【推荐2】Envelope Budget

From McDonald's to Sonic, fast food had a bad effect on my waistline and my budget. It was nothing to run to a drive-through to pick up a cold drink or a quick bite to eat. It was so easy to use my card for a small purchase. For me, I got a lot of satisfaction from fast food.

One day I sat down and calculated that I was spending a surprising $40 a week on fast food. This was a lot of iced coffee and hamburgers! Instead of reducing my guilty pleasures, I decided to give myself a strong budget to reduce my consumption. Every Monday I placed an envelope with $20 in my purse. That was my fast food budget for the entire week. If there was anything left over at the end of the week, it was mine to save or spend. If I spent all of the money during the week, there were no more fast food stops that week.

The budget made me more mindful of my purchases. Instead of purchasing a large drink from Sonic, I would purchase a small. It was sill satisfying but not nearly as pricey. Instead of eating a whole meal, I would pick the part that I actually wanted. Many days, the thought of hanging onto the money for a special purpose meant more to me than the instant satisfaction of fast food. I never really felt unhappy because it was a conscious choice to spend or save with each purchase.

Envelope budget kept me honest. I had a clear idea how much money was spent each week on fast food purchases. I started to bring my lunches more often to save more money for the week. It was a fun challenge to see how much I could save every week.

Changing the way I spent on fast food not only helped my budget, but improved my weight. In the first month I was able to get rid of 5 pounds by simply changing the way I approached spending on fast food. Now I am more likely to bring my lunch than to buy it. I am not upset, but empowered to make positive choices to improve my life.

【推荐3】How to teach kids responsibility

We'd all like our kids to develop into responsible people. How can we help to ensure that our kids learn the lessons of responsibility? Here are some ideas：

Start them with tasks when they're young.

    1         They can do a lot more than you think if you're patient and creative. Encourage them to begin at an early age, and this helps them build confidence and enthusiasm for later tasks in their life.

Don't use rewards with your kids.

If you want your kids to develop a natural sense of responsibility, they need to learn what they do affects others not just themselves.         2    

Use natural consequences when they make mistakes.

If they keep losing their baseball glove somewhere, let them deal with the consequences. Maybe they have to ask to borrow one for the game.         3     If you rescue them every time they make a mistake, they'll never learn responsibility.

    4    

This is where they'll learn it from. Take care of your stuff. Try to be on time. They're watching you very closely.

Give them an allowance(零用钱) early in their life.

Let them make their own money decisions from an early age. They'll learn their lessons in a hurry.     5    

【推荐2】I still remember my first day at school in London and I was half-excited and half-frightened. On my way to school I wondered what sort of questions the other boys would ask me and practiced all the answers: “I am nine years old. I was born here but I haven’t lived here since I was two. I was living in Farley. It’s about thirty miles away. I came back to London two months ago.” I also wondered if it was the custom for boys to fight strangers like me, but I was tall for my age. I hoped they would decide not to risk it.

No one took any notice of me before school. I stood in the center of the playground, expecting someone to say “hello”, but no one spoke to me. When a teacher called my name and told me where my classroom was, one or two boys looked at me but that was all.

My teacher was called Mr. Jones. There were 42 boys in the class, so I didn’t stand out there, either, until the first lesson of the afternoon. Mr. Jones was very fond of Charles Dickens and he had decided to read aloud to us from David Copperfield, but first he asked several boys if they knew Dickens’ birthplace, but no one guessed right. A boy called Brian, the biggest in the class, said: “Timbuktu”, and Mr. Jones went red in the face. Then he asked me. I said: “Portsmouth”, and everyone stared at me because Mr. Jones said I was right. This didn’t make me very popular, of course.

“He thinks he’s clever,” I heard Brian say.

After that, we went out to the playground to play football. I was in Brian’s team, and he obviously had Dickens in mind because he told me to go in goal. No one ever wanted to be the goalkeeper.

“He’s big enough and useless enough.” Brian said when someone asked him why he had chosen me.

I suppose Mr. Jones, who served as the judge, remembered Dickens, too, because when the game was nearly over, Brian pushed one of the players on the other team, and he gave them a penalty (惩罚). As the boy kicked the ball to my right, I threw myself down instinctively (本能地) and saved it. All my team crowded round me. My bare knees were injured and bleeding. Brian took out a handkerchief and offered it to me.

“Do you want to join my gang (帮派)?” he said.

At the end of the day, I was no longer a stranger.