Landlord making it hard to leave lease early
Q:Iam moving out of my rental apartment a few months early to move in with my special someone. I gave plenty of notice to my landlord to find a new tenant, and they are not doing anything. Now they are giving me grief about scheduling the moving truck, and I am beginning to regret trying to do it the “right” way. What should I do? — Andres
A: It sounds like you are trying your best to make this as easy as you can for your landlord. Instead of trying to work with you to make this early departure better for themselves, your landlord seems to want to punish you a bit for terminating the lease early.
Generally, your landlord will have to “mitigate its damages” by trying to find a replacement tenant to put in the unit. Due to your early termination, you are responsible for the amount of time the unit is vacant and their expenses in getting the apartment ready for the new tenant.
Check the exact language in your lease agreement to see if it contains any special clauses covering your situation. While it usually does not, once in a while, I review a lease with favorable language covering this scenario.
If your landlord does not make reasonable efforts to find a new tenant, he could lose the ability to collect the missing rent from you. The law will not reward someone for standing by when he could have reduced the harm and will, therefore, reduce the amount of money he is due from the party who caused the problem.
Everyone should work to make a bad situation better, or at least not let it become worse than it has to be. So while your landlord is not technically required to get a new tenant quickly, if he does not, the amount of rent you owe due to breaking the lease early would be reduced.
My advice to you is to continue to try to move out nicely. Cooperate with showing your apartment to prospective tenants and fill out some forms regarding your moving company, but not to the point where you are being walked over or punished.
With fewer than half of all states in the U.S. offering any personal finance in schools, parents have their work cut out for them when it comes to teaching children how money works and how to make money work for them.
According to Tanya Van Court, the CEO of family savings app Goalsetter and a former executive at Nickelodeon, Discovery Education and ESPN, financial lessons can be spread out over the years. There’s no need to cram every piece of money advice into one teachable moment. In fact, there’s a lesson to learn at nearly every age from birth to 18. You can start, Van Court said, with opening a savings account for the newest addition to your family.
“There’s no reason that we can give thousands of dollars in baby shower gifts and we can’t set aside $100 to set up a savings account for every kid in this country,” Van Court said.
Once you’ve established a solid financial foundation, Van Court said it’s important to show children the most effective ways to use, grow and even share their money whether you’re sending them to their first day of kindergarten or preparing to kiss them goodbye before college.
Here are the main lessons to teach your child about money from ages 5 to 18.
Ages 5 through 9
Ages 5 through 9 for children should be focused on three main concepts, Van Court said: “skills, saving and sharing.” Five- and 6-year-olds should learn the basics of money, which includes how money can be exchanged for items and services and that different things cost different amounts. Children at this age should also learn that money is finite, and while you can buy some things, you can’t buy everything.
“They learn that if you have money in your hand, you can go into a store and exchange it for what you want,” Van Court said.
But, if things cost different amounts, and you can run out of money, prioritizing also becomes important.
“Then you’ve got to determine what are the things that you are going to buy based on what you need (or) what you want,” Van Court said.
Skills, saving and budgeting come into play between 7 and 8 as children start doing chores for money and wanting pricier items.
“How can you find things to do? How can you develop skills that are valuable to people? So, if you’re the best one who sweeps the stairs or you’re the best one who cleans the bathroom, that’s a valuable skill in mom’s household,” Van Court said.
In addition to being organized about finances and identifying marketable skills, Van Court said parents should focus on teaching children about delayed gratification.
“You can buy bigger things if you wait for them,” Van Court said. “So at 8, you can teach them that saving and delayed gratification are really important to get the things that you really want.”
The lesson about waiting and saving for good things can also be a segue into another higher-level money lesson: generosity.
“At 9 years old, that’s when they start to really understand their place in a larger world,” Van Court said. “And so the lesson I really like to focus on there is, it doesn’t feel so good buying everything you want if other kids can’t even buy enough food to eat.”
Learning to share with others early will make it commonplace for children to think of others as they get older, Van Court said.