Keeping The Roots (of children) Stronger.

Once upon a time, there were two neighbors living next to each other. One of them was a retired teacher and another was an insurance agent who had a lot of interest in technology. Both of them had planted different plants in their garden. The retired teacher was giving a small amount of water to his plants and didn’t always give a full attention to them, while the other neighbor interested in technology, had given a lot of water to his plants and looked after them too well.

The retired teacher’s plants were simple but looked good. The insurance agent’s plants were much fuller and greener. One day, during the night, there was a heavy rain and a wind due to a minor storm. Next morning, both of the neighbors came out to inspect the damage to their garden. The neighbor who was an insurance agent saw that his plants came off from the roots and were totally destroyed. But, the retired teacher’s plants were not damaged at all and were standing firm. 

The insurance agent neighbor was surprised to see it, he went to the retired teacher and asked, “We both grew the same plants together, I actually looked after my plants better than you did for yours, and even gave them more water. Still, my plants came off from the roots, while yours didn’t. How is that possible?”

The retired teacher smiled and said, “You gave your plants more attention and water, but because of that they didn’t need to work themselves for it. You made it easy for them. While I gave them just an adequate amount of water and let their roots search for more. And, because of that, their roots went deeper and that made their position stronger. That is why my plants survived”. 

Moral: This story is about parenting where children are like plants. If everything is given to them, they will not understand the hard work it takes to earn those things. They will not learn to work themselves and respect it. Sometimes it’s best to guide them instead of giving them. Teach them how to walk, but let them follow their paths.

The Many Origins of Father’s Day.

 

The campaign to celebrate the nation’s fathers did not meet with the same enthusiasm as that of the Mothers’ Day. This, perhaps, was because “fathers haven’t the same sentimental appeal that mothers have.”  

A Spokane, Washington woman named Sonora Smart Dodd, one of six children raised by a widower, tried to establish an official equivalent to Mother’s Day for male parents. She went to local churches, the YMCA, shopkeepers and government officials to drum up support for her idea, and she was successful: Washington State celebrated the nation’s first statewide Father’s Day on June 19, 1910.  

Slowly, the holiday spread. In 1916, President Wilson honored the day by using telegraph signals to unfurl a flag in Spokane when he pressed a button in Washington, D.C. In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge urged state governments to observe Father’s Day. Today, the day honoring fathers is celebrated in the United States on the third Sunday of June: Father’s Day 2017 occurs on June 18; the following year, Father’s Day 2018 falls on June 17.

 

In other countries, especially in Europe and Latin America, fathers have always been honored on St. Joseph’s Day, a traditional Catholic holiday that falls on March 19.  

During the 1920s and 1930s, a movement arose to scrap Mother’s Day and Father’s Day altogether in favor of a single holiday, Parents’ Day. Every year on Mother’s Day, pro-Parents’ Day groups rallied in New York City’s Central Park, a public reminder that both parents should be loved and respected together. Paradoxically however, the Great Depression derailed this effort to combine and de-commercialize the holidays. Struggling retailers and advertisers redoubled their efforts to make Father’s Day a “second Christmas” for men, promoting goods such as neckties, hats, socks, pipes and tobacco, golf clubs and other sporting goods, and greeting cards.

And finally, in 1972, during a hard-fought presidential re-election campaign, Richard Nixon signed a proclamation making Father’s Day a federal holiday. Today, economists estimate that Americans spend more than $1 billion each year on Father’s Day gifts.

Feeling pressure to buy a home? Resist!

The homeownership rate is at record lows–but that may be a blessing in disguise for young workers and many others who need flexibility in their careers to get ahead.

Too many people bought homes at the peak of the housing boom a decade ago, leading to a foreclosure epidemic when it turned out many couldn’t afford the mortgages. The pendulum has now most likely swung too far back the other way, and the adjustment isn’t over. “We think it will get worse before it gets better,” Ralph McLaughlin, chief economist of online real-estate firm Trulia, explains in the video above. “Eighteen-to-34-year-olds are the largest share of the population, and they just don’t own homes at the rate older people do.”  

Young people face many difficulties trying to buy a home these days. In many markets, there’s a shortage of starter homes, which has pushed prices beyond what first-time buyers can’t afford. Banks, meanwhile, are pickier about whom they lend money to than they were before the 2008 financial crisis. And a heavy student-debt burden for some young workers leaves little left to save for a down payment. 

But a lot of young people might be better off renting than buying, even if they feel they’re not living up to the standards of their parents’ generation. “Take a deep look at your personal circumstances,” McLaughlin advises. “If you’re a little uncertain whether you might move someplace else, or your parents or family live someplace else and you might need to take care of them, it’s probably a good idea to rent.” 

McLaughlin says he himself made the mistake of buying his first home when he was 29 years old—six months before getting another opportunity that required him to move. Even if a seller can unload a house for the same price he paid just a few months earlier, he’ll typically lose thousands in closing costs, agency fees and other one-time expenses. 

Workers today need to be more flexible than in decades past, since many companies operate all over the world and technology can rapidly disrupt industries that seem stable. Housing experts typically say it’s a good idea to buy if you’re pretty sure you won’t be going anywhere for 7 to 10 years. But given the pace of change today, fewer and fewer people can look that far into the future with reasonable certainty. 

Some things remain the same, though. As young people get married and have kids, they need more space and homes in good school districts—which are often in the suburbs, where the only real option is to buy. “Millennials are not getting married at the rate their parents did, or they’re getting married later,” McLaughlin says. “But we do know they want to own a home eventually. They’re just not in the personal situation to do it right at this moment.” There’s nothing at all wrong with that.

 Courtesy: Rick Newman. His latest book is Liberty for All: A Manifesto for Reclaiming Financial and Political Freedom.