I’ve finally started digging into my first book of the year … a terrific book called Sheepish: Two Women, Fifty Sheep and Enough Wool to Save the Planet. More on the book to come but I wanted to share a quote from it that’s attributed to an anonymous source:

“We are all a little weird and life’s a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.”

Tags: quote, Relationships, weird

It’s amazing how many marriages end because the two people involved in them can’t reconcile their financial differences. It’s sad that money comes between us and our lovers so often, isn’t it? So how do we stop fighting about money.

Here are some of the tips that I think make sense:

• Deal with your emotions surrounding money. People fight about money because they have all kinds of money emotions. Issues related to fear, power and control dominate people’s money conversations. If you learn to deal with your money emotions and to keep them out of your financial talks, you’ll fight a lot less with your partner.
• Create a plan for handling money in your home. It’s not easy to come up with money solutions that work in your home. You need to consider who will pay the bills and how, which purchases need to be discussed in advance and which don’t and what your long-term savings goals are. This is tough. But if you create a plan, you’ll have something to work with and won’t fight as much anymore.
• Pick a date to deal with money. You don’t have to fight about money every day of the month. Pick one date (perhaps when rent is due) to deal with your money problems. Commit to solving them on that date. Then put the rest on the back burner until the next month and just enjoy your spouse without money being an issue.

I think we just need to start being more responsible and more respectful in our conversations about money and we’d have a lot fewer fights about it!

Tags: fighting about money, kathryn vercillo, marriage, money, money fighting, Relationships, stop fighting about money, talking about money

I love going on cheap dates. Don’t get me wrong – I can get all glammed up and go out for an expensive night on the town as well. But I tend to think that inexpensive dates are a lot more fun. You’re more relaxed on them. And you usually end up doing things that are more creative than you do when you spend a lot of money on traditional dates.

I happen to think that summer is the ideal time for romantic cheap dates. Part of that has to do with the great weather that most places have during the summer (something that’s not necessarily true where I live in San Francisco but can be found nearby). And it also has to do with the fact that there are so many great cheap events in summer that don’t necessarily happen the rest of the year.

Last weekend I got to enjoy a series of activities that made for great cheap dates. I actually went with the guy I’m dating as well as with some friends so it wasn’t uber-romantic but the activities we enjoyed were perfect examples of great cheap dates. Those activities were:

• A short inexpensive road trip. We piled into a car and listened to the radio and laughed about crazy sights in small towns along the road.
• Lunch in Old Town. We stopped in Old Town Sacramento and got a cheap lunch then just did some windowshopping and photo-taking.
• Antique browsing. I admit it – I love looking at old junk in cheap antique stores. I ended up buying a great colorful pitcher and glasses set for $15 but I would’ve been happy just looking too.
• Art gallery reception. We ended up in the small town of Marysville. There was an art and literary opening reception there. It was themed around the 1970′s and seeing the dressed-up people was great. Plus there was free wine and food.
• Farmers’ Market. There was a Farmer’s Market going on so we got some great inexpensive fruit and walked around people-watching.
• Carnival. It doesn’t cost much to play a game of throwing the darts at the balloons but it sure was fun.
• Spent the day at a river. The main purpose of the trip was to spend a day at the river up there. We floated down natural rock water slides, ate a picnic lunch, swam in too-cold water and had a really great time.

All of these things are cheap and there were fun and I’m looking forward to the rest of the summer’s adventures!

Tags: cheap dates, dating, frugal dates, kathryn vercillo, Personal Finance, Relationships, romance

The recession is doing strange things to people. It’s causing many different types of changes – some positive and some negative. One of the things that seems to be affected greatly is relationships. People are handling dating, marriage and discussions about money differently than they did in the past.

For some people, this has been a good thing. Couples that are facing the recession head-on together may be strengthening their relationship as a result of undergoing these tough times as a team. Unfortunately, that’s not how everyone is handling this situation.

There are quite a few couples out there that find their relationship impacted by the recession in a negative way. They are fighting about money. They are fighting about things unrelated to money because they’re stressed out by their finances. They are letting the recession tear them apart instead of allowing it to bring them together.

At the end of this difficult economic time, we are going to see that the way we dealt with the recession says a lot about who we are and the lives that we lead. Those couples who opt to make use of this time to bring themselves closer could be the ones that end up having positive life-long relationships.

Tags: dating, economy, marriage, money, Personal Finance, recession, Relationships

I recently wrote an article with 20 Tips for Dealing with Difficult People. What the common denominator for almost all of these tips ended up being was that you really need to deal with difficult people by changing yourself rather than them. This is a firm belief that I have for all situations that are making us unhappy. We can rarely change the circumstances around us and can even more rarely change the others within those circumstances but we can always work to change ourselves.

We like to believe that it is the people around us who are causing trouble for our lives. Although the problems that we face do often come to us in the form of conflict with another person, the solutions lie almost entirely within ourselves. How we opt to take in information, react to situations and deal with our own feelings about things is all up to us and that’s something that can entirely alter the situations that we find ourselves in.

For example, your husband goes on a business trip and doesn’t call you when he arrives even though you think that he should. You get angry. And then you get worried. And then you get anxious because you’re wondering where he is and what he’s really doing and why he hasn’t called and who he’s doing things with and … you make yourself crazy and angry. And when he calls, you express this anger and the two of you get into an argument.

In your mind, this entire thing was caused by the fact that your husband didn’t call. In reality, it was caused by your own belief that he should’ve called and your choice about how you reacted to it. Yes, he could’ve been doing god knows what with god knows who or he could’ve been lying in a ditch somewhere but neither of those things would have been altered by your own over-the-top reaction. You can choose to simply not react in this manner and save yourself a lot of chaos in your mind.

This isn’t to say that your husband shouldn’t call if he said he was going to. It’s to say that you can choose healthier options for your own mind and healthier ways of communicating your feelings. You can wait until your husband gets home to discuss how this made you feel and what you wish could be different next time. And you can give him the room to react accordingly. You can choose to be different if you want your relationships to be different.

Tags: change, communication, dating, friendships, how to improve relationships, hubpages, kathryn vercillo, people, Relationships

I’ve been really lucky in the past few years in that I have made a large number of great new friends. I’m not just talking about the people that I kind of know and see around. I’m talking about good friends who are really there for me.

It wasn’t always this way. I’ve often found it difficult to make new friends as an adult. Since I work from home, figuring out where to meet new people is tough. And since I’m busy, it’s hard to make the time that you need to make in order to really build up friendships.

But I’ve been successful at it lately and I’ve benefitted from that greatly. Here are some tidbits of info on how I’ve managed to make new friends:

• Met people through the Internet. Whether it’s Craigslist or Meetup.com or just via commenting on the blogs of local bloggers, I’ve used the Internet to make that initial connection. It’s just so much easier than approaching someone in a coffee shop, I think.
• Found things I like to do. It helps to have some shared activity when making new friends so I find things that I like to do and then invite along new people that I want to be better friends with.
• Said yes when people invited me to things. The more you go out, the more chance you have of making new friends, right?
• Maintained connections online. I find that sites like Facebook and chat conversations on AIM make it easy to really trade information and get to know someone even when you can’t get together in person all of the time. It’s not a substitute for real face-to-face connecting but it’s definitely a great supplement.
• Shared myself openly. The more open and honest I am about who I am and what’s going on with me, the stronger the connections that I’ve been able to make with others.

What else are people doing to make new friends as adults?

Tags: ehow, friendship, kathryn vercillo, meeting people, Relationships, socializing, society

I have been reading a bunch of interesting news articles online lately about divorce rates and the current economy. It’s interesting stuff because it seems to be this nasty cycle.

On the one hand, the poor economy is causing a lot of stress in marriages which means that there are a lot of couples interested in getting divorced right now. On the other hand, divorce is expensive. It’s complicated by the fact that couples usually own houses together and this is definitely not a good time to sell a house which is what usually happens in a divorce. So even though more people may want to get divorced, it’s actually a really bad time to do that.

Fascinating stuff. In my opinion, it’s a bad idea to make a decision about something as huge as divorce when you’re going through tough times because of other things. A marriage will go through rough times and getting through them together can really serve to strengthen your relationships.

Take a look at my two newest articles on this topic: How to Avoid Divorcing Because of the Economy and How to Delay Divorce Until the Economy Improves. Then come back and let me know what you think about those tips and whether you have any additional advice for people who are thinking about the pros and cons of divorcing in these rough economic times.

Tags: divorce, divorce rates, economy, finance, marriage, news, problems, Relationships

I’ve been busy answering questions over on Yahoo Answers. I think it’s a great way to connect with other people, share information about the things that I’m knowledgeable about and explore my thoughts on different topics. And apparently I’m not half-bad at giving advice because three of my recent Yahoo Answers were chosen as the “best answer” in their respective topics.

Take a look:

• I provided a detailed answer to a question about where to travel in the West or Southwest for Spring Break. Mostly I suggested cities in Arizona because the asker was really interested in doing photography on the trip and Arizona is such a beautiful state. However, I did note that there are several other great spring break destinations in that area.
• I gave a resounding yes answer to the question on whether yoga as anger management is a good idea. I believe that yoga is a great tool for stress reduction and for getting to know yourself which are two definite keys for reducing the feelings of anger in your life.
• I offered what I hope was helpful advice to someone seeking to find a way to get over a breakup without turning to friends. Basically what I said is that there are several things that you can do to get over a break up including finding things you enjoy to occupy your time. However, I pointed out that friends can really be a great support system in times like this and that the key is to choose the right friends for that support.

So I write about a lot of different things but I try to make sure that I know what I’m talking about before giving advice on any of them. I do my research, think it through and try to provide a complete answer to the question before me.

Tags: advice, break up, kathryn vercillo, questions, Relationships, spring break, writing, Yahoo Answers, yoga

You know what I think is one of the smartest things that you can do for yourself emotionally? Learn to find support when you need it. We all need people to support our choices and decisions and actions so that we can feel confident in what we’re doing. Finding the right people to support each different aspect of our lives can be hard but learning to do it can make the difference between a tough life and a much easier one.

One of the areas of life that we need support in is our work. Another, for many of us, is our creativity. And for those of us who do freelance work such as freelance writing, those two things often go hand-in-hand. Our creative selves and our money-making selves are all tied up in one and there can be a lot of conflict around that. To be strong enough to resolve that conflict, we need support.

The smart freelance writer will figure out where to get that support. They will realize that it can come in many different forms and from many different people from the support of people who read what we write to the support of people who pay us for our work. Making sure that we know where it’s coming from and that we get enough of it can be one of the smartest things we do for our careers!

Tags: employment, freelance, freelance writing, people, Relationships, support, work, writing

Loss is something that we all have to deal with in our lives. There’s major loss in the form of the deaths of our loved ones. There’s minor loss like when we lose a favorite piece of clothing. And then there’s all that loss in between when we lose our houses, lose our jobs, lose our sense of self or lose friendships to time. As we grow up, we learn to cope with loss.

People who have gone through major losses will probably be familiar with the 5 Stages of Grief that are traditionally accepted as being the things we go through when we are dealing with loss. We deny the loss, get angry about the loss, try to bargain not to have to go through the loss, feel depression over the loss and then finally, eventually, one day we accept the loss.

These five stages of grief are most often cited when going through dealing with the death of someone close to us. However, we experience them on some level for most losses. We definitely experience them when going through the loss of a romantic relationship. I’ve explored the five stages of grief when a relationship ends in a comprehensive article over at HubPages. The article looks at what happens in each stage and assures readers that eventually you really do get through to the other side!

Tags: breakup, coping with loss, divorce, kubler ross, loss, Relationships, stages of grief