Feeling the Pinch?

Managing Money When It's Hard to Make Ends Meet

Does your emergency fund add up to less than three months of living expenses? Are you paying only the minimum amount due on your credit cards each month? Are you arguing about money in your household?

If you answer yes to any of these questions, it's time to talk about money.

Money is a common problem
Regardless of your income, age or education, money can cause hassles and arguments. Lack of open discussion about money and feelings about money often lie at the root of family financial problems.

When talking about money:

• Clearly identify the issue at hand.
• Recognize that whoever earns the money doesn't also earn the right to dictate how it should be spent.
• Let each household member freely state wants, needs and personal feelings.
• Listen carefully.

Develop a spending plan

A spending plan helps you spend less than you make. Here's how:

Write down every dime, quarter and dollar you and your household members spend. Record your expenses on the Monthly Expense Chart. You may be surprised to see how you are spending your money.

After a month of charting your expenditures, think about how you and your household members spend money. Can you make changes that allow you to pay more than the minimum on your credit cards?

• Did you find yourself buying lottery tickets?
• Are you buying coffee you could make at home?
• Are you making unnecessary trips with the car and using more gas? Can you combine trips or eliminate trips by carpooling?
• Are you bringing your lunch to work or are you buying lunch at work?

Where can you reduce or eliminate spending? Every change in how you spend money will free up some money for you to spend in another category.

For more information
Develop a Savings/Spending Plan
Browse our money-management Web pages
Attend a workshop or other money-management event
Consult a county Extension family & consumer educator

Written by Suzann Enzian Knight, Extension Family Resource Management Specialist

Key forestry publication being revised

Project seeks public comment

New Hampshire is unique among heavily forested states in that forestry practices and standards aren't mandated by state law, but upheld by voluntary compliance with best-practices guidelines.

This voluntary process is guided by Good Forestry in the Granite State: Recommended Voluntary Forest Management Practices for the State of New Hampshire (GFGS), a publication for both public and private forest landowners, and an essential tool for resource professionals working in all sectors of the State's $3 billion forest economy.

GFGS is currently being revised to consider new scholarship in the field of natural resources and to address changes in forestry markets and professional forestry practices, changes in natural communities, and changes in state statutes and administrative rules.

Looking for public input
Public input is an important part of revising GFGS. To that end, Cooperative Extension has set up a Good Forestry Web site to inform the public of the status of the project and to collect public opinion on the first edition of GFGS via an online survey.

We encourage all forest stakeholders to take the survey, which asks the public about their own use of GFGS, their assessment of the first edition, and their suggestions for the revised document.

The survey, which takes 10-15 minutes to complete, will remain open through December 1, 2008. The committee considers the survey responses an important contribution to the GFGS revision process.

GFGS history and new steering committee
The first edition of GFGS, published a decade ago and written by 24 New Hampshire forestry stakeholders, was a joint effort of the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests and the N.H. Division of Forests and Lands. The effort also included thoughtful comments provided by hundreds of individuals and organizations statewide.

The update project's steering committee represents stakeholders all segments of the forestry community, including

• N.H. Division of Forests and Lands
• N.H. Fish and Game
• UNH Cooperative Extension
• N.H. Timberland Owners Association
• N.H. Tree Farm, the U.S. Forest Service
• The forest products industry
• Many conservation organizations

Besides identifying information gaps and needed improvements to the current best-practices manual, the steering committee will recruit the technical teams to handle the writing and revision process.

Funding for the GFGS revision is provided by the Northeast Utilities Foundation, Inc.

To receive a paper copy of the GFGS survey, contact Kristina Ferrare at (603) 862-3883 or kristina.ferrare@unh.edu. For more information on the Good Forestry in the Granite State project, contact Karen Bennett, Project Manager, UNH Cooperative Extension, (603) 862-4861 or email karen.bennett@unh.edu

2009 NH Outside Calendar Available Now

Our beautiful 2009 NH Outside calendar is now available. The calendar contains excerpts from published NH Outside columns, illustrated with original artwork by volunteer artists and spiced with daily tips and tidbits to help increase awareness of the natural world.

Subtitled connecting you with the wisdom and wonder of the natural world, the calendar itself reflects the purpose of our collaborative writing project: to give our many natural resources volunteers who love to write another way to share the humor, insight, and wonder they've found in the world outside their doorways.

We recruit people with a passion for the natural world and offer training, professional editing, and ongoing support in exchange for their written work. Most of their essays reflect on a private experience or encounter with the world just outside their doorways.

The only aim of our project: to connect readers to nature in some concrete, meaningful way. Every week we distribute a new essay to print media statewide and publish it to our NH Outside Web page.

Last year's calendar won a first-place award from the Association for Communication Excellence (ACE), an international association of communicators and information technologists. We think you'll find this year's edition every bit as gorgeous and useful. At $8.95 each ($7.95 for bulk orders), we expect the calendars to disappear quickly.

Webworms or Halloween Decorations?

Ghostly apparitions emerge from the morning fog.

Many are old bedsheets and tablecloths draped over the vegetable garden's best tomato plant or still-green pumpkins. (Just another week without a frost is all I ask!)

But the most impressive of these spooky sightings are the trees draped with masses of light gray, silken webbing. They're inhabited by a caterpillar called the fall webworm, which seems particularly abundant this year.

I suspect it's because our cool wet summer favored caterpillar survival and reproduction over that of their natural predators, various wasps for instance.

Those hairy webworms eating your leaves at the moment will live in the soil this winter as pupae, emerging next July as pure white moths. Then the cycle will begin again.

Unlike that spring pest, the Eastern tent caterpillar, the fall webworm isn't very harmful to the plants it feeds on. Unsightly perhaps, but the leaf feeding happens so late in the year that little damage is done to the health of the tree.

Why not think of the nests as early Halloween decorations? I know I've seen worse draped over trees.

Article and photo by Steve Turaj, Coos County Agricultural Resources Educator

Making New Hampshire Better for Working Families

First N.H. Summit on Work and Family October 29

UNH Cooperative Extension in conjunction with the New Hampshire Legislative Task Force on Work and Family will host the first annual New Hampshire Summit on Work and Family October 29 at the Holiday Inn in Concord.

A single goal: Start the conversation about work/family balance
"This meeting has an elegantly simple yet profound goal: to initiate a dialogue between business leaders and human resource professionals, state legislators, labor leaders and representatives, researchers and bureaucrats on how to make New Hampshire a better place for working families," says Malcolm Smith, Extension Family Life and Family Policy Specialist.

Without balance, quality of both work and family life suffers
"We know when workers are forced to neglect their families' needs because of work related pressures, the quality and quantity of their work suffers," Smith says.

"In addition, when work pressures and job strain pile up at work, our families suffer. Therefore, it's vital that business, community, state and national leaders pay attention to the many issues involved in balancing work and family life."

Strong slate of state and national presenters
N.H. Governor John Lynch and UNH Provost Bruce Mallory will welcome attendees. Among the national and local experts and business leaders who will share ideas and information at the Summit:

• Cali Williams Yost, consultant, researcher, executive, and author of Work+Life: Finding the Fit that's Right for You. One of the leading voices and most creative thinkers in the work/life dialogue, Yost sees work and life-fit as a partnership between employers and individuals.
• U.S. Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, recently honored by Working Mother magazine as one the "best of Congress" for working families in the U.S. Maloney, who represents New York's 14th District, believes that the federal government should set a national standard for family-friendly workplaces. Her new book, Rumors of Our Progress Have Been Greatly Exaggerated, has garnered national attention and her work and policy initiatives have been featured on national news and talk shows.
• Connie Roy-Czyzowski, VP of Human Resources for NE Delta Dental, will host a panel discussion of business leaders from small to large companies that have increased profits and attracted vibrant employees by focusing on work and family balance. Included in the panel will be executives and human resource managers from Citizens Bank, Timberland, Hypertherm, and Badger Balm, among others.

Other sessions include:

• A research update on best company practices from the Work and Family Institute.
• An exploration of U.S. Department of Labor flex-time initiatives.
• Examples of how work and family practice, policy and legislation can work together to create family-friendly workplaces.

The best part?
The entire day, including lunch, is free. But you must pre-register to attend. For more information about the conference and presenters

Note: Listen to Dr. Malcolm Smith and others discussing work/life balance issues on NHPR's The Exchange with Laura Knoy.