Imagine a life where all your time is spent on the things you want to do.

Imagine giving your greatest attention to a project you create yourself, instead of working as a cog in a machine that exists to make other people rich.

Imagine handing a letter to your boss that reads, “Dear Boss, I’m writing to let you know that your services are no longer required. Thanks for everything, but I’ll be doing things my own way now.”

Imagine that today is your final day of working for anyone other than yourself. What if—very soon, not in some distant, undefined future—you prepare for work by firing up a laptop in your home office, walking into a storefront you’ve opened, phoning a client who trusts you for helpful advice, or otherwise doing what you want instead of what someone tells you to do?

All over the world, and in many different ways, thousands of people are doing exactly that. They are rewriting the rules of work, becoming their own bosses, and creating a new future.

Some of these unexpected entrepreneurs found their freedom through online communities, creating digital goods that were sold for a fair price. Others took to opening retail storefronts in actual neighborhoods—a yarn shop in Portland, a coffee bar in South Carolina.

Some were natural-born entrepreneurs, determined to go it alone from a young age. But most were ordinary people of all ages and backgrounds, who transitioned to a new career after growing disillusioned with the world of traditional work.

They all did it by pursuing two twin concepts: freedom and value.

Freedom is what we’re all looking for, and value is the way to achieve it. The magic formula of skills + usefulness is how you change the world.

When you value freedom above other things, you’ll make different choices. Your priorities will shift. You’ll have more time for your family and more time for the hobbies you enjoy.

When you focus on helping others, connecting your work to their needs, that’s when value is created.

This is what it came down to for all of these people, and that’s how it can work for you too. No special skills, not a lot of money, but the willingness to imagine.

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Chris Guillebeau is the author of The $100 Startup, a new book that chronicles the rise of unexpected entrepreneurs and provides a blueprint for creating your own freedom. You can also read his free blog at ChrisGuillebeau.com. 

‘… and she loved a boy very, very much– even more than she loved herself.’ ~Shel Silverstein, The Giving Tree

Post written by Leo Babauta.

There is no such thing as stress-free parenting.

A reader requested that I share my thoughts on stress-free parenting, as the father of six kids. And while I have learned a lot about being a dad, and finding joy in parenthood, I also know that stress-free parenting is a myth.

Parents will always have stress: we not only have to deal with tantrums and scraped knees and refusing to eat anything you cook, but we worry about potential accidents, whether we are ruining our kids, whether our children will find happiness as adults and be able to provide for themselves and find love.

That said, I’ve learned that we can find peace.

Peace isn’t a place with no stress, but a place where you take the stress as it comes, in stride, and don’t let it rule you. You let it flow through you, and then smile, and breathe, and give your child a hug.

There is a Way of the Peaceful Parent, but it isn’t one that I’ve learned completely. I’ll share what I’ve learned so far, with the caveat that I don’t always follow the Way, that I still make mistakes daily, that I still have a lot to learn, that I don’t claim to have all the answers as a parent.

The Way

The Way is only learned by walking it. Here are the steps I recommend:

• Greet your child each morning with a smile, a hug, a loving Good Morning! This is how we would all like to be greeted each day.
• Teach your child to make her own breakfast. This starts for most children at around the age of 3 or 4. Teach them progressively to brush their teeth, bathe themselves, clean up their rooms, put away clothes, wash their dishes, make lunch, wash their own clothes, sweep and clean, etc.
• Teaching these skills takes patience. Kids suck at them at first, so you have to show them about a hundred times, but let them try it, correct them, and let them make mistakes. They will gradually learn independence as you will gradually have less work to do caring for them.
• Older children can help younger children — it’s good for them to learn responsibility, it helps the younger children learn from the older ones, and it takes some of the stress off you.
• Read to them often. It’s a wonderful way to bond, to educate, to explore imaginary worlds.
• Build forts with them. Play hide and seek. Shoot each other with Nerf dart guns. Have tea together. Squeeze lemons and make lemonade. Play, often, as play is the essence of childhood. Don’t try to force them to stop playing.
• When your child asks for your attention, grant it.
• Parents need alone time, though. Set certain traditions so that you’ll have time to work on your own, or have mommy and daddy time in the evening, when your child can do things on her own.
• When your child is upset, put yourself in his shoes. Don’t just judge the behavior (yes, crying and screaming isn’t ideal), but the needs behind the behavior. Does he need a hug, or attention, or maybe he’s just tired?
• Model the behavior you want your child to learn. Don’t yell at the child because he was screaming. Don’t get angry at a child for losing his temper. Don’t get mad at a kid who wants to play video games all the time if you’re always on your laptop. Be calm, smile, be kind, go outdoors and be active.
• When a stressful time arises (and it will), learn to deal with it with a smile. Make a joke, turn it into a game, laugh … you’ll teach your child not to take things so seriously, and that life is to be enjoyed. Breathe, walk away if you’ve lost your temper, and come back when you can smile.
• Remember that your child is a gift. She won’t be a child for long, and so your time with her is fleeting. Every moment you can spend with her is a miracle, and you should savor it. Enjoy it to the fullest, and be grateful for that moment.
• Let your child share your interests. Bake cookies together. Sew together. Exercise together. Read together. Work on a website together. Write a blog together.
• Know that when you screw up as a parent, everything will be fine. Forgive yourself. Apologize. Learn from that screw up. In other words, model the behavior you’d like your child to learn whenever he screws up.
• Patiently teach your child the boundaries of behavior. There should be boundaries — what’s acceptable and what’s not. It’s not OK to do things that might harm yourself or others. We should treat each other with kindness and respect. Those aren’t things the child learns immediately, so have patience, but set the boundaries. Within those boundaries, allow lots of freedom.
• Give your child some space. Parents too often overschedule their child’s life, with classes and sports and play dates and music and clubs and the like, but it’s a constant source of stress for both child and parent to keep this schedule going. Let the child go outside and play. Free time is necessary. You don’t always have to be by her side either — she needs alone time just as much as you do.
• Exercise to cope with stress. A run in solitude is a lovely thing. Get a massage now and then.
• It helps tremendously to be a parenting team — one parent can take over when the other gets stressed. When one parent starts to lose his temper, the other should be a calming force.
• Mom and dad need a date night every week or so. Get a babysitter, or better yet, teach the older kids to babysit.
• Sing and dance together.
• Take every opportunity to teach kindness and love. It’s the best lesson.
• Kiss your child goodnight. And give thanks for another amazing day with your beautiful, unique, crazy child.

‘You know the only people who are always sure about the proper way to raise children? Those who’ve never had any.’ ~Bill Cosby

Kids in today’s school system are not being prepared well for tomorrow’s world.

As someone who went from the corporate world and then the government world to the ever-changing online world, I know how the world of yesterday is rapidly becoming irrelevant. I was trained in the newspaper industry, where we all believed we would be relevant forever — and I now believe will go the way of the horse and buggy.

Unfortunately, I was educated in a school system that believed the world in which it existed would remain essentially the same, with minor changes in fashion. We were trained with a skill set that was based on what jobs were most in demand in the 1980s, not what might happen in the 2000s.

And that kinda makes sense, given that no one could really know what life would be like 20 years from now. Imagine the 1980s, when personal computers were still fairly young, when faxes were the cutting-edge communication technology, when the Internet as we now know it was only the dream of sci-fi writers like William Gibson.

We had no idea what the world had in store for us.

And here’s the thing: we still don’t. We never do. We have never been good at predicting the future, and so raising and educating our kids as if we have any idea what the future will hold is not the smartest notion.

How then to prepare our kids for a world that is unpredictable, unknown? By teaching them to adapt, to deal with change, to be prepared for anything by not preparing them for anything specific.

This requires an entirely different approach to child-rearing and education. It means leaving our old ideas at the door, and reinventing everything.

My drop-dead gorgeous wife Eva (yes, I’m a very lucky man) and I are among those already doing this. We homeschool our kids — more accurately, we unschool them. We are teaching them to learn on their own, without us handing knowledge down to them and testing them on that knowledge.

It is, admittedly, a wild frontier, and most of us who are experimenting with unschooling will admit that we don’t have all the answers, that there is no set of “best practices”. But we also know that we are learning along with our kids, and that not knowing can be a good thing — an opportunity to find out, without relying on established methods that might not be optimal.

I won’t go too far into methods here, as I find them to be less important than ideas. Once you have some interesting ideas to test, you can figure out an unlimited amount of methods, and so my dictating methods would be too restrictive.

Instead, let’s look at a good set of essential skills that I believe children should learn, that will best prepare them for any world of the future. I base these on what I have learned in three different industries, especially the world of online entreprenurship, online publishing, online living … and more importantly, what I have learned about learning and working and living in a world that will never stop changing.

1. Asking questions. What we want most for our kids, as learners, is to be able to learn on their own. To teach themselves anything. Because if they can, then we don’t need to teach them everything — whatever they need to learn in the future, they can do on their own. The first step in learning to teach yourself anything is learning to ask questions. Luckily, kids do this naturally — our hope is to simply encourage it. A great way to do this is by modeling it. When you and your child encounter something new, ask questions, and explore the possible answers with your child. When he does ask questions, reward the child instead of punishing him (you might be surprised how many adults discourage questioning).

2. Solving problems. If a child can solve problems, she can do any job. A new job might be intimidating to any of us, but really it’s just another problem to be solved. A new skill, a new environment, a new need … they’re all simply problems to be solved. Teach your child to solve problems by modeling simple problem solving, then allowing her to do some very easy ones on her own. Don’t immediately solve all your child’s problems — let her fiddle with them and try various possible solutions, and reward such efforts. Eventually, your child will develop confidence in her problem-solving abilities, and then there is nothing she can’t do.

3. Tackling projects. As an online entrepreneur, I know that my work is a series of projects, sometimes related, sometimes small and sometimes large (which are usually a group of smaller projects). I also know that there isn’t a project I can’t tackle, because I’ve done so many of them. This post is a project. Writing a book is a project. Selling the book is another project. Work on projects with your kid, letting him see how it’s done by working with you, then letting him do more and more by himself. As he gains confidence, let him tackle more on his own. Soon, his learning will just be a series of projects that he’s excited about.

4. Finding passion. What drives me is not goals, not discipline, not external motivation, not reward … but passion. When I’m so excited that I can’t stop thinking about something, I will inevitably dive into it fully committed, and most times I’ll complete the project and love doing it. Help your kid find things she’s passionate about — it’s a matter of trying a bunch of things, finding ones that excite her the most, helping her really enjoy them. Don’t discourage any interest — encourage them. Don’t suck the fun out of them either — make them rewarding.

5. Independence. Kids should be taught to increasingly stand on their own. A little at a time, of course. Slowly encourage them to do things on their own. Teach them how to do it, model it, help them do it, help less, then let them make their own mistakes. Give them confidence in themselves by letting them have a bunch of successes, and letting them solve the failures. Once they learn to be independent, they learn that they don’t need a teacher, a parent, or a boss to tell them what to do. They can manage themselves, and be free, and figure out the direction they need to take on their own.

6. Being happy on their own. Too many of us parents coddle our kids, keeping them on a leash, making them rely on our presence for happiness. When the kid grows up, he doesn’t know how to be happy. He must immediately attach to a girlfriend or friends. Failing that, they find happiness in other external things — shopping, food, video games, the Internet. But if a child learns from an early age that he can be happy by himself, playing and reading and imagining, he has one of the most valuable skills there is. Allow your kids to be alone from an early age. Give them privacy, have times (such as the evening) when parents and kids have alone time.

7. Compassion. One of the most essential skills ever. We need this to work well with others, to care for people other than ourselves, to be happy by making others happy. Modeling compassion is the key. Be compassionate to your child at all times, and to others. Show them empathy by asking how they think others might feel, and thinking aloud about how you think others might feel. Demonstrate at every opportunity how to ease the suffering of others when you’re able, how to make others happier with small kindnesses, how that can make you happier in return.

8. Tolerance. Too often we grow up in an insulated area, where people are mostly alike (at least in appearance), and when we come into contact with people who are different, it can be uncomfortable, shocking, fear-inducing. Expose your kids to people of all kinds, from different races to different sexuality to different mental conditions. Show them that not only is it OK to be different, but that differences should be celebrated, and that variety is what makes life so beautiful.

9. Dealing with change. I believe this will be one of the most essential skills as our kids grow up, as the world is always changing and being able to accept the change, to deal with the change, to navigate the flow of change, will be a competitive advantage. This is a skill I’m still learning myself, but I find that it helps me tremendously, especially compared to those who resist and fear change, who set goals and plans and try to rigidly adhere to them as I adapt to the changing landscape. Rigidity is less helpful in a changing environment than flexibility, fluidity, flow. Again, modeling this skill for your child at every opportunity is important, and showing them that changes are OK, that you can adapt, that you can embrace new opportunities that weren’t there before, should be a priority. Life is an adventure, and things will go wrong, turn out differently than you expected, and break whatever plans you made — and that’s part of the excitement of it all.

We can’t give our children a set of data to learn, a career to prepare for, when we don’t know what the future will bring. But we can prepare them to adapt to anything, to learn anything, to solve anything, and in about 20 years, to thank us for it.

When I wrote about my family doing the No New Gifts Holiday Challenge, I received a couple comments that I was a Grinch:

You must be a drag to live with. ‘What kind of deprivation and sacrifice has Daddy got for us today?’

and

I couldn’t agree more lol, I’m sure kids see him as the Grinch, i feel sorry for them. I doubt his kids would be like ‘Yes dad, don’t buy me the latest Call of Duty game, i don’t want the 1% to get richer.’

While I was touched by the concern for my kids, I am not worried:

• My kids have plenty of video games and electronics (including the latest COD game). They earn money and buy them themselves, and learn that if they want something, they can earn it, and it’s not handed to them.
• My kids have everything they need and much more. If anything, they have too much, but I try not to force my minimalist philosophy on them.
• Instead of deprivation, my kids are learning that there is much more to Christmas than getting a bunch of presents. (More below.)
• They are learning to be creative instead of consuming. This lesson is more necessary today than ever.
• We are learning that spending time with family is more important than spending money or spending time shopping.
• Together we are creating new traditions based on creativity, fun, and giving, not just buying.
• We are thinking of ways to give that don’t necessarily involve shopping — making gifts, volunteering, donating to charity, etc.

The reaction of my kids when I talked to them (once again) about not buying presents? They completely understood my anti-consumerism reasoning, and they were excited to come up with new ideas. Honestly. I was really proud of them when I sat down with them (individually and in groups) and talked about these ideas — they didn’t look disappointed at all, they in fact happily thought of some cool things we could do together.

Some ideas they’re excited about doing this Christmas instead of buying new gifts:

1. Making our own gifts. My son Seth is really, really excited about making stuff. In fact, he wants to make something for himself and wrap it up to open on Christmas morning. Yes, he’s a bit weird, but I love that. Eva wants to sew gifts for people.
2. Baking gifts. We love baking, and it’s a fun activity to do together. And we can give cookies, cupcakes, brownies as gifts to family, make them fatter, but not clutter their homes with needless possessions.
3. Going to play in snow. We’re from Guam, so snow is a novelty for us. My kids know it from Christmas movies and the like, but it’s not a yearly tradition for us — so driving to play in snow is really fun. We love making snow people, snow forts, snow angels, and having snowball fights.
4. Volunteering. We’re not sure where we want to volunteer this year (in past years we’ve done soup kitchens and Salvation Army bell ringing), but we do like the idea of giving.
5. Christmas caroling. We aren’t good singers, but we love singing Christmas songs.
6. Playing games. We love, love board games and other such games. We love getting together with family and playing games and sports. Having fun with family doesn’t have to involve gifts.
7. Make decorations. It’s so much fun to put up festive decorations, and if you can make them yourselves, even better.

And this is just the start of the ideas we’ve come up with. Sure, buying gifts is a holiday tradition — but is it the only possible tradition? Can’t we create new ones?

My kids are not deprived. In fact, I think our family is very lucky, and I hope to show others that creativity, fun, giving, and family bonding are amazing things that you can do without being a participant in the usual consumerism.

I often get asked how I can do so much while having six kids.

My short answer, and all you really need to know, is my wife Eva is awesome. I couldn’t do half what I do without her.

She is the reason Zen Habits is able to exist. And so if you want parenting advice, you’d be smart to ask her.

She doesn’t, however, have a blog. And so I’ll share some things that we both do that make our jobs as parents easier.

These are Very Important Rules that must never be broken by any Serious Parent … until, of course, you want to break them. The first rule of Rules of Effortless Parenting is that you should always break rules.

Rules of Effortless Parenting

There is really only one rule: Love Them. But you already knew that one, so let’s get into details:

1. Teach kids to be self-sufficient. Our kids started by learning how to pick up after themselves (as 1 and 2 year olds), and later learned how to feed themselves breakfast, brush their teeth and shower and dress themselves, wash dishes and clean up in the kitchen, clean their rooms, do laundry, etc. Our jobs as parents became tons easier, but it does take a little patient teaching in the beginning of each skill.

2. Teach older kids to help with the younger kids. If you have multiple kids, this rule is golden. Our teens can help the little kids with anything. That makes our jobs a lot easier, and the older kids learn responsibility.

3. Teach them to solve problems. This is really the main job of unschooling, which is the philosophy we follow as homeschoolers. Our kids don’t learn facts or even skills. They learn to solve problems on their own. If they know how to do this, they can learn any facts or skills they need to solve their problems. Want to learn how to write a computer program? That’s just another problem that you need to learn how to solve. Want to cook Thai food, or write a blog, or start a business, or build something? Problems that you can solve.

4. Show them how to be passionate. The other main thing you teach unschoolers, besides solving their own problems, is how to be passionate about something. If they know this, they will do work they’re passionate about as adults. How do you teach them this? By modeling it yourself. By doing projects with them where you’re passionate about something. Kids learn an amazing amount by watching and mimicking.

5. Play with them outside, and be active. Spending time with your kids is one of the best ways to show them you love them. Playing with them is one of the best ways to spend time with them. Playing outside shows them how to be active and have fun being active. I also stay active on my own, but I make sure they know what I’m doing, why, and how much fun it is. They have a role model who is healthy and fit, and that will help them for the rest of their lives.

6. Don’t overschedule. Most parents schedule too many classes, sports, parties, activities. We give our kids lots of unstructured, unscheduled time. They have to figure out what to do with that time. That’s an important skill to learn. It also means their lives are less stressed out, as are ours, and they learn a slower pace of life.

7. Don’t dote. I’ve seen lots of parents that dote on everything their kids do, who are worried about every little thing their kid might touch or that might cause a fall. Back off, and give them some space. They need attention, but they also need some time alone to explore, to fall and get back up, to scrape their knees, to figure stuff out on their own. Go do something on your own, and leave your kids alone sometimes.

8. Dance. Because life without dance is dull and not worth living. Play loud music. Go crazy.

9. Read with them, and read in front of them. Kids love books, especially if you read them with them. Here are some of my favorites. If you are a reader yourself, and they see that, this will teach them to love reading too. Reading is one of the best loves you can instill in kids.

10. Be inquisitive. Ask questions about everything, and encourage them to do the same. Kids are naturally inquisitive … they can ask a million questions, because everything is new to them. Learn to see the world through their eyes — it’s amazing. Why the hell IS the sky blue? Why do leaves change color? How does a bird fly? These are brilliant questions, and you should explore them with the kids — don’t just give them answers, but show them how to find out.

Every time we automate a process in our lives, we trade a piece of consciousness away for a piece of convenience.

This can be fantastic, as long as we ensure that we automate positive, sustainable habits.

The problem with automation comes when we try to apply it to areas in our lives that need more consciousness.

We run into trouble when we try to solve a problem by automating it.

Automation itself doesn’t fix anything.

In fact, automating a undesirable process only buries the problem even further.

“Problems can’t be solved at the same level of awareness that created them.” -Albert Einstein.

We cannot solve problems by trading away consciousness.

We need to reverse this trend. We need unautomation.

Unautomation is the act of deliberately trading back pieces of convenience for increased consciousness in return.

In our financial lives, there are plenty of examples were we can benefit from unautomation:

• Creating a list of every item you own. While far from convenient, this will drastically increase the awareness of our clutter.
• Using a 30-day list for wants. Waiting 30 days to purchase an item can be a drag, but we’ll likely realize how little we really desired it in the first place.
• Tracking our spending with pen and paper. Carry a small pocketbook and record every purchase by hand rather than just on your plastic.
• Converting the cost of items into time we’ll need to work. This can be a tough exercise, but will put things in perspective quickly.
• Purging 2 items for every 1 you bring into your life. Yet another inconvenient (at times) rule-of-thumb that can raise awareness around just how much clutter we bring into our lives.
• Quit signing contracts. Until you’ve ever tried to quit signing them, you don’t realize how fundamental contracts are in our society.
• Spending with cash over plastic. Going without plastic isn’t easy, but you can’t get much more aware than we spending cold, hard cash.
• Taking public transportation. You may have to leave early or plan a little more in advance, but taking public transportation will open your eyes the other side of your daily commute.

These examples are only a handful of hundreds of money instances where we could benefit from a path of less convenience and more consciousness.

The next time you look to change a set of behaviors in your life, don’t turn to automation.

Start with unautomation.

My daughter Chloe is starting out in college in the fall, and with her newfound independence will come the newfound responsibilities of dealing with money.

Like many young people, she hates thinking about finances.

I was one of them. I always dreaded budgeting and paying bills and thinking about savings and retirement, and figured I could always deal with it later.

Problem with that is you end up screwing yourself if you put things off until later. Living for the moment is great, until the finances catch up with you and the moment starts to suck because you owe a ton of debt.

I’ve found that living mindfully means not just partying in the moment, but taking care of things now, when they’re small, rather than when they’re huge.

So with that in mind, I have a few lessons I’d like to emphasize for Chloe, and for anyone else starting out in college.

1. Spend less than you earn. OK, this is almost the only lesson you need, but it’s so important I’m going to break it down further. The biggest reason people get into financial problems is they spend money they don’t really have. Then you end up in the hole, and it’s hard to get out of the hole, and you work crazy hours to keep up with your spending, and you end up with a life that’s about nothing but trying to pay for all the spending on crap you don’t really need.

So spend less, work less, worry less, be happier.

1a. Don’t get into debt. If you spend less than you earn, you won’t be in debt, obviously. It’s easy, though, to get a student credit card and put things on there if you don’t have the money right now. You can pay for it next week when you get your check, right? That’s a slippery slope. Student loans are another tool for getting over your head in debt. They’re not the worst debt if you’re paying for a degree that’s going to earn a lot of money, but most of us English majors aren’t going to get an $80K per year job and shouldn’t take out $80K in student loans.

1b. Savings is your first bill to pay. If you spend less than you earn, save the rest. Make the savings an automatic payment that happens every payday, and make it the first and most important bill you pay. Not optional. You’ll be glad as the savings grows, and especially when emergencies come up.

1c. If you don’t have the money, go without. This is a lesson most people (young or old) forget. You don’t actually need a car, so if you can’t afford to pay cash, don’t get a loan. You don’t need nice clothes, or a smart phone, or a fancy laptop or iPad or Kindle, you don’t need to go to nice restaurants or the movies or bars. If you don’t have the money, find free ways to have fun or get things done you need to get done.

2. Make a very very simple budget. It’s a scary thing for people who’ve never done a budget, but it’s not hard. List your income, then list your bills (and savings). If the bills add up to more than the income, eliminate some bills. Use a simple spreadsheet to do the adding for you. This helps you to know what’s coming in and going out. I like the envelope system for making sure I don’t spend to much on variable expenses.

3. Pay bills right away. If you have the money, pay the bill as soon as it comes in. You can usually do this online, but if not, it’s just a matter of writing a check, putting it in an envelope, and writing out an address — two minutes. Do this two-minute action immediately, so you don’t have to worry about it later. If you let the bill-paying get pushed back, it becomes a dreaded thing, and your bills start to become overdue, and then it’s much worse.

That’s all you need to know. If you save when you’re in college, avoid debt (except perhaps a modest student loan), and pay bills on time, you’re golden.

For almost a year now, my wife Eva, my six kids and I have been walking and riding mass transit almost exclusively.

We have bikes but we’re still new to them, and we also use City Carshare for longer trips out of the city. But for everything else, it’s walking and mass transit — for meeting with people, going to restaurants and movies and museums and parks, for grocery shopping (we only buy what we can carry), farmer’s markets, fairs, visiting relatives, and more.

It’s been one of the best things ever for us.

We’ve adjusted from being car users when we were on Guam. I love walking tremendously (I can walk anywhere in the city), but I also love the mass transit … for the lessons it has taught my family.

Some of the lessons we’ve learned so far:

1. How to wait. Mass transit isn’t always on time (surprise!). But rather than look at that as a reason why riding buses and trains suck, we learn how to see that as an opportunity. My boys climb trees while I do pullups and (admittedly rudimentary) gymnastics from a low branch. We tell jokes and I swing the little kids around. We share things with each other, make each other laugh. It’s a good time.

2. How to walk. Mass transit doesn’t take you everywhere, so we walk more than most families. That’s a great thing. Even my little ones are in pretty good shape and rarely complain about walking. We deal with the weather, which is something most people don’t do, as they’re cut off from the world in their glass and metal boxes. Truthfully, we don’t always walk — we love to race each other up hills and be out of breath. It’s wonderful.

3. How to deal with humanity. We’re often shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers, which is something you never experience with a car. We deal with smells, with annoying people, with those who talk loudly, with the mentally challenged, with plain crazy people. In other words, with people. And this is a great thing. We learn that we come in all shapes and sizes, that life isn’t the perfect picket fences you see on TV, that the world is real … and that that’s OK. We’re learning to celebrate differences.

4. How to live sustainably. We haven’t cut our emissions to zero, but by the simple act of giving up a car, we’ve cut our use of resources and our emissions down more than most people will by recycling, buying less, using less heat, using less paper, etc. I’m not saying this to brag, or to judge others. I’m saying we’re learning, and while we have a lot to learn, I think we’re making progress.

5. That transit can be more convenient than cars. Sure, it’s nice to be able to hop in your car and go somewhere quickly, no matter the weather. That’s convenient. But there are inconveniences with cars that we forget about: the frustrations of parking (especially in San Francisco), traffic jams, rude drivers, car accidents, flat tires, car maintenance, having to stop for gas, having to actually drive instead of relaxing on the trip, sitting all the time instead of moving around, and more. Again, I’m not judging cars, but all of that, if you think about it, makes riding on a bus or train actually seem nice.

6. How to live frugally. My kids aren’t poor, but I want to teach them that there are good ways of living that don’t have to cost a lot. That spending money for conveniences isn’t necessarily a good thing. We shop at Goodwill, ride transit, cook in big batches, eat little meat (my wife and I eat none). We’re not the most thrifty ever, but we’re teaching the kids that it’s possible. (Read more.)

7. How to live with less control. When you have a car, you feel that things are under your control (forgetting about traffic, accidents and the like). But when you’re riding mass transit, things are not under your control. You’re at the mercy of the schedule, of drivers, of other people slowing the system down, of trains breaking down and backing the system up, and so on. You learn to let go of the illusion of control, and to deal with changes as they come. This is a miraculous lesson.

I haven’t written about finances in awhile, because these days I barely think about them.

That’s because for several years, I focused on getting out of debt — and these days, I live completely debt-free and worry little about finances. It’s a beautiful thing.

However, recently a reader asked me to write about Simple Budgeting, and so I thought I’d revisit the topic. I’ll talk about how I deal with finances these days, and then a Simple Budgeting method for those who aren’t exactly debt-free yet.

How I Deal with Finances

As I said, these days my finances barely register on my brain. Now that I’m out of debt, it’s not a major issue for me, and I’ve automated most of my finances.

Here’s what I do:

1. Income is streamed into my checking account automatically. My income is all electronic, so I never deal with checks. In a couple cases I’ve purposely set up electronic payments when previously I was sent checks.

2. Savings & investments are automatically taken from the checking. If it’s not automatic, I might forget about it. Forgetting about it is a good thing when it’s automatic though — I will check every few months and see how my savings and investments have grown.

3. I often make major payments all at once in the beginning of the year. Because I’ve been able to grow my savings account, now that I have zero debt payments, I have a good cushion so that I can pay things like rent or other major expenses all at once in the beginning of the year. This way I don’t worry about the payments each month, and I don’t spend money I might need for these payments.

4. Other bill payments are made automatically. If I don’t pay in one big lump sum, I’ll set up automatic monthly payments. I never worry about paying bills. I just make sure there is enough in my checking account at all times to cover the total amount of my bills.

5. I leave a cushion in the checking for unexpected expenses. And once the bills, savings and investments are taken care of, what’s left is basically groceries and other living expenses. I don’t spend all of what’s left, because other things will inevitably come up, and having a cushion means I don’t have to worry about these things. Building up a cushion took me time — after I eliminated debt, I just continued to spend little so that I could build up savings and a cushion in my checking account.

And that’s about it. I don’t budget anymore, because everything is automatic. I am not quite as frugal as I was when I was getting out of debt, but that’s the freedom of living debt-free — you don’t worry about that stuff as much.

Simple Budgeting

If you’re a bit lost when it comes to budgeting, it’s not that hard. You just need to sit down and do it, and not put it off. Here are the steps I’d recommend:

1. First make a few lists. Lists are easy. The lists you need: list all your monthly income amounts (estimate an average if you have irregular income); list all your mandatory payments (like rent, auto, power, groceries); list debt payments. See how much (if any) you have left over — if there isn’t much, see the next step.

2. Simplify. See what “mandatory” payments you can eliminate. This might take time, but many things are optional. For example, I eliminated cable TV, magazine subscriptions, a car payment (going from two cars to one), and more. Also, see what discretionary spending you can eliminate while you’re trying to reduce debt — Starbucks coffee, eating out a lot, buying magazines or comics, etc.

3. Make savings and debt payments first, each payday. Make that mandatory, even if they’re small at first ($50 each maybe). Try to increase them as you continue to simplify.

4. Make mandatory payments next. Rent, car, utilities, etc. Make them automatic if possible, but if not go online and pay them right away each payday.

5. What’s left over is spending cash. Maybe it’s for groceries, gas, and fun money (eating out, etc.). If you have difficulty not spending your grocery and gas money so that they last for two weeks, put the amounts you think you’ll need in separate envelopes — one for gas, one for groceries, one for fun money.

6. Long-term moves. Over the long term, you want to decrease and even eliminate debt, one debt at a time. This will free up a lot of your money. You also want to start saving for an emergency fund immediately, and build it up over time. This is crucial, as without even a small emergency fund you’ll never smooth out the bumps that inevitably come up. Increase income if possible while you’re getting out of debt. And when you’re out of debt, start investing in index mutual funds (Vanguard 500, for example) to grow your money over the long term.

Is your family stuck in a rut? Are you bored? Do you find yourself wondering how you got so far off track?

You’re not alone!

All families go through times like these occasionally. I know I would love to be able to push a pause button and just sit, regroup and get back on track.

While that’s not literally an option, life doesn’t come with a pause button, there are ways we can get back in touch with our families. With a bit of effort it is possible to get in sync, connect and move forward in a deliberate and meaningful way as a team.

I have a great family who I love dearly but that’s not to say we get off track from time to time. I want to share with you a few things we do occasionally to get back on the same page.

1. Have deep and meaningful conversations. After being with someone for months or years it’s easy to take them for granted. We assume we know them better than they know themselves. We consider ourselves experts on their likes and dislikes, their needs and wants. And I’m sure you know what they say about assuming. The thing is people change. Their tastes change. Their hopes and dreams evolve. Their outlook on life has likely changed significantly to what it was 15 years ago.

The simple act of sitting and talking about things that matter can do wonders to deepen the understanding we have for one another.

2. Be present. This probably isn’t the first time you’re hearing this on Zen Habits. When we’re distracted by cell phones, email, work, presentations, TV etc. it’s difficult to really appreciate what’s going on around you. Think about it – if you’re at work trying to have a conversation with your boss but he/she is constantly checking his/her email, phone messages and waving at everyone that walks past the window, how would you feel? Frustrated? Unimportant? Discounted?

You can only fully experience something and give someone your undivided attention when you don’t have the temptation to be somewhere other than where you are in that moment. Your family is no different.

3. Do something fun. Block out a chunk of time and do something fun with your entire family. Go for a walk, ride your bikes or go skating. Do something none of you have done before like rock-wall climbing, yoga or badminton. Team activities where you have to work together to succeed are great ways to promote trust, increase the sense of belonging and unite you as a team.

4. Plan for the future. Think as long term or short term. Maybe you want to plan your summer holidays or what you will do once you’re done school. Maybe you want to plan a little further out and think about retirement or early retirement if that’s in the cards. Planning together gives a sense of longevity to the relationship and gives you something to work towards together.

5. Invest in your family. Take the time to really put your family first. So many of us simply pay lip service to the phrase “family is my number one priority” yet very few of us actually live it. Investing a bit of time and energy in your family can tighten that core unit, make everyone feel safe and secure and raise happiness to levels you only imagined.

If you are ready to give your family a reboot, I would like to tell you about a program Leo and I will be offering through Zen Family Habits starting Thursday April 14. It’s called The Ultimate Family Bootcamp and it’s designed to help and inspire families of all shapes and sizes to regroup, reconnect, feel happier and move forward in their right direction.

This is a 10 week multi-media bootcamp with 10 modules discussing topics like creating your ideal family, getting on solid financial ground, time management for real people, organizing and decluttering, mastering the art of self-renewal and much more. These modules consist of a combination of weekly videos, articles, workbooks, printables as well as expert interviews.

If you would like more information please check out the course page here. Leo and I look forward to you joining us this April for a bootcamp – family style.

Sherri is the co-creator of the The Ultimate Family Bootcamp. Read more on family, parenting, organizing and simple happiness at their blog Zen Family Habits.