🎮 Cheat Codes To Fatherhood

Dadpack Digest, V9

A dad refuses to pay for his daughter's 4th marriage - "I have managed to stay married for 33 years. It's not that difficult. I will help her with the next one." Takes to Reddit, am I the asshole?

This Week From Dadpack

• 🎮 📺 If life was a video game, here's how to win: There are plenty of cheat codes to living a happier and healthier life.

• 🤓✏️ Study, buddy: Keeping yardsticks and measuring cups accessible might help your kid with math and science one day.

• 📰 🚨 In case you missed it: Most of the news dads can use to make small talk with other parents on the playground.

• 💸💰 Great recommendations: The best budgeting app of the year is free and easy to use, but with few frills. But who needs frills when you have cash?

• 📎🖇 Why paper clips are a dad's best friend: Just make sure your kid doesn't find your hiding spot.

Dad Debrief: What Are The Cheat Codes To Life?

Life is not a video game, but sometimes it’s fun to think of it as one — particularly when it comes to identifying cheat codes that make the day to day more meaningful. The big question is, what are the cheat codes for being a dad?

Engineer, entrepreneur and father Mike Schiff has a few good ideas for where to start. Schiff took to Twitter recently to share a few hacks he’s picked up over the years. And while some of his tips are related to fitness and wellness, many of the more compelling codes are really about identifying your values and not wavering on what matters to you.

“An abundance of money is the lowest form of wealth. An abundance of health, love and free time are the highest forms of wealth,” Schiff wrote as his first tenant, followed by, “Only get feedback from those who are playing the game. It’s too easy to boo from the sidelines.”

In terms of being a dad, his priorities are clear. “You’ll never regret playing with your kids, even if you must stay up late to work after they go to bed,” he added. “Teach your kids the things you wish your dad had taught you.”

It’s not that you have to identify with every tool or trick that Schiff uses to maintain perspective as a parent. It’s that his thread raises the more valuable question of what is important to you and what keeps you from doing it?

Or to put it more playfully, what are your cheat codes to life?

Good News, Dad News

• 😷 🤒💊 Thanks to the Covid-19, flu, and RSV "tripledemic" parents have to brace themselves for a children's tylenol shortage and other pediatric medications, because apparently having a sick kids wasn't already stressful enough.

• 🤑📈 Rober Kiyosaki, the author of "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" predicts that Bitcoin will become more valuable once the fed Fed prints more money, decreasing it's value and making tangible dollars more "fake."

• 🍔🐮 If you're sick of the Impossible and Beyond Burger hype, it turns out that the entire fake meat boom is in danger of busting due to dumb money and greed in the industry. So go ahead and buy the cow.

• 🐳🎥 "The Whale" starring Brendan Fraser (a father of three), set a specialty box-office record for 2022 for "best limited opening." As much as critics praise Fraser's performance, they kind of hate the movie.

• 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy started in his first NFL game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, where his family cheered him on from the Levi's Stadium stands. Within the first half, Purdy's dad was so overcome with emotion over her son's stellar performance, he welled up in tears. There may be no crying in baseball, but in football it's fair game.

Do You Even Tinker, Bro?

It’s not surprising that many parents want their children to take an interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, and potentially wish they entered the STEM field themselves. In 2021 alone, the annual mean salary for STEM jobs was $100,900, compared with $55,260 for careers outside of STEM.

Regardless of what they end up doing when they grow up, getting children interested in STEM is incredibly helpful for their future. For instance, studies show that when children are engaged in STEM activities it not only increases their interest in science, but it also increases social-emotional learning as well.

So how do you make sure your kid is into STEM? New research suggests that keeping items around the house like a thermometer, measuring cup, a map, a yardstick, blocks, binoculars or a magnifying glass, and other simple tools is a great start. As much as we want to think that school is enough to teach children about science, past data indicates that individual interest levels largely depend on what’s going on at home.

And the key seems to be finding your inner Wayne Szalinski, only without shrinking anyone.

“Ordinary tools that we have around the house can play an important role in building interest in science careers, and can help children develop new lifelong hobbies,” study co-author Gail Jones, Alumni Distinguished Graduate Professor of Science Education at North Carolina State University, said in a press release. “Also, having access to these tools is related to a child’s perception that their family values science. When they think that the family values science, they are more likely to want to go into a career related to a STEM field.”

After surveying 44 parents and 45 children ages 8 to 11 about their access to basic science tools at home, as well as giving them several different STEM assessments, Jones and her team found that access to basic tools like a yardstick were “significantly correlated with their science achievement value score,” the researchers concluded.

In the end, most of setting up children for success involves maintaining a household conducive to “tinkering” or what Jones describes as “spontaneous play” or “messing about.” More specific examples she offers are “building a tower with paper straws, making a bridge with toothpicks or figuring out how to use different kinds of tools and objects. There is evidence that when children just sit and independently play with some of these tools, they develop skills and confidence in science and mathematics.”

So the next time your spouse tells you to get rid of a dusty old magnifying glass or wrinkly map, do both of yourselves a favor and give it to your kid to play with instead. Throw a measuring cup into the mix, and who knows. They might be able to buy (or build) their own house one day.

If You Need A Budgeting App, You Need A Mint

If you had a dollar for every budgeting app out there, you wouldn’t need a budgeting app.

Even if the math on that fails to check out, the point is that there are so many budgeting apps to choose from and so little time to pick one and stick to it. Fortunately, with 2022 coming to a close, one of the many "best of" lists coming out narrows that down nicely. And according to NerdWallet and The Balance, the best budgeting app across the board is Mint.

So what makes Mint so great? Other than being partially owned by Deadpool, Mint is free, user-friendly with ample customer support, and helps users track their bills and categorize their expenses easily. Outside of that, “Mint may help users pay down debt, save more money and track goals,” NerdWallet explained. “The app also shows users their credit score and net worth.”

Mint appears to be the everyman’s budgeting app, which is the main downside for those looking for more sophisticated financial planning tools. “If you’re searching for an app in which you plan ahead for your money, rather than track it after the fact, other apps on our list may work better for you.”

But in terms of basic budgeting, Mint will help you freshen up your finances just fine. Cheers to keeping the Arizona Iced Tea flowing.

Parting Paternalism: Locked Doors Be Damned

Whether it’s your toddler accidentally locking themselves in the bathroom, or your teenager purposely locking their door to smoke weed out the window, a locked door is one of the more underrated nemeses of a dad. Unless you’ve armed your door with a secret weapon: the paper clip.

As reddit antikythera3301 user advised, keeping a paperclip in the doorframe of every lockable door could make the difference between getting your kid out of a locked room quickly, or having to take the hinges right off. Other parents in the comments suggested a screw-driver or a masterkey, but no recommendations compared in terms of simplicity.

The only downside of this is when kids figure out how to pick locks themselves.

“When I was a kid I discovered that the antenna from one of my lego sets worked to unlock interior doors in my house,” Cyclejones wrote. “The first time I ever used it I accidentally walked in on my parents having sex... Lesson learned.... I never used it again…”

If this happens to you one day, look on the bright side: at least you finally got them interested in STEM.

Polling Your Leg