Category: Mom’s Occasional Money Advice

The Mom Weekly Volume 130: February 3, 2025

You can read this, or any other previous Mom Weeklies, by going to the home page here.

Notes:

I decided to pre-empt what I had scheduled this week to share about a useful financial housekeeping activity. This one is topical because it happened to be just a few days ago.

I promise you that you will feel good once you complete this!

It’s especially good to do these kinds of activities during some of the extra-cold days we’ve had recently when it’s hard to get outside. 

Remember how much I love you,

Mom

Set Up Alerts for All Your Credit Cards (Mom’s Occasional Money Advice)

Just a few days ago, I was checking the Chase app on a newer credit card to see how close I was to the spending I would need to trigger the sign-up bonus. The sign-up bonus for this particular card is a lot of points, so it was definitely worth checking!

I noticed several small charges from the same merchant, and several from another, and I thought, wait, did I spend money at something called “M Solutions”?

This can be tricky because sometimes charges will occur that appear odd. We have lunch at the excellent Skylight Commons cafe at the Mayo Clinic on the days we are there—but the merchant name is something strange that I know now, but might have thought was sketchy the first time or two I saw the charge.

Anyway, I was heading out for my dentist appointment at that time, so I couldn’t do much until I got home. When I got home, I checked on all the charges, and saw a dozen or so charges, ranging from 99 cents to $27, from four merchants I did not recognize. 

The fraud department representative that I spoke to was very nice, and I went over all the charges with her. She could see they were all connected to the same digital wallet (not mine, obviously), and so she cancelled the card and I’ll get a new one in a few days.

I realize that I had not set up text or app alerts for this particular card, because it is relatively new. So I took some time that afternoon to check all of our credit cards and make sure that text/app alerts are enabled. Now, anytime there is a charge on any of our cards, I (or Dad) will get a text message or app alert, or both. 

I do have this set up for many cards, so that I can appear to be a mind reader. I told Dad when I was setting all the alerts up that I already get those. I said, “Didn’t you make a purchase using (certain credit card) at Trader Joe’s about an hour ago?” Dad thought that my knowledge of his wherabouts a state away was pretty impressive, and I agree. 🙂

The typical way to do this is on the app or website of your card’s bank, look into “profile & settings.” Usually within there or something similar, there is a “manage alerts” section. Just be sure that you save after you change the alerts. I’m sharing a screen from within Chase so you can see what I mean. Be sure to check all of the categories of alerts, especially any purchases!

For some reason, it was hit or miss with our cards. Some had alerts of all kinds enabled, and some had few or none. It was a good feeling to be able to get all the cards set up that way. You’ll be glad, too, once you complete this task!

Interesting/Notable: 

Seeking Beauty — EWTN Studios.

Erica Campbell, the founder and owner of Be a Heart, a Catholic goods shop, shared this show in a recent email (her emails are great, by the way. I find her very sensible and spiritually mature). 

I’ve only watched part of the first episode, but it’s got great production value and it’s highly watchable! I was not aware of the actor/producer who narrates it, but he does look familiar. You younger people may recognize him more. 🙂

They Wanted Another Bathroom. So They Built a $1.3 Million Home: WSJ

I read this article because of the headline, but it’s actually about a general contractor and architect with a very interesting personal history that led to him becoming a home builder. Worth a read!

The Mom Weekly Volume 125: December 30, 2025

You can read this, or any other previous Mom Weeklies, by going to the home page here.

Notes:

One of my children—who shall remain nameless—mentioned that I read more books in 2025 than she has, which surprised me since she is quite well-read, and that is a big part of her career! There are two factors that contribute to this. One factor is hers: she does not “count” books that she reads for classes. One is mine: I include books that I do not finish.

I disagree with her that not counting books just because they are used in class is counter-productive, not the least of which counting them increases your total number! Also, I do like knowing books that I have read or read part of, so I can look back later if something sounds familiar to me. That happened when I saw that The Other Bennet Sister, a recent novel about Mary Bennet, the “dowdy” sister in Pride & Prejudice, is being made into a television show. (

I could look up and see that I had read The Other Bennet Sister in 2022.

Perhaps the more controversial question is, can I count books that I do not finish as among my books read for any particular year? I say a firm “yes” under the following conditions: not just that I read the first page and immediately send it back to the library. I give a book a good shot, read several chapters and perhaps more, and then for whatever reason realize it’s not worth my while to finish it. 

I consider that a book “read,” but imagine that others would have a different opinion! If I don’t count those, my total number of books would go down by a decent percentage. The other type of book I count is picture books or children’s books, and people may take exception with that (But on this, they are wrong.)

What do you think? No matter what, I hope that you are reading books!

Remember how much I love you,

Mom

Believe What You Read, Teach What You Believe; Live What You Teach

A few weeks ago, Dad & I attended the Mass for the ordination to the diaconate to someone we’ve known since he was a baby. That was quite an experience! He will be ordained a priest in May, but this liturgy was very very moving, 

There was one other young man being ordained, and so they repeated several of the vows and parts of the actual ordination portion of the Mass. One part was the “Presentation of the Book of the Gospels.” This took place just after the Litany of the Saints and the actual ordination. The young men each approached the Bishop, who gave each a “Book of the Gospels.” We were seated in the back, so I’m not sure exactly what that it, but I imagined it to be one of the big lectionaries that are held up before the Gospel reading at Mass. And what the Bishop said, and repeated twice, struck me so much that I brought out my phone to write it down. Here it is:

“Receive the Gospel of Christ, whose herald you have become. Believe what you read, teach what you believe, and live what you teach.”

Believe what you read. Teach what you believe. Live what you teach. 

Isn’t that a good maxim to ponder in the new year? I almost want to make it my Lenten expression to meditate on. (Lent 2026 begins February 18). Let’s unpack it a little bit.

“Believe what you read.” Are we reading (and viewing) trustworthy, noble words and images? A goal to read Scripture—especially the Gospels—could be a way to learn more about Jesus and his life, death, and resurrection, and deepen our belief in Him.

“Teach what you believe.” If we have our faith, we should be willing to teach it. For a priest, it means being able to teach people, I imagine chiefly through homilies, about the love of God and the Gospel message. For the rest of us, it could mean teaching, but also being able to speak about our faith without reservation. I think that’s a pretty difficult task, but being willing to learn more about our faith by reading not only Scripture, but the Catechism, writings of the Saints, and other spiritual books.  

“Live what you believe.” This is really the most important part—living our lives in line with what we believe. And it’s obviously the most difficult, and we can fail at it from time to time. But we know that as we keep practicing our faith, as well as the precepts of the Church,

Also, we can work to practice the corporal works of mercy and spiritual works of mercy.

All this is possible only through prayer—a relationship!

Interesting/Notable

Everyone is Invited to Jane Austen’s Birthday Party —NY Times gift link

There is a video of English country dancing from the 2025 JASNA meeting in Baltimore that begins the article. Two of my dear friends from my Jane Austen book group are in it! I was actually at that dance, but fortunately not in the video. Can I just say how much fun English country dancing is?

The article is also a solid read. One of my favorite parts was the description in the byline of the author: “For this story, Sarah Lyall traveled to Bath, England, and Baltimore; saw two exhibits and two plays; re-read six novels; purchased a handbag made to look like a copy of “Pride and Prejudice”; and tried on a Regency bonnet.” To show her bona-fides, I suppose! Works for me.

Action Item: Time to Update Your Net Worth (Mom’s Occasional Money Advice)

Wow, that seemed like net worth update time rolled around again pretty quickly!

We are almost at the end of Quarter 4, which means it is time to update your net worth. I am just going to direct you to one of my many previous calls to begin this helpful process. Let me know if you need any help with it.

The Mom Weekly Volume 117: November 4, 2025

You can read this, or any other previous Mom Weeklies, by going to the home page here.

Notes:

After I completed this, I realized that my part-time job is actually writing The Mom Weekly. It’s a joy and a privilege. And also related to my vocation of being your Mom, also a joy and a privilege!

Remember how much I love you,

Mom

What’s Your Part-Time Job?

As most of you know, we have a running joke with Dad about his love of reading, if not the entire, or maybe darn near close, the New York Times online edition. (Slight aside: We haven’t been able to get the paper delivered in some years, which is a tremendous relief to me, as we don’t need to recycle all the newspapers.)

Anyway, we started calling it his “part-time job,” especially on Sundays, and when we are the beneficiary of interesting commentary/curious travel/trendy recipes from Dad, we can say that it’s all due to the part-time job.

That got me thinking: everyone probably has this kind of “thing”—something that they enjoy, but they also feel the need to complete, that takes up a fair bit of time. It’s a fun thought experiment:

What’s your part-time job?

For awhile, I thought for me it could be the games that I like to complete—Wordle, Connections, Letroso, Spelling Bee, maybe some crosswords, the Linked Games line-up. But honestly, all of that doesn’t take very long—it’s more of a very freelance gig, rather than a true “job.” 

Perhaps taking care of the dogs? That takes more than a half-hour a day! And it does pay rewards in that the dogs are pretty attached to me and follow me around and are good cuddle buddies. And, like a break from a job, I truly enjoy my vacation from the dogs when I am traveling. So yes, taking care of the dogs is my part-time job.

My work coordinating points and miles travel among family members has become a part-time job, both in time and expertise. I would hazard to say that its “salary” or payoff is pretty high, if we consider some of the fun/comfortable travel we have been able to complete in recent years. So, I think I will stick to that part-time job.

Time for you: what is your part-time job? You’ll enjoy thinking about it, and if you don’t like your part-time job, what would you like to substitute it for something else?

Interesting/Notable: 

This YouTube video started playing when I was looking something up, and I watched every minute:

We turned a schoolhouse into our dream home.

Wow, what a crazy, incredibly involved project. Some of the items I remember doing when we first had our 1920s house. Yes, your Mom glazed windows and did a lot of other crazy stuff, because when you are younger, you think this is fun!

The spaces in this schoolhouse are very cool, actually, but so much work! I also don’t think that I would want to live in that big of a space. I wonder what their heating and cooling bills look like.

The Mom Weekly Volume 114: October 14, 2025

You can read this, or any other previous Mom Weeklies, by going to the home page here.

The Privilege of a Large Family

This past week, as most of you know, I was in Baltimore for the Jane Austen Society of North America Annual General Meeting (better known as the JASNA-AGM). It was a wonderful event and trip and I’m still recovering from the week. But a conversation there helped solidify some thoughts I’ve had in recent weeks.

The Sunday morning of each JASNA AGM begins with a Jane Austen themed “Fun Run/Walk.” For a conference that had nearly 1,000 attendees, I was surprised that only 14 showed up for the run—about half were runners and half walkers. But that made it a very convivial group and a fun early morning time.

(Digression: one of the runners was Friday night’s speaker, Susannah Harker. She played Jane Bennet in the 1995 adaptation of Pride & Prejudice, and if you’ve seen that adaptation, she is EXACTLY as you would imagine her. An absolutely lovely person in every way. She was a runner, and I was a walker, so we didn’t get a chance to visit until we sat together at the SAME TABLE at breakfast later that morning. One of the people at her table called me over when I was fruitlessly looking for a seat).

Since about half of us were walking, I was able to drift in and out of several conversations. At one point, I was talking with a woman about something medical and I mentioned that one of my sisters is a doctor (and somehow had mentioned I’m one of six). She said, “Do you have any lawyers?” To which I responded, “hahaha, you have no idea!” And then she said, “Do you have any finance people?” And I said, “Well, my son is an accountant, and I do financial writing, and there’s an actuary among the cousins.” And then she said, “Well, you’ve got everything covered. It must be nice.” 

It must be nice. Yes, it is nice! Through the rest of that morning a phrase kept popping up to me: we experience the privilege of a large family.

The word “privilege” has become loaded and even fraught in our current culture. There’s the saying, “Check your privilege” when discussing certain topics. I could write a lot about why I don’t find “check your privilege” a particularly useful construct because you never know what someone has gone through, either for good or ill, and may not have as much privilege or as little privilege as you suspect. Appearances can be deceiving.

But … There is a privilege to being part of a large family. It’s not just because in our family, some of us are medical professionals, and others are lawyers and a judge, and some are money nerds, and others are artists and thinkers and extraordinary people. All those things are well and good. But they don’t “cover everything,” as my fellow walker thought.

The connection and the love that we share are the real privilege. 

Yes, we have a person to call or text when we have a medical issue, or a legal issue, and I in particular LOVE to help people with money questions. But that’s not the real privilege.

It’s not that we don’t annoy or irk each other (understatement) or disagree strongly about issues, or have the same outlook on things. I, for instance, have zero interest in sports, which puts me at a distinct disadvantage among our sports-loving family. But I know I still belong!

I invite you over the next few days to consider what a privilege you have in being part of a large family. I invite you to experience gratitude for our large family, and rest in that gratitude to help you get through the inevitable bumps and annoyances that come along with a lot of people interacting.

Remember how much I love you (and our large family!),

Mom

Interesting/Notable:

What It’s Really Like to Support a Family on a Modest Income (gift article)

This piece is lovely, and beautiful. We can make a way to have the life and the family we want. Finances shouldn’t be the main consideration about this.

How to ADHD: Declutter—Clutterbug YouTube Channel

I thought this was a very helpful video about how to declutter large amounts of items, and also how to arrange an apartment or home in a way that serves the people living there and their style. In this case, lots of open storage—which can be great for ADHD. And I love the reveal. It’s worth watching in the background while you are doing something else.

The Mom Weekly Volume 112: September 30, 2025

You can read this, or any other previous Mom Weeklies, by going to the home page here. https://themomweekly.com/

Time to Update Your Net Worth (Mom’s Occasional Money Advice)

We are at the end of the quarter, so it is time to update your net worth!

Yes, this headline pops up every quarter, and that is not going to change. 

Here’s why: I am trying to convince you to start this practice early, so you can feel more confident over time about how your money life looks. It really works!

Calculating net worth has been enormously helpful in making me feel more confident about our finances, just by knowing.

Before doing this regularly, I might have been concerned about our spending at different times—for instance, sometimes we would have a year when we had big tuition bills, or we had done a lot of house-related spending. 

I would have an amorphous feeling like, “eek, we are spending too much..” or “things don’t feel stable, but I can’t imagine how to figure this out except for taking a million years to track every bit of our spending…” 

Or, alternatively, I might think, “Everything’s great!” But not really know. Knowledge is power, as the kids like to say. And it’s true!

Even when headlines talk about how bad the stock market is doing, or how terrible the housing market is in our area—both things that occurred in the recent past—I can look at how our personal finances are doing, and not pay attention so much to what the headlines say.

Here is a version of my regular pitch:

This may take slightly longer this first time, if you have not done so. But I promise you, over time, you will be happy that you do this. 

The only reason I hesitate is that, especially for younger people, it could be pretty likely you have a negative net worth, largely because of student loans. But that’s will be so temporary (over the long haul!) that you should not be discouraged by it. 

When people begin to track their net worth, they call it “getting back to zero” when they have a zero net worth. That may not seem promising, but it’s a great accomplishment for those who have paid off a significant amount of debt, whether student loan debt, credit card debt, or other types of debt. 

And it can be very encouraging to see an improvement in your net worth over time. 

Here is a super-simple net worth calculator spreadsheet I put together. 

There’s no formatting with cool colors and such, but it works and completes the calculations for you. Let me know what you think about it!

A few notes:

*Make your own spreadsheet or list. Unfortunately, Google Sheets does not allow password-protecting of items. I prefer to keep this information, and most of my spreadsheets, in a format I can password protect. Think Microsoft Excel, Apple’s Numbers, etc. You can even do this on paper if you want, and store it somewhere safe. 

*There are two “sheets” in the shared spreadsheet — the first is a blank one, and the second is a sample with random numbers that I have included. I have added made-up numbers to the sample sheet, so you can see how the numbers change over time.

*Sometimes people do not include their vehicles or mortgages. I do, because you can see how much equity you have in the house or vehicle. But I mentally don’t include them with the same weight as other assets, since they are not liquid and it’s not likely one would sell them for living expenses, in retirement or not.

Interesting/Notable:

Looking to Make New Friends? Try Church. — Aletheia

I love this! This is written by an online friend I met years ago at a Catholic blogger conference. Like her, I have met people through noticing them at church. It’s really worth a quick conversation! 

How to Include Kids Without Centering Them—Priya Parker

Also, what great ideas of what to do with older kids in a larger gathering. Priya Parker is the author of The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters.

The Mom Weekly Volume 99: July 1, 2025

You can read this, or any other previous Mom Weeklies, by going to the home page here.

Notes:

Because of the rather spontaneous travel that some of us are doing this week, it made the most sense to me to expand on the action item for this week: Update your net worth. I hope you take a moment to make a simple (or complicated) spreadsheet with your info. Once you get it started, it’s a breeze to update your numbers once a quarter.

Give it a try!

Remember how much I love you,

Mom

Time to Update Your Net Worth (Mom’s Occasional Money Advice)

Yesterday was the end of Quarter 2 of the year, so it’s time to update your net worth! 

Here is my regular pitch for this:

This may take slightly longer this first time, if you have not done so. But I promise you, over time, you will be happy that you do this. 

The reason I hesitated is that, especially for younger people, it could be pretty likely you have a negative net worth, largely because of student loans. But that’s will be so temporary (over the long haul!) that you should not be discouraged by it. 

When people begin to track their net worth, they call it “getting back to zero” when they have a zero net worth. That may not seem promising, but it’s a great accomplishment for those who have paid off a significant amount of debt, whether student loan debt, credit card debt, or other types of debt. 

And it can be very encouraging to see an improvement in your net worth over time. 

Here is a super-simple net worth calculator spreadsheet I put together. There’s no formatting with cool colors and such, but it works and completes the calculations for you. Let me know what you think about it!

A couple of notes:

*Make your own spreadsheet or list. Unfortunately, Google Sheets does not allow password-protecting of items. I prefer to keep this information, and most of my spreadsheets, in a format I can password protect. Think Microsoft Excel, Apple’s Numbers, etc. You can even do this on paper if you want, and store it somewhere safe. 

*There are two “sheets” in the shared spreadsheet — the first is a blank one, and the second is a sample with random numbers that I have included. I have added in pretend numbers to the sample sheet, so you can see how the numbers change over time.

*Sometimes people do not add in their vehicles or mortgages. I do, because you can see how much equity you have in the house or vehicle. But I mentally don’t include them the same weight as other assets, since they are not liquid and it’s not likely one would sell them for living expenses, in retirement or not.

Interesting/Notable: 

Are weighted vests worth the hype? WSJ (gift article)

Not for the first time do I point out that I am often ahead of the trend! I have known about “rucking” and weighted workouts since 2010 when I chatted for a bit during the Royal Parks Half Marathon with two British servicemen who were wearing weighted rucksacks and completing the half-marathon that way. Impressive!

Two or so years ago, I purchased a 12-pound weighted vest at Aldi’s specials aisle, and have used it off and on for walks and hikes. This spring, I got a little more serious about it, and I now have a 20-pound and a 30-pound weighted vest. It increases my heart rate and effort level for any walk from not much to really challenging!

I also find that I can lift weights easier when I attend a weight lifting class, and that I walk faster when I’m not wearing one of the vests. They have been really worthwhile investments!