Time for back to school regimen | Sep 11th 2007
Planning for a new school year is not unlike planning for a new business year. Creating a budget for back-to-school spending, structuring my hours to accommodate school, organizing paperwork and coordinating everything with my husband are all pieces of a complex plan I’ve put in place to keep things running smoothly.
I’ll need to work a minimum of 35 hours per week to recover from the financial hit we took by reducing my hours at the beginning of the summer. I worked about 20 hours a week since June, which means I’ll spend 75% more time in my office starting next month. In order to accomplish this without too much fallout, the entire family is going back on a fairly regimented schedule.
My husband created a weekly dinner menu which ensures we sit down promptly at 6 pm and we’ve agreed to put the kids to bed by 8:30 pm, latest. My alarm clock goes off at 7:00 a.m. sharp, even if I don’t have any place to go, so that we’re all up and moving around at about the same time each day.
Budgeting for extra expenses is also an important part of getting ready for the school year. A good friend of mine gave me great advice for sticking to a back-to-school budget. Namely, don’t set foot into any store without a list. I budgeted $150 for each child’s back-to-school needs including clothes, shoes, school supplies such as bags, pencils and paper and I’ve really challenged myself to stick with this budget.
A quick word about organization
When my daughter started kindergarten last year I had no idea how much paperwork she’d bring home with her each day. Every available surface in our house was buried beneath a pile of memos, artwork, homework and critical school forms that I spent way too much time hunting down.
My preschooler also brings home lots of paperwork and between the two girls, my business and our personal mail, it’s a wonder I can find anything. To combat the growing tide of paperwork, I spent an entire weekend updating my files and devising a system for handling what’s sure to be a mountain of new papers. Most importantly, I communicated the new system to my husband (who prescribes to the paper bag method of filing).
Hopefully this means that the phone doesn’t get shut off again (which happened TWICE in the last year) because the bill was lost in a pile of artwork, and neither girl misses the opportunity to go on the field trip of their dreams because I forgot to send the signed permission slip back.
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This article was published in the Poughkeepsie Journal on Saturday, September 1, 2007.