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Men Choosing Fatherhood Over Careers

This article was written by in Career and Work, Family and Life. 6 comments.


Last week, I acknowledged recent survey findings from the Pew Research Center showing that women are beginning to value success in their careers more than men value their own. It’s a historical twist, brought about by the idea that women entering the workforce is no longer related to a necessity, but an innate desire. Women, as a group, have a higher level of education and are increasingly choosing to pursue a successful career path.

With young children at home needing care and an increasing cost of outsourcing that care, many families need to choose a parent to stay home while the other earns money with an occupation. Women are still subject to compensation inequity — again, as a group — but in an increasing number of families, the wife is out-earning the husband. The choice is often simply financial; whoever earns the most money or has the potential to earn the most continues in their career path, while the other parent stays home to care for the child or children.

Now that more men are staying home to care for their children while their wives concentrate on their careers, it’s easier to shatter one of the long-standing myths about fatherhood. Previously, men who chose to pause their path to career success were judged inadequate to survive in the world of business.

Men are raised to value work as their main source of worth and self-esteem. Society’s underlying message is that men who make sacrifices and choose family over career advancement do it because they can’t succeed at work. But we are at the beginning of an epic shift in cultural norms. More men are finding parenthood meaningful and that is raising the status of fathers. Some men are trading career advancement for time with their family because they value the fulfillment they find in fatherhood, not because they can’t hack it in the job market. More men than ever feel that being a good father is a significant accomplishment in life.

Child and fatherResults from a survey performed last year by the University of Nebraska indicate that 75 percent of men consider being a parent very important, while only 48 percent had the same opinion about having a successful career. It’s possible, however, that there is a new stigma against being overly concerned with financial success, and this psychological aversion to being associated with the stereotypical careerist might prevent people from answering in a survey in a manner the respondent might think reflects poorly on themselves. There’s a tendency, also, to answer surveys as if one is an ideal. In other words, I might answer a survey as if I were an ideal version of myself rather than reflecting a true self-analysis.

Even if that is the case, it reflects the idea that stay-at-home-fatherhood is now a more respected life choice than it has been in the past.

Having a two-income family is still a luxury, and when at least one of the two incomes is significant enough to afford a solid living for a family of three or more, it’s a blessing. Most middle class families, when both parents are working out of necessity, it’s the ability to stay home with the children that is a luxury. It can be a difficult choice, particularly if one parent’s income is roughly equivalent to the cost of day care for his or her child or children.

The argument fails to consider yet another reality of life: one parent, either a father or a mother, struggling to earn an income and take care of one child or more, without a spouse for support.

For men: Would you put your career on hold — possibly forever — if it made more financial sense for you to stay at home with your children?

For women: Would you be willing to pursue your career full steam ahead while your partner develops a closer bond with children through more time spent with them during formative years?

Photo: Chris. P
Fathers Forum, CNN, BabyCenter

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How to Handle a Credit Card Data Breach

This article was written by in Credit. 8 comments.

Last week, Global Payments confirmed a massive security breach involving credit and debit card numbers and information. Global Payments operates a gateway; when you use your credit or debit card to purchase an item — and this could be online or in a brick-and-mortar store — your card information is sent through Global Payments or one of many similar companies to the issuer to determine whether the transaction can be approved.

The breach affects all major issuers, so if you have used a Visa, MasterCard, American Express or Discover card, whether a credit, debit, or charge card, you might be one of the estimated 10 million consumers affected. Update: Global Payments is now confirming that 1.5 million card numbers were included in the breach. Issuers — either the banks that offer the cards to their customers or the credit card companies themselves — have already begun notifying customers whose information might have been compromised.

You can expect issuers to offer free credit monitoring and identity protection services to help customers feel secure about their information in the future. The services differ depending on the provider, but most focus on the same core set of benefits.

  • You can receive alerts — by phone, email, or even text message — when your card is used for suspicious activity. Suspicious activity could be anything from a transaction at a store or in a location you haven’t previously.
  • You can receive updated credit reports. While the government requires the credit reporting agencies to offer one free credit report per customer each year, identity protection services typically provide access to more frequent credit reports — perhaps monthly or unlimited, on demand.
  • If your identity information has been compromise, you should lock down your credit file. By contacting each of the three bureaus, Experian, Equifax, and Transunion, you can inform these companies not to allow any new credit to be issued in your name. This is not going to be an issue with most incidences of credit card information compromises, if your identity is stolen, you are at a higher risk.
  • Change your credit card numbers. If you were affected by this security breach, you may have received a new credit card with a new number without so much of an explanation from your issuer. Changing the number helps protect customers who have had their data stolen. Some card issuers offer options where you can receive a new number for every online transaction; this may be a worthwhile service if you have reason to believe your credit card number has been compromised.
  • Don’t forget to use your credit card online only over secure connections. Different browsers have different methods of indicating a secure connection. Using a credit card over a secure internet connection is safer than handing your credit card to a waiter or gas attendant. Over a secure connection, your credit card number is encrypted while in transit, but when you hand your credit card to someone and they step out of view, there is no limit to what they can do with your card in 30 seconds.

Aside from trusting technology and employees who handle your card information, it helps to always be aware of your surroundings. While in an airport waiting at the gate to board a flight, I called a hotel to inquire about a reservation. The hotel customer service representative was happy to take my reservation, but required me to announce my credit card number. Although I had no reason not to trust the individuals who were sitting near me, I opted not to provide my credit card number to all within earshot. As a result, and with the understanding that there would most likely be rooms available when I arrived later that night, I didn’t make the reservation.

I did lose the best rate offered on the room, though. When I arrived, the rate I had been quoted earlier was no longer available. I consider it a small loss in exchange for the comfort of not sharing my credit card number publicly.

When the cause of the breach of your information is a payment processor, as in this particular announcement from Global Payments, the issuers do all that they can to protect their customers, even if communication is slow or incomplete. When fraud happens on an individual level, and you are the only customer affected, it’s more difficult to get support from the companies you deal with, without insistence.

If you are the victim of fraud or identity theft, and it is not part of a large-scale technology hack, there are extra steps you must take.

  • Start keeping a log of everyone you talk to about the fraud, including credit issuers, banks, and the police.
  • File a police report describing the fraud or the incident.
  • Contact the credit bureaus to inquire about identity protection services and possibly credit freezing.
  • Contact your issuers and explain your situation, seeking any tools they have available to protect you going forward including assigning new card numbers.

Different banks and card issuers have different policies regarding your liability in the event of fraud. For the most part, if you follow the appropriate procedures including reporting suspected fraud in a timely manner, you will have no liability. With debit cards, however, even in the case of fraud, your balance could be lower than it should be. That could lead to missed payments or overdraft fees. That’s one benefit of using credit cards rather than debit cards — your bank account won’t be affected in the event of fraud, even for a day.

Of course, if you choose a cash-only existence, you may be able to completely avoid the hassles involved with credit card fraud and identity theft.

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Starting a Roth IRA is a Critical Step for Financial Freedom

This article was written by in Investing. 13 comments.

I’m excited to be participating in today’s Roth IRA movement. There’s more information about this movement towards the bottom of this article.

I wish someone told me about Roth IRAs when I got my first real job. I was a teenager, working in a local Radio Shack store, even though I didn’t even know what a soldering gun was. So many years later, it’s hard to know what would have gone through my mind if someone were to start talking to me about investing part of the money I was earning. I had a bank account, but I’m sure most of the money I earned from working was spent on entertainment with friends. I wasn’t thinking about the future, and I’m not convinced that someone pointing me to an article about a Roth IRA would have changed my approach.

But it might have.

It would have been impossible for me, anyway, unless I had been visited by a time-traveler or I had received a book from the future.

Roth IRAs weren’t invented until years later, while I was in college. (This detail isn’t that germane to the point, as traditional IRAs were available and would have in most respects been appropriate for saving for the future.) Anything other than stock trading was missing from my understanding of investing. Considering Roth IRAs existed by the time I graduated college, why didn’t I know about Roth IRAs when I started my first job after that point? Well, they still weren’t widespread by then, and I was earning too little money to even conceive of dedicating some of it to my future.

I would have been wrong, of course, but I only know that now with hindsight. The problem with trying to educate young people about investing for the future is that it’s easy for them to be stuck in the mindset that other pressing needs deserve attention above investing for the future. Until someone’s mind is open to the possibility of financial security in the future with today’s sacrifice, any information about investing for the future, with Roth IRAs or not, just won’t have a strong effect.

Today, though, there are ways to make this transition easier. The benefits of investing for the future no matter how little an amount have been discussed on Consumerism Commentary ad nauseum, but they bear repeating. I’m not really discussing retirement as a goal. Most discussion about investing for the future revolves around retirement, but it’s unclear that the traditional concept of retirement will be relevant thirty, forty, or fifty years from now.

  • Investing in a Roth IRA with your first job creates a new habit that lasts your entire life.
  • The Roth IRA, with its ease of access, is a perfect gateway to investing for the future.
  • When you intentionally invest in a Roth IRA with every paycheck, you can easily see the effect your choices have on your wealth.
  • When you create an automated transfer plan from your checking account to your Roth IRA, you take some of the stress out of investing.

Good investing habits start with the Roth IRA because it’s so easy. There’s no concern about tax-related issues, because you invest with “after-tax” money. Minimum balances at brokerages are typically low for Roth IRAs because these companies know that these types of accounts are best used by people new to investing. The one step, opening a Roth IRA, opens a world of financial possibilities, and it’s possible to open an account with as little as $100 per month.

It’s easy to blame ignorance when we see young people in their first jobs, earning money but not saving for the future. Here are some typical anti-youth misunderstandings:

  • “If only they had a financial education and understood that the earlier they invest in the stock market, the wealthier they’d be four or five decades in the future, they’d want to invest immediately.”
  • “Today’s kids are focused only on the ‘now’ and don’t think about their future needs.”
  • “The public educational system is to blame for the lack of solid financial knowledge among today’s youth.”
  • “Why can’t parents take some responsibility for instilling good financial habits in their children?”
  • “Get off my lawn!”

There is some relevance to at least four of these misunderstandings, but what makes them misunderstandings is that the point is really about cognitive development. By the time most teenagers have their first jobs at fifteen, sixteen, or seventeen years old, their brains are not yet equipped to consider the concepts of investing for the future. Of course, different individuals experience different rates of cognitive development, but attempting to feed someone knowledge before his or her brain is ready to grasp some of the higher concepts necessary for full understanding is a waste of time.

You can hope that some of the ideas stick with a child long enough for the connections to be made later in develop. That’s why some parents teach and model good financial habits with their children starting in kindergarten or earlier, but when it comes to the practical side of investing, adolescents in their first jobs are often not mentally prepared. As teenagers seeing for the first time how they have control over their lives outside of their parents’ house, there’s a tendency to want to make decisions independently, and without the influence of an adult preaching about prudent financial habits.

In their minds, adolescents may have already weighed the benefits of keeping more of their income for use today against the benefits of saving for the future and decided, independently, that their immediate needs are more pressing. They may believe they’ve already made the right decision.

I don’t know if I can propose a solution. Investing in a Roth IRA is a critical step towards financial freedom because of its ease, accessibility, and habit-making features, but if a young individual doesn’t apply this approach during the critical time when he or she first begins earning income, the barrier grows with time and it can be more difficult to start later on. The numbers have always been obvious; a five- or ten-year head start in investing in the stock market almost always pays significant dividends when it comes time to draw upon that nest egg, but these words are meaningless to young people who have other concerns.

Taking a slice of the paychecks from the first job can be done with little encroachment on expenses; directing 5 percent of each paycheck to a Roth IRA would hardly hurt at all. With a minimum investment of $100 each month, any working kid could find a way to make it happen, if not immediately, then after saving up for a few months and starting with a lump-sum rather than a periodic investment.

It’s not going to happen on its own, though, and it’s still unlikely to happen even after reading an article extolling the virtues of investing and saving for the future. It’s going to happen when the synapses in the brain fire in such a way that saving for the future makes sense and when sacrifice, no matter how small, is an acceptable option. In some ways, the latest guidelines that encourage automatic enrollment in 401(k) plans see this problem and have arrived at a solution: you’re busy thinking about other things, so we’ll get you started automatically. There’s always the argument that this policy benefits the financial industry more than the investors, but it does benefit the investors.

How do you propose encouraging young individuals in their first jobs to begin saving for the future with a Roth IRA?

Thanks to Jeff Rose, a Certified Financial Planner, who initiated today’s Roth IRA movement, involving more than 130 partners, all of whom are taking time today to discuss Roth IRAs on their websites, newsletters, or other publications.

Photo: stevendepolo

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Amazon.com Retail Stores: Another Threat to Small Businesses?

This article was written by in Consumer. 19 comments.

I was torn when Amazon.com, the online-only retailer for books, music, and movies, became popular. I liked the convenience, but it was clear that local brick-and-mortar bookstores would have difficulty competing with Amazon’s prices in the long term. I was swayed enough to the side against Amazon when I participated in a boycott of the company when they filed for a patent for the 1-Click ordering system.

Over the years, though, I’ve come to accept Amazon.com as a part of my life as a consumer, and I shop using Amazon.com for more than just books, music, and movies. I gave into my desire for speedy delivery and joined Amazon.com Prime, as well.

BooksAmazon.com’s aggressively competitive tactics has extended recently to book publishing. With a book publishing arm, Amazon.com has the right to sell its own published books exclusively. With the new tools Amazon.com is offering authors, traditional publishers are having a hard time competing.

This week, I saw that Amazon.com is planning to open a physical, brick-and-mortar store in Seattle. It could be the first step to bring storefronts to more locations throughout the country, but that depends on the results of this one Seattle location. The purpose doesn’t seem to be to keep an inventory of books, movies, and other media on hand to sell, but to focus on Amazon.com’s own electronics, like the Kindle.

I was recently reminded of why I was wary about Amazon.com in the first place. I’ve seen what has happened to local book stores, some of which have gone out of business, and what has happened to Borders, with large, empty stores left in the wake. There are several local book stores that remain, but I can’t say whether the stores are thriving and predict how long they’ll last. I spoke with a book-lover who was mortified that I rarely shop in independent book stores and that Amazon.com is changing the landscape for consumers and hurting small business owners.

If Amazon.com extends its new store front model beyond one location in Seattle, the primary competitive target seems to be Apple, not local book stores. Yet, if the e-book, and particularly Amazon.com’s proprietary version of the e-book, becomes the preferred method of reading for more consumers, and these e-books could be purchased only from Amazon.com, local bookstores will be in danger.

What will a book store look like in the future? Will locally-owned book stores continue to exist as viable businesses?

Photo: shutterhacks
O’Reilly, The Globe and Mail, New York Times

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My Varied Job History

by Flexo

For some people, finding the right career is easy. During formative years, perhaps one skill outshines all others, directing someone to develop that skill over time. Perhaps there is one particular area that develops into a passion, and the only choice is to follow that passion regardless of the income potential. In my formative years, ... Continue reading this article…

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Updated: Hackers Steal Credit Card Numbers From 360,000 Citi Customers

by Flexo

The latest big business security breach affected Citigroup and about 1 percent of the company’s credit card customers. Hackers were able to access the customer database, finding customers’ names, credit card numbers, and email addresses free for the taking. The hackers were not able to gain access to other personal information, like Social Security numbers, card ... Continue reading this article…

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Are Online Banks Safe?

by Flexo

Anyone who is accustomed to being able to walk into the local bank branch, access accounts through a teller, and discuss banking options with an account manager on-site might still have reservations about moving money to an online-only bank. The benefits are big. Usually, online-only banks offer higher interest rates on savings and certificate of ... Continue reading this article…

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How to Track Gold and Silver Bullion in Quicken

by Flexo
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Despite the convenience of Mint.com for tracking personal finances, it’s not flexible and in-depth for my needs. I’ve stuck with Quicken as a desktop program for many years. It’s unlikely I’ll move my data to the “cloud” until Mint.com or a similar service provides all the functions included in Quicken. Even the desktop version of ... Continue reading this article…

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