Returning Home

From Marsha A. Hall

From Working To At-Home Mother
We often hear about mothers returning to the workplace after staying home with their children for a few years. Special guest author Marsha Hall shares the story of her transition from working mother to stay-at-home mother.

Failed Expectations and Unexpected Peace

One woman's story of the transition from working out of the home to stay at home motherhood.

by: Marsha Hall

I never even considered staying at home with my daughter. I was educated and informed, and for four years, I didn't think I needed to. My reading revealed that children who attend daycare are as healthy and well-adjusted as children who stay home with a parent. I believed that Jessy's social and academic skills would be stronger. I did my homework and located good day care providers. Jessica consistently affirmed my beliefs.
She was always affectionate but never clingy. She loved her baby-sitter, she loved the other children, she was a happy child. Her mental and physical development was always 2-3 months ahead of the norm.

Routines were established, and I told friends and family how Jessy enjoyed having "her own little life". I marveled at the day care providers, wondering how they could spend fourteen hours a day or more surrounded by children. I enjoyed my nine hours of adult conversation and intellectual stimulation.

Something was missing and I didn't know what it was. I told myself that I had an easy and affectionate relationship with my daughter, that I was a better mother when I was working because I could compartmentalize my life and be truly present for my child when I was at home. The truth is, I wasn't.

Every weekday I arrived home at nearly 6:00 p.m. I made dinner, we ate, Jessy took a bath. Every night I read two stories to her, not always because I wanted to, but because I felt I had to in order to justify the nine hours I had spent away from her that day. I adore my daughter, but some nights I was just too tired and distracted. I tried to make it up on the weekend, but on Saturdays I did laundry, grocery shopping, paid bills, and cleaned the house. I usually collapsed sometime after 8:00 p.m. On Sundays I tried to do something fun with Jessy, but I never lost the feeling that I was compensating for the rest of the week, and that put a damper on the activities.

Last year, my husband and I decided that I would quit work and stay home with our daughter. She starts school in the Fall and I really wanted that last year. We had financial concerns, but when we wrote out a budget we realized that the cash flow difference could be overcome.
To Stay-at-Home Mom

I really had to talk myself into it. I did draw a good deal of my self-esteem from working. It was a place where I felt needed, competent, and in control. It was difficult to break away. I worried that I would become isolated and depressed. But the desire to know what it was that I felt was missing in my relationship with my daughter was stronger than my fear and we did it.

I had several preconceived notions about life at home. Not one of these has revealed itself as truth.

I believed that the housework would be a snap. After all, I had seven days to do what I formerly accomplished in one day. My husband would come home every afternoon to our tidy and polished corner of the world. What I failed to consider is that my daughter and I were home to create a mess. I also failed to realize how differently I would feel about the standard of cleanliness in my house.
When I was working I cleaned on Saturdays and expected a natural progression of clutter and buildup of dust. Now I have transferred the guilt I used to reserve for my family to the appearance of the home. I feel that care of the household is my contribution to our family work and if my husband does more than throw a uniform into the washer, then I am not doing my job.

I thought I would have all of this time on my hands. I would create a home environment which was educational, enlightening, and enjoyable. I planned lessons and made time for teaching my child the basics of Math, Spanish, Science, and Social Studies. I would develop in Jessy a passion for culture and the arts and raise her social awareness. I planned to keep the vegetable garden in year round operation and we would beautify our yard with flower beds and rose bushes. I thought we would be frequent visitors to local playgrounds and the beach since I had so much time on my hands. I had no clue.

I tried to implement my plan of action as if it were a project, but Jessica was easily distracted, clearly not interested, and the sessions usually deteriorated until I was frustrated enough to quit. I couldn't understand what I was doing wrong and I am still trying to fully understand it. I do know that I was still trying to make up for time lost. By planning thirty minutes to an hour of what I considered to be quality time well spent, I was still following my old pattern of squeezing it in when I could. I forgot the definition of quality time-- being fully present for your child during any length of time while participating in an activity or conversation which the child finds enjoyable. I was trying to force my needs and my dreams into a space that I told myself was for the benefit of my child.

This transition hasn't been easy. It has taken some time for both of us to adjust. The most painful insight I have had is that even though Jessy has always seemed to be happy and secure, she didn't trust me in this. She didn't believe me when I told her I would be home with her for a long, long time. I realized that after spending her days in child care, she didn't believe I could really stay home. In her memory, I hadn't ever been home with her for more than two weeks and she seemed to view this new development as an extended vacation. She also wanted to use this time to extract as much of my attention, good or bad, as she could before she returned to real life.

Gardening has proven to be the hobby that Jessy and I truly enjoy together. I can pull weeds by the hour while she digs into the soil, pulling from it every creepy crawly she can find, house, and feed. I love watching her lay out a pound of grass for the culinary delight of a quarter inch roly poly. Jessy loves to plant the seeds herself. Seeing a sprout come up for the first time through the eyes of your child is a pleasure not enough of us have known. The down side is that it's hard for me to find time to spend in the garden and lately Murphy's Law seems to dictate that when I have the time, El Nino is rearing its ugly head. By the time I get home and outdoors again, I have to repeat tasks and as a result, the garden I envision is still little more than a dream.

I had many plans and good intentions, so many ideas about how this would be. It hasn't worked out that way at all. I have discovered the answer to the question that led me down this path. What was missing? Me. I was missing. I was well meaning but self serving. In this experience I have not only formed a deeper and more honest relationship with my daughter, but I have touched that part of me that is not the face I put on when I go to work, or when I interact with others. Incredibly- I like her. I have given up the desire to be seen as the woman who has it all together and gained the knowledge that I really do have it all.

Top Ten Money Tips for Women

Turn Your Financial Life Around
Why do so many women delegate their financial security to a spouse or signficant other and allow divorce or death to plunge them into poverty? Why do so many women spend more than they earn and become mired in debt?

A National Center for Women and Retirement Research (NCWRR) study showed a direct correlation between a woman's personality characteristics and her financial habits. Assertiveness, openness to change, and an optimistic outlook are the qualities that tend to lead to smart money choices.

Financial Planner, author, and TV host Suze Orman believes our problems with money are manifestations of problems in our life and relationships. Work on the money issues and many of the other problems will take care of themselves; or, work on the other problems and the money problems will take care of themselves.
For many people, money is an emotionally charged issue. It may represent power, or love, or control, especially in relationships. Our beliefs about money and our emotional attachments to it strongly influence the way we spend and handle money.

Stock Trading Or Stock Investing

By Justin Blasi

As I study the markets daily, I find a unique trade or see a stock that looks beautiful, technically, on one of my numerous monitors. Occasionally, I find myself curious how a Warren Buffet, or some other master in the market, would view it. I then tell myself it is irrelevant; our style of capitalizing off the markets is completely contradistinctive to Mr. Buffet and most investors. One of the many lessons and rules of playing the markets is to comply with your technique. At Elite Trading & Speculation our style has more of a characteristic of a trader. On the contrary to many opinions on trading, we find this trait to have such a great paramount over the classic buy and hold strategy. I am not completely opposed to this casual technique of buy and hold, but I have found short term trading to be superior in allowing us to manage risk and returns. With recent market volatility and short term trading in general, this technique has become more interesting and admirable to the novice and retail investor.

First, let us remember how the classic investing technique works in general. A buy and hold portfolio needs to be diversified; this helps control risk and helps maintain the portfolio through market cycles. The portfolio should contain quality stocks and dividend paying stocks. Speculation is usually not included in a classic portfolio; however more aggressive investors do have a percentage of their portfolio in speculation, but a very small percentage. Fundamentals of each stock are very important. Most classic investors base 100% of their decision on fundamentals and ignore the technicals of the charts, although technical techniques do exist on the long term view and prove to be very effective if followed. The more advanced investor usually utilizes options and hedging techniques to manage risk, however the novice and retail investor lack knowledge in these techniques, therefore they leave this risk controlling variable out of their investment plan. The long term investor does and must trade, but they do this on a longer term basis. Once a component of their portfolio makes a great return over a long period of time the investor will either take some profits by selling a percentage of the position or swap into another stock. There are many more variables that go into classic investing, but by going through it generally will tell us this technique can work; history also tells us this technique works successfully from famous investing gurus. This technique may work well and satisfy many market players, but may put many retail and novice investors obliviously at a disadvantage. One con is the amount of capital it may take to realize gains. Starting out with little capital can be frustrating especially when the market is in a bearish mode for a lengthy period. Most classic investors do not play the market in every aspect. They usually lack the knowledge of or find it highly risky shorting stocks. When the market makes a huge correction, it always scares off a big percentage of classic investors out of the market indefinitely; although the correction could have been used as a huge buying opportunity and inevitably the market does go back up after a correction. If they would overcome their fears and hold their positions, they would go back up in parallel with more gains from new positions bought in the lows. The physiological effects are hard to bear for some when a considerable amount of an investor's capital is lost. A retail or novice investor, working a classic day job watching the market on a casual basis, may lack discipline. This does not mean investing or trading cannot be done part time, but many casual players become torpid as time goes by. This is a huge set up for complete failure.

Why do we use the edge of a short term trader here at Elite Trading and Speculation? We find numerous advantages, on top of the fact that the markets are a passion of ours wanting to be actively involved in them full time. We hold positions for periods ranging from intraday to 3months. Although we are short term traders, we still have long term outlooks on stocks as well as long term price targets. For example, we have had a long term outlook on Google since December of 2005. We have not bought and held our position, but rather traded around it since 2005. Let's compare our gains based on a $25,000.00 investment, to gains that would have been made if we just bought and held our position.

Our entry price was $412.50 in December of 2005. Go to our web site to view a chart of our entry points and exit points. Our rough average of holding a position is a little over 2 months. At today's current prices, by trading the position with $25,000.00 we have a gain of $32,899.00 a 76% return. If we would have bought and held using the classic buy and hold technique; selling around today's levels we would be sitting on a gain of $15,450.00 a 62% return. This only shows that trading can have a superior advantage if executed correctly! At the same time of capitalizing on this stock, we have controlled our risk. How have we controlled our risk? First of all, we constantly research the up to date fundamentals, news, the streets outlook, and conference calls. All these variables shows us our long term outlook, but one of our most important tools that we use for the short term entry and exiting points is the chart technical's. If there was to be a turn in the outlook at any point we could have quickly closed out our position, and waited for a pull back on the charts and at that point reevaluate the stock. The saying is a trader is always on the edge worried and stressed, but on the contrary I feel more comfortable knowing I am on top of my research and if the markets turned I could quickly turn with them and profit from the downside. If we would have shorted this stock on the pullbacks we would have almost doubled our gain.

Diversification in trading is not an important variable. If technology is working at the present time, that is what we put to work. If the market cycle changes we could quickly reposition into new stocks that do well in that type of cycle. In doing this, your full portfolio is always working for you; as opposed to classic investing diversification is what keeps you a float; when one part of your portfolio is not working the part that is working helps you stay in the game. One could have debated years ago that trading is not worth it due to brokerage fees. That debate is obsolete today with discount brokerage firms such as E-trade, Trade Station, and so on. These firms provide trading at deep discount fees. One could have also debated years ago that you would need a professional to trade the markets, and you would need to be in the trading pits all day. Today with the internet we can make trades at lightning speeds, and as far as information goes that is also delivered today at lightning speeds through the internet. Not to mention CNBC, and Bloomberg Television, these networks provide a great wealth of information, debates, interviews, and breaking news. Benefiting from options is also a advantage to a short term trader. There are numerous complex and also fairly simple strategies to insuring your short term positions. This is a general overview of investing and trading; we could study the technique of trading, investing, and the markets for many life times. Bottom line, the two forms of capitalizing off the markets described here will work; it is up to you to find your niche and what works best for you. Once you discover your style, study it and execute it with passion.

Founder of Elite Trading & Speculation. I am a student of the markets; I research and trade the markets daily. I founded Elite Trading & Speculation to network our research and the research of our contributers and in doing so providing investors like yourself access to our information to shadow our trades and gain knowledge of the markets.

www.elitestockpicker.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Justin_Blasi

Online Investment - How To Make And Save Money Online?

By Micheal James

Stock Exchange is the symbol of the free market economy. Here the bull and the bear does the talking for the open market and participate in the uncertain roller costar ride of buying and selling and investing in company derivatives known as shares. You can call it a gamble or you can speak the expert words and address it as place of actuarial science. Look at it at whatever way you can but stock market is now the place to make some quick bucks.

Money has two forms of use. Money can be used as a common way of transaction and be used for buying and selling things or money can be used as store value of assets. This is known as the speculative use of money. Investing in stocks is like investing in the speculative value of money. Stock market allows us to invest in shares. Shares are small units of the company, which are listed in the share market. People can invest their money in the form of stocks and expect their money to appreciate along with the expansion of the company.

Investing in stock has it share of subtle risk but profit is the reward of the risk. Stock market investing has become very lucrative. It is those rare forms of business where people become over night millionaire by just investing in stocks and selling them. But for stock market investing one thing that is the most important is the sound knowledge. Perfect knowledge about the volatile market can save a person from the uncertainty of the stock trading.

Stockbrokers and online stock trading has made the job of your investment easy. Online trading and investing has various advantages over conventional modes of stock trading. Online trading in stocks is much more hassle-free and cheap. Online trading should be taken care of in various senses. One should do a good profile check of the company in which they want to invest. One should keep a good know how about the companies past performance and its future prospects. Before quoting any share one should keep in to account the stock quotes, trading options of shares, payment mode, commission rates, etc. one should know about the financial condition the company is in present moment. One should also take care of the broker's service, which it is using for stock market investing. Efficiency and expertise of the broker can make a big difference to the trading of stocks and also your bank balance.

Various advantages of online investing are as follows:

* Online investments are much more hassle-free than any other conventional way of investing. A click of the mouse is all that you need.
* Financial data and service of the online broker who sells certainty in this uncertain world of stock exchange is very minimal.
* Internet connects all the major stock exchanges of the world and hence one can open their option of foreign portfolio investment.
* Getting updates and minimal establishment cost are other advantages of online investment.

Therefore, it's the right time to invest your money and get maximum profit out of it.