October 31, 2016
This was one of my annual goals for 2016.
We’ve been setting aside money for JuggerBaby’s care and education since 2014 but I hadn’t committed to a specific savings vehicle outside of our savings account. I wasn’t ready to think about it in the first half of the year because the first half of the year totally sucked but I finally started getting stuff done in the fall, including picking and funding a 529 plan. (That felt GREAT.)
I finally sat down to do some more research after my first halfhearted attempt last fall.
California’s 529 plan, the ScholarShare College Savings Plan, was the logical first place to start.
They allow earnings grow income-tax deferred, and the money is also free from federal income tax when it’s used to pay for qualified higher education expenses, but all the plans do. What they don’t offer are any tax incentives to keep the money in the state, and they hold their funds in TIAA-CREF which I don’t much like, so I went looking elsewhere.
Since any other state’s tax incentives do me no good as a California resident, I just targeted companies that I like: Fidelity and Vanguard.
Nevada’s Trust is administered by the Board of Trustees of the College Savings Plans of Nevada, and the plans themselves are held in the Vanguard 529 College Savings Plan with 3 age-based plans and 19 other choices. I don’t much care about the 19 other choices at this point, the money just needs to go into an aggressive investing mix right now, so the age based plans are what I care about.
Vanguard works with UGift which means that anyone who wants to contribute can just enter the code that I give them and quickly set up a bank transfer without any confidential information changing hands. I don’t want your bank information and you’re not getting JuggerBaby’s SSN, period. That’s non-negotiable.
Sidebar: some thought was given to whether it made sense to hold a plan in our names or in the gifter’s name, based on the concern that when assets are considered for college funding, assets in our or JuggerBaby’s names are counted as primary assets.
Our assets at this point in time wouldn’t disqualify JuggerBaby entirely from receiving grants, but in 17 years? If I’m doing my job, and I will, then our total assets would be sufficient that JB wouldn’t qualify for any need-based aid. If either one of us is gone, we’d have life insurance to supply some of the contributions. And frankly, one of the selling points for people planning to open 529 plans in their names instead of the beneficiaries is that they can change the beneficiary at any time. I’m not banking on JB’s future with assets in someone else’s name. I’m not saying a gifter would take back the money, but as long as that money isn’t in zir or our names, then it’s not really ours, is it?
That brings us back to the technicality that if you want to open a 529 plan in someone’s name, you need their SSN. And with the amount of identity theft and fraud out there, I’m not taking that risk in any way shape or form. JB’s SSN stays with us and whatever financial institution that I enter it into when I’ve vetted them, that’s it. I’m not widening that net of risk.
Ok, back to the program. Fidelity administers New Hampshire, Arizona, Delaware, and Massachussetts’ plans, and also has a good secure way for people to gift to the beneficiary.
PiC and I both have enough assets at both Fidelity and Vanguard to be a little more than your run of the mill investors and so we have some advantages at both, but what it came down to were the fees. Vanguard charges 0.19% on their age-based portfolios. Fidelity charges two sets of fees: a program management fee, plus investment management fees and other expenses in each of the mutual funds. It’s different for each of the four states and is a mess to figure out. But they start at 0.88%.
That’s pretty much no contest!
Vanguard, as ever, is my friend and so I’m moving cash to JuggerBaby’s account there to let it flourish and grow. But I’ll wait until after October to add more money to it, since it’s been a rather rough period in the markets.
Now we just have to get on with raising a kid, making sure ze wants to attend college, and is adequately prepared to make the most of it. I paid my own way through college but the days of being able to do that on your own are probably limited with all the rising costs of school and living.
I don’t want zir to get a free ride through life, far from it, but I don’t want zir to be crippled by the burden of many student loans if it can be avoided. At the same time, it’s possible that ze will have good reason not to want to attend college for one reason or another. If that’s the case, I’d need to consider how we might redirect these funds.
:: How did you pay for college? If you have kids or niblings, are you saving for their possible future education? How would you spend $50,000 in educational funds?
October 28, 2016
I love food, and I love cooking for my family now so by somewhat popular vote, I’m sharing some of our family-approved meals here with you, on Fridays.
How I generally try to cook: 3-5 ingredients per dish; use fresh ingredients if possible; time from prep to table goal is 1 hour or less. I aim to serve a starch, veggies, and some protein. Sometimes dessert if I’m feeling incredibly motivated but that’s pretty rare.
It’s cool weather again so I’ve hauled out the Le Crueset for a stovetop to oven dinner. I’ve never made a classic shepherd’s pie, so don’t be surprised if this all looks a bit weird to you. The important thing is that the family will happily eat it.
Our little Le Crueset is one of my favorite kitchen staples. I wouldn’t have splurged on it but it was affordable some years back with a combination of coupons, gift cards, and not being picky about colors. Cherry seems to be the current unpopular color, and therefore cheaper, right now but I can never tell why certain colors are more or less popular than others. I can’t imagine picking white cookware, though, not the way I cook. I don’t need my cookware to advertise my cooking mishaps, thank you very much.
Ingredients:
1 lb of ground turkey
2 diced zucchini
1/2 diced tomato
1/2 cup frozen sweet corn
1/4 cup frozen shelled edamame
1 tbsp onion powder
1/2 tbsp garlic salt
2 potatoes and 2 cups of beef broth to make mashed potatoes topping
I started the mashed potatoes in a medium pot first. I boil my diced potatoes in broth for extra flavor so I can skip the butter and milk or cream. Nothing against them but I prefer to save those fat calories for something really delicious, like butter filled pastries. Mmmm…..
While that was bubbling away, I start to saute the ground turkey with the spices, experimenting with not using black pepper to see how that changes the flavor, over medium heat in the Le Crueset. While that’s cooking, I cut up my vegetables, deciding against adding carrots and onions because that’s ten more minutes of sous chefing on my feet. Once they’re ready, in go the vegetables, including the frozen ones, and everything is cooked through in about ten more minutes.
The heat gets shut off while the potatoes finish cooking through, and I wash all the dishes that were waiting in my spare five minutes. That done, the potatoes are ready to be smashed with a wooden spoon, added to the Le Crueset, and topped with a sprinkling of cheese. Ten minutes at 350 degrees in the oven finishes it off while I prep some broccoli to steam on the side – if JuggerBaby rejects some of the shepherd’s pie veggies, ze will nom on the steamed broccoli. If ze doesn’t, then the broccoli goes into zir lunch for tomorrow.
Total time from prep to serving: 1 hour.
:: What’s your favorite filling combination for a shepherd’s pie?
October 26, 2016
A story of denial
Does everyone have a price? I thought yes. Then, no. Then changed my mind again.
I wanted to believe the answer was no. I needed to understand the answer was yes.
Integrity and moral fiber become inherent, I used to think. They are part of consistently learning to be, and making the choice to be, a good person. To choose to do the right thing whether or not it was easy.
Suffice to say, that I could still believe into my mid-30s despite all my experiences that prove otherwise suggests a bedrock of faith I didn’t know I had until it crumbled.
But the story doesn’t start there.
It started with my first lessons in the school of hard knocks, toiling to save my family from financial ruin. I was 17 when I learned we were more than broke. We were in debt, deeply in debt, and my parents saw no way out of the quicksand they had built our lives on. Credit cards were used to make ends meet, too often. It wasn’t frivolous but it was absolutely foolish. When their siblings needed cash, or a parent needed a replacement something, they turned to my parents. Saying no is not an option for that generation, so they found a way. Half a lifetime of solving other people’s crises left them carrying six figures of debt on credit cards and personal and business loans.
Making mistakes didn’t make them bad people. My parents deserved my help because they always helped others. For a decade I made it my life to help them back, but I also learned from their mistakes. I helped them but I saved.
At first it was paltry. I was literally saving pennies. Nickels and dimes were salted away. I scrimped and skipped meals, worked overtime, saved like my life depended on it.
In a way, it did. More than my life, this was my Hope.
After more double shifts and sleepless nights than I care to remember, I invested my painstakingly hoarded nest egg. It grew a little bit and I reinvested it repeatedly.
18 months ago, the investment matured at $15,000, and I asked my father to pick up the cash. I hadn’t decided but was almost certain it would pay for JuggerBaby’s daycare so that’s what I told him the money was needed for. No immediate rush, then, I said, but I would absolutely need it by fall.
He’d been my loan courier for the interest payments in previous year but, this time, I wouldn’t be able to pick it up from him for two months. Two long months where I ignored my sense of misgiving over his characteristic silences, chiding myself for being worried, chalking it up to a hard-won sense of skepticism gone haywire.
By this summer, I had been put off several time. He was busy, they kept missing each other when he dropped in to pick up the payment. All normal, plausible, reasonable except it felt a little off. Nothing I could pinpoint but my instinct’s honed on decades of accurately identifying my brother’s lies. They had long outnumbered his truths, his half truths, and I’d become an expert at gauging when he was trying to con me.
I had never wanted to learn the art of detecting deceit in another family member.
An old friend always says, “your instincts are your best friend,” and I should have known when I was deliberately ignoring mine that they weren’t wrong.
They weren’t. But I wasn’t either.
I wasn’t prepared to accept another betrayal. I was trying to avoid it by pretending I didn’t sense the wrongness, the lie underneath, by giving him every opportunity to make it right. To make a clean breast of it and pay me the respect of treating me like an adult. Just a regular adult he cares about, never mind the fact that I’d sacrificed my life and health for his comfort and safety.
But denying your instincts always kicks your ass. My nightmares of fighting with my family started again. For years, they were so common PiC had mastered the art of soothing me without even waking himself. I’d wake screaming at my brother as we grappled over yet another bad decision.
Prepared to deal or not, once those nightmares started again, I knew I had to confront the situation head on.
A story of anger
So I did. And I saw the man who taught me to have integrity, to build a life by helping others and doing no harm, crumple under direct questioning. He had taken that money and used it to invest in a venture that was “expected to pay out within 6 weeks but…”
I watched as his face, once beloved, revealed that I could no longer trust anyone in my family. He regretted betraying my trust, he said, but the betrayal went far deeper than he understood.
Having made the colossally bad decision to take my money, my baby’s money, he then lied to me. Kept lying until he was backed into a corner.
The kindest possible interpretation is that he’s still grieving, that he’s eaten up by the shame and guilt of dependency, and the only way he knows how to deal with it is to try and make the most of any opportunity. Even if it wasn’t an opportunity that was offered. Even when it was clearly not his to take.
Some part of me still wants to be kind because any harsher interpretation is harsh for me too. But it’s been five years since Mom died. Three years since we had the incredibly hard conversation about our feelings of guilt and hurt and trying to mend things. Seventeen years since I first picked up this work of supporting my family and we had our first fights about honesty and making the household work.
He’s had time. He’s had enough chances to learn to work with me, and has proven in the starkest possible way that another chance is just another costly disappointment.
He promised to pay it all back when the money came back but in past year he’s called me once, and only because he thought he was returning a missed call and then to ask when we’re coming to visit. No updates on what’s going on, no calls to see how we’re doing. Not a word about receiving an email full of pictures of an (I’m not biased at all) incredibly cute grandchild growing up fast. Nothing.
That money, in other words, is lost and gone forever, dreadful sorry, Clementine.
What does this all mean? How do you go forward when you admit this is the state of affairs?
In practical terms, not much. I won’t put him out on the street by stopping his rent payments, I won’t punish him by stopping his utility payments. I’m not able to assess the cost of his betrayal and theft as equal to that of his right to live like a human with basic needs.
But it has cost him my love, my regard, and my trust.
The hardest realization is that I’ll never trust him alone with his grandchild. I once believed he would protect me at all costs and have now learned that we’re not even worth $15,000. I was his own child, his only daughter, his sole support, and he’s abused my good will and manipulated me under the umbrella of good intentions for years.
He’s rationalized it all as his way of helping me. He was working hard to make sure that I didn’t have to pay more than I already do to subsidize my sibling. So it naturally makes sense that he would take the money intended for my child’s care, daycare that is necessary for my health and for my income which he relies on, as seed money, then cover up his actions with lies.
That was his “better course of action.” Not: communicating clearly with me about his needs or his plans. Not asking if he could use it as capital. Just taking it and lying til the cows came home.
Well, the cow has come home and guess what? Asking forgiveness MIGHT be easier than asking for permission but what they don’t tell you is that you may never get forgiveness.
Knowing that he’d already easily rationalized the very wrong and harmful act of stealing from me and then lying to me about it until caught, what else can he rationalize? This wasn’t the first lie, but it has to be the last before the price is too high and too painful to be counted in dollars.
I’d been quietly resentful before that he hasn’t once lifted a finger to engage with his only grandchild. On arranged visits, he’s a drop-in. He’s a visitor to the proceedings, he’s played with zir maybe twice and that’s because PiC has been even more persistent than I in making sure ze gets Grandpa time.
After all this?
There’s simply no way I could ever trust zir in his care. I suppose it’s a good thing he never offered to help with zir, not even to watch zir for five minutes so I could scarf down a meal, so we haven’t developed the habit of relying on him. In my family, non-parents always lend a hand to the parents of little ones, grandparents above all. I have personally done it for more years than I can count, for everyone’s kids. He’s done it countless times for other relatives but I see that the most special consideration I get is that he’ll show up. Good thing, I guess.
He was an icon, in my eyes. A figure of storied proportions. His sacrifices to make a better life, his hard work, his ethics. I imbibed those with my mother’s home-cooked meals and tutelage. And now he’s made himself all but a stranger.
I’ve wept.
There are still some tears in the days to come, when a fond memory feels shattered, when I can’t remember the word for “meatball” in our native language and I can’t bring myself to dial his number.
I’m still angry with him. I may forgive someday but today is not that day. Tomorrow isn’t either. Even if it ever happens, I still won’t forget.
I don’t doubt he was sorry to be telling me the truth when he was forced to, but how much was regret over being caught and how much for the wrongdoing? History suggests mostly the former, less of the latter.
Years ago, a blogger aptly named Grace said she heard the voice of a hurt daughter wondering why she wasn’t good enough. It seems Grace read me more correctly than I knew.
I know now that I didn’t want it to be true. I wanted to believe in his good intentions. But his good intentions always came with a price and I was always the only one to who paid them. So here I am admitting: I am hurt. I do wonder why my father doesn’t love me enough, never loved me enough, to work with me or to put me and my well-being even equal to that of my Sibling’s when he was still clearly capable but unwilling to take care of himself.
Six years ago, I couldn’t conceive of the notion that my parent could value me so little. That he could see me as nothing more than a way to pay the bills. Today, I’m seeing that it’s not only possible, it’s been the truth for a long time.
I regret the loss of faith. I regret the loss of history. I regret that ze won’t be able to learn our family oral history the way I did from the man who remembers so much of it because he can’t spend an hour in our company. I hate that ze won’t have a living loving grandfather worth knowing.
I hate that when people joke that they still lean on their fathers like JuggerBaby now flops against zir father with complete faith, I feel a pang of envy. I hate that when a dear friend got married and his bride introduced me to her beaming, over the moon father, I felt loss.
Where was my father for all that? For the joy, the support, the fatherly bond? I worshiped him. I still remember before so clearly. At five years old, I was brewing his morning coffee and sitting with him while he drank it before he left for work. I brewed his nightly pot of tea, offering the first pour to our ancestors with lighted incense as is our custom, every night. I carefully washed it and the tea cups afterward, setting them out to dry for the next day. He combed my hair for me, just like his!, before school every morning of first grade. When Mom and I clashed, I could always turn to him for support over books, over clothes, over anything.
When did he stop loving me?
I won’t ask why. I don’t want to know. Maybe I don’t want to know when it happened, either.
A story of acceptance
I refuse to let this diminish me. I refuse to let this make me feel like I’m less than worthy. With or without him I am a person, whole and complete, and I will not be made less because my father forgot I have value.
Just as I learned from his mistakes in money, I’ll learn from his mistakes as a person and as a parent. I know now that not having money can do terrible things to a person, no matter who they were before, and while I cannot save my father from himself, perhaps I can save my chosen family from making the same mistakes.
For better or worse, I am my father’s daughter and inherited many of his traits. But I am not him, just like I’m not my mother, either. I have a choice and can choose to do things differently for my future.
I think it’s clear that I have done that, in finding a way to fulfill what I see to be my responsibilities and still preserve and protect my own family’s future. It’s not as easy as it would be if I were unfettered but I make it work.
More than one friend has asked me: would you ever cut him off?
The reality is he’s 70 years old, he’s unlikely to get hired anywhere, and he has minimal Social Security. He can afford his food and his gas, but clearly not more than one utility bill at a time. It would be inhumane to cut him off when I do have the means to support him, but I will be looking at ways to reduce the burden on our finances by pushing him to move to senior housing. This has been a challenge because he won’t throw out my sibling, the Parasitic Trainwreck (mixing my metaphors to give a clearer picture of his character), and I’m not sure what senior housing would allow for the presence of a person like him.
But for now, it’s enough that I’m able to face this squarely.
Then I’ll fix it. Like I always do.
October 24, 2016
Background: 2 years ago November, J. Money and I had a quick chat that spawned this post on earning side money and then I started tracking our earnings publicly because it’s always more fun that way. PiC is our resident Craigslister and I’m the resident Try Anything Once-er.
As previously mentioned in the May and June monthly reports, I gave mTurk a little test run.
My time was particularly tight in those months so it wasn’t a smart time to be trying new things but I wanted to dip my toes in and give it a wiggle. I think because it was so time-crunchy, my brain really needed to know that it wouldn’t last and the way to give myself hope for that is to do something new that feels purposeful and makes a bit of money.
After a couple months, spending nibbles of time when I was taking a mental break from work, I haven’t cracked any secret codes. Tasks are most available during business hours, and you do better when you spend time on skill-based tasks, I think. The tasks I’ve been qualified for are things like surveys which don’t earn much.
Total earned: $50.95
Whether it’s bad timing or lack of effort, mTurk isn’t for me right now. I’ll put this experiment on hold until I have a bit more time to play with it.
:: Have you tried mTurk or anything like it? Would you use your spare 5-15 minutes a day on something like this?
October 19, 2016
Pardon my doting
But I adore this child. When ze was first born, the reviews were mixed. Ze looked like me, some said. Ze looked like him, said others. Never mind that, I sighed, how do you get zir to stop crying?
Ze got that from me if you believe the family canon. That and the face. And the fire. That nearly savage defiance is almost certainly from me.
It’s a peculiar thing in my family that certain facial features are incredibly pronounced in the first two to four years. It was long told that you couldn’t tell our matriarchal pack of cousins apart by voice or face comparing us at the same ages, male or female. There are still a few pictures I remember holding up to Mom and even she couldn’t tell which of us two kids it was. It didn’t help that we also shared the same hand me down yard sale clothes. Uncanny really, and the genes hold strong for yet another generation. For now, ze looks like every two year old in my family.
PiC twits me for my “vanity”, joking that I’m just admiring myself. “Sure I do, I’m great. But that kid’s not ME, that’s mini-me,” I retort. But it’s only a little bit true. This child did come from me but other than some superficial similarities I think (and hope) ze is a totally different person. Super finally, ze is far more compellingly attractive than I ever was, ze is brimming with personality and quirks. Where I was sullen, ze is vibrant. Where I was suspicious and shy, ze is curious and inquisitive. Sometimes even charming. Definitely wholly engaged with the world I only wanted to hide from. The whole combines to make a child photogenic in manifold ways. I was, and am, not. Which is ok given my personality, honestly but I wonder how well it’ll serve zir. A dear friend sighed, “Well. Ze will be a beauty, nothing we can do about that.” I had to laugh at that – but we both know that living with good looks can be more an impediment to good character than not.
I don’t recall what my good traits were from that time, other than “finally stopped crying all the time” and “obedient” and the person who might have remembered is long gone. Maybe that’s why I keep these notes. Someday I’ll share them so JuggerBaby might know what a challenge and a delight ze was.
We talk a lot about parenting and what we hope to share with zir. We hope ze has my sense and his way with people. We hope ze has the love of money that I have and the sense of responsibility that he has. We hope ze enjoys life like he did, that ze enjoys being zirself like I did. But that’s the hope we hold through the lens of our experiences.
I know that ze isn’t us 2.0, and zir experiences will be wholly zirs, not ours to retread. I hope we do a good job of supporting and guiding without alienating or enabling. I hope that ze avoids the uglier gifts of my family line. The depression, the bipolar disease, the preponderance of abuse issues. We’ll talk about them, in hopes ze is as well informed as ze can be, and so ze also knows to come to us first if ze has need.
Ze has a whole life ahead that ze will live and I hope love.
Of course, it’s not ALL good
We’ve been having a problem with biting for the past several months.
It started as something ze did for a reaction, for fun. This is how we went from “oh, weaning, maybe around a year or so” to “We’re done, keep those teeth away from me, take your a bottle.”
Let me tell ya, it did nothing good for my fears that ze will grow up into an adult sociopath when ze would grin, bite, then chuckle when you yell OW! Sometimes, ze would be overcome with baby belly laughs, and mock your “ow”: “aaaoohhwwww! heh heh heh heh oooohhhhwwwww!”
… It’s not funny!
Except zir laughter was contagious and ze wins again because everyone’s laughing and ze did it. Sigh.
And mostly ze was biting me so, not a big deal, except teeth happened and it flipping well HURT. Those bites were mainly out of frustration – ze would be angry that I was preventing zir from, say, licking the dog, or throwing a punch, or flipping over everything in sight. Ze would yell, and I don’t respond to yelling, so then ze would zoom in for the kill and chomp down on me. That sucker is quick, too, I know it’s coming and sometimes I still can’t block it.
The laughing at mouthy-biting stopped right quick when the anger biting started, and we’ve been working through all kinds of techniques. Let’s start with what doesn’t work: Saying “no” calmly. Saying NO loudly. Saying OW! Not reacting. Opening zir jaws like ze is a dog, not saying anything. Pulling away. Not pulling away.
What’s worked: NOTHING.
The teachers keep saying this is just a phase and it’ll pass when ze can talk, but in the meantime, I live in dread that ze is going to get zir little butt booted from daycare if ze doesn’t stop biting kids as communication. Generally it stems from an inability to know how to ask for toys, and other kids’ unwillingness to share. We don’t insist they always share but ze doesn’t understand kids who don’t proactively offer to share like ze often does. Ze doesn’t share everything but almost always offers something, and I’ve noticed a shift in zir behavior from willingly offering to being more guarded and refusing to offer since ze has been playing more with these kids. Maybe it’s just a phase they’re all going through, but I’m pretty sure the company has a lot to do with it too since you see zir behavior adapt to the company ze is in.
Parenting skills: boogers boogers everywhere
Everyone I know swears by the NoseFrida snot-sucker. If this works for your kid, you’re clearly blessed by some deity. For MY kid, if you even pick up the thing and look at zir, ze will scream blue-brown-grey-purple murder. It doesn’t matter if ze has lost the ability to breathe like a normal human, that snot-sucker and the saline isn’t coming near zir.
FINE. So I very quickly squish zir nose like I’m pinching it shut several times, gently, and voila! The boogers come out. No fuss, lots of muss, but whatever, the boogers are removed.
We love …
Games
Chase, AKA, I’m a monster, I’m going to get you. If you’re too slow, ze will come back to get you. If you wander off, ze will come back to get you. Mind, you’re the monster in this scenario.
Tickle my toddler. JuggerBaby will shriek with laughter, then say “no”. I always stop when ze says no. Then ze looks at me and points at the tickle-spot: you may resume. Rinse, repeat.
Find my toes. Ze stretches out zir feet, as far as ze can, and waggles zir foot. Where’s my foot? Do you see my foot? Touch zir toe with one finger and ze collapses with laughter.
Where’s my belly button, do you have a belly button? Flip shirt up. Stick head under nearest adult’s shirt to check if they also have the elusive belly button. Check the dog’s belly. Where’s his button?? (Seamus: STOP.)
Favorite book
Nursery Rhyme Comics, published by First Second. We don’t love all of the nursery rhymes but with 50 to choose from, who needs to? Ze can sit through three read-throughs of this book. Ze loves Three Little Kittens, Three Blind Mice, Pat-a-Cake, Rock-a-bye Baby. Ze is not creeped out by Mike Mignola’s Solomon Grundy but PiC is. Personally, I think Georgie Porgie’s a jerk and I’d have punched him in the nose.
Lunch things: bento boxes
I’m in love with bento boxes, conceptually, and having to get JuggerBaby a new set of lunch gear was right up my alley. You wouldn’t believe the hours of research that I put in to find the perfect lunch set but we’re very exacting people when it comes to buying containers.
Our requirements: leakproof, insulated, stackable, microwavable, dishwasher-friendly, the right size for JuggerBaby’s lunches from now until ze is 5 (aka not too big, not too small, juuust right).
After a few false starts, I happened across the InnoBaby brand. While it doesn’t fit the microwave-friendly requirement, we can work with that because it’s excellent on all other fronts.
We picked two InnoBaby Keepin Fresh 15 ounce boxes instead of the smaller 11 ounce snackbox sizes. The smaller ones come with a convenient divider which would be nice but zir idea of a serving size of fruit isn’t your standard toddler size. We didn’t want a hangry toddler wreaking havoc in daycare after an inadequate lunch.
It’s been FANTASTIC. It’s secured by four clips, one on each side, and the metal tray stacked within the plastic box holds in cold or heat for hours. This also means that despite JuggerBaby’s habit of shaking zir lunch like it’s a mysterious Christmas present, it remains intact and non-leaky for the rest of the day.
We’ve sent some good lunches to daycare, if I do say so myself! Certainly better than the hot lunch option they’re providing.
- Box 1, grapes, strawberries; Box 2, cheesy pasta w/veggies
- Box 1, banana, hummus and 3 pieces of pita bread; Box 2, fried rice with veggies
- Box 1, banana, strawberries; Box 2, baked beans and cornbread
- Box 1, cherries, grapes; Box 2, meatloaf and pasta primavera
- Box 1, mango, yogurt; Box 3, turkey cheese sandwich
:: What were some of your favorite books to read as a child? What’s your earliest memory?
October 17, 2016
Has it really been so long since my last update? Whoops.
Things have mostly been going well, but I’m definitely seeing the downside of hired property management. Not that I have a choice, the property is an unrealistic distance from us so I can’t drive over there and manage it myself. But when your property manager’s responsiveness goes down by 55% despite your specifically calling them out for it, then it’s time for a change.
I’m also in the market for a new home warranty company, and a new loan! If possible, I’m looking to refinance since my original interest rate was not favorable at all and I need to bring our monthly costs down.
But let’s start with one thing at a time since I get that “mountain sitting on my chest” feeling from all the things that feel like they must be done NOW.
- I contacted my broker, and investing friend, to get recommendations for a new property manager. (Turns out that same friend is also considering a change because we use the same person and it’s not just me, the service has been much less attentive than it should be.)
- The broker gave us a recommendation for a boutique property manager. The fees are pretty high, in addition to the monthly 10% off the top, so I’m thinking about what it is I want and how much I’m willing to pay. I want the kind of hands-on detailed service this manager provides but I have to consider whether my income will bear it. My monthly profit margins still aren’t high enough to cover more than a little over our expenses by the end of the year.
- I read through some Yelp reviews and sites, and sent an email asking about services and fees, to the one that seemed to be a possibly good fit.
- They replied the next morning saying politely they were not taking new clients because they have a full docket. That’s actually a good sign, I think, when a company knows how much they can handle well and sticks to it. Not great for me personally but good to know they’re not the sort to just take in as much business as they can get and damn the consequences.
- My friend is inquiring after a larger company. He and I both came up with their name independently, I’m guessing because it was because they advertise.
- My preliminary research turned up mixed results. They have all their information up front, which is great, and they state pretty baldly that if you’re asking about the kinds of restrictions you want to put on who gets to rent from you, you’re very likely trying to screen out people based on discriminatory reasons. This isn’t the first time I’ve been told that screening renters based on certain characteristics is really a racially motivated screener, I’m glad to see this company is speaking plainly about what that’s code for. I like that because of their size, they have easy ways for the renters to pay electronically. But I’m not sure that I want to work with a huge company that only gives you a price break after you own 40 units. For one thing, that’s a hell of a lot more than I intend to take on, so I wouldn’t benefit from adding one or three more properties with them the way I would with the boutique manager. For another, while they have the infrastructure to be more technologically up to date, that also means they may not be motivated or willing to consider updating where they’re lacking.
:: If you were renting, would you prefer to deal with a large somewhat faceless company, or a boutique property manager? If you were hiring a manager, which would appeal to you more?
October 12, 2016
In February, inspired by Cloud, I decided it was high time to get back to the business of being me. Life isn’t all about work, money, and family. Life is meant to be lived, and we are meant to grow.
What I read
Last Woman Standing, by Thelma Adams
I can’t recall why I snagged this one, might have been free on Kindle for a limited time, but I loved the idea of reading up on the woman in Wyatt Earp’s life. I’m familiar enough with Wyatt Earp’s general legend, but I was always curious about the woman by his side.
It was a mostly satisfying read.
The Daughter of Union County, by Francine Thomas Howard
This was an Amazon Prime First free book. Didn’t enjoy it. Maybe it was just too hard reading about the horrific American racism towards black people in the past that simply has not stayed in the past. This is racism now, and it’s not even subtle or that much diminished. Interracial marriages aren’t illegal anymore but we haven’t come very far beyond that.
Sorcerer to the Crown, by Zen Cho
This was very different in style from her last book. It wasn’t hugely complex, but I really enjoyed the story and the characters. Also the names. Nidget! (more…)
