Unless your child expresses ambition and drive from a very young age, your childs’ education IS important to you and the most compelling reason for this – you are not independently wealthy so you can’t afford lazy, uneducated kids. How do I know you’re not rich?

Rich people don’t read MouthyGirl. Chances are one out of every two of you reading this didn’t go to college, and if you did, you may not have gotten a degree. It is our job as parents to teach our children better than we know, guide them to lead a better life. How can you do that if you don’t start with their education?

If you don’t care about your kids’ education, they won’t either and the teacher can’t make them care, no matter how hard they try. What you’re left with is a child that is complacent about schoolwork, and not only school work – any hard work. Sure he might make the effort to pass just to keep from being held back, but the fundamentals aren’t there, nor is the work ethic that boss’s are looking for everywhere.

Why is this a problem? That child grows up with only a very basic skillset to get a job with and is competing with college graduates for jobs. Does that sound fair to you? For you and me, we can still get a job based on experience, selling ourselves and demonstrating what we know, our children will not be so lucky, at 30 I can tell you I have been passed up for many jobs because I don’t hold a degree, many of which I was capable of doing but didn’t have the degree to back me up. It is only going to get more difficult for people like me.

Being a parent means one thing first and foremost – IT AIN’T ALL ABOUT YOU ANYMORE. So why would you leave your child out their alone, with no one to care about their school work, work ethic, dreams and goals? I know it’s hard to be an active and attentive parent but believe me it’ll be worth it, before the dear hubby was around I was a single mom and even then I managed, so you have no excuse.

Are you involved in your kids’ school life?

Materialism. I admit I am guilty of it, I want what other people have just as much as the next person, but I also have a habit of convincing myself why I shouldn’t buy something, needed or not. Most of the time, the miser in me wins.

What really helps is that I despise shopping and turning my money loose. I find however that I have an urge to travel more and more, I want to explore the country and find favorite places to visit.

I want to fill photo albums with memories. I want to tell my Grandchildren about adventures I had and places I saw, people we met. I’ve spent a lot of my life already looking at walls and waiting for paychecks, waiting for this and waiting for that. I’m ready to start doing and going, being and living.

I announced to the hubs that I would like for us to begin to position ourselves, financially, in such a way that we can live off of one income and save the other. It was met with surprise, then disbelief and finally resignation as it was realised that I am very serious.

I do not want to spend my entire life working. Due to this I’ll be spending a little time soul searching and exploring my ideals for this website. I have dreams that I have been subconsciously subduing and it’s high time I start taking the steps to realise them.

This is gonna be a ride, and after all that’s what life is designed to be right? A journey through – exploring what there is to explore and creating memories worth keeping. I’ve been existing, and that is simply not gonna be enough anymore.