a few months, and be ready to develop their vocabulary to High School level years before anticipated. That's your solution that will give your child the confidence and enthusiasm to become great writers.

For schools, the solution is technological. I've had incredible success recently using my ipad and this software: http://pyromediaapps.com/this-weeks-words/
It's one you can use at home on your iphone, ipod touch, or ipad too. Every Monday you (or a Teaching Assistant in school) input spellings for each child from their previous week's writing. The pupils spend ten minutes playing three rounds of games connected to learning only words that they have shown they cannot spell. The success rate is brilliant- i've seen over 80% of inputted words being spelt correctly two weeks after using this app.

Spoil your child

No educational psychologist will agree with me, but I see great value in giving children expensive gifts.

Let me explain.

I've decided that buying decent quality items- clothes, food, technology- is the way forward. I spend less over the year as the items I purchase last longer, taste better, and do what I want them to without fail.


When we buy our children cheap toys, we tend to buy a lot of them. Houses clutter up, bad purchasing habits are reinforced, and we treat items as being disposable. "That cheap toy car? Bin it, it's broken."

It's not environmentally friendly, it's not logical, but it's what we do. I went through three cheap netbooks in three years (plus a couple of laptops before that) before finding my iPad, a piece of technology that works well and will last me for years. It's robust!

Something I see in school on a regular basis is the boost given to a child when they come in and say they've had something amazing for a birthday present. Recieving a great gift that is desirable but unexpected can motivate a child when you add in the phrase: "We thought you deserved this, you've worked so hard at school this year, we're so proud of you".

A fantastic gift can be something that continues to motivate an individual for decades. Think back. Can you remember the person in your class who had the proper Sony Walkman compared to your plastic rip-off that broke within two weeks? The lad who got a Game and Watch and let you play on it? We should not be indicating that posessions are important, but to show a child that one quality item will provide more entertainment, satisfaction, and pride that numerous cheap pieces is a worthy advancement of opinion.

So work out your finances and put aside £1000 a year for each of your children. Withdraw their pocket money, stop buying cheap comics and toys, and stick a picture of their dream posession on the fridge. Work their maths skills and planning ability by telling them the price and talking about what they will have to do to achieve their target. Tie in household chores, independent activities, and school reports and in twenty years time when they want to buy a new BMW they'll eschew finance, thinking: "I'm going to have to work overtime for eighteen months, scale up my small business, and cut back on the non-essentials to buy this."

Rewards can be eternally rewarding.

[Side note- keep the boxes in pristine condition, sealed in plastic bags. Even if the toys/tech end up being battered, they will often sell for a profit in twenty years if the boxes have been kept. Look up 'Game and Watch' and 'vintage Sony Walkman' on eBay. You'll find that your £1000 a year could eventually be worth four times as much when your child comes to sell their beloved presents when they are older. And who is buying them? The kids who always wanted them as a present but always got a lot of little things instead. The desire for amazing posessions will continue if not fulfilled! Go on, buy them something nice.]



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Show your child your creative side

A modern successful person can be seen (rightly or wrongly) to have the following:

• a happy life,
• a nice car,
• a beautiful house,
• happy children,
• a loving marriage,
• opportunities to travel,
• lots of technology.

Let's add in:

• money in the bank,
• creativity,
• a good social life,
• good health.

As a Power Parent, you're a role model. I want my son to see all sides of my character, so as he gets older I spend less time watching pointless TV programmes and more time doing things with him. I'm presuming that both you and I have everything in the first list; from the second list, money in the bank will come with time. Creativity is an interesting one. If you follow the normal pattern of: work, rest, shop your child will presume that money is key to life. I've started making things (woodworking) to expand the creative aspects of my character. When I decided that my son would love an arcade machine in his bedroom, I decided that spending £1000 would not be enough. I needed to make something that would give him a story. I can imagine Charlie, aged 30 and a parent himself, saying: "Dad made me an arcade machine when I was a kid. It was amazing. I'm going to make my son one too, family tradition!"

Creativity is a powerful tool to engage children. The hands-on learning approach works excellently in school, and showing a child how satisfying it is to make something from a stack of wood provides a real life lesson. As adults we're keen to spend a couple of hundred pounds on a TV unit, but we rarely ask if the quality and styling of the unit match up to the cost. You might not make furniture, but perhaps this post will spur you on to creating art for your child's bedroom, or picking up your old sewing skills and making personalized cushion covers for your play room.

Get some ideas from www.etsy.com and don't get discouraged when your first few attempts at creativity fail. Good luck, email me your successes as creative Power Parents!

What is a Power Parent?

You are a Power Parent! By finding this blog you have demonstrated that you are willing to spend time searching for ways to help your child be the best person they can be. I'm a Primary School teacher and I have set up this website to share ways in which you can make your child 'top of the class'.

Rationale

Today's Primary School pupils are facing difficult lives. Unemployment, the lack of career opportunities, prohibitively expensive University courses, and a growing 'have/have not' divide are all factors that will shape our children's lives. Modern education statistics, as evaluated by the media, focus on the number of children who leave school unable to read and write to a reasonable standard. What is avoided, but a more serious concern, is that many more children from middle-class families, children who are bright and enjoy school, are leaving unable to multiply, divide, know little about history, cannot structure letters, etc. Schools are failing our future leaders by placing curriculum attention in the wrong places. As teachers, we are directed to help the lowest ability learners; we are pushed to bring our 'pass' aka level 2 and 4 figures up, and are left with little time to help the brightest children fly.

The Future

In days gone by, your bright and engaged child would have been picked out in school for the 11+ exam, gained a place at a Grammar School, and followed this into a top University, followed by a well-paid high-flying career. We can't take this for granted now. Power Parents need to top-up their children's education, giving them the knowledge and skills that schools do not have the time to provide.

Your child can achieve anything they want to. Power Parenting provides the training and support needed to help your child succeed in life. Less than 1% of the population will ever even hear about the concept of Power Parenting- so you have a massive advantage here. Use it wisely, and help your child to become an incredible person.