Lazy Man and Money

The Cost of Summer Camp

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This past weekend, I finished signing up the kids for summer camp. Camps have changed a lot since I was a kid. I think my mother said she spent about $25 to send me to camp for a week. That was around 40 years ago though. It might have also been subsidized. In any case, we pay a lot more than that for our kids to go to summer camp nowadays.

We used to send the kids to the local YMCA for most of the weeks. That was similar to the camp I had growing up. Play sports, do arts and crafts, go on hikes, and have a little swim time. The price for the YMCA is reasonable and they have long hours which is good for me. Unfortunately, the kids hate the YMCA camp. The camp counselor takes away anything fun if one kid misbehaves. Their groups are big (that’s how they keep the price reasonable), so there’s always one kid that spoils it for the whole group.

This is the first year that we skipped YMCA or a general, old-fashioned camp. Instead, the kids have picked the camps they enjoyed the most over the last few years. Unfortunately, those happen to be the most expensive camps. This is one of those cases where Kids Ain’t Cheap. The good news is that there’s a lot of enrichment.

Kid 1: Nine-Year-Old

We signed up our oldest for 4 camps. He’s doing a theater camp, a sailing camp, a veterinarian camp, and a cooking camp. The theater camp is 3 weeks and the sailing camp is two weeks.

Sailing is big in Newport, Rhode Island. It’s so big that the National Sailing Hall of Fame is moving here. The theater camp is fairly renowned. The veterinarian camp fits well with my dog boarding business. If I’m going to spend a lot for a camp, I don’t mind the money helping out our local animal shelter. I’m a huge fan of kids learning cooking – it’s a lifelong skill that will save them a lot of money.

Kid 2: Eight-Year-Old

Our youngest is signed up for 6 different types of camps. One camp has four separate weeks of activities. They are a maker camp, art camp, Lego robotics, and a sports camp. Drawing and building are what he loves and does best. It’s also being done at his school, so there’s a good chance he’ll know some kids.

Like his older brother, he has a sailing camp and a veterinarian camp (a more junior version of the same veterinarian camp). He also has a cooking camp, but it’s only 3 days as an introduction. Essentially he traded his brother’s theater camp for building and art.

The Cost of Summer Camp

Summer camp has become a big business. Consumers will pay for the education of their kids. Perhaps it is a trap, but I’ve fallen for it.

The 9-year-old’s camps add up to $2,150. The 8-year-old’s camps add up to $2,420. That’s over $4,500 for two kids to have 7 weeks of camp. We are taking three weeks of camp off, but they’ll be small road trips. With hotels and driving and events, they’ll be even more expensive than the camps.

Are we spending too much on camp, or are we investing in education and things we believe in. Perhaps it is a little of both? What do you think? Let me know in the comments.

Teach Your Kids Everything with Pokemon

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Teach Kids Pokemon

Happy Pokemon Day! Twenty-six years ago Pokemon Red and Pokemon Green were released in Japan. Pokemon celebrates its anniversary every year on February 27th. I was in college when Pokemon came out and by that time I was only playing Madden and NHL from EA sports. I missed everything about Pokemon except for one friend who clued me into how funny Jigglypuff was. With kids, I got a second chance to learn what Pokemon was about. I wrote this article last year, but it still works.

I’m going to give you some of the ways I teach my kids with Pokemon. This bonus Saturday edition of Lazy Man and Money has a lot less personal finance than my usual articles. If you don’t have kids or if Pokemon isn’t your thing, it may be best to come back early next week for the regularly-scheduled personal finance programming.

If you haven’t already left, Pokemon can be a money topic.

  • Highest Grossing Media Franchise – Did you know that the highest-grossing media franchise has a mouse as its mascot? Did you know that the mouse’s name is Pikachu? It’s true*. In Walt Disney’s famous words, “I hope we never lose sight of one thing – that it was all started by a mouse.”
  • Teaching Kids about Money with Pokemon

    • – I’ll cover this in a little detail with much of it focusing on Pokemon Go.

  • Pokemon as a Side Hustle – There are numerous Etsy creators and YouTube stars turning Pokemon into a career. One artist makes some great money creating her art with Pokemon cards. There are even Pokemon Scholarships available for the top kid Pokemon card players.

My Brief History of Pokemon

I was 23 years old when Pokemon became popular in 1999. At that time, I was more interested in day-trading tech stocks than a silly kids’ show. As for video games, I only played Madden, NHL, and maybe Mario Cart. Nineteen years later, my 4 and 5-year-olds became obsessed with the adventures of a young boy and his Pikachu. My 5-year-old found it on Netflix after some older kids were talking about it at summer camp.

I thought Pokemon was about the cards and card game, like Magic the Gathering. That led me to ask:

As you can tell, I didn’t know a thing about the world of Pokemon. Its cards, video games, television shows. I found the anime confusing because it doesn’t always in any particular order like season 1, episode 1. I later found out that it does have an order, but you have to know the names of the seasons. You also have to know where to slot in the movies.

But the kids and I started off watching Indigo League together. I “watched” a lot of television with the kids while writing or doing other work. I am able to keep a little focus and ask some questions at the end about the lessons learned. It soon became obvious that the show was more interesting than most kid shows.

Once it was clear that my kids loved everything about Pokemon, I started to look into how I could use to teach them almost anything. I have to admit that some of it came about by accident.

Before I dig into some of the many things I’ve my kids with Pokemon, I have to get the standard disclaimers out. I’m not a teacher. I’m not a Pokemon expert. I’m a boring parent who mostly asks his kids questions to get them thinking.

Teaching Kids to Read with Pokemon

One tip that I learned early on is to always put on the closed captions with kid shows. I had this set up automatically on Netflix. There are studies that show that closed captioning can help kids read (Source 1, Source 2). My sample size of 2 kids is small, but I feel like it helped and common sense may tell it you can’t hurt. Even as a kid I remember following the bouncing ball in reading cartoons.

Just 10 days after my Tweet (and probably 50 episodes of Indigo League) we had this exchange on the way to camp in the car:

So we went to the library.

There they had the Pokemon Essential Handbook. (Note: This is the newest version, the actual book was older with fewer Pokemon.)

The Pokemon Essential Handbook is the most important Pokemon book. It’s an encyclopedia of 800+ Pokemon. My 5-year-old stayed up all night for a couple of nights reading and memorizing every page. He would start kindergarten in a couple of months with an understanding of how an encyclopedia worked. When I was in kindergarten, I had an understanding of how to scribble with a crayon.

Before I returned it to the library, I bought it. It was the best $10 I’ve ever spent. We’re actually on our second copy, that’s how much use it has gotten.

By the way, if you go to the library to get Pokemon books, go to the non-fiction section:

It turns out that the stories revolving around Pokemon count as fiction, but the fact that a company created the characters of Pokemon is non-fiction. That was news to me. So yes, Pokemon isn’t just about teaching kids.

My 4-year old wasn’t as much of an early reader. Every child is different and math was more his thing. That doesn’t mean that we couldn’t use Pokemon for reading though. In fact, but the time he was 5 and a half like my other son was, he knew how to read many Pokemon. He may have been associating the pictures with a memory of the show, but I still count it.

When I found the Pokemon Fusion website, I knew I struck gold once again. The website combines two Pokemon names and pictures to make up a new Pokemon. It’s very silly. Kids love making new combinations of Pokemon, laughing at the funny pictures and names. Since there are tons of combinations, they have to focus on reading the names, words they never would have seen before. No, a Chartoise isn’t going to be on a future spelling bee, but a kid that can sound out that can tackle most words in the English language.

To round out this section, I’ll add that video games have some limited reading. I haven’t played any of the classic games, just Pokemon Go, so I’m only going off of what little I’ve seen.

Finally, there are Pokemon books for every reading level:

  • Pokemon Little Golden Books – I grew up with Little Golden Books and now you can get Pokemon ones. This is good for pre-school and pre-kindergarten.
  • Pokemon Phonics Reading Program – These are geared towards kindergarten and first grade level. I haven’t read them, but they seem more for teaching beginning reading rather than telling a story.
  • Pokemon Junior Books – This series of books are good for most kids in the 1st to 2nd grade.
  • Pokemon Chapter Books – These are good for most kids in the 2nd to 4th grade. Second graders may have more success if they have seen the shows that each book is based off.

There’s a school of thought that this learning isn’t valuable. When are you going to use Pokemon in real life anyway? I don’t believe in that school of thought. If it gets your kid to read, there’s tremendous value in that. I’d much rather have my kid develop the skill so he can apply it in other areas.

When I was a kid, I read about Greek mythology. I haven’t used that much in real life.

Teaching Kids Math with Pokemon

After a couple of months, my wife got Pokemon Go on her phone so the kids can play it. I remember laughing at everyone going crazy about it in 2016 – a bunch of buffoons. Well, now that I knew what Pokemon was, I became one of those buffoons, a couple of years after everyone else:

(Sadly, no one wanted to be my friend.)

My wife didn’t play Pokemon Go much, but I got hooked. My kids would mostly watch me play. In hindsight it was a poor experience because they could barely see the phone at the height I carry it at. Nonetheless, the kids were young enough that the novelty and interaction of catching actual Pokemon were amazing.

My kids were still in kindergarten and pre-kindergarten. At this age, place value is a big thing. Numbers in the hundreds and thousands are still new and unusual. It was a big deal to catch a Nidoking in the wild with a CP over 1000. The kids would also start to learn to place value to the millions to track the experience points I was getting while leveling up.

The kids learn early on how many Charmander candies they need to reach 25 to get a Charmeleon. For a kindergartener and a first grader that’s difficult math, but math that they love to do. They were quickly adding the 100 more candies for Charizard. We were able to work through the math of 125 candies total. You get 3 candies for catching a Charmander and one if you send it back to the professor. So I was able to introduce them to division, using 125 divided by 3 to get ~40 Charmanders to catch.

Because we don’t know if you are going to send back all the Charmanders to the professor or just some, we developed a skill called estimating. It’s helpful to know that it is between 30 or 40 Charmanders, even if it isn’t exact.

We’ve used the game to learn about distance. Specifically, since the game is in kilometers it gives the kids an introduction to the metric system. You can earn a candy (with most Pokemon) by walking for 5km. It keeps track in decimals (tens place only). I had a task (which would give me a special Pokemon) where I had to walk my Eevee 10km to evolve it into an Umbreon. We were soon doing double-digit subtraction of how far we walked to the 10.0km that we needed. Admittedly, they aren’t learning formal regrouping (or borrowing as it was called when I was in school), but they usually get the right answer after as much practice as we’ve had.

My 8-year-old is in the 2nd grade now and hasn’t been formally taught decimals yet. He’ll be “introduced” to the next year. My 7-year-old will have to wait a while for the school to catch up. Of course, I’m not suggesting that Pokemon Go can replace formal teaching, but I think my kids have built a foundation.

We also talk a lot about probability. Pokemon have “Internal Values” (IV) of Attack, Defense, and Hit Points. Each of these can be 0 to 15. A Pokemon’s IV is an average of all these. A Perfect IV Pokemon is 100% (or “hundo” in Pokemon Go slang). These have a 1 in 3375 (15x15x15) chance of happening in the wild (i.e. just anywhere in the real world). If you get a Pokemon from completing a task or winning a raid, the lowest number can be 10. Thus you have a 1 in 216 chance (6x6x6) of a hundo Pokemon. Finally, you can make a lucky trade (something that happens rarely) where a Pokemon’s lowest number is 12. The odds of a lucky pokemon being a hundo is one in 64 (4 x 4 x 4).

I know they don’t get all the probability math at this stage, but I think they get a feel for the concept.

Teaching Kids Science and History with Pokemon

It may not be obvious, but there is a ton of work that goes into the design of each Pokemon. Each one is the work of dozens of people… and many prospective Pokemon never make it past the initial development phase.

Thus it shouldn’t surprise you to find out that each Pokemon has a very specific name origin to match with its type and its history. For example, Charmander is a fire salamander. There is a mythical salamander that is known as a fire spirit capable of surviving in extreme heat or flames.

There’s a great YouTube Channel that gives an overview of every Pokemon’s history. Sometimes they have to make educated guesses as the history isn’t always clear, but I learned so much… and I know my kids did too. Here’s their 30-minute video on just the fire type Pokemon:



There are 16 types of Pokemon, so you could literally spend 8 hours learning about all kinds of animals and the historical context that led to their designs. I recommend spreading it over a month. I also recommend watching it with your kids. Adults will learn a lot too. This list has all the types of Pokemon.

This YouTuber, Gnoggin, also created his own Pokemon region based in the Seattle, WA area. It’s inspired my kids to create some Pokemon for our Rhode Island/New England region. They have a ton of schoolwork and other activities, but hopefully this summer we’ll go over the history of our area and start fleshing out our own region in more detail. I expect there will be a lot of water types that thrive in saltwater, considering that we are the Ocean State.

Teaching the Science of Making Pokemon Real

It turns out that my oldest kid isn’t the first person who pondered this question. There are many discussions on the internet. There’s even a presentation by a high school student:



Teaching Kids Art with Pokemon

Kids love drawing at an early age and the Pokemon characters are iconically cute.

There are a number of books that teach kids how to draw Pokemon, but this Deluxe Edition from Scholastic is the best. It has all of the most popular, unlike some other books that are missing many of people’s favorites.

Teaching Kids Language and Quick Thinking with Pokemon

The latest season of the Pokemon Anime came out in Japan (as they always do). It looked like it was going to be a while before Netflix bought the rights for the English translation and distribution. I found the Japanese episodes online (with English captions) and the kids loved seeing the original versions.

At the end of the episode, they play a game called Pokemon Shiritori. Shiritori is a game where one person starts with a word in a class, such as animals. The next person takes the last letter and names an animal that starts with that letter and it continues. So one game could go, “pig, giraffe, elephant, turkey, yak.” The game ends when someone says an animal that ends in “n” such as chameleon (the loser) or when someone can start with the letter “m” (the winner). Of course, in Pokemon Shiritori the category is simply Pokemon names.

The reason why the “n” is the loser is that there are no words that start with that character in Japanese. The reason why “m” is the winner is because the next person can say “Mew” a particularly powerful Pokemon. (I didn’t make up the game, it was simply the designer’s choice.)

Kids have to really think quickly and think about the spelling of Pokemon to avoid the trap letters at the end. It’s particularly great because you can play it in a car or on a rainy day. You don’t need anything, except a few people and your memory. We played the animal version at our kid’s birthday party because not all kids know all Pokemon.

Recently, Froakie was introduced in Pokemon Go. He’s iconic in the anime. We spent a day coming up with things like, “What do you call a Froakie with no money?” “Brokie Froakie.” “What do you call a Froakie who makes you laugh?” “Jokey Froakie.” There are many more Froakies than you would think like Karaoke Froakie, Hokey Pokey Froakie, Okey Dokey Froakie. You can try this with other Pokemon, but I haven’t found any as good as Froakie. Let me know in the comments if you can come up with a good Pokemon to work with.

Teaching Empathy with Pokemon

In the episode, The Joy Of Water Pokémon, Nurse Joy had a great quote. It might be my favorite in all the series:

In the world of battling Pokemon, it’s easy to get judgmental. Some Pokemon are simply better battlers. Over time, the creators have worked to give many Pokemon other characteristics and talent.

Not to get political, but I noticed more than a few times our new president, Joe Biden, had repeated a version of this on the campaign trail. He’s been saying a quote from Thomas Jefferson for a while now:

“My mom said, ‘Remember, nobody is better than you but you’re better than nobody.’ Everyone’s equal.”

This is something I’ve made a note to repeat my own kids.

Learning Motivation, Grit, and Empowerment with Pokemon

I wasn’t joking when I said that my kids got completely absorbed by the anime. It took a little over a year, but they watched over the 1,000 episodes in about 13 months. (Please don’t do the math… it’s not great.) Each season has around 50 episodes, many more than the 22 that we typically have in American shows. That means you hear the theme songs a lot.

Fortunately, the themes are perhaps the most motivational songs ever created. Each of them brings you through 10-year-old Ash Ketchum’s hero’s journey of just trying to make a friend to often literally save the world. I used to think that Rocky theme and music had no equal, but I was wrong. Have a listen:



Below, I started off summarizing the main theme of each, um, theme. However, the themes are short enough to give you the main lyrics. Note: you probably don’t want to read all this unless you are already familiar with the themes.

  • Best the very best (like no one ever was). Our courage will help us defend the world and along the way, I’ll teach you and you’ll teach me.
  • Find the courage and the skill to be “Number 1” (the best)
  • “each time you try, gonna get just a little better, each step you climb is one more step up the ladder [to become a Pokemon master].”
  • “My whole life has led to this Time to test my skills And I know I just can’t miss Gotta show the world!”
  • “No time to question my moves, I’ll stick to the path that I choose, Me and my friends are gonna do it right… I’ve got a chance to win I’m on my way to victory I can be a champion if I just believe… ’cause all I got to do is believe in me… And I believe…”
  • “A kid from Pallet Town with a brand new world to see, Don’t know what’s ahead, but it won’t get the best of me, There’s so much to learn and battles to be won, I’ve advanced so far and still there’s always more to come… Give me just one chance… And the future will decide… If there’s a hero buried deep inside… I wanna be a hero!”
  • “Every Trainer has a choice, To listen to that voice inside, I know the battle may be long, Winners may have come and gone, I will carry on!”… “We will rise to meet the challenge every time!”… “Will be the best this world’s ever seen”
  • “I’m unbeatable, Looking down this endless highway, Nothing but my friends beside me, We’ll never give in, We’ll never rest…”
  • “It’s a battle win or lose, It’s the friends you make, It’s the road you choose, You got the right stuff, So make your mind up, Find the courage inside of you, If you’re strong, you’ll survive, And you’ll keep your dream alive”… Be the best you can be, And find your destiny, It’s the master plan, The power’s in your hands!”… “You’ve got the strength to win it, So stay in it, If you’re smart you can take it all”
  • “It’s all about the challenges, … As you fight for survival, Nothing can stop you,”… “You gotta play smart, you gotta move faster”… “We can change the world”
  • “On a road, far from home, you don’t have to feel alone. Brave and strong, together we will be. It’s our destiny! We will be heroes, We can change the world if we try! I go where you go, Forever friends, you and I!
  • “Sometimes it’s hard to know, Which way you’re supposed to go. But deep inside, you know you’re strong. If you follow your heart, you can’t be wrong. Stand up! For what is right. Be brave! And if we come, together as one… We will win the battle!”
  • “It’s about you, It’s about me, It’s about hope, It’s about dreams. It’s about friends that work together, To claim their destiny. It’s about reaching for the sky, Having the courage, And willing to try. It’s about never giving up, So hold your head up, And we will carry on,”
  • “It’s always hard, When the journey begins. Hard to find your way, Hard to make new friends. But there’s nothing you can’t do,’Cause you’ve got the power inside of you! It’s not always black and white, But your heart always knows what’s right. It’s not about win or lose, it’s the path you choose.”
  • “A new adventure, another day, One more challenge that comes our way, It’s up to me and you, We know what we’ve got to do, We are together now, friends forever now, Whatever comes our way, we won’t run away, Standing tall, One for all, It’s our destiny.”
  • “Ready for battle, brave and bold I know we’re gonna make it We will find a way”… “We belong together It’s always you and me”
  • “You’re just a kid on a quest, To be the best of the best, Someday you’re destined for power and glory, You know you’re up to the test, All the power is at your command, Face your fears and show you’re a hero, The future of the world is in your hand
  • “I stand tall ’cause I know I’m a winner, Knock me down, I’ll just get up again, You’ve met your match, yeah, I’m no beginner”
  • “I can feel every day, I’m a little bit stronger, I only wish each day was longer”
  • “We’ve been preparing, Sharing, Training, Studying A to Z, Bonding, Battling, Laughing, Gettin’ crazy, you and me, ‘Cause it’s coming soon, When we all meet our destiny”
  • “Rise if you’re prepared for the challenge, Rise if you’re a champion at heart, Take my hand, we’ll train as one, And triumph together, Nothing’s gonna stand in our way, Stronger and stronger we’ll, Rise to the challenge of, Life
  • “We’ll be together and we’re gonna do it our way, We’ll discover we believe in each other, On adventures with my friends like every day”

That was a lot of copying and pasting from 20 songs, but you can see that the main themes are courage, friendship, never giving up and overcoming challenges, the journey of self-improvement, and being the best you can be.

The faults of Teaching kids with Pokemon

Pokemon isn’t like Sesame Street or Daniel Tiger, designed from the ground up to be educational. There are real-life problems, the characters have real-life flaws, and the writers in hindsight may want to change up some episodes. Sometimes the Japanese culture doesn’t necessarily align with American culture. Yes, unfortunately, you are going to have to be a parent and exercise some of those parenting skills.

To start, Pokemon didn’t become the top media-grossing franchise giving away its content for free. There’s a lot of consumerism and the whole game started with the concept of “Gotta Catch ‘Em All.” If you aren’t careful, you’ll end up buying cards, video games, DVDs, stuffed animals, etc. This kind of thing can happen with Minecraft, Roblox, or just about anything that kids are into.

The anime itself isn’t without problems. There are a couple of banned episodes. In one Ash went in blackface in an innocent attempt to assimilate and be accepted by a group of monkey-type Pokemon. I like to think that in Japan, it doesn’t have the negative racial and historical context that it has here. (I hope that’s true and it was just innocent.) Earlier in the series another Pokemon, Jynx, had characteristics of a racial stereotype. They changed that character making her purple.

Finally, as in many Japanese anime, the female characters tend to wear provocative clothing – really short skirts and shorts. One of the characters, Brock, goes to extremes in harassing women, especially nurses and police officers. It’s cringe-worthy stuff, but there’s always another character to give him a poison jab or ear-twist to show that the behavior isn’t acceptable. Even this character has some good qualities as he’s a great chef and an aspiring Pokemon doctor. In a lot of ways, he gives big brother or fatherly advice to Ash.

Final Thoughts about Teaching Kids with Pokemon

Believe it or not, I’ve barely scratched the surface of what can be taught with Pokemon. Many shows have a lesson. The card games have real strategies. I didn’t dig into the type advantage of Pokemon (water-type Pokemon are good against fire types but bad against grass types). Pokemon Snap is coming out in a couple of months… a reboot of an old Pokemon game that has the promise of teaching photography to kids.

I didn’t get to the story to explain how my favorite Pokemon, Magikarp was introduced as an MLM scam. I didn’t get to cover how its evolution from the weakest Pokemon into one of the strongest is due to the Chinese mythology of a lesson based on perseverance and hard work.

At nearly 4500 words, this is one of my longest articles. (Though counting the song lyric section would be clearly cheating.) Pokemon has no natural end to the story, so there’s no possible way to tie a bow and end this article. It keeps going, because there are many companies (Gamefreak, Nintendo, The Pokemon Company, Niantic, Pokemon Center), with billions and billions of dollars invested, constantly creating around Pokemon.

Have you used Pokemon to teach your kids anything? Let me know in the comments.

* While Pikachu is officially considered a “Mouse Pokemon” and an electric rodent, the designer actually designed him after a squirrel.

Lazy Man Goal Update (August 2021)

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My plan this year was to do eight updates of my goals, spaced out every 6 weeks. I thought that doing it more often would keep me focused on the long-term plans instead of getting lost in the daily routine. The last update was in April – I’ve missed two updates and I’m a week late with this one. It’s been a struggle.

I have been keeping up with my passive income reports which includes a little slice of our lives (pictures and things we did) over the last month. I add that personal stuff in for the voyeurs out there, because the math can be boring. This goal update is a mix between the two, some money and professional as well as family goals.

For 2021, I made some goals to start the year like I do every year. However, year after year, I fail to make any consistent progress on my goals. I know I always plan to do too much. I also fail to review my progress and make corrections.

With the failure to review progress and make corrections for four months now, let’s see how it’s going:

August 2021 Goal Update

Before we get started here’s my spreadsheet. It’ll be helpful to follow along. If you have ideas on how this system could be better I’d love to hear them in the comments.

I don’t think I made very good goals this year. They are all over the place. Some of them are boolean (we either went to Europe or we didn’t). Some of them are based on numbers and others are based on percentages. If I can take a “win” out of these goals, it’s that many, many people were screaming, “Don’t make goals for 2021!” When the year started we didn’t know when we’d be eligible for vaccines or if there would be enough of them. At the time, Delta sounded like more of a college sorority than something that would threaten to spin us back to square one.

Money Goals

Make $60,000 – I’ve made $48,266.97 so far and I’m on pace for almost $75,000. In April, I declared this an impossibility since my dog sitting income was close to zero due to COVID. However, vaccines, summer travel, and pandemic dogs have been amazing! I’ve been hustling and my wife calls me the Walter White of dog sitting (not sure if this is a good thing). Anyway, the dog-sitting income will probably drop down for the rest of the year. There’s always a seasonal drop-off when the kids go back to school, but add in the Delta variant and the dog sitting income will start trending down.

Wife Retirement Savings – My wife’s retirement fund is $15,000 bigger this year, but we are still a little behind what I had hoped on this one. We’ve had a few months where we spent more money than we usually do. The travel section below covers most of it.

Business Goals

Content Audit/Article Refresh – I’ve completed 8 of the 40 articles that I hope for this year. I have a lot of articles from around 2006 and 2007 that are very short, filled with a dozen of spelling/grammatical errors, and not very well put together. I haven’t been able to keep up with this over the last four months. The scheduling of 40-50 dogs a month is a full-time job. It’s not so much the dogs as it managing the owners. This goal will most likely get pushed to whatever seasonal downtime we have coming up.

7,000 Twitter Followers – I manage to lose a few Twitter followers every update. I’m going to need some tips or something. It may help to have some big media coverage.

Minor Website Design – I made no progress on this one. I think the only way to move forward on this one is to put on a short-term to-do list, rather than this mid-long term one. Unfortunately, that short-term list is full right now.

Article for New Website – Five. I’ve gotten a couple more articles written for the new website I’m planning. This is not great progress. As with the content audit above, I’ll have to put more of my time towards blogging instead of dog sitting.

Personal

Lose Weight – I’ve lost 4 pounds of the 15 that is part of my goal. I’ve made some gains this year and then lost them while traveling and getting out of my routine. This is a long-term average throughout the year as measured by my Fitbit scale. It’s great to see the line moving in the right direction even if I had hoped to have more progress.

Bucket List/Dream Board – I’m still where I was in April with this one. That’s about 65% done with creating something. As for the 35% that I have left with this, I want to create a dream board to make it more visual. When these things sit in a spreadsheet on a hard drive, they just don’t get done. As far as checking off items on the Bucket List, my wife booked tickets for our flight to D.C. in November. There’s a military dinner where it is tradition to meet the Vice President and there’s a rumor that the President himself may be there this year.

Professional Skills – 20% done. I had made a list of blogging professional skills, but I’ve accomplished none of them. However, I’ve certainly made great progress when it comes to my dog relationship skills. I’m going to count it. I’m also better at working with people, which is a skill that has atrophied a lot when I transitioned to blogging.

Family

Travel to Europe – Nope. My wife had big plans to do a Greek cruise this summer. That wasn’t realistic, so she pivoted and came up with the idea of our Hawaii trip in April. We were able to get tested and fly over many states that would have forced us to quarantine. We had a great time. In June we went to Block Island, which is a local staycation. Rooms are expensive, but it’s great to get away from technology and hike around in nature. In July, just before Delta got bad, we went to Hershey Park and the Cartoon Network Hotel (it’s a motel) in Lancaster, PA. With Delta as bad as it is now and knowing that even though I’m vaccinated, I can get my kids sick, I treasure these trips more.

Remember above when I explained that we didn’t make as much progress on saving my wife’s retirement goals? This was one of the main reasons why. We have no regrets – in fact, my wife planned all these trips and the spending that went along with them.

Finish the Basement – We’ve got half of our basement cleared out as of a few days ago. We just need to make a call and get the contractors scheduled. We got pricing several months ago, but we got busy and didn’t have the basement where it needs to be. We’re there now, so hopefully, they can get started. The plan, for now, is to do half the basement and see how that room serves us. The other half is being used for storage for now.

Parenting

YouTube Channel – I bought a green screen. That’s all the progress I’ve made on this. I think I just need to point the camera and get the kids posting content no matter how unprofessional it is. It’s not like we have a plan to make millions. I’m just hoping they get some experience and we get a few laughs along the way.

Drone Flying – We went drone flying once since the last report. My youngest (7-year-old) got to be quite good with it. The drone they are using is about $25, so it lacks features that help with flying. I have a $75 drone that I got on an Amazon Prime Day that we can upgrade too soon. If they can fly these terrible drones well, they should be great with the expensive ones, right?

Outdoor stuff (hours) – I originally had 40 hours outside as a very minimum goal because the kids rarely do much outside. However, when we were in Hawaii we were outside almost all the time. This summer the kids have had camps (see below). The weekends have been tougher to get out because of the dog sitting, but we still managed to get some activities in. I got my first surfing lesson in. It didn’t go great, so I’ll have to practice a lot more, but it was a lot more physical work than I thought.

Computer Programming – In April the kids were reading Captain Underpants and making comic books and I thought this was a good enough learning activity. In the last week, the kids have had some time off of camps, so I got them started on Tynker.com’s computer programming courses. In one of the camps, one of the kids had some computer programming with Lego WeDo. If that’s all we get done this year, I’ll consider this completed.

Specialty Camps – We missed out on some camps because we were preparing to go to Hawaii (and going to Hawaii) and my wife deployed soon after. However, we got a couple of building camps, art camps, and cooking camps. This covers most of their special interests. My 8-year-old was the youngest in the cooking class and he loved being with all the older kids. Next year, my 7-year-old will be old enough to do cooking class too. It’s expensive, but it’s a good skill to learn, right?

Final Thoughts

Back in April, I wrote: “Overall, I’m not feeling like I’ve made much progress, but there are pockets of progress. Unfortunately, the next update probably won’t have more progress. My wife is deployed getting the vaccine in peoples’ arms, so I’m trying to make this time extra fun for the kids.”

The progress was so bad before that I couldn’t put out an update. However, as you can see, things have turned around significantly. I should be able to make (or come close) to everything but the blogging goals this year. Even those have a chance in the next few months. Whatever gaps I have in those business goals should be filled by the ones I’ve added with the dog sitting skills.

My Kids’ Roth IRAs

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The following article is brought to you by Kid Wealth and is closely related to Kid Wealth’s Kid Roth IRA article.

Two years ago, my kids got a Roth IRA to jump-start their retirement savings. It was a little aggressive for a 5 and 6-year old, but I wanted to start them early. By starting now, they’ve got the most valuable thing on their side – time.

It can be difficult to get a kid a Roth IRA. On one hand, you have the IRS with the annoying rule that the kids have to have earned income to put into an IRA. On the other hand, you have pesky labor laws that limit the work a kid can do. It’s a shame that my baby modeling idea never took off. I also don’t see people lining up to purchase their wonderful Pokemon art creations.

Kid Roth IRAs with a Side Hustle

So how do they earn this money to comply with the IRS demands for funding a Roth IRA? I pay them to help with my dog sitting business on Rover.com. In non-COVID years, I can make around $15,000 a year, which is a nice side hustle while I’m freelancing from home and writing this blog.

Kids Roth IRA

I’ve been dog sitting for five and a half years now, so the kids have grown up with a couple of extra dogs around. They’ve become naturally curious about feeding dogs and they love to play fetch with them. We’ve taught them how to pick up the dog droppings, but that’s not something they like. Some of their peers do the chore for allowance. However, for the family dog sitting business, it’s a core aspect of the job.

Feeding dogs, playing with dogs, keeping the water bowl filled, and picking up after the dogs is most of the dog sitting job. These are all things that my kids can do. Occasionally I have to give them medicine, but that’s about the only thing that I need to do 100% myself. The IRS should have no issue with me subcontracting out some of the work to them. In fact, I did some math on what a professional pooper scooper company costs, and it seems like it could be a couple of thousand dollars a year for the number of dogs we have and how often they’d have to come. My kids aren’t professionals, but the service doesn’t fill the water bowls or play with the dogs, so I think it averages out.

[This article has been refreshed for 2021.]

Kid Roth IRAs: Powerful Stuff

Contributing to a Roth IRA at this age is very, very powerful. Money grows quite a bit nearly 60 years of compounding until they reach ages 65 and 66.

Before we get to my kids’ Roth IRA numbers, here’s a helpful CNBC look at kids and Roth IRAs in general. Who wouldn’t want 3.4 million in one of their accounts?



My kids won’t have 3.4 million any time soon. If they were to earn 7% interest over that long period of time, a single dollar would be nearly $58. So $1000 in a Roth IRA would be worth $58,000. Of course, at 3.5% inflation over that time, you’d need $7,878 to have the buying power of $1,000 today.

When you crunch those numbers, it gives them a real post-inflation gain of 7x their money. Theoretically, if they could earn the $6000 Roth IRA limit, they’d set themselves up with $42,000 in retirement. Of course, that would be an extreme amount of dog care and that wouldn’t be reasonable.

In addition to the Roth IRA, we pay them some real spending money. They saved up for a Nintendo Switch before the pandemic. That was really good timing, because they were hard to find last year.

I settled on paying the younger one $400 and the older $600. In the next year, the younger got $600 and the older got $750. Since he’s a year longer, it works out to be fair as he’ll have an extra year at the end. This year, I’ll go to $750 and $1000 for each. The dog sitting business is going well with everyone traveling now that they are vaccinated.

Here’s how my 8-year-old’s Roth IRA grew to $1891.99:

Kid Roth IRA

Here’s how my 7-year-old’s Roth IRA grew to $1368.73:

Kid Roth IRA

The 8-year-old would have an inflation-adjusted amount of $13,443.70 in his nest egg at age 65. My 7-year-old would have to settle for “only” $10,066.02. I haven’t contributed to their accounts yet this year since dog sitting income got started late with COVID. These projections will go up once that happens.

Investing in My Kids’ Roth IRA

I normally believe in investing in only index funds for them. However, they always have some money left over. With VTI trading at $222, I buy a couple of shares with $600 and have over $150 leftover. I can buy some other index funds but sometimes I look for some satellite stocks. The theory is that you have core holdings and then little satellite holdings to explore. That’s why it’s also called “Core” and “Explore.”

Core – I’ve decided that the core of their portfolio should be the Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (symbol VTI). Last year, I bought as much I could and then used the rest of the money (less than $160) to explore. This year I did the same. One child got the high-dividend ETF, symbol HDV, that I’ve been touting lately.

Explore – Last year, I explored with Exxon and Ford stocks. I liked that they paid high dividends. I had an idea that I could show how reinvesting the dividends grows. It all sounded good until COVID happened. Ford eliminated its dividend completely. This year, I explored by buying more Exxon (dollar-cost averaging) while it was still paying a big dividend. I also explored by buying all three cruise lines (Carnival, Royal Caribbean, and Norwegian) with at least a share of each. It turns out that those stocks all performed well. Ford’s stock is up nearly 100% as they look to an electric car future. The cruise lines are up 100% as it seems like cruises will be possible soon. Even Exxon has benefitted from rising oil prices.

I don’t have a plan on how to invest their money this year, beyond buying VTI as a core holding. Perhaps we’ll put money into VEU and VWO which focus more on international investing. It might also be time to sell the satellite stocks and put the money into these more traditional indexes.

Because the account is with Fidelity, the no-cost commissions make it easy to diversify by buying a share here and there.

The Future of My Kids’ Roth IRA

In the next few years, I’m hoping they can participate in some of my blogging work. (The older has helped a little bit with my MoneyTime Review. Perhaps later this year or next year, I’ll introduce a bi-weekly kids article. I’ll interview them and get their perspective on what money-related thoughts they have. I’ll then explore how we are parenting their use of money. This is just a seed of an idea. I need to think a little more about how this would work. Of course, I’d pay them for their time and insight, which would be earned income.

After that maybe they can do babysitting or lifeguard work. There will be more opportunities for them to earn money as they get older. While all this is nice, their core “job” now is to get good grades in school.

Doubling the Kids’ Money with Robinhood

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This is going to be another short article today. I am still swamped with dog sitting business. I love that so many people are getting vaccinated and traveling. I also love that almost everyone decided to get a dog in the last year and a half. The only downside is that I’m constantly doing meet and greets, and booking appointments. I had two meet and greets yesterday and during one, I had an emergency last-minute request from someone who needed to travel for work, but their dog regular sitter was on vacation.

After more than a year of very few dogs to sit it is an overwhelming, but a welcome change.

In any case, I didn’t intend to write about dog sitting today. We can save that for the May financial update that should come out early next week. Instead, I want to talk about investing your kids’ money.

I started an investment account with Robinhood when the kids were 2-3 year old. In July that will be exactly 5 years ago. It’s a perfect time to look back and see how that decision went.

I don’t like to invest other people’s money. There’s just too much risk if it doesn’t work out. Fortunately, a 2 and 3 year old weren’t going to feel too much one way or the other.

I could waste a lot of words to build suspence before giving you the results, but I wasted that opportunity in the article’s title. Here’s how they’ve done:

Robinhood

For full disclosure, the results include a little free stock from Robinhood from referring friends (and website visitors). If you sign up here, you’ll help make a couple of kids very happy as they’ll get some free stock… and you will too.

No worries if you don’t sign up, because they are already very happy with the growth of their money. They are starting to figure out how money works, but grasped the idea that twice as much money is better a while back.

I should be open and say that there’s no guarantees that you’ll double your money when you invest via the Robinhood brokerage. The brokerage doesn’t make your money double, the investment choices do. The rule of 72 would indicate that they’ve made 14.5% interest per year. My kids have been lucky with that great bull market and I expect things will slow down in the future.

They’ve been mostly in the US total market (via Vanguard’s VTI ETF), but sometimes I buy some fun stuff for them like a gaming conference company or a little Dogecoin. That’s the advantage of having free trades with Robinhood. Five years ago, brokerages offering free trades were rare, but they are more common now.

The other thing I should note is that Robinhood doesn’t have custodial accounts for kids. I had to put the account in my name and I’ll have to pay taxes on it when it’s sold and distributed to the kids. Hopefully, since they are long-term capital gains, they won’t be so bad. Since having separate accounts was difficult, I simply added the same money from each kid whenever I do a cash deposit. This way they’ll each own 50% of the account.