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Difficult Family Conversations

Written by Ian Bloom, CFP® on .

Transcript:

What's up Internet? My name is Ian Bloom. Welcome to Nerd Finance! I'm your resident financial life planner and huge nerd!

In today's video, we are going to go back a little bit. At the beginning of the month I talked about running your household like a kingdom if you're going to be hosting. Well, there's some trouble in the kingdom because this video is on those difficult family conversations that can only possibly take place during the holidays. Whether it's politics, religion, or some other thing that's very near and dear to you, you may feel a lot of emotion around this time of year. So, here's a couple of quick tips to help you navigate that emotion.

Rule number one for difficult conversations around the family dinner table is very simple - if you raise your voice, you lose. This may seem counterproductive, because you want your point to be heard over all the chatter and discussion, but just know that anytime you get angry your points become less coherent. You'll speak less intelligently and you're less likely to get your point across in a way that doesn't offend anybody else at the table. If you're offended by something somebody else says that doesn't necessarily mean that you want to be offending the entire dinner table or making a scene.

The second rule of navigating difficult conversations with family is - listen for the pain. If someone is talking about a contentious topic, whether that be religion politics or something else, with a lot of emotion behind it there's probably a story behind their belief. Beliefs often come from a place of having an either extremely negative or an extremely positive experience. Often around politics, religion, or something similar there is a lot of pain there, so listen for it and identify it. If you can identify the pain in someone else's subject matter you make it a lot easier to proceed in the conversation without offending them, making the conversation snowball out of control, thereby leaving everybody feeling like the conversation went very, very wrong. So listen for that, it's there... trust me.

Rule number three of navigating difficult family conversations is - acknowledge the other person's viewpoint and get yours across in the same sentence, without diminishing either. You can have a contrary belief to somebody else at the table. I've never heard of anybody who had a family dinner table conversation around the holidays and completely changed their worldview based on it. So, I know that in some cases the views that are being expressed there are outdated or maybe so contrary to yours that it actually offends you, but keep in mind that you know shooting down somebody else's viewpoint is less likely to get them to change it. State yours in a positive way, state theirs in the best way that you can acknowledge it, and move past it, There's really not a whole lot that you're going to gain from a true argument at the dinner table.

This isn't really a rule, but always remember that you have the right to dismiss yourself. Whether that means going to take a bathroom break until the conversation is finished or just getting up from the dinner table to clean your plate.

Wrapping up this topic, these are the three simple rules for navigating family dinner table conversations, and these difficult family conversations wherever they happen around the holidays. They're not always that simple when you're in the heat of the moment, so just remember to take a deep breath and acknowledge that if it's some sort of bigotry or bias you are allowed to just walk away.

Thanks so much for watching this video! I hope you enjoyed it and if you did please make sure to like, comment, subscribe, and interact with the video in any way that you want. Then make sure to find your way over to our website at openworldfp.com. There you can find the blog, which much like this youtube channel features all the videos that I produce, but then it also has a transcript of all those videos. Thanks so much and have a wonderful day!

Money-Saving Tips for the Holidays

Written by Ian Bloom, CFP® on .

Transcript:

What's up Internet? My name is Ian Bloom. Welcome to Nerd Finance! I'm your resident financial life planner and huge nerd!

In today's video we are going to be covering some money-saving tips during the holidays, because the holidays are just always expensive, frankly. Whether it's a Christmas party you have to buy stuff for, just a get-together with your friends, or all of the gifts that you're expected to shell out if you celebrate a gift-giving holiday this time of year - there's a ton of stuff to do. So, I wanted to make sure to cover some tips for how you can save some money. Let's get started!

My first of three tips for saving money during the holiday season begins with gift-giving. Gift-giving is usually something that is viewed as a huge chore - you have to go out and shop for everything and usually, the malls are very crowded. But, there are some very easy ways to reduce that. I would start out by making a list ahead of time of all the people that you know that you want to be shopping for. Start it during the month of November. Just keep a list of names jotted down. Wait for the big sales to come around, Black Friday is usually the big one, but there's also some tradition called Cyber Monday which is really just Black Friday but the following Monday. Anyway, you can shop online for all of the gifts that you want for the most part. There aren't a whole lot of artisan goods that you'll be giving away this holiday season, because people generally want things that they've seen advertised. Finally, go ahead and purchase those items and have them shipped to your house in one big order. Then you're done, all you need to do is wrap them if that's what you want to do or throw them in gift bags. That makes gift-giving a whole lot easier and also a lot less expensive because you're purchasing all these gifts ahead of time - you know what you're spending and you're doing it all during the sales, so win-win.

My second tip for saving money during the holiday season is frankly, just save money on sweets. You see, I like dessert as much as the next guy. I really enjoy sugary foods, but as it turns out my wife and I receive tons of cookies, candy canes, and other forms of candy and other sweets during the holiday season. So it almost feels like a waste to go out and buy some fresh cookies to make.

My last tip for saving money during the holidays...well, set up gift exchanges. Within our friend group, what we realized is that we're all at different points in our career and have different amounts of money to spend, but we could all afford to spend $20 on one person within the friend group. So, we decided that we would just do a random gift exchange instead of everyone going out and buying individual presents for one another. I find that this makes it a lot more fun because nobody's budget is stretched in order to provide the fun gifts to one another. But, it allows us to still get that good, intrinsic value of giving a gift and having it well received. So, I enjoy setting those up and I recommend that you guys do that too. It's a good time.

Thanks so much for watching this video. I hope you enjoyed it, and if you did please make sure to like, comment, subscribe, and interact with the video in any way that you want. Then make sure to find your way over to our website at openworldfp.com there you can find the blog, which much like this YouTube channel features all the videos that I produce, but then it also has a transcript of all those videos if you're just looking to find some key highlights. Thanks so much and have a wonderful day!

How Do I Handle Holiday Hosting?

Written by Ian Bloom, CFP® on .

Transcript:

What's up Internet? Welcome to Nerd Finance! I'm your resident financial life planner and huge nerd!

In today's video, well...winter is coming and so are the holidays. This month we are going to be kicking off a series of videos that's going to be focused on getting you through the holidays alive and financially safe. The first part to this is talking a little bit about what happens if you have to host a holiday party, so let's get started.

As a host, remember this is your kingdom. You are the king or the queen of this castle. If somebody says something that really doesn't sit well with you, don't worry about it, they can't hurt you here. This is your place. That being said, as a host, there are some certain expectations of you. Let's go through the three big things that you'll want to take care of.

First, you'll want to make sure the place looks nice. A good kingdom is clean and well taken care of. It doesn't take a lot, but just go around and tidy up. Vacuum, dust, or whatever before you receive your guests. While you may not notice it during your day-to-day life, the little bit of lack of cleanliness that you may have in your house is frankly more noticeable to other people when they enter your home. It's just the way it is.

The second thing you want to make sure to do is procure some entertainment. For other nerds it may be sufficient just to hook up Super Smash Bros to the TV or in some cases just put out a board game that's nice and complex and hand them the rulebook while you go off to cook. That's easy. However, with family members it can get a little more complex. I suggest finding a pretty neutral game that family members can play or some puzzles that they can do, as well as throwing a sports game on the TV if that's the kind of person that they are. Neutral games that are a good fit are Scrabble and Bananagrams or some other similar puzzle-solving games such as Sorry or Trivial Pursuit. These are very very simple games that everybody can play and all ages can participate in. It'll keep them entertained for you.

Finally, some refreshments are a must. Refreshments are a very very big deal when it comes to entertaining. Frankly, if you don't have something to sip on or something to snack on you notice. In general, just make sure to have some stuff on hand. Whether you make it a BYOB situation, so that people can make sure to bring stuff that they prefer or whether you have stuff on hand, just make sure that it's there. Keep in mind of course that you are the host and you're providing the space, so guests can contribute or you can choose a budget limit that you're willing to spend on your guests ahead of time. Do some careful planning.

So wrapping up, careful planning or a little bit of forethought around all of these three subjects - the cleanliness, the entertainment, and finally, the refreshments that you have on hand - will make hosting a breeze. Trust me, it's a lot of fun to do but if you don't take some time to plan for this event it can get a little bit stressful. Thanks so much for watching this video, I hope you enjoyed it. If you did please make sure to like, comment, subscribe, interact with the video in any way that you want and then make sure to find your way over to our website at openworldfp.com. There you can find the blog, which much like this youtube channel features all the videos that I've produced. But, it also has a transcript of all those videos if you're just looking to find some key highlights. Thanks so much and have a wonderful day!

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