May 28, 2012
This year, two of my baby relatives are heading off to medical school and I couldn’t be prouder.
Growing up in an equally poor household, their family stayed that way. They didn’t try to live above their means, live above their means or throw money away on big purchases. They had one parent stay home with the kids and tend to their needs physically and educationally: carting them around to school, a few limited activities, cooking, extra tutoring when they were younger or taking them to study groups and accelerated classes when they were older while the other parent worked.
Perhaps they got a wee bit spoiled in that they don’t cook or clean for themselves at all at home, but their mommy looooves to do those things for them. Instead they studied their tuchuses off and earned full scholarships to universities, and then took care of themselves after that. And now, medical school.
It finally feels like they’re becoming adults as much as I’ve been in denial about it even though they’ve been growing up right at my heels. It’s a cognitive dissonance that may never fade to realize my wee rellies aren’t so wee. I remember cradling them as infants, while just a child myself. I remember dandling babies off knees hardly far enough off the ground to fall and scrape it. The distance between us is half a decade and more, yet it seems like they represent the next generation, and perhaps even redeem mine own.
At times, I look at our socio-political landscape and I weep for our present. Others, I look at my cousins and I think, we may have something yet.
They might well indeed be the ones to mend up my broken heart over my sibling. They have potential still, they have futures to fulfill and prospects ahead of them. I can’t wait to see what life has in store for them and what they’ll do with it all.
They have “the promise of a generation.” (CJ Cregg, The West Wing)
May 21, 2012
Recent discussions about money, higher-earners and expectations, external and internal to the relevant family members, has conveniently coincided with the point in time where we start talking about trajectories for the future.
I was fascinated, and disturbed to see, value judgments still being passed on choices like whether dads should stay at home with the kids. I completely understand having a strong personal preference one way or the other, but I’m not a fan of declaring one way right or wrong when harm isn’t being done in the pursuit of building and rearing a family.
I wandered into a parenting forum that disgusted and outraged me on the subject. One woman was stomping all over the thread (population: single dads/stay at home dads/dads being the primary caretakers for other reasons) telling all the posters that they were second class citizens, the second but worst choice, that they were harming their children by choosing to be home with them instead of leaving them with the women in their lives, because “women are naturally better at caring for children”. Her claim was that at childbirth, women are gifted with the skills and a level of cognition that men can never achieve, so men are bumbling incompetents apt to do more harm than good interfering with the women’s right to raise the children.
In this day and age, that was difficult to see.
When people are constantly decrying the deadbeat dad, the detached dad, the long-gone dad, how on earth does someone have the gall to decry those men who are choosing their children over their career or choosing to make their career work with their children as the first priority? And what about those situations where the mothers/females are not in the children’s lives because they simply cannot be or choose not to be?
I can tell you this much: giving birth to a child means you are capable of giving birth. I have never in my anecdotal experience of seeing dozens of cousins, first, second and third degree, and coworkers, have children, seen it confer any level of parenting expertise that outmatched anyone else’s if that person didn’t have a brain to begin with and resources to coach them. I say this from having learnt how to care for three children alone, a toddler and two infants, while their idiot mother swanned off for several hours to hang out. Because she figured a seven year old was appropriate childcare for her 3 kids under the age of three. And from watching more than one coworker smoke and drink her way through pregnancy and then wonder why her kid was on a respirator at birth.
So what makes the “choice” more or less “ok”? If it’s not a choice and one has to be forced into the situation due to unemployment, disability, or other circumstances beyond one’s control?
That was the situation my relatives found themselves in: the husband was becoming obsolete in his field due to rapid technology changes and the cost of staying up to date was beyond their means. With the kids, it made sense for the dad to stay home with them. Yes, they were poor but they weren’t latchkey kids. And for all I know, that could have been the choice that saved our family from eventual meltdown.
Good friends of ours consciously made that choice. Dad could have kept a horrible commute to make more money but his wife made good enough money for their household and it was better for their peace of mind to always have Dad with the young ones rather than babysitting with family (which meant no rules!) when mom wasn’t home so that’s what they did.
Let this pessimist declare that judgment system flawed.
I’d much rather try to make as conscious a choice as possible and plan ahead. I know what it’s like to be raised with not much in the till or on the table, and I saw how much my parents struggled with not having anything at the end of their lives. In the middle here, I’d like to attempt some informed choices that include all possibilities.
I like to think I’d choose to be a mother who stays in the workplace because I don’t think I’d be stellar at caretaking while I know I’m awesome at professional work. I know this because I’ve spent over 20 years caring for family and children, related or not. I love them dearly but it’s exhausting and I simply didn’t have the instinctive biological yearning that my mother did to want to continue to care for children. I’m not bad at it, in fact, I am a great sitter in a pinch, but I’m no Child Whisperer. In contrast, love or hate my job at the time, I’ve always been good at it. And even if I’m in pain, I can do my job. And when it’s really bad, I can work from home or take a sick day. You cannot take a sick day from your kid!
PiC, on the other hand, may not have 20+ years under his belt but he is goooood with kids. They love him. They love uncle to distraction. At any age, at any time of day or night, Uncle is awesome. And he has so much more energy than I do. And to him, a job is a job is a job. It’s there to make a living, he’d rather be (fill in the blank). He understands how to live life – which is what grounds me when I’m willing to be grounded away from work.
He’s never loved his work to the degree that I do. My theory is that he would be way better at home with kids than I would. I have no real idea if he’d survive nap times and setting structure but he’s so good at ignoring a clingy Doggle that I’m certain he’d set boundaries after a while. Men parent differently and I know he’d make it work.
Financially, it could be a little tricky. Frankly, at the moment, he has far superior benefits. Mine are mediocre. If we had a family, I’d want his coverage. I make more now but I need to make way more if we were to lose his salary. In part, because we’re still covering my dad. But things could definitely change. I could find a better gig with better benefits, or at least different benefits, and then it could work.
At the end of all this, this is only the Right Now.
My health hasn’t improved appreciably over the last ten years and has in some ways, declined. This is a reminder that we cannot take our health and capabilities for granted.
There are so many unknowns:
What’s my actual health and earning life span? (No idea.)
What if he takes a break and has to go back to work? How does that work? (we could sort of plan for that)
What if I have to be the one to take a break?
How does that affect earnings and savings?
And what about cultivating alternative income?
And honestly, we could just change our minds and want something totally different from what we thought we wanted. I not only want, I need and expect that to be ok. That’s why any of this: choice.
April 16, 2012
We’d recently taken a much needed break to spend a few days with friends and a week without in Hawaii for our delayed honeymoon. I didn’t realize how very much we needed it but we were frazzled and dipped in less than happy sauce by the time we got on the plane.
I’d been stressing over financing the trip with points or miles for months, but honestly when it came right down to it, the effort of what used to be easy-breezy personal finance was just a burden on my overtaxed attention meter. I just couldn’t do it so we booked the flights, lucking into a sale, and put it on our card that we’ve been concentrating on building points for. It was expensive.
Transportation alone cost:
$550 for rental cars
$2300 for airfare
= Total, $2850
I thought we’d see some real savings not going to Australia…. whoo, boy. Not so much. And the food, oh my gosh the food. It was one, fannntastic. But two? Oh wow. I actually stopped keeping mental tabs on the spending because I needed to be able to enjoy the trip. After all, spending quality time together and stuffing our faces were the primary reasons we went! Boy, did we. Stuff our faces, I mean.
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| The requisite umbrella drinks on our first night in town! |
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| The most amazing bouillabaise I’ve ever seen – or eaten. That bread was a foot long, btw. That’s a lobster tail you see there. Next to the largest prawn I’ve ever consumed. Next to the best crab legs. Ever. |
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| Plate Lunches! A loco moco for her. Fried fish, chicken and pork with fries for him. |
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| Luau appetizers. Pineapple, poi chips, sashimi. |
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| Lunch at Leoda’s. Leave your heart (and most of your cash). Absolutely delicious. Definitely pricey but oh, so good. |
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| No vacation would be complete if I didn’t find a stray to pet! |
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| The famous Black Sand Beach – the sands were amazing. There is a big layer of black rocks; then really grainy sand. |
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| Yet another gorgeous beach on the road to Hana |
Sadly, I spent most of the trip down with a virus, apparently I’d been pre-infected or something so we were forced to keep our activities to a minimum. Bummer. It was still beautiful and the food was amazing but I’d really like to call a Calvin-and-Hobbesian do-over!
An interesting thing about Maui, I noticed, was the assortment of resorts and timeshares populating the coast. We meandered through a few of the semi-local areas on our own looking for more hole in the wall, less-touristy places to eat but pretty much everything catered to tourists if you were a reasonable distance from the coast. A local real estate office posted the listings for the timeshares currently available in its windows and of course I had to run over and look. It was incredible how much they were going for.
The place we stayed at simply wasn’t a luxury location or business, which was fine considering we only booked several months out so the booking agency couldn’t get us into anything nicer, but I couldn’t believe they’d sell at nearly the same pre-owned rates as the Westin or the Hyatt down the road. I guarantee you that the quality had to be much better at the places down the way. Our concierge had the gall to tell us our trip “wasn’t a honeymoon if the wedding was 5 months ago.” There’s some service for you. While I’m not overly precious about the trip myself, that was downright rude. If a guest was sensitive about it which frankly, given the fact that had we tried to honeymoon after our wedding and cancelled because of my mom’s death, I would have been … well, lucky for him, I was in vacation mode and my claws had been left at home. I’m just shaking my head over his need to go out of his way to be rude rather than just shrug and move on.
PiC and I had a fun debate over the cost of a timeshare and real estate in Maui. A driving tour guide told us that one piece of land (2 acres) plus a house was going for what seemed like a reasonable amount compared to the Bay Area: $400,000. You simply can’t get that kind of property here and I’ll admit to a moment of sheer insanity – what if we got a second home in Hawaii!?
……
Yes, ok. I had vacation brain. Right, we don’t even have a first house.
Plus, the cost of eating there had nearly given me a heart attack. I abandoned PiC in one grocery store because I’d nearly frozen to death while he ooohed and aaahhhed over the prices like we were in a zoo admiring otters do backflips. With cereal costing anywhere between $7-9/box, milk running $8/gallon, fruit $2/piece and up, it was hard to blame him but I didn’t go to Hawaii to become a Popsicle in their refrigerated section.
Anyway, housing – COLA was incredible. And while property tax was purportedly very low according to a couple of friends, cost of living for everything else remained skyhigh. Gas prices are actually higher than in the Bay Area by 10%. So no, a second home is everything firmly on the side of insane. It was funny to dream for a minute though. I just got suckered in by the idea.
Our two budget-busters were the luau and the really nice dinner in Paia. Luaus are, no kidding, pricey as all get out. We definitely ate way too much. And our friends recommended a fantastic seafood restaurant so I saved all my seafoody wishes for that restaurant and ate until I could hold no more. It’s embarrassing how much that food cost, actually, I couldn’t believe that it could run so much. But, as our dear friend who sent us to this timeshare texted us, “you only have a first honeymoon once!”
Yes, I burst out laughing. No, I didn’t text her back: “first?” That text is my justification for a do-over. 😉
It was a lovely trip. I had to let my hair down and in fact, let it wave free because I forgot my hairbrush. PiC had no qualms about being seen with me in public like that. He’s always been good about embracing messy-mussy-me. We had fun. It was a little bittersweet, remembering why we are still doing it out of order and still haven’t celebrated with family and friends. But it was good, reconnecting, rediscovering the world, and doing really really stupid things together like eating so much pork at a luau that neither of you can walk without pain. We deserved each other that night, and probably always.
April 3, 2012
Once upon a time, I dreamed big for the future. Out of those dreams, I formulated a life plan wherein I’d be taking a professional health degree of some kind and a PhD, entering a white collar profession, and buying a home for myself and my parents (separate homes, mind) before the age of 30. After 30 was a little hazy, but I figured plotting the next 23 years was good enough. Also, two degrees and affording two homes was a tough enough nut to crack – I wasn’t ready to plot any more years.
This was before I knew the words “net worth” because, you know, seven years old, but you had better believe that the balance sheets did not include debt. I’d already been writing out the checks for the bills for my parents and knew how I wanted to set up my own budget when the time came.
You may notice, as my mother had, that I had made no provisions in those plans, for marriage or kids. As far as I was concerned, it might happen, it might not, I wasn’t planning on it or depending on it and figured it wasn’t terribly relevant to the trajectory of my career and money. That was a pretty unsophisticated understanding of how life and marriage works.
Clearly, I was bound and determined to have my own mind and at the time, that also meant keeping my own finances, separate and free. As the years passed, I saw too many bad choices made by one or another couple where there was a divide in the spender/saver continuum, even in my own family, or business decisions gone awry, especially in my own family, and I just couldn’t fathom living in that life.
“If you live in a community property state, not combining finances is just lying to yourself about legalities.” @practicalwed
So once upon a time, I might have disagreed with Meg. Despite my primary marriage example being the relatively healthy and supportive partnership my parents shared in which they had combined finances, I was still certain that I could keep separate finances in any prospective marriage and cope just fine.
Except I’d never coped with two separate systems for myself and my parents so I had no blueprint for a working system. I’d assumed it was only a lack of income on their part and need to control on my part that that didn’t work.
After several months of juggling our separate systems, the time has come to wish good bye to that once-loved independent money philosophy: PiC and I need to combine our finances. Between my OCD control tendencies and his laissez-faire attitude to saving versus spending, I now doubt that we’d get to our final destination in one piece. And we live in a community property state so, frankly, we are combined in the eyes of the law, whether we have combined or not. Entangled, like it or not. (Romantic, hm?)
It’s been as stressful being hands-off while we paid bills separately and waited for incomes to reach stasis as it was maintaining two separate sets of accounts for myself and my parents more than ten years ago.
We just don’t function very well managing our “own” money when we have such different views of it. Part of it is the actual management and lack of transparency. The system isn’t set up well at the moment between our paychecks and direct deposits.
And philosophically, he still viewed his money as his money and spent freely, resenting that an uneven amount of expenses were coming out of his pocket, while I viewed all the money as our money and saved to offset his spending, and resented his depletion of our budget.
It turns out that we need to literally be on the same page to think from the same page. Never thought that’d be the case but there it is.
Starting at the beginning, I evaluated all our expenses and income and set up the target amounts that we’d want in specific pots for our savings and spendings goals. Now, we just have to figure out which banks and which accounts to keep and which to cut out, then actually do it.
Married Life Posts:
Married Life: Benefits
Married Life: Mortgage Prepayment for Refinancing
Married Life: Blending spending styles and learning the art of compromise
March 19, 2012
In Donna’s Strategic Pizza, she shares her experience with the beginnings of the same phenomenon that I’ve noticed has crept into our own shared lives organically, but not comfortably, over the past year and some.
One of the natural effects of living with PiC has been that my normal levels of frugality and privations to make sure that ends are met are offset by extra spending where I normally would not have chosen it.
Left to my own devices, life is conducted Broke Student Style. I don’t eat out, I don’t buy anything I don’t need unless (or even if) the existing item is falling apart, I stay home all weekend, every weekend because I can be productive, learn, and monitor finances without spending money that way. I’ll buy gifts, frugally, but rarely are purchases for myself.
PiC looks at me crossways, wondering why I didn’t just stop and pick something up to eat if I’ve run 4 hours of errands and I’m exhausted. He wonders why I don’t go out on a sunny day to shop, plan brunch, or have dinners out with family and friends.
Not only does it not occur to me to do that instead of cheap or free options like taking a snack on errands, cooking at home or going to the park or hanging out at home and catching up, it actually feels like I’m going off the rails. I’m being foolish and wasteful, spending.
Our experiences have shaped us so fundamentally differently, he and I.
When we come home after extra long (14+ hour) days, I wonder: What’s in the freezer and fridge? What kind of meal can I throw together if I don’t already have one ready? I can defrost and put something together. Or: maybe I can just pass out and forget dinner.
His is: Let’s just get take-out and get that worry out of the way.
The last thing I want to do is add spending guilt to my fatigue. The last thing he wants to do is spend more time and energy at the end of a long and tiring day.
Now that my health is so largely exacerbated by exhaustion and our income isn’t scraping by penny to penny, month to month, I have to admit that he has a point. I have to keep reminding myself that the ledger doesn’t need to be the absolute first (and only) priority.
In the early months of our living together, it was incredibly difficult not to object every single time the subject came up. To keep the issue from becoming a point of contention, I tried to artificially restrict the number of meals and the cost of eating out. I needed to impose some limits to know that we weren’t going to spiral into an endless convenience spending cycle.
After many months of tracking our expenses, we’re still looking for a system that suits us, but we’ve come to an understanding. Some convenience spending is part of our lives as a freedom he’s accustomed to, particularly when we’re, one or the other, just too tired to scrape the meal together, but we limit it to those times when the fatigue threatens familial harmony. The amount is still more than I’m comfortable with but that’s to be expected; we can work on that. Meanwhile, I’ve been learning to let go of the wallet-anxiety a little.
This is a small step in the direction of living a mindful, purposeful, and ultimately, peaceful life.
Married Life Posts:
Married Life: Benefits
Married Life: Mortgage Prepayment for Refinancing
February 29, 2012
Nicole and Maggie (I’m on a Grumpy Rumblings kick this week, as you’ll see): request in this post:
Please do not try to work full-time and also go to school full-time. That’s why we have low-interest loans for education. Don’t take out more than the average salary for someone in your major from your school, but don’t kill yourself either. School isn’t just a degree– the reason it gets you a job is because of the skills you learn, and a lot of these skills are fuzzy… they’re training your ways of thinking. How to think like a [insert your major here]. If you’re just repeating things you’ve memorized back, or cranking numbers through an algorithm like a computer could, then you’re not really much more useful to an employer than a high school graduate would have been.
If you do work full-time and go to school full-time, don’t blame us for trying to make you get a solid education even though you don’t have time for it. Choices = consequences. As your professors, we realize that you have other things in your life besides our courses. But if you don’t place a high priority on our courses, your grades will suffer, and if they don’t, you have to wonder about the worth of the degree you’re getting. More importantly, you won’t be learning anything. Save yourself the time and money and don’t go to school full-time now if it’s not going to be a priority.
And… regardless of the schooling choices you make, it is never too late to learn and grow and change.
Do you think people should be encouraged to work full time while going to school full time? What would your advice be?
The comments thread was so big I didn’t even want to dive in so I thought I’d muse over here instead.
Now, I’m that kid that went to school full time and worked 40-80 hour weeks. More or less, I didn’t plan to pay for college because I thought I’d get more scholarships than I did, and I thought I would have my parents’ support, not that I’d be supporting them.
While I graduated with an ok GPA that I wouldn’t state publicly because I’m not proud of it, it’s not bad. It’s just not as good as I think it should or could have been (summa cum laude, say). I know I skated through at least one class on decent testing skills and probably the professor’s empathy (B). Also, I took some classes that were just for learning because I wanted to, not because they were required and not because I knew anything at all about them. And those Russian Lit classes were way above my brain-grade so making Bs in those classes was kind of a miracle.
Yet, I always got my homework done, always. I took care of my ailing mother, I worked my tuckus off and I graduated within four years. It required a bit of summer school, very little social life, and very little sleep, but I did manage it. And I have a thriving career now, thanks to the start that degree gave me.
Meanwhile, here are Nicole and Maggie citing studies that working less than 10 hours per week is beneficial and while working more than 20 hours per week is detrimental.
And I’m wondering – what would I do if I had kids?
Deep down, you know I’m totally going to judge my kids if they don’t at least try to work through college, whether it be a few hours during the week or just full time summers, right? There’s absolutely a bit of me that says you have to want it and you have to earn it, and yo’ momma wasn’t the smartest cookie in the jar and she did it, so can you. And I recognize that’d be poor parenting and the voice of inexperience being 18+ years away from having to even think about the question. But still.
What is really a good answer here?
Obviously, I haven’t a clue because I haven’t met my prospective kids yet, so I don’t know what might be best for them in their specific circumstances. But I am quite certain that their future does involve having a vested financial interest in their success and progress through college.
:: What would you do? What did you do?
:: Bonus question: did being either an on-campus or commuter student affect your experience?
February 26, 2012
It’s been a heck of a week. Not terrible but tiring. I finally caught up with my dad and found out that there have been multiple deaths in the family. It’s maybe a good thing that I didn’t know about them in time to attend the services as I would have felt obligated to attend. Instead, I’ve been focusing getting things done at home and exercising myself and Doggle.
Kind of overdid it though, between being emotionally overwrought thinking about Mom and seeking catharsis through cleaning. My hands and arms don’t appreciate the outlets that my brain seeks, which is really frustrating as physical activity is so good for the brain.
Posts for Perusal
Little Miss Moneybags and Peanut got their Life Insurance in order. PiC and I organized our life insurance along similar lines, though we will likely be having more conversations to get aligned as things change. At the time we sorted our insurance, he was well able to take care of any financial needs without my income. Without me, he would likely still work in this town and stay in this home. He would need some assistance for sorting things and Doggle, so I still carry insurance through work but both he and my dad would be beneficiaries of my life insurance because I don’t want him to be financially responsible for Dad’s healthcare and continuing care. (I still have to set up a trust for that.) If he’s gone, I couldn’t carry the costs for myself, this home and my Dad however long I had to support him, so I would need a fair amount of extra income from his insurance.
Eemusings on the Cost of Convenience: I’m pretty sure that I’m close to the same as eemusings. I hate spending money on convenience items like snacks when they’re not part of the grocery shop. But I will buy things as part of the shopping trip like chips, nuts, frozen foods for reheating on those nights when we don’t want or don’t have time to cook a full meal.
A Recipe
I have SingleMa‘s Pinterest obsession to thank for this one. She pinned this Crispy Honey Lemon Chicken recipe several weeks ago and the name (of course) stuck in my mind. I rather obsessively went back to hunt for it when trying to decide what to make for dinner and made it with some alterations to the recipe to suit my lazier cooking style and general preference for baked over fried (faster clean-up).
Original:
Crispy Honey Lemon Chicken
serves 4-6
Ingredients:
4 boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into pieces
1/4 cup olive oil + 3 tablespoons
3 tablespoons honey + more for dripping/drizzling
the juice of 2 large lemons
1 tablespoon fresh lemon zest + 2 teaspoons
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 cup all-purpose (or whole wheat) flour
2 tablespoons cornstarch
Directions:
In a bowl, combine 1/4 cup olive oil, 3 tablespoons honey, lemon juice, 1 tablespoon lemon zest, and a 1/4 teaspoon each of salt and pepper. Whisk ingredients together, then add chicken pieces to a ziplock bag and pour marinade over top. Let sit for 30 minutes – 2 hours.
When ready to make, add flour, cornstarch, 1 teaspoon lemon zest and the remaining salt and pepper to a large bowl. Mix well. Heat a large skillet on medium-high heat, and once it is very hot, add 1 tablespoons of olive oil. Coat chicken pieces in the flour mixture, then add to the skillet and cook until each side is golden brown, about 3-4 minutes per side. Remove and set chicken on a paper-towel covered plate. Cook remaining batches, adding more/less oil if needed. I used 3 tablespoons, but depending on how coated your chicken pieces are you may need a bit more.
Serve with rice and a few tablespoons of honey mixed with lemon zest for dipping.
Modified
Crispy Honey Lemon Chicken
serves 2 greedy-faces
Ingredients:
4-8 chicken drumsticks and/or thighs, bone-in
1/4 cup olive oil + 3 tablespoons
3 tablespoons honey + more for dripping/drizzling
the juice of 2 large lemons
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 cup all-purpose flour
Directions:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Cover a roasting pan with foil.
In a bowl, combine 1/4 cup olive oil, 3 tablespoons honey, lemon juice, and a 1/4 teaspoon each of salt and pepper. Whisk ingredients together, then add chicken pieces to a ziplock bag and pour marinade over top. Let sit for 30 minutes – 2 hours. (Or overnight.)
When ready to make, add flour and the remaining salt and pepper to a large bowl. Mix well. Coat chicken pieces in the flour mixture, then place pieces side by side in the roasting pan.
Bake for 20 minutes, turn, bake for another 10-15 minutes until done.
Serve with rice and roasted vegetables.
