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College Savings Beyond 529 Plans

We’ve written plenty about the challenges of saving for college and the performance woes of some 529 plans. In the WSJ’s  Weekend Investor section, Jane J. Kim explains how, thanks in part to recent tax-rate extensions, there are plenty of other college-savings options worth considering. These include standard brokerage and savings accounts, Coverdell Education Savings Accounts, plain-vanilla municipal bonds and even Roth individual retirement accounts and loans against life insurance policies.

Many Jugglers have 529 plans, state-sponsored vehicles which allow people to save for education expenses and withdraw the earnings tax-free. (Some plans even offer a break on state income tax.) For some families, though, 529 plans have fallen short of expectations in recent years, with middling performance, limited investment options and higher fees than their mutual-fund counterparts, Kim writes.

So for those who want access to a broader range of investments and easier access to their money, Kim describes in detail other options families may want to consider…

Make Your Bed, Clear Your Mind

I have a big writing project due in a few weeks, and before delving in one recent morning, I spent a couple hours cleaning up my desk. I tossed out old files, organized some folders and piles and created a neater workspace. While the act didn’t add to my word-count or get me much closer to my deadline, I still found it helpful. It’s hard for me to get much meaningful work done if my environment is too messy. For me, a cluttered space equals a cluttered mind. I thrive more in a neat, orderly environment than in a chaotic, jumbled one.

One of the simplest steps to creating an orderly home right from the start is to make your bed. I know some people feel that making the bed is a worthless activity—after all, you’re going to get back in it in a few hours, so why bother? But I love how it gives me a sense of order that helps carry me through the day….

iPhone Mastery: New Milestone for Tots?

A post over at the WSJ’s Digits blog by Jennifer Valentino-DeVries caught our eye today. Here’s an excerpt:

These kids today. They’re playing with apps and computer games and learning to use a mouse. Whatever happened to tying their shoes and learning to ride a bike?

Young children are still learning to do those traditional activities, but they’re also mastering a variety of tech skills early in life — raising questions about how quickly the world is changing for kids and parents.

Take the skill of tying shoelaces, for example. In a recent survey, 14% of kids age 4 or 5 could tie their shoes, while 21% could play or operate at least one smartphone app…

Is the child who can play with smartphone apps by age 2 a tech genius, or is touchscreen usage something we should expect of a toddler? Do we need a new list of developmental milestones that takes technology into account? And should we be concerned if children learn to navigate the Web before they can write their name?

Read more over at the Digits blog and return here and share your thoughts:  Do you have young kids who have mastered things like apps? And how should we view the use of technology by very young children?

Q & A: Walter Mosley on Taking Care of Your Parents

Walter Mosley is a best-selling author of more than 34 books, including the popular mystery series featuring detective Easy Rawlins. His latest novel, “The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey,” explores some issues that many Juggle readers have dealt with or will eventually face: the challenges of aging, and caring for someone with dementia.  The book’s lead character, 91-year-old Ptolemy Grey, lives in a cluttered Los Angles apartment and suffers from age-related dementia. A young family friend helps care for him, helping to restore his dignity – and eventually, through an experimental medical procedure, his memories.

The book is a personal one for Mosley. In recent years, he helped care for his mother, who suffered from dementia and passed away two years ago at age 88. Like many people dealing with aging or sick loved ones, Mosley, 59, had to manage his mother’s care remotely; he lives in New York City, while his mother remained in her home in Los Angeles.

Mosley hired caregivers through a local social-service agency to help his mother in her own home, where she had lived since the early 1960s. Some of her care was funded by a long-term-care insurance policy that his mother had bought, with foresight, years earlier.

I spoke with Mosley recently about some of his experiences caring for his mother. Here are some excerpts from our conversation…

The Power of ‘No’

One of the biggest challenges of my daily routine is learning how to set limits and say no.

As a part-time worker who cares about my job and my colleagues, it’s easy for me to get lured into answering work emails or editing copy during the hours I’m supposed to be off. But in this new year, I resolve to try to be more diligent, when possible, about not responding to everything when I don’t need to. It’s hard to remember, in this super-fast digital world, where the idea of the 9-5 workday is becoming more of a relic, that some things really can wait until tomorrow. (Google Calendar even has a cool feature that allows you to send an out-of-office-like warning to others if they invite you to meetings outside of your working hours – Hat tip: Working Moms Break blog.)  Part of this involves working as efficiently as possible and managing expectations–to be clear with colleagues and bosses about what is possible, and what isn’t, within working hours…

How to Get Your Kid to Sleep

Getting enough sleep is a tall order for both parents and kids alike, given many of our jam-packed, stress-filled days that leave little time for a good night’s rest.

But, as we’ve written about before, sleep is key for our physical and mental health – and that of our kids. Having a child with sleep problems is no picnic for parents; it can severely disrupt a parents’ routine, causing weakened work performance and grumpiness during the day. Scientists have also linked children’s sleep problems to a host of issues, including aggressive behavior, learning and memory problems and obesity. Now, researchers are discovering that children with chronic sleep problems are at increased risk for developing a mental illness later in life, as Andrea Petersen reports in today’s Personal Journal.

Psychiatrists and psychologists say they hope that by addressing sleep problems in childhood, some of the instances of later mental illness can be prevented, Petersen reports. There’s a lot parents can do to encourage healthy sleep…

For Work-Life Balance, Be an Accountant

I usually don’t think of accountants as ahead-of-the-curve visionaries. But the accounting industry has led the way in providing work-life balance and flexible schedules for its employees, according to a recent New York Times piece.

Many large accounting firms, for example, allow employees to work just a few days a week during non-peak months or to take whole summers off to devote to their families. Others offer three-to-six month sabbaticals at 40% pay but with full health benefits so employees can chase life dreams, like climb mountains or do volunteer work overseas. Some firms have programs that allow employees who take significant time off –like new mothers — to keep up with education and licensing requirements so they can eventually return to work at full speed.  Many of the firms’ flexibility programs are open to all employees, both women and men.

The firms say that such policies…

Friday Fun: Job Descriptions Gone Wild

Is it tough to describe what you do?

Several months ago, the WSJ ran a page-one story about how company descriptions have gotten ridiculously vague.  As “corporate complexity collides with the fanciful phrasing of image makers,” the story says, it’s getting harder to tell what some companies actually do. DXP Enterprises Inc., for instance, describes itself as “a leading products and service distributor focused on adding value and total cost savings solutions to MRO and OEM customers in virtually every industry since 1908.”  Huh? In plainer language, the company distributes pumps, tools, nuts, bolts and safety supplies such as hard hats.

The same can be said for individual job titles and career descriptions. In my extended family, we have a “search-engine optimization consultant,” a “user-experience designer,” a “multimedia designer” and an “organizational consultant for nonprofits,” among others. Try explaining some of those jobs to the kiddos on Career Day.

The explosion of technology and the growth of the financial-services industry mean that hundreds of new professions have come into being since the days when many of us were simply doctors, lawyers or teachers. For kids, this is complicating the answer to the age-old question…

Amy Chua Responds to Readers

Over at our WSJ blog Ideas Market, Amy Chua, author of the new book “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” answers some questions from Journal readers. The excerpt from the piece, titled “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior,” attracted a lot of attention, generating more than 4,000 comments on wsj.com around 100,000 comments on Facebook, and many comments on our related Juggle posts. Here’s an excerpt from her Q & A:

Do you think that strict, “Eastern” parenting eventually helps children lead happy lives as adults?

When it works well, absolutely! And by working well, I mean when high expectations are coupled with love, understanding and parental involvement. This is the gift my parents gave me, and what I hope I’m giving my daughters. I’ve also taught law students of all backgrounds for 17 years, and I’ve met countless students raised the “tough immigrant” way (by parents from Pakistan, India, Nigeria, Korea, Jamaica, Haiti, Iran, Ireland, etc.) who are thriving, independent, bold, creative, hilarious and, at least to my eyes, as happy as anyone. But I also know of people raised with “tough love” who are not happy and who resent their parents. There is no easy formula for parenting, no right approach (I don’t believe, by the way, that Chinese parenting is superior—a splashy headline, but I didn’t choose it). The best rule of thumb I can think of …

Read more at Ideas Market and then come back and share your thoughts.

Taming a Wild Closet

How organized are your closets?

Mine, alas, are a mess. While I try to keep the public areas of my house as clutter-free as possible (a tall order with two young boys and a dog),  I often take short-cuts in our mid-century house’s tiny closets.  Shoes are in a jumble on the floor of my bedroom closet, while clothes are pouring out of my Elfa shelving, which we installed in a wan attempt at taming the disorder.

My closets are a far cry from those described in today’s Personal Journal.  Anjali Athavaley writes how closets in some houses have been upgraded to room-like status, with amenities like flat-screen TVs, coffee makers and fancy lighting. Just having a walk-in closet won’t do anymore…