Christmas is over for another year and as you wipe that plastic smile from your face having thanked everyone for their 'wonderful' gifts, it's time to make some ethical decisions.

Do you try and hide some of them with the Christmas wrapping paper hoping no-one will notice as you dump it in the garbage bin? Or, do you make a quick trip over to St Vinnies and offload as much as you can promising the staff that this is the last year you do this?

Have you ever considered regifting?

Recycling gifts is not a new concept but the trend is growing as budget-conscious gift receivers realise that the unwanted present they received from Aunt Hilda could be kept as a present for someone later in the year.

And while it it hotly debated, certainly in high-brown conversations, recycled gifts are a smart way to reuse a present rather than waste it. However, according to the Emily Post Institute there are some societal etiquette tips required;

* You are certain the gift is something the recipient would enjoy.
* The gift is brand new (no cast-offs allowed) and comes with its original box and instructions.
* The gift isn’t handmade, or one that the original giver took great care to select.

I would add one more to the list;

* If the product is past its use-by-date (either as a perishable item or the fad has passed) don't regift it.

So, while we're all being honest and mature adults, was there anything you received this Christmas that will end up as a recycled gift?

Posted by Stuart at 6:17 AM | Permalink

Well this is it for me until after Boxing Day (Dec 26 here in Oz). I want to thank all you wonderful bloggers and readers who have given me so much this year.

Your emails, comments, links and even the jokes at my expense have all contributed to a wonderful year.

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and that you're blessed with the presents you hoped for - or at least a nice card or two. Keep it safe and I look forward to seeing you back here after a wonderful break with your family.

Love Stu.
xoxoxoxo

Posted by Stuart at 8:03 AM | Permalink

It pops into your mind every so often, that niggling thought that you still haven't tied up all those loose ends you planned to three years ago - or was it four? It's not that it isn't a high priority it's just that it's so easy to procrastinate on writing your last will and testament.

The reason I'm posting this very topic is because having a legal will has once again risen it's ugly head in our household. We have four children, a mortgage, lease on our car and several other assorted assets including home furnishings for which there is no designated benefactor.

If Deb and I were both to die tomorrow our financial situation could be tied up in bureaucratic red tape for months. The situation is even more exaggerated because there is currently no guardian to protect our children and I could envisage a major family bun-fight for who would step into this role.

So, it's time to clean up our act and get a legal will in place. Here's what I've found;

Continue reading "Legal Wills: Is your last will and testament finished?" »

Posted by Stuart at 7:38 AM | Permalink

After a successful State Youth Games and a great weekend away with a bunch of young people I'm finally back on board. It's been so tempting to steal away from the group and check out my stats via an internet cafe but I resisted and enjoyed a great weekend.

Thank you for all of your wonderful comments and well wishes. I certainly am humbled by your response and hope that any new readers that stick around will enjoy the journey with me. It's great to have you on board too.

Posted by Stuart at 6:43 AM | Permalink

If I had realised that my last post would have caused such a stir I would have planned strategically for it, written some back up post material and spent the weekend on my computer forging the next phase.

Alas, I'm off this afternoon for three days in my capacity as a youth pastor taking a bunch of kids 30 mins north for the Annual State Youth Games. This means that the opportunity to entice all the new people who headed this way after Darren's very humbling post of my modest earnings will be missed .

Nevertheless, life isn't all about the almighty dollar and if it was blogging would be boring. So to those of you who were willing to trek the blogosphere over the weekend and found that we're out, my humble apologies.

We'll be back on board Monday afternoon.

Posted by Stuart at 3:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

If you haven't stumbled across it yet then it may be time to head over to PFBLOGS.ORG. This news aggregator is by far the most useful I link to as I get to find out what's current in the personal finances blog sector.

Pfblogs.org doesn't just cater for personal finance blogs though. They also aggregate real-estate and investing blogs.

Posted by Stuart at 8:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

As more and more would-be parents weigh up the cost of raising children the costs purported by the media seem to rise exponentially. How do analysts arrive at these costs and are they justified?

A Survey completed by the US Department of Agriculture shows that at a minimum each child will cost more than $100K to raise from birth to age 18. What intrigues me is the costs they are including in these surveyed results.

In accounting there is a term to describe expenses that have already been paid as a result of conducting the business and these are referred to as "sunk costs". I suspect that many of the costs they include here, especially the big ticket items are "sunk costs" - meaning parents would have been paying for these costs regardless of whether they had children or not.

Regardless of whether I had 2 children or not I would most likely have a 3-4 bedroom house as an investment. To include the difference between the cost of this house and the costs of keeping a 1 bedroom apartment is not the cost of raising children. The same can be said of vehicles. I would most likely run a 6 cylinder 4 door sedan rather than a 4 cylinder 2 door coupe anyway so the difference between the running of these two should not be considered as the cost of raising a child.

If this is how we quantify the cost of raising children we would have to use the same calculations for arriving at the cost of keeping pets.

Posted by Stuart at 5:20 AM | Permalink