But They Sure Are Worth It
It’s easy to allow your children to grab a snack or two when you’re busy working or tending to other adulting concerns. However, once you get in the habit of this with unhealthy snacks it starts to take a toll on their wellbeing.
Introducing better options to your children can help decrease parental guilt around snacking. Healthy snacks can help to control the addictive snacking habits of your kids.
As recently as just a few weeks ago, the hope was that almost all kids were going to be back in their school buildings for the upcoming school year in spite of COVID-19. But as of right now, it doesn’t look like that’s going to be the case.
Most, if not all, schools are once again going to be using remote learning or distance education. It means that teachers will have to do their best to teach kids while they’re at home until the coronavirus pandemic passes.
Though we put it off as long as we felt we could, this summer, we decided to get our child a cell phone for his birthday. We had specific requirements for a cell phone. Namely, we didn’t want it to have internet access, yet we wanted it to look like the phones his friends use. We did a lot of research before we finally bought a phone from Gabb Wireless.
While a Gabb Wireless cell phone doesn’t have all the features a typical cell phone has, it does have several important ones:
In addition, Gabb Wireless doesn’t require a long-term contract. You pay month by month (billed on the 15th of the month with payment on the 17th), and you can cancel at any time.
You can go to the Gabb Wireless website to see if coverage is available in your area.
Honestly, the answer depends on what you’re looking for. However, there are several reasons why Gabb Wireless is a good first cell phone for our child.
We use Ting for our own cell phone service, so we were pretty sure we didn’t want to add him to our plan. (With Ting you pay as you use, so you pay for each individual call and text, which we didn’t want to do with a teen.)
Our teen isn’t particularly chatty, but he uses his new Gabb Wireless cell phone a lot. He is working on a political campaign, and part of his work is calling registered voters for about six to eight hours a week. That translates to A LOT of cell phone calls. We’re so glad he has unlimited calling!
He also likes to text his friends, so he uses that feature frequently.
We specifically wanted a phone that didn’t have internet access and all of the trouble that could potentially go with the internet such as viewing inappropriate content, spending too much time playing games or using social media, or just fueling a cell phone addiction, which is so easy to do.
We wanted our teen to have a cell phone, but we didn’t want to give him too much device that he wouldn’t handle responsibly. In a few years, he can upgrade to a regular smart phone.
If you’ve spent any time looking for cell phones that don’t have internet access, you know that many of them look like relics from 15 years ago. We really appreciated that the Gabb Wireless cell phone looks like any other regular smart phone. That was an important feature for our teen.
Our child is forgetful and not the most gentle with his possessions, so we wanted a phone that was reasonably priced. We bought the cell phone from Gabb Wireless for $69 on sale. (Sometimes they have sales where the price of the phone goes as low as $49!)
Gabb Wireless has their own network, so we pay approximately $24 a month for the service, but as I mentioned, there is unlimited text and calling. So, the total outlay between buying the phone and paying for service for a year is $357 ($69 for the phone and $288 for a year of coverage).
Photo by Lance Anderson on Unsplash
The phone does have basic apps and features that our teen enjoys. He listens to music on his phone when he takes walks, and he uses the alarm feature frequently.
If you’re a parent who wants a simpler phone for your kids that keeps away many of the dangers of a traditional smart phone, Gabb Wireless may be a good first cell phone for you. However, there are definitely some drawbacks to this phone.
The majority of smartphones give you the ability to track your child. You can quickly check and see exactly where they are. This gives parents reassurance that children are where they’re supposed to be when they say they are. In the unlikely chance that your child gets kidnapped (or if he simply gets lost), the tracking feature can also help the police find him.
Unfortunately, Gabb Wireless does not have this ability. For some parents, that alone is a reason to not buy this phone. I do hope that this is something Gabb Wireless is able to remedy in the future.
While a Gabb Wireless phone does have a camera, you can’t use the camera to send photos in your texts. Texts can only send text messages.
I completely understand why Gabb Wireless did this, but still, sometimes this feature can be annoying. Within the first week of getting his phone, my son was chatting with his aunt who sent over some pictures of her dogs, but my son did not receive the images. He was a bit embarrassed to tell her that his new phone doesn’t let him view images.
Since there is no Internet on this phone, there is no way to install monitoring software to monitor your child’s texts. This seems to be a flaw in an otherwise extremely safe phone. I would hope in future models that Gabb Wireless could address this issue.
For our family, Gabb Wireless is a good first cell phone. It looks like other smart phones with more capabilities, and it offers basic features that are necessary for younger children. Yet, it takes away one of the greatest sources of addiction as well as mischief—the Internet.
There are some drawbacks to this phone, but overall, Gabb Wireless is the best “safe” cell phone we found on the market.
It can be confusing when you hear people refer to their credit score as being bad.
Yet not understanding credit can negatively impact you in a variety of ways.
So what is a bad credit score, and contrarily, what is a good credit score? Why do the two matter?
Keep reading for a full breakdown of what they entail.
Many parents have been struggling to homeschool their children since the beginning of quarantine when schools closed due to COVID-19. Luckily, there are many organizations giving parents guidance on how to continue their kids’ education.
Leading education columnists, the United Nations, governments, universities and special learning and teaching groups have all come up with e-learning programs. So, you don’t have to struggle with your child’s education. Read on for 8 expert tips to help your kid’s education during the COVID-19 pandemic.
People can easily open a trading account and start taking trades. Having easy access to the UK investment community doesn’t give you the guarantee that you will be earning money most of the time. People become frustrated with their losing trades because they don’t have enough skills to overcome this hardship. You must acquire some special skills before you can expect to make some serious profit from this market. Thousands of traders are joining the retail trading industry each year. People who have strong analytical skills are able to change their life within a short period of time. For the benefit of traders, we will highlight the top 4 skills that you must have to trade the options market. [Read more…]
When you get divorced, there are many firsts. Of course, there are the emotional firsts—the first Christmas not spent as a couple, the first wedding anniversary not celebrated, the first family vacation without your ex. But there are also financial firsts such as purchasing your first house alone or buying a car alone. One of the most important is the first tax return filed as a divorced citizen. You may worry how does child support affect tax return? The good news is that in general, it doesn’t affect your tax return.
Child support has no tax implication when it comes to stating your income.
If you’re the person giving the support, you may wonder if it is a tax deduction. It’s not. Think of child support this way. You’re giving your ex-spouse money to take care of the kids. So, if she’s using child support to buy groceries for the kids, it’s no different than when you were together and she used your income to buy groceries. Just like you couldn’t claim money spent for basic living expenses on your tax return, the same is true for child support.
Those who are receiving the child support will be glad to know that it does not count as income. You will still use your income from your job to complete your tax return, but child support does not show up anywhere on your tax return.
Photo by Scott Graham on Unsplash
While giving or receiving child support does not affect your tax return, what can affect your return is who gets to claim the child as a dependent on the tax return.
Some may want to argue that the person paying child support should be able to claim the child as a dependent on his/her tax return, but that’s not the way it works.
Typically, the person who the child lives with the majority of the year is the one who has the right to claim the child as a dependent. If your child lives with you 60% of the time and 40% of the time with your ex, you have the right to claim the child as your dependent.
If you split custody, the person with the highest income typically claims the child as a dependent.
Sometimes, the parent who is eligible to claim the child as a dependent can decide not to and let the other parent claim the child. To do this, the eligible parent must fill out Form 8332 with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
While filing the first tax return as a divorced citizen can seem complicated, it’s not any more complicated than usual. If you wonder how does child support affect tax return, rest assured that it doesn’t. The only time being divorced may affect your return is considering who gets to claim the child as a dependent. However, the law clearly explains which parent gets that right.
Did you know that dogs have an intelligence similar to toddlers?
Although it may sound strange at first, both dogs and three-year-olds can experience symptoms of separation anxiety.
One of the more controversial topics in parenting circles, right behind should children be paid an allowance tied to chores, is, should you reward kids for good grades? As a student, I never received money for good grades. I didn’t need to because I liked learning and school. Likewise, we haven’t paid our kids for good grades because generally they get good grades on their own. However, if paying your kids works for you, then by all means, continue to do so.
Our family has several reasons why we don’t reward kids for good grades:
We have three kids, and two of them have dyslexia. Those two are currently getting intervention to help them read more fluently, but they’re always going to struggle with reading, writing, and spelling. If I reward all three kids for good grades with money, the one without the disability will generally earn more. Likewise, if you have a gifted and a typical learner, the typical learner may struggle more than the gifted learner.
Another reason why we haven’t yet paid our kids for good grades is that all three are motivated to earn good grades on their own. They have an intrinsic desire to get good grades. When an intrinsic desire is there, kids are usually more motivated than if they had an extrinsic motivator like being paid money. (Having said that, if our kids had little desire to learn, we may implement a monetary system to motivate them to get better grades.)
Photo by Antoine Dautry on Unsplash
This is not true for all kids, but for some kids, getting paid for good grades may encourage cheating. Let’s say a child gets paid $10 for a C grade but $50 for an A grade. If he struggles with the material, he may resort to cheating to boost up his grades and make more money. After all, if a child is getting all Cs for six classes, that’s only $60 for the term versus if a child is getting all As and earning $300 a term. I would say $240 is a strong incentive to cheat to get a better grade, especially if working hard and studying isn’t giving the child the results that he wants.
There is no right answer to the question, should you reward kids for good grades. Many parents argue, rightly so, that rewarding their children helps motivate them. (Keep in mind, some parents reward with money while others reward with privileges. Either works, though privileges might work better for younger kids.)
However, our family philosophy has always been, if it isn’t broken, why fix it? For our family, our kids are motivated enough on their own to try to get good grades. We’ve been hesitant to add in a reward system for that reason and also because it seems unfair to the children who have dyslexia.
When your little one needs children’s eyewear, it’s time to start the process of finding the perfect pair. The perfect pair of glasses for adults might not always be the same for children. What a pair of glasses needs to be considered ideal for your little one is much different than what your own pair needs to be considered perfect for you.