Home Management

How to Build an Indoor Play Area for Your Kids We have four very active children, so about a year ago we decided that we needed a place for them to play and burn energy in the winter and when they couldn't go outside. In our search for ideas we came across this blog , showing their indoor climbing wall and monkey bars. We really liked the idea and made our own very similar version.  Climbing Wall We used these rock climbing holds from Amazon for the climbing wall. We liked these holds because of the price, the natural rock look, and because they are installed with screws instead of with bolts. To make the wall we used 3/8" sheets of OSB (oriented strand board) that we glued and screwed together to create a double thick board. I made two sets so we could stack one on top of the other to make a taller wall. We used OSB because my parents had some extra and we could get it for free. Plywood would look nicer, but is more expensive. After attaching the boards we s...

Easy, Low Cost Investing with Acorns A few months ago I signed up for an Acorns account. At the time it seemed like a simple way to save a few extra dollars every month (money that I wouldn't have done anything with anyway), and it wouldn't feel like a sacrifice. For the most part that has been true.  How Acorns works.  When you sign up for Acorns you link one or more checking accounts to your Acorns account. Acorns then monitors the transactions in your account and rounds each of of them up to the nearest dollar. So if I spend $3.12 then Acorns records a "round up" amount of $0.88 or if I spend $198.97 then Acorns records a "round up" amount of $0.03. Once the total of my round ups gets to $5.00 Acorns withdraws that amount from my checking account and invests it in my Acorns account where it can earn money on the stock market. This process allows people to begin investing in the stock market for a very low rate (most of the time you have to start...