I remember when my son was young we made a move to a new state. We left behind a community within a community. We left behind a large group of people (friends and neighbors) that subscribed to similar ethics and standards of behavior. Everyone we knew, predominantly, up-held same guiding principles that our family lived by. Then that ever fateful day. It was during first week at his new preschool & playing with his new neighborhood friends in our new state. My son walked in house and I made a simple statement “because that is how we do it.” To which my son replied “well, Mike’s family doesn’t do it that way and they don’t even care about that stuff.” UGH ! We had come to another milestone in parenting: awareness of diversity within family styles and values.

The reality is that kids DO learn through osmosis; meaning, they will assimilate and become what they see around them. However, what is it that they see around them? Aside from home-schooled children (or those that attend private academies) children today are away from their families up to 12 hours a day in some cases including before and after school care. Being gone either 8 hours or 12 hours a day leaves precious little time for a family to model all appropriate qualities they wish to instill within their children. Not to mention, these hours are relegated to EARLY morning hours (barely awake time) and late evening before bed hours (barely coherent time again).

Gone Phishin’ When I was a wee lass, my Grandpa George would take me to pond on a warm Saturday afternoon and we’d fish for hours. Unfortunately, this type of Phishing has nothing to do with warm fuzzy memories of my Grandfather.

Phishing (sounds just like fishing) usually arrives in your inbox in form of a spoofed e-mail message. It sure looks legit, huh? Well, it’s not. Phishers blast e-mail messages in hopes you’ll take bait and click links, which will redirect you to a fake website. What do they want? Your account numbers, PIN numbers, SSNs: anything they can use to gain entry to bank and brokerage accounts and other financial information.

Remember, your brokerage, bank, credit union and credit card provider will never ask for this information via e-mail. They will never ask you to login to your account to confirm information.

If you feel you’ve been phished, do not access links included in e-mail. Also, reporting phishing to your ISP and Anti-Phishing Working Group (http://www.antiphishing.org/).

The Paper Trail – Snatch that Receipt I bet you’re type to leave receipt at gas pump and at ATM when you make that late night deposit. Smack on hand and shame on you – stop doing that! Take ALL receipts when you make a purchase or a deposit, when you return items, etc. When you go to clothing store, take receipt out of bag and place it in your wallet.

Save all receipts until you receive your end-of-month statements (see Two Dollars below). Also, don’t throw away your receipts; see my notes on shredding

It’s … Like … Magic! Pet Peeve: Folks who use cheesy passwords to protect their online accounts – you people make me crazy! I recently hired a client and I’m managing several e-mail accounts for him. Guess what password he used for ALL of them? You guessed it: magic. I immediately changed passwords on all of accounts and then we had a chat.