I have an appointment with my bank tomorrow on my lunch hour, to help me sort out my finances now that I will be living back in Canada again. The last time I lived here, I was a single, carefree person who didn't really care about tomorrow. Now I'm a boring old married person, and it's time to think about things like life insurance, if not retirement savings. I would like to make one point, though: There is no woman in my family who has lived to retirment age. I do not expect to be the first. There is a faulty gene somewhere. But when my mother died lo these many years ago, my father was entitled to all her pension and retirement savings - which wasn't much.

Perhaps if she had known Babs, and taught me to do the same...

One of the greatest gifts we can give our son is an education about money. At fifteen months old, he's too young to understand the lessons, but we're starting anyway. Every cent he gets (mostly money from Grandparents at his birthday and Christmas) gets divided up. 50% he can spend (or we do for him at this point), 25% goes in his savings, and 25% goes to the orphanage in Russia from which he was adopted. Right now, since I control his spending money, it goes primarily to new books. Kids can have too many toys, but they can't have too many books. Once he's old enough to make choices we'll work on making appropriate ones, but I know he'll buy a lot of garbage. That's ok. We've all done it. Still do. But I want him to understand that a lot has to be put away for the future. And as much needs to go to those less fortunate. For now, it's the orphanage. Later, he can help choose.