Beyond Know How

Have you been putting off your emergency plans? Do you even have one? I read an emergency preparedness blog that recommended at least a month worth of food, supplies to live without power and water and an evacuation plan. Ideally, you’ll want to have at least 3 weeks of water for each person. As a rule, I put back a gallon of water per person, per day. This gallon of water per person includes water for drinking, washing and cooking. I also stock up both canned foods as well as freeze dried foods. These generally have the longest shelf life of any food. Just remember to rotate out your canned goods. Most have a shelf life of a year to three years, so choose wisely. Running out of food is no fun during an emergency.

If you’re just beginning to stockpile food, make sure you buy food that you actually eat. If you’ve never tried green beans and rice, don’t buy them! When you facing an emergency that could last a month or more, that’s not the time to find out you can’t stand green beans with rice, or any other strange food.

To make the most of your food stockpile, just continue to buy the foods you would normally. Just more of it. I normally budget an extra $10 to $20 per week to buy food for my emergency stash. You’ll be amazed at how fast you can put food back at this rate. You’ll even catch yourself doing without food you really don’t need in order to get some food for your stockpiles!

Our family has been taking camping trips since our kids were in diapers.  I was talking with a neighbor the other day who was going on his first family camping trip.  He has seen us packup the tents, sleeping bags and cooking gear many times and asked for a few tips on how to make the trip enjoyable for the kids.  Probably one of the most over looked this that parent do is not thinking of their kids comfort in the tent at night.  Oh sure adults will almost always have nice pads or cots to sleep on but the expect the kids to put their sleeping bags on the hard ground.   You can drastically improve their camping experience by getting a small adjustable air matteress for them to sleep on.  The kind the kids would use to float on at the pool or lake is better than nothing.  This will allow them to get a good nights sleep and be ready to tackle each day’s activities with a much better attitude.  So when you plan your family outing make sure that you consider the kids comfort as well as your own.

If you owe child support and are having it deducted automatically from your paychecks you may be wondering how they figure out how much you owe. In each state, the way the payroll department calculates child support is the same, but some states are more lienent to the percentage that the non-custodial parent must pay.

So how is child support calculated? The amount starts with what you owe each month. Depending on your pay period schedule, your child support may come out bi-weekly, weekly, twice a month, etc. It will be deducted with each paycheck. Your employer is required by law to deduct from your paycheck using a child support calculator equation that figures out whether you will have enough that is required after the child support is taken. Depending on your situation this may be 50%, 55%, 60%, or as much as 65%.

Which pecerentage that child support can be taken up to will depend on if you are supporting a family or have child support payments in arrears.