Hello, fellow tinkerer 👋

ICYMI, I'm co-hosting a free live session about taxes and budgeting for solopreneurs with tax expert Hannah Cole of Sunlight Tax on April 30th at 10:00 am CT.

Can't make the live session? Sign up anyway, and I'll send you the replay and resources after.

1) Reflection:

My 16-year-old got their driver's license last week. Let me tell you, I thought it was hard when they got behind the wheel for the first time with their permit. But at least I was in the car with them, and we were in a parking lot with no other cars around. Watching your child drive away for the first time on their own is an entirely different set of feelings.

I'm looking forward to the decreased chauffeur responsibilities on my end, since my teen can now drive themselves to and from activities. And also, I'm sure it will be a long time before I stop worrying.

2) Product

When I turned 16, my dad made me sign a "driving contract." It outlined the expectations for using a car, plus what I would pay for (like my own gas).

For my kid, I found this teen driving contract online and modified it. If you've got a pre-teen or soon-to-be-driving teen, I recommend something similar. That way, they understand the seriousness of driving, and there are no questions about what they're responsible for.

3) Tip

I'd been forewarned that my car insurance would increase astronomically when I added my teen (which was true). Car insurance is one of the many things I budget for.

If your bank allows it, I really like savings account "buckets." One account, and you can create virtual buckets for different savings, like "insurance" or "travel." One of my banks (Ally Bank) has this feature, but other banks I use don't. In those instances, I create multiple savings accounts.

I even have multiple savings accounts for my business to help me budget (which is one thing I'm going to talk about in the upcoming live session!)

Want more ideas?

→ Last time I sent my newsletter, I mentioned that I'd built a system to consolidate school emails into a single digest and asked if y'all thought that would be useful. Several replied, so I wrote up a tutorial here.
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→ I previously interviewed Hannah Cole and her work at Sunlight Tax. You can read the interview here.

→ If making decisions is hard for you, here's a way to apply "fast thinking" and slow thinking" approaches, depending on the type of decision.

That's it for this issue of Tinkering! See you again in two weeks.

Cheers,
Anna

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