Being There For Your Teenager

Your teenager is a big part of your life; they’re still your little baby, no matter how old they’re getting, and you want to be there for them as much as you were when they were a kid! But teenagers have a lot of special needs, and no matter how much you try to connect with them, there’s always a chance they’re going to push against you. 

But being there for your teen isn’t something to give up. You’re a good parent, and you want to always be one, no matter how old your children get! When you’re next talking to your teen about their life, or you know they’re going through some troubles, keep the following points in mind. 

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Create a Safe Talking Space

If you want your teenager to talk to you, whenever they have a problem, no matter how bad or serious it might be, you need to create a safe space for talking. You need to ensure they know they can come to you, without fear of judgement or crass words. 

As a parent, you might want to shout and scream from time to time, because you’re worried for them or you know they’ve done something that conflicts with how you raised them, but you can’t let these feelings come to the surface. 

Create a safe talking space that’s about them. Let them say whatever they want or need to when they’re talking to you, and make sure you sit and listen the whole time they’re going on. Let yourself think things through; you’ll be a lot calmer and rational in your response this way, and that’s what your teen wants from you. If you want to mention heroin addiction treatment for teens to them, a safe talking space and tone like this would allow you to do so. 

Find Something to Do Together

If you want to be able to connect with your teenager, on a one on one personal level, you should find something the two of you can do together. After all, if you’re trying to connect, yet have completely separate lifestyles, you’re never going to make much progress! Don’t let yourself be too busy, and don’t let your teen seclude themselves away from you. 

Instead, get to know their interests a little more closely. Talk to them about what makes them happy; make sure you listen when their eyes light up and they get passionate about something. It’s in these moments that you’ll discover common ground and understanding, and ideas for where to go from there. 

Find a class nearby that you can take together, or a hobby you could try out together; gardening, or knitting, or even just kicking a ball around in the park can all work well! A little bit of effort and your teenager will be hugely appreciative of what you’re doing for them. 

Being there for the teenager in your family might seem hard and confusing, but there’s some great ways to connect. 

Savvy Financial Advice For Novice Real Estate Investors

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An investment is an excellent opportunity to grow your wealth. Letting your money sit in a bank account with a low-interest rate isn’t going to transform your lifestyle any time soon. Plus, an investment isn’t as risky as people seem to believe. If anything, it’s a fantastic way to protect your resources as well as boost them.

However, it’s tough to get the ball rolling when you’re a novice. Yes, choosing real estate is an excellent first step, but then there’s plenty more to consider. From which loan to apply for to which property to bid on, you won’t find it straightforward in the beginning.

Thankfully, there are pieces of advice that make the process less complicated for beginners. Use the following and your first-ever real estate investment should provide you with a high ROI. Nothing is guaranteed, but at least you’ll increase your chances of success!

Overestimate The Costs

The biggest mistake newbie investors tend to make is to underestimate their budgets. Seeing a number that is feasible instantly increases your mindset and makes investing less daunting. However, it also lures you into a false sense of security. Once the real figures start to pop-up, you’ll find yourself in a sticky situation and won’t know whether to pull out or continue.

To avoid this, you should overestimate your budget by including every possible expense. So, aside from mortgage repayments, don’t forget to add repair and maintenance costs as well as money lost from late tenant payments. The latter might not happen, yet it’s wise to plan for the worst outcome so that you have the money to cover the fees.

An industry rule is to take your budget and add 10% on top. Then, you’ll have a buffer for a rainy day.

Choose A Variable Rate Loan

There are two types of mortgages: fixed-rate and variable. The former is often a tempting proposition because nothing changes, which means you can plan for the majority of situations. Regardless of what happens, at least you know the mortgage payments will never increase.

While this offers peace of mind, it doesn’t give you flexibility. And, flexibility is essential when it comes to the best variable home loan rate for you and your portfolio. Why? It’s because you decide when to up payments, lower them, or keep them the same. If, for instance, the investment goes well and you want to use the profits to clear some of your debt, you can by contacting the bank. Fixed-rate mortgages don’t allow you to do this, so you’ll be stuck with the loan for 25 to 30 years.

Currently, interest rates are low and have been for ages, which means a hike won’t hit you out of the blue.

Try A Turnkey Property

Potential is a buzzword that you’ll hear a lot when you’re viewing properties. Although there is an element of truth to the process of renovating and selling a house, there’s a lot of realtor bluster too. Essentially, they need a way to advertise the building without being negative, so they lean on its ‘potential.’

Don’t fall for this tactic. Yes, turnkey properties are more expensive, but they come with less hassle. Plus, there’s no way to tell whether a fixer-upper will cost you more in the long-term. When your investment is ready to go, you can find tenants and start covering your expenses within days.

Houses that require renovating could take months before they are livable, and that eats into your profits. Also, some platforms provide a warranty for turnkey solutions. Roofstock has a 30-day free returns policy.

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Get Ready To Make Tough Decisions

In a perfect world, you’d rent out your property to dream tenants who pay on time and never miss a payment. Unfortunately, not everyone is as organized, and it causes problems. After all, you’ve got debts to clear, and late fees and penalties eat into your ROI. Let it continue and you’ll end up with fewer resources than when you started.

When the tenants are attempting to steal from you, it’s not hard to evict them. But things can get complicated. Sometimes, the people living in your house are down on their luck after being fired or getting injured. Although you are happy to offer some leeway, you can’t carry on covering the costs forever. Nobody is saying you need to make them homeless, yet you will need to make a tough decision.

As far as real estate investment goes, this is probably the feature new investors underestimate the most.

4 Tips for Successfully Turning Over a New Leaf in 2020

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With the New Year still in its early days, it’s likely that you are either already pursuing some resolutions that you’ve set for yourself, or are still trying to work up the inspiration and motivation to “make a fresh start” in 2020.

Something about the idea of turning over a new leaf naturally appeals to people in all sorts of situations, and all around the world. It’s a great thought that, in the right situation and with the right motivation, we can all actively move to become better representations of our ideal selves.

Of course, many good intentions that exist at the New Year do unfortunately end up fizzling out – so it never hurts to have some proactive plans, tricks, and techniques up your sleeve to make sure that things remain on the right track.

Here are a few tips for successfully turning over a new leaf in 2020.

Use your current circumstances to springboard yourself to something new

Generally speaking, it’s always difficult to take a completely new direction in life, in a short space of time, without any buildup. People do manage it from time to time, but the far more reliable approach is to use your current circumstances as a springboard to something new and more desirable.

You can do this with a bit of creative thinking in your professional life. For example, maybe you want to become a writer, but have a background in some field like engineering or IT. Instead of trying to immediately reposition yourself to make a living as an author of literary fiction, why not make a smoother and faster initial transition, by offering up your services as a writer for engineering or IT websites? Or as a copywriter for those sorts of companies?

Sit down for a while and actively try to brainstorm ways to use what you have right now, to springboard yourself to something more desirable.

Define and clarify your goals and ambitions – don’t just leave them vague

A big part of the reason why goals and ambitions are often not achieved, is because they simply never get clarified at the right level of resolution.

Anyone can have a vague sense that they would like to do something a bit different, or that “one day” they might want to be a world-traveller, or something along those lines. But far fewer people actually specify in detail just what it is they want, and what it would mean to set about pursuing and achieving their goals.

When your goals and ambitions remain vague and undefined, that can be a bit of a “relief” in some sense. That’s because, when you don’t define things clearly, you can free yourself from a lot of the potential anxiety of realising that you aren’t doing a good job of progressing towards your ideal situation.

If you really want to significantly turn things around in the New Year, though, you’d be much better off clearly defining a set of targets for yourself, and then actively moving to pursue them, even though this might be frightening on some level.

Make some symbolically significant changes upfront to “change gear”

As human beings, we are all largely motivated by symbolism and narrative – and we will typically look for certain psychological cues in our own behaviour and environments, in order to establish and refine our sense of just who we are.

If you want to make some big, significant change in your life, it can be very useful to begin with some symbolically significant action, upfront.

If you want to travel more this year, for example, you could begin by buying yourself a nice rucksack upfront, and putting it in a prominent location in your home, so that you’re always reminded of it.

Do something, right now, to psychologically commit yourself to your ambition and make its “more real.”

Establish accountability systems and networks

No matter how highly motivated and driven you are, it can be difficult to remain consistent – especially over a period as long as a year – without having external accountability systems keeping you in line.

To dramatically increase the odds that you will actually stay the course, come rain or shine, begin by looking to join networks of people who will hold you accountable. And, consider tools and services designed for the same purpose.

Everyone has days when they want to give up and go to bed – but it’s much harder to do that when you have to justify your actions to other people.

Take steps to make your financial habits and goals more mindful and intentional

Making a big change in your life is generally far easier if you first begin by getting your financial habits tidied up; and by making your financial goals more mindful and intentional.

Among other things, this could mean investigating topics such as topics such as why refinance a home loan? and adopting an intuitive budgeting system that helps to move you out of the realm of guesswork, and towards a greater degree of certainty and planned-action.

When we manage our finances “by intuition,” we may manage to cover our key expenses each month, and to continue to accumulate savings at a decent rate. But a greater degree of financial awareness and intentionality can really make all the difference when it comes to enabling us to effectively and efficiently pursue our dreams and ambitions.

How To Choose The Right School For Your Child

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Choosing the right school for your child is a huge responsibility. It's going to be where they go every day, where they learn, the place which will shape them for their future. You want to make sure they will be happy; they will make friends; they will learn and thrive. So how do you make such a big decision and make sure you get it right?

Write down five things that are most important to you

Start simple and write down what is important to you when you think about your child's school. Is it the location? Is it where their friends are going? Is it the academic results of the school? Are the advantages of private school education important to you? Whatever it is, this is where you need to begin. 

Think About Your Child's Needs

Every child is different, so you really need to think about yours and what will work for them. Do they need a more structured environment? Do they need individual attention? A small class, perhaps? Would they thrive in a more sports focussed school or one that does lots of music and drama?

Get As Much Information As You Can

You know your child, so all you need to do there is just make sure you know what you're looking for. But you don't know the schools (unless you went yourself, but a lot will have changed) so you really need to gather as much information as you possibly can. Talk to friends and family, search the internet, read educational magazines and look in the newspapers. Go to as many open days as you can or arrange a visit when it's not an open day, and you can see the school on a normal day. Go to the school fairs and any other events they have, see if you can go to the school plays. Then, of course, you must look at the results of the school which you should be able to find online. Look at what else the school offers in addition to the core subjects and how they handle issues such as bullying. You need a full, holistic view of the whole place and you need more than one so you can compare.

It's also important to look at the teachers, other students, their behaviour, their uniforms, and how they behave with the teachers. There's a lot to take into account.

Ask Your Child

Remember it is not you going to this school, it is your child, and they have an opinion too. Make sure that they are familiar with the school and have been on a visit or two. Perhaps they know others who go there or have been in the past. If they do have their own ideas or thoughts on the matter, then listen to them. Children do know their own mind, and it's worth discussing things with them. They might have heard something about a particular school that you're not aware of. So listen to them and remember that it is about their happiness and their future.