April 4, 2018

Our big luxuries

We appreciate the little things that fulfill our sense of luxury but the big things are amazing because we can afford some things that were totally out of reach for me 20 years ago.

The pricey daycare

This is for all of us. Our local preschool wait list is 3-4 years long so we’re not specifically choosing this over the muuuuuch cheaper preschool, but I view it as a luxury to pick this particular option instead of a home care option. Home care options are significantly cheaper but since we don’t know anyone who can refer us to a good one, we just don’t have the peace of mind that ze will be treated well and that any violations or mistreatment of children will be immediately reported by the other people who work at the facility. Our facility isn’t perfect, but they DO self-report any time there are infractions where other people might dismiss them as “not that bad”.

JB LOVES the teachers at this daycare and all the resources they have: books, toys, iPads, desktops where ze can pretend to be me. They are located close to PiC’s work which makes dropoff much easier, we love that their schedule mirrors PiC’s work schedule so neither of us has to take precious days off to cover childcare on holidays.

Empty spaces

We have 2 cabinets in our kitchen that are almost completely empty. I have no plans or desire to add to it any time soon. It’s my favorite non-thing about the kitchen! The emptiness is a promise to myself that if we want to grow or change or add, we can without feeling claustrophobic and that we are committing to not expanding to fill every empty space just because it exists. We’re respecting the space.

My ideal closet is a half empty room, housing exactly what I need, a couple of extra lovely soft cuddly things for cold days and nights, and a wide open space. For possibilities!

Four legged friends

Seamus is a delight and a comfort. He keeps my blood pressure down, generates fabulous sleeping dog scent while he cuddles nearby, and intervenes when JB is driving us all loonytunes.

He brings pure joy when he’s sleep-roaching, when he’s converting a friend who is afraid of dogs into a doglover, when he’s sunbathing and grins with tongue lolling and stretched gaping joyful jaws. He requires a lot of hands on care and he’s worth every minute and every penny.

Travel

As a confirmed hermit, and would be shut-in, who hates to be away from her home and dogs, you would think that travel would be my last priority for spending. In some ways, it is – I hate paying full freight on flights, rental cars, lodgings. But it’s important so I travel hack to make it affordable. We live far away from friends and family so, as a purely practical matter, it’s the only way we’re going to spend time with a lot of them as they have families themselves and it’s no longer just a matter of driving across town and dropping in for dinner.

“Be fearless in the pursuit of what sets your soul on fire.” – Jennifer Lee

The non practical side of it is simply this: discovery. It’s so easy to lose sight of the world out there. It’s really easy to let our own narrow range of lived experiences come to encompass all experiences, to overwrite the wealth of the world’s beauty and inspiration because it’s easier and, for me, less painful to stay home. It’s easy for friends and family to forget that I live with pain as a companion every minute, it’s most definitely easier for me to avoid those exertions that bring on even worse pain. Hiking, exploring new countries, walking to new food experiences, riding horses through Scotland? That sounds fantastic, except that after the first flushes of excitement, I come home to my body. Where I live, the view never changes. It would truly be much easier to avoid travel. That ease makes it much more imperative that we don’t fall into that trap. Even if it costs money, takes a lot of time and precious brainpower, it’s a luxury that we can afford and should afford for ourselves.

In my family, travel hasn’t ever been a thing you did for fun. You traveled when you were leaving everything you knew, for good. Emigration, not tourism. Now that we can, we should.

Laurie described great reasons for international tourism more eloquently than I can manage right now, but Done by Forty reminded me of another one: our children are going to be raised by very different parents than we were. Our parents were immigrants who came here with nothing but the clothes on their backs. By contrast, we are basically wealthy people. Not just compared to our parents, compared to much of the world. As such, it’s even more important that our children be exposed to more cultures and languages and society with different values so they understand that there is so much more to the world than just what they know here.

:: What big extras do you prioritize?

March 28, 2018

Credit card churning update: March 2018

Back in ’15, I decided to slow churn cards on a regular basis, even if we didn’t have a specific trip goal in mind.

Quick notes:

• We still don’t have a specific trip in mind yet but I have my sights set on some kind of an international trip next year. For about 5 seconds I wildly dreamed about hiking through Patagonia but my body reminded where I live. Hahah, no. Dammit.
• For the purposes of figuring out whether we’ve wasted money on a card or not, I’m estimating the total value of our miles or points for each card to make sure that we are earning at least our minimum profit per churned card but we won’t know the true value until we actually redeem them.
• We haven’t been respecting the “no annual fee” rule for the past several cards as long as the miles or points bonuses were at least worth twice as much as the annual fee, if not four times as much.
• We ALWAYS pay the card balances in full. No exceptions.
• We time our churning activity with necessary spending. We never manufacture unnecessary spending for a card bonus. We’ll pass on a card before we do that. I keep a spreadsheet to track expected large expenses for this. (more…)

March 26, 2018

My little luxuries

There’s been a whole lot of chatter on the interwebs about what income level you need to be considered middle class, or more.

My contribution early on was that a household income of $100,000 in most places is what I consider upper middle class. That wouldn’t sustain us or our current lifestyle in the Bay Area. We wouldn’t be able to afford daycare, or travel, or eating out. We probably couldn’t afford this house or our second car. We’d get by but it wouldn’t feel good.

Nevertheless, I started to feel wealthy a long while ago even though our salaries are laughable compared to Silicon Valley friends or more highly educated colleagues. That’s because I truly appreciate the value of certain small things.

BOOKS!

Reading the calendar, I see that our daycare is going to have a Scholastic Book Fair in a few weeks. I asked Twitter if they were pro- or con- SBF because I don’t know much about the program. Penny assured me that they’re great about giving teachers funding support which made my heart sing. Buying a book because we want to read, because our kids love to read, that’s the stuff that feeling rich is made of.

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March 12, 2018

Our charitable giving strategy

This is a reader requested post on a subject that’s been percolating for some time.

I say “our strategy”, but PiC trusts me with our money, even when I appear to be giving it away with reckless abandon. (Or maybe that’s how it feels to me, and he knows I’m rarely reckless with money.)

I’ve already talked about my philosophy on charitable giving. We’ve talked about increasing our not-significant giving each year, and I’ve committed to continue doing that this year. It seems like more transparency is in order to keep us on track, and perhaps sharing our thoughts with others would help them, but I’m not sure if others value that part. Let me know if it’s yea or nay?

Here, I’m going to share how we’re structuring our giving this year.

Warning: I’ve never been this organized before, but we’re also not all that organized by objective measures so, lower your expectations please!

NOTE: Cutting off Dad doesn’t mean we’re flush with cash now so that hasn’t had any effect on our giving. We originally needed to stop supporting him because we couldn’t afford it any longer. When we moved, our mortgage and our taxes tripled.  YEEK.

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