Extension News: October 2008 Archives

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.

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?

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

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

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.