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FREE Will & Trust Kit from Suze Orman!

Today Emily and I, along with some other bloggers, got to chat with the DYNAMIC and passionate Suze Orman on the phone, thanks to Avon. Suze is the financial advisor to all of Avon’s independent consultants. Isn’t that cool? She’ll also be featured in Avon’s “Success Without Limits” program, airing on Oxygen at 6:30 PM this Saturday. Suze’s personality was as large over the phone as it is on her financial television show. She was very funny and straight forward and she gave us some great financial advice.

Here are three key things I learned from our call with Suze today:

1) Your emergency fund should contain enough money for you to live off of for eight months! I didn’t realize this, I was thinking more four to six months! Very eye-opening.

2) Going back to school? Don’t defer your previous student loans! Just keep paying them off. Student loans can almost never be discharged in a bankruptcy filing should you fall on hard times, so get them out of the way NOW.

3) You should never start saving for your kid’s college funds until you are out of credit card debt, have a fully-funded emergency fund, and are putting savings away for your own retirement. Once you have those things in place, Suze recommends a 529 college savings plan.

For more great financial tips, you can visit Suze’s website – and Suze was kind enough to give all of us and our readers a FREE GIFT! From now until Midnight on Saturday, April 25th, you can download Suze’s Will & Trust Kit – valued at $2,500 – for FREE!! Here’s how:

Just go to suzeorman.com and click the “Will & Trust Kit” link in the blue bar on the left-hand side of the home page. Click the orange “Gift Code” button and enter “Moms Rule” into the gift code field. Click the green “Submit” button and follow the instructions to redeem your free copy of the Will & Trust Kit.

I did this tonight and finished the whole kit in less than two hours – that’s with my kids running around everywhere and my phone ringing off the hook! It is an awesome resource. You do it all online and then it prints to PDF for you. Amazing! Thanks Suze, for the great call today and the great gift.

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Wasssupdate!

So, I kind of left you hanging there a couple of weeks ago when I told you my hormones still had me all in a twist and that I was going to the doctor.

I thought I’d better give you an update so that you’d know I haven’t done anything crazy like laying down in oncoming traffic or running around the neighborhood in my underwear searching for my childhood cat who died when I was 10. *Ahem*.

My OB-GYN agreed with my self-diagnosis of a hormone imbalance (me + Google = medical degree!) and she said the best thing for that really would be for me to try another kind of birth control pill. Now, since the pill is part of what made me go crazy in the first place, I was reluctant to try it unless I had a little something to take the edge off the debilitating depression it *just might* cause.

So, it’s Ortho-Tri-Cyclen with a side of low-dose Prozac. (Is that like Diet Prozac? Prozac Lite?) I already started the happy pills, but I can’t start the birth control until Sunday, for reasons I should not have to explain to any of you females reading this. I am a little nervous about this week as it gets closer to the beginning of my cycle, which is when I generally get irrational and weepy and what-not! I’ll be fun two weeks of the month, and then the complete opposite of fine the other two. So here’s hoping the superhappyfun meds are already kicked in enough. We shall see. In any case, I am hopeful that a month from now, I will be feeling MUCH better. And my doc had me schedule an appointment with her in a couple of weeks to see how I’m doing.

I appreciate all your comments, thoughts, and prayers! I am a million kinds of tired of not feeling like myself, and a million kinds of thankful that you’ve let me share my feelings with you.

{Insert supportive comments here.}

Love y’all.

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I can’t believe you’re five.

To my Kate,

Today is your fifth birthday. Your fifth birthday. How did that happen? In so many ways, it seems impossible that it’s been five years since you were born. In others, it seems impossible that we existed without you.

From the moment you were born, you were an incredible baby. Your dad swears the first time you looked at him, you smiled.

The nurse said to us, “That baby knows what she likes and what she doesn’t.” She was right, and you still do. I absolutely love that about you. I do… even though at times it makes me nuts. Your instinct and self-assurance will serve you well.

When you were born, your dad and I were such rookies. We had no idea what we were doing. (But we do now. Yep. For sure. Ok, still – no idea.) By being the first one, you had our complete focus, our complete attention, for four years. And while neither you nor your brother have very complete baby books, someday you’ll be able to look back on the Excel spreadsheets that contain detailed plans of your introduction into solid foods and lists of your first words. At least you have that going for you.

You have already had to be the one to push through the boundaries your dad and I are afraid to cross, whereas your brother will slide right through them. For example, on your first birthday, you had whole wheat toast with cream cheese. On his first birthday, Sammy had cake.

By the time you turned two, though, I let you have cake.

You really love the icing.

Each year, you grow so much, and every time I look at you I see less of the tiny baby, the little girl you once were. Even last year you still had some of that baby-ness to you.

Now that you’re five, you’ve turned the corner. You’re completely in “big kid” territory now. You’re less soft and more angles. But you’re still the most beautiful girl I have ever seen.

You have a wonderful personality. You’re friendly and smart, you’re funny and kind. You got everything good your dad and I had to offer, kiddo, and you have so many things that are uniquely your own. You absolutely amaze me, Kate. I love you so, so much, and I am incredibly proud of you.

Happy birthday, baby girl.

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