Daily Quotes: Alan & Marilyn Bergman

Dedicated to a noble profession - accounting - that only recently has been spending sufficient time getting rid of its bad apples:

For too many mornings
The curtains were drawn
It's time they were opened
To welcome the dawn
A voice deep inside
Is getting stronger
I can't keep it quiet any longer.
No matter what happens
It can't be the same anymore.

The Price of Children

Normally I would not post something to this blog that was this long or that I did not know who wrote it. But this was sent to me in an E-mail and I believe it needs wider distribution. If the person who wrote it will contact me I will gladly give attribution or if they prefer not to have it in the public domain I will reference where it can be obtained. But meanwhile I hope you all will enjoy.

The government recently calculated the cost of raising a child from birth to 18 and came up with $160,140 for a middle income family. Talk about sticker shock! That doesn't even touch college tuition.

But $160,140 isn't so bad if you break it down. It translates into:

$8,896.66 a year
$741.38 a month, or
$171.08 a week.

That's a mere $24.24 a day!

Just over a dollar an hour.

Still, you might think the best financial advice is don't have children if you want to be "rich" Actually, it is just the opposite. What do you get for your $160,140?

· Naming rights. First, middle, and last!
· Glimpses of God every day.
· Giggles under the covers every night.
· More love than your heart can hold.
· Butterfly kisses and Velcro hugs.
· Endless wonder over rocks, ants, clouds, and warm cookies.
· A hand to hold, usually covered with jelly or chocolate.
· A partner for blowing bubbles, flying kites
· Someone to laugh yourself silly with, no matter why with, no matter what the boss said or how your stocks performed that day.

For $160,140, you never have to grow up. You get to:
· finger-paint,
· carve pumpkins,
· play hide-and-seek,
· catch lightning bugs, and
· never stop believing in Santa Claus.

You have an excuse to:
· keep reading the Adventures of Piglet and Pooh,
· watching Saturday morning cartoons,
· going to Disney movies, and
· wishing on stars.
· You get to frame rainbows, hearts, and flowers under refrigerator magnets and collect spray painted noodle wreaths for Christmas, hand prints set in clay or Mother's Day, and cards with backward letters for Father's Day.

For $160,140, there is no greater bang for your buck. You get to be a hero just for:
· retrieving a Frisbee off the garage roof,
· taking the training wheels off a bike,
· removing a splinter,
· filling a wading pool,
· coaxing a wad of gum out of bangs, and coaching a baseball team that never wins but always gets treated to ice cream regardless.

You get a front row seat to history to witness the:
· first step,
· first word,
· first bra,
· first date, and
· first time behind the wheel.

You get to be immortal. You get another branch added to your family tree, and if you're lucky, a long list of limbs in your obituary called grandchildren and great grandchildren. You get an education in psychology, nursing, criminal justice, communications, and human sexuality that no college can match.

In the eyes of a child, you rank right up there under God. You have all the power to heal a boo-boo, scare away the monsters under the bed, patch a broken heart, police a slumber party, ground them forever, and love them without limits, So. . . one day they will like you, love without counting the cost. That is quite a deal for the price.

Love & enjoy your children & grandchildren!!!!!!!

Daily Quotes: Albert Einstein

Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value.

Daily Quotes: Theodore Roosevelt

To educate a person in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.

Daily Quotes: Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren

In civilized life, law floats in a sea of ethics.

Daily Quotes: Learned Hand

We may win when we lose, if we have done what we can; for by so doing we have made real at least some part of that finished product in whose fabrication we are most concerned: ourselves.

Daily Quotes: The Talmud

If you add to the truth, you subtract from it.

Daily Quotes: W. Clement Stone

Have the courage to say no. Have the courage to face the truth. Do the right thing because it is right. These are the magic keys to living your life with integrity.

Daily Quotes: Eugene L'Hote

Honesty isn’t a policy at all; it’s a state of mind or it isn’t honesty.

Daily Quotes: Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart

There is a difference between what you have a right to do and what is right to do.

Daily Quotes: Theodore Roosevelt

No man is justified in doing evil on the grounds of expediency.

Daily Quotes: John Wooden

The main ingredient of stardom is the rest of the team.

Daily Quotes: Andrew Fastow

In testimony in the trial of Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, "I think I said I was a hero and I believed I was a hero in the context of Enron's culture."

Daily Quotes: Winston Churchill

Personally, I'm always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.

Daily Quotes: James Cagney in his portayal of Admiral William Halsey

There aren't any great men. There are just great challenges that ordinary men like you and me are forced by circumstances to meet.

Daily Quotes: John Wooden

It is what you learn after you know it all that counts.

Daily Quotes: John Wooden

Things turn out best for those who make the best of the way things turn out.

Daily Quotes: Old Yiddish Proverb

Sometimes the remedy is worse than the disease.

A mol iz der refuch erger fun der makeh.

Daily Quotes: Albert Einstein

One should guard against preaching to young people success in the customary form as the main aim in life. The most important motive for work in school and in life is pleasure in work, pleasure in its result, and the knowledge of the value of the result to the commmunity.

Daily Quotes: Roy Disney

It's not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are.

Daily Quotes: Margaret Thatcher

You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.

Daily Quotes: Warren Buffet

Earnings can be as pliable as putty when a charlatan heads the company reporting them.

Daily Quotes: Bob Wright

Being posted on the day before the trials of Enron's Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling begin:

...nothing is more important than hiring smart, capable people who have unimpeachable integrity. By the way, you need both: integrity without knowledge is useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous.

Daily Quotes: Lord Acton

Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and authority: still more when you superadd the tendancy or the certainty of corruption by authority.

Daily Quotes: Martin Luther King Jr.

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

Daily Quotes: George W. Bush

At this moment, America's highest economic need is higher ethical standards.

Daily Quotes: Pearl S. Buck

You cannot make yourself feel something you do not feel, but you can make yourself do right in spite of your feelings.

Daily Quotes: Andrew Carnegie

As I grow older I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.

Daily Quotes: Abraham Lincoln

Stand with anybody that stands right. Stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong.

Daily Quotes: Plato

Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.