February 27, 2017
[Part 1] What would it take for you to feel rich? Specifically money rich? Joe at Retire by 40 asked.
I feel rich and poor at the same time. A very strange feeling, that. I told Joe that we’re at this weird crossroads of nearly being there, for us, and then having the rug pulled out from under us with the house thing. It wouldn’t matter in another COLA but it matters a great deal here. (And having student loans, like many of our relatives and friends still do, would be an entirely new level of pain – those take years or even decades to pay off.)
About 80% of our assets are invested in real estate and the stock market, intentionally. That was a long term plan I developed based on the assumption that we would pay off this mortgage in approximately 7 years. During that time, we’d go on to save at least half the same amount of cash that we do each year now, and invest that cash. At the end of 7 years, I’d legitimately feel wealthy, if all went according to that outline.
Ignoring those categories of assets, as I do in covering a contingency of this size, we’re not near the shouting distance of the neighborhood of rich.
It would be shortsighted to sell off our budding portfolio or rental property and I’m not prepared to toss either of those to the winds. It would require a far bigger catastrophe for me to be willing to liquidate our long-term assets.
On the other hand, a couple weeks ago, I started the conversation with our lender. Apparently he thinks we’re great borrowers and is totally competent as well because after 4 days, he approved our loan for a vast sum. (This is in stark contrast to our refinancing with SoFi that took almost six months. I’m at least a little bitter that I wasted all that time, now!) I don’t even like to think the number, but it’s real: $800,000.
Even with that large a loan, we’re still priced out of most homes in this area. Even smaller places, and more rundown places, than what we have now are running more than $1M. I’m just not willing to take on more debt than that.
Pardon me as I shudder in the corner for a while.
Safe to say, where we are right now? Weird. I also don’t like our financial stability to be dependent on “as long as nothing else goes wrong” because in my experience, that’s an open invitation to my old friend Murphy to come kick me in the ribs.
:: How much do you need to feel rich? Are you on a steady trajectory to that point or is it more of a waltz?
February 22, 2017
I tend to equate my value as a person to what I can do for others or what I’ve achieved. I’m frequently guilty of fighting against being overwhelmed by things that I cannot control by taking on the burdens of others to distract myself.
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
– T.S. Eliot.
Sitting with my own problems, not solving them because they’re complex and take time, is hard. Having chronic pain and fatigue is isolating. Losing connections with others, by way of service, is another level of isolating.
It’s no surprise that my worst days are those days when I feel like I’m not doing anything. Days when I can barely sit up in bed, days when I should be working during JuggerBaby’s naps but if I do, I pass clean out halfway through the afternoon. In those moments, I get a stab of insecurity, forgetting the lessons we learned in chronic pain classes: these are moments, and they pass.
I do an awful lot on a day to day basis even if I’m not launching a massive year-long, or month-long, challenge with a billion readers following along. It’s ok that I didn’t manage to start a business or 10x my salary this year.
I’m…
living in pain. Sometimes teeth-gritting, excruciating, hold your breath til it passes but grey out, pain.
writing for this blog three times a week.
working a traditional full time office job, at least 40 hours a week.
co-raising a rambunctious toddler and co-running a household.
nursing Seamus and managing his medications and special diet.
managing my own medications and diet.
I also struggle to remember, while I’m kicking myself for not being capable of cooking dinner every night as I do when my brain is functions and I have four halfway decent limbs, that PiC remembers I’m not superhuman. He easily stepped into my shoes to head up planning and preparing dinner without a word from me. He admits that he misses my cooking but that’s the extent of it. So I shouldn’t feel guilty.
It feels to me like I really need to be spending less time on things of pleasure or leisure (as I write this post at 12:30 am), and spend that time on income replacing activity instead. Maybe that’s where the guilt comes from.
February 20, 2017
Childcare was a scary thing for us well before having JuggerBaby. Culturally, I should have been able to “expect” my parents to be our live-in babysitters. Multigenerational living is what we’ve always done. But much like the rest of my life, when the time came, our reality was totally different from what I was told to expect. Mom was long buried, and Dad was utterly disinterested. While I regret what JuggerBaby loses as a result, a richer life with interesting and strange grandparents, there was no use dwelling on what “should” have been. It’s a good thing I’d gotten used to adversity by now!
We went through a long and fruitless search for a good nanny, and finally had to take advantage of my flexible work schedule to be a work from home mom.
I kind of miss my #BabyCoworker, but before age 1, ze was just too social and active for our old arrangements to work for us anymore. The daycares in this area range from the at-home care situations to very commercial operations, and the wait lists were miles long. Naturally, by this time last year, I was pretty stressed about what we were doing with JuggerBaby. We had a huge flash of luck when one of the daycares on our approved list had a few unexpected openings earlier than our requested start date, and we went for it.
It’s expensive, but they’re certified, they’re a big enough operation to really pay attention to all the rules and regulations and gives me confidence that they’re not as likely to have problems with abuse as smaller operations that perhaps have less oversight or employ family members. On the one hand, I love a family operation. On the other hand, if a family member of the daycare provider abuses a child, I simply have no faith that the welfare of the child is going to be put above the provider’s livelihood and natural urge to protect their family.
We expected a tough start but JuggerBaby was PSYCHED. Ze has exactly zero compunctions about diving into the new environment and immediately adored zir adoring caretakers. We only started part-time because of my worries, to ease into it, but that worry was allayed immediately. We continued part-time to save money.
Almost a year after that, we settled into a full time routine at daycare. Verdict: mostly good. The germs streaming home from that place had me more sick in 6 months than I’ve been in ten years, but ze has been largely unfazed. Which has been, as you might imagine, nothing but good for me.
Ze has been through three classrooms and we really miss the first one. There were 5 caretakers in the classroom, they were all loving and attentive and calm personalities, and they were very good at redirecting JuggerBaby when frustration with communication reared. The biting started there but it was only at times of great frustration. Ze was remarkably tolerant of all the small babies using zir as a jungle gym as they learned to stand and walk.
When ze was moved to the next classroom (they’re moved around by age group) the transition was downright horrible. It had me doubting our choice, constantly.
JuggerBaby was crying every day, saying “no-no no-no” and trying to go (RUN) back to zir old classroom. The main thing, and it was SUCH an easy fix, was that 2 of those 5 teachers were standoffish and not at all involved in the children’s care. The other 3 teachers were great but they couldn’t completely negate the negativity from the two bad teachers. We had been told so many times that transitions are always hard and that the kids are always upset that we gave it more time than we should have. I should have listened to my gut.
After observing the class one morning, we gave the teachers feedback – say hello to JuggerBaby when ze comes in! All they had to do was say good morning to zir, and acknowledge that ze was coming in. Ze just wanted to know that ze was wanted, and every cold morning drop-off was more frigid by the morning teachers who sucked. Lo and behold, within 36 hours of asking for this specific change, ze was happy again.
I know my child – ze is temperamentally inclined to getting on with people but ze is also very attuned to being unwelcomed, by adults at least. And zir unhappiness was wholly unnecessary.
We reported this experience to the directors of the daycare, who were mortified and also grateful that we’d brought it to their attention, and assured us that steps would be taken to ensure this didn’t happen again, and that this was not at all the daycare’s policy to be standoffish when transitioning children to new classrooms.
I later discovered that other parents had the same experience, and had also reported it. It’s a great reminder that we have to be our children’s first advocates, no matter how uncomfortable it might make us, or how we might doubt ourselves.
Ze had a second transition recently, and that one was much more smooth. Unfortunately, we don’t love the classroom set-up because they drop the caretaker to student ratio by 2 caretakers for this age group. Now there are only 3 caretakers for 12 rambunctious toddlers and there’s quite a lot more chaos. Mostly controlled chaos, or directed chaos, but I think it’s also difficult because toddlers are loving and jerks at the same time. It’s not that they’re jerk-jerks, they can’t communicate well with each other using words yet so they still revert to slapping, hitting, and biting. I know it’s developmentally normal but it’s frustrating nonetheless.
We’ll be in this class until the end of the year barring any problems, so this is who we have: JerkFace is back. He was in zir first classroom and left us with a bad impression that he’s just renewed. He bullied JB, hitting zir with his jackets, kicking zir, standing over zir so ze couldn’t get up to defend zirself. Any time you walk in, he’s hitting kids, climbing on things he’s been told repeatedly are dangerous, and generally just getting his kicks out of causing harm or dismay. So he sucks.
Zir bestie is there, now, and the two of them are bounding with joy together.
The money part
Year 0
Partway through 2014, I realized the smart thing to do was to start saving for daycare, so we started salting away $2000 a month.
Year 0-1
We spent $1500 on childcare as we tried nannies, sitters, quit for several months, then finally part-time daycare. We continued to save $2000 a month. Between gifts and saving, zir saving account reached a whopping $49,000.
Year 1-2
We stopped saving the full $2000 a month because we couldn’t save that in addition to our 25% savings rate and cash flow the full monthly daycare bill. We spent $19,977 on part-time, then full-time, daycare. Zir savings remain untouched, moderately augmented, even: $66,000.
It’s really scary seeing those numbers. Really scary. At the same time, it helps to see that our savings haven’t been materially diminished, we haven’t lost anything significant in our lifestyle or any true stressors on our marriage, and we’ve been able to truly appreciate the immense joy that JuggerBaby adds to our lives. Even if it does cost many pretty pennies.
*Part of Financially Savvy Saturdays on brokeGIRLrich and Super Saving Tips*
February 15, 2017
The story of my money and my family goes back to the very start of this blog. I wanted to be independent for my own sake, but also wanted to take care of them as they had me. I wanted to support them until they got back on their feet.
More than ten long years of striving later, the truth of today is hard to swallow. My dad isn’t who he once was. He’s not the person I dedicated half my life to helping. He’s become, maybe as a result of my taking on so much responsibility, someone who lies to me, and takes from me. Because he’s not working with me, for his own benefit, but rather working against me, I have to step away from this relationship even more. He’s not just undermining my efforts, he’s damaging my ability to trust people, all over again.
This truth has lain heavy on my heart for months, for years. It hasn’t set me free, I didn’t know what I could do with this revelation.
In all these years, I’ve kept this a secret from the rest of the family. I didn’t share my challenges, or discuss Dad’s actions, I just took care of business. It was my other way of protecting them – I didn’t want them to look bad in front of their siblings. It wasn’t something they asked me to do but it felt, much like writing anonymously, it was just the right thing to do. Take care of your business and don’t share that with people outside the family. Heck, I barely learned to let PiC in on the secret, in no small part, due to the scars it left.
Walking Seamus in the dusk, ground wet from the (drought-breaking?) rain last week, I finally felt overwhelmed. After all the struggle, when confronted with a need to move, I find that honoring my responsibilities has left us with the choice of no choice at all. To change living situations, we have to make financial commitments that eliminate even the possibility of asking whether I want more kids. We can’t afford to have that answer be yes. We can’t afford to take on foster kids, we can’t adopt more dogs, we can’t afford to add to our family in any way.
With that frustrating realization, something in me dissolved. That last bit of pride fell right out of me and I called my aunt.
Not my rich aunt, I don’t have one of those. My poor aunt, the one who still knows what it’s like to struggle because she still works every day plus weekends to provide for her family, putting off retirement for another couple of years so she can be sure her kids make it through their internship years.
I asked her if she had a minute. I asked if she might talk to my dad about his housing situation, and convince him to apply for housing assistance. He should be eligible. For more than five years, he’d been telling me that he always intended to move out now that Mom’s gone but he’s done nothing. We think that he doesn’t want to move to a more affordable place because he’s tied to Mom’s memories there. It’s the only way I can see us squeezing any more money out of our budget – we’re currently footing the bill for his rent and utilities, all of which add up to well over a thousand dollars a month but I can’t very well push him again without coming off like a total jerk.
What she had to say shocked me.
Not only did she already know what I’ve been doing all this time, she’s talked to (at) Dad in the past already. She and the other aunts have always helped a bit as they can – bringing by food, or clothes when they spot a great bargain, but they can’t tackle his living expenses. This I knew.
What I didn’t know was that while doing so, she’s told him that grieving Mom is one thing, and his right, but he has to attend to the living as well. If he loves me, as he should, he shouldn’t let his grief for someone who is gone override his love for the person who’s still here working her tuchus off. He should be looking for ways to ease the burden on me. She and her family love me, unconditionally, and it’s clear to them that he needs to be making better choices, my support notwithstanding. He’s not, she says, “realistic.” That’s a very accurate assessment. He’s never had to learn to live with our poverty, not really. He’s always had me to cushion the financial hits, to pinch the pennies, and Mom did it before me. It’s past time that he starts making better choices, and nothing I’ve said has ever made a difference. She’s agreed to try to talk to him about it.
I don’t expect results immediately, maybe not at all, but the confession, and hearing someone in the family agree with me and offer to support me, was unexpectedly hard. You’d think it’d be harder to go solo – but I’m used to that. I’m NOT used to being vulnerable enough for someone to offer help.
Choked up, I confessed, I’m not sure that he loves me, judging by his choices. It’s a hard thing to say out loud and I thought it didn’t matter, but it does. The knowledge makes it much harder to continue to give and sacrifice freely, even if money wasn’t an issue.
While I can’t (won’t) put him out on the street, I must pull back on some of the bills we pay. With someone, another elder, willing to push him to live more prudently, and make changes, I can take steps to minimize the financial harm. He’s more likely to give into that pressure.
Whether it’s because of the shaming fact of my going to his sibling, or that he’s more willing to listen to her, it appears that he already has given in.
For 5 years, he’s said my sibling refused to apply for disability assistance which would include housing support to pay for the rent that I’ve been footing. I don’t disbelieve that, but I don’t necessarily believe he’d done all he could, either. Mere days after my aunt said she would step in, they started the application and approval process. I can’t know if the magic was my aunt stepping in, for certain, but the timing is certainly telling.
We need to save every bit that we can now, and he needs to make ends meet on his own eventually, with or without sibling. It’ll take months for the process to be completed. Then we’ll see if I see a penny of that housing assistance without becoming a bill collector but this is the first step toward that goal.
Wish me luck?
:: Have you ever had to make a tough love decision? Tell me about it?
February 13, 2017
I hate change (that I didn’t initiate) so much. This is turning out to be the season of many changes, many more than we had originally planned.
We have that awful neighbor / house thing happening right now, which means we have to pare our things down to the bare minimum, and then put a great deal of furniture in storage. That also requires renting a truck to move said furniture to and from storage. And of course that’s the smaller portion of the greater problem: we have to show and sell our place, while finding a place for ourselves to buy. And then move.
That’s been stressing me out but I’ve just about been able to handle it, even with dealing with the logistics for a big trip we have to take later this year.
It’s almost like I was taunting my old friend Murphy who came swooping in with a new problem and dropped it on my head.
I’ve been trying to book our favorite, and most trusted, and let’s be honest, our only trusted petsitters well ahead of time. We always try to give them as much notice as possible. This isn’t just our favorite sitter, this is The Perfect Sitter. They made themselves available when JuggerBaby was born, picking him up, dropping him off, bathing him, keeping him an extra day when we had to stay in the hospital another night. They take him for hikes, their dogs cuddle with him, they sleep together on his bed. They text with pictures and updates regularly, they spot even the slightest new thing wrong with him and alert me immediately.
But – you knew that was coming, right? – they are unexpectedly unavailable for several months this year. We would normally need to leave Seamus with them a few times, and now we have to find a new sitter entirely.
This has happened before.
A few weeks before we went to Italy, 20 days before we were set to leave, our sitter had serious issues that prevented her from watching Doggle. Given the short timeframe we had to find another sitter, I wanted to skip the trip and stay home with Doggle and Seamus who had just come to live with us. That feeling seemed irrational at the time. There are competent, caring people who can care for a dog, and some of them live right here! We finally chose to trust a friend – I’ve regretted it ever since. The worst possible thing happened: we lost Doggle.
Can you imagine how little I want to go on any trip, much less an international trip in these uncertain times, and leave Seamus in the hands of someone who hasn’t proven to be a completely reliable, intelligent, resourceful sitter with great communication?
This is one of those times where I would normally just say damn the cost, and find a way to fly out a trusted friend for a vacation for the price of hanging out with and caring for Seamus.
This is one of those times that totally sucks because I can’t afford to throw that kind of money at the problem. Our housing situation is going to suck up every bit of cash we have and then some.
I have more than just 3 weeks to find someone suitable, this time, but I can’t shake that horrible feeling that this is going to turn out terribly again and I don’t know how I’d forgive myself if that came to be true.
:: Tell me that it’s possible to find a second great dogsitter in a few weeks? Tell me good stories of your pets (or kids if that’s your thing) being taken care of by other people?
February 8, 2017
The Gracious Host
JuggerBaby has learned to serve zirself at the dining table, sloppily and with very little coordination, at daycare because they encourage the kids to serve their own snacks from the big bowl, and bus their table afterward. The latter skill leads to a lot of food waste, though, because toddlers are mini lemmings sometimes and so when one finishes eating and goes to scrape off their plate, all the others quickly follow suit even if they had only just served themselves. Mixed success, that. But something they don’t teach is serving others because they also have no sense of limits, so if you let them add food to each other’s plates, even more chaos!
Which is why I’m puzzled as to where zir latest habit has come from: “more, mama”, and “more, papa”. We misunderstood that to be zir asking for more for zirself, but zir exasperation and eventual pointing at our dishes cleared it up. When ze gets more, ze wants to make sure we both also have more. When we clink glasses, ze wants to be sure all glasses are refilled. If you haven’t reassured zir that really, you don’t need more, ze will take the initiative and add food to your plate. Either ze is mirroring us serving zir, or ze has inherited that compulsion every cook over the age of 50 in my family has: insisting that everyone have more more more!
Which isn’t to say ze is selfless or anything less than pragmatic. When it was just the two of us sitting down to dinner for a nice hot vegetable barley pasta chicken soup and ze was ready for seconds, ze helped zirself to all the soup in MY bowl while my back was turned. Food thief!
Literacy
I’m thrilled that JuggerBaby enjoys listening to reading now, even if it means the same books ten thousand times.
Ze is now working on “writing”, which means squiggles and scribbles and colors. Ze got my old planner for Art Time which makes zir feel just like mama, and is convinced that the secret to my being able to form letters is the pen. After every word I write, ze forces me to trade pens because ze wants the Magic Pen That Contains Letters. It never seems to work, perhaps clicking it open and closed several more times would help? No?
JuggerBaby dictionary
At-yai: outside
Hap: help
Yight: light, right
Dooaaaannn: down
Chiz: please
Nom nom: please put that food on my plate / please put toothpaste on my toothbrush
Yees: let’s brush our teeth!
Jeep: sleep
Dit-dews: stickers
Parenting skills
Holding the firm line. Our JuggerBaby is the most headstrong child and we have to consistently hold the line against zir temper, demands, and recklessness. It’s business as usual most days, but we seem to have entered A Whole New Zone of irrationality.
SWEET CHRISTMAS do I ever feel like a hostage to this toddler’s terribleness sometimes. Even just the slightest thing sets off the crying jag of the century, ever-so-slightly worse than the last one ten minutes ago, like asking zir to come say hi, or to leave daycare, or to go TO daycare, or go eat, which, what? YOU LOVE FOOD! YOU LOVE FOOD SO MUCH.
But we navigate it. Like the one morning when ze was circling PiC’s legs like a horrifically large cat when he was trying to cook and I set off a stopover at Meltdown City because we asked zir to come sit with me instead. Ze just fell to the ground sobbing, instant tears and snot, because how could we do such a thing??? Three rounds of tears later, I suggested that ze might want to look at pictures of “baby” (zir own baby pictures), and perhaps ze might want to do what baby is doing in the picture (eat)? Through many tears, ze forced out a YES. Ze even begrudgingly managed to dredge up the energy to shuffle over to the table, and then was immediately distracted by the crayons, and had to be convinced all over again to “show baby how to eat”. It’s possible that the current key is that ze likes to set an example.
Teaching manners. Ze went through a long phase of being a jerk to Seamus. Yelling “no!” at him, getting in his space, even putting zir hands on his side and trying to push him. As if ze could shift his 100 lb bulk. Nevertheless, it’s rude, it hurts his feelings, and it’s not ok. There have been consequences every time ze has been rude to him, and lo, miracle of miracles, it paid off! Ze accidentally kicked him in the face whilst flailing about one day, and turned and apologized to him without prompting! There was a lot of happy parental gasping in that moment. And some praise for the JuggerBaby.
Best moments …
Bath time
I drew a shallow bath for us. One minute we were practicing lying on our backs in the water. The next we were embroiled in a splash war. This kid believes the best defense is staying on the offense and ze isn’t wrong.
Reading time
Ze handed me a book but refused to lie down. Instead ze insistently pointed at zirself, garbling zir name over and over. “You want to read this?”
YES.
*shrug* Ok, you read to us.
Ze stared at the page for a while. Handed it back.
“Can’t read?”
No.
Too much snuggle
I lay down next to zir on the Boppy, elbow draped on zir leg.
“NO!”
Get elbowed off.
“BASE!” (Space)
Bed Time
PiC lowered zir into the crib. Ze bounced back up. YIGHT! Ze had to turn them off, personally. Ok fine. Lights off.
Bye GiGi! (Seamus had fallen asleep early and forgotten to come over for bedtime.)
Back in the crib. Bounced back up, arms out. I leaned down expecting to thwart an “up!”
Instead, arms went around my neck for a big hug, and ze flopped back down into the crib, satisfied.
Ponderings
“Pick one book, then it’s naptime, JB.”
Ze tapped zir finger on zir nose. “Hmmm.”
Where did that come from??
Roar!
JB pointed at zir shirt, then threw zir arms in the air: “RAWWWRR!”
*expectant look turns impatient*
“RAWWWRR!”
Zir shirt had …. DANDELIONS!
Favorite books
Nursery Rhyme Comics
This was the gift that just kept giving. Ze gets to pick three books to read before bed, and ze always picks this one. We’ve read it no less than 6 times a day, every day, for weeks. WEEKS.
Beep! Beep! Go to Sleep! by Todd Tarpley and John Rocco
You know JuggerBaby has robots on the mind when ze yells beep beep!
:: Does anyone else antagonize their kid/dog/cat/turtle just a little bit for laughs?
February 6, 2017
On Money
Income
Our normal income is two full time day job salaries.
We experiment with earning money on the side, including minimal cash flow that we don’t touch from an investment property.
The goal is to replace our day job income before my health gives out and prevents me from working.
Spending
Our normal spending includes the living expenses for two households, these updates ignore those ordinary expenses.
I stopped tracking our expenses to the penny five years ago because it was too time-consuming. That was fine for a couple years but I’ve observed increases in our spending in the last three years, mainly unusual expenses, that need to be budgeted for. For a fresh start this year, I’ve created a new spreadsheet where we list the bills we paid with an average spending amount listed in the budgeting column. Specific types of spending (food, gas, groceries, utilities, insurance, etc) are paid by credit card, so those will be mildly opaque but we seem to do better when we aim at reducing aggregate amounts rather than “$100 per month on drinks”. Not that we spend that on drinks. (more…)