About sixteen years ago, I met him for the first time. My trainwreck sibling brought home this adorable puppy he had no business adopting because he had not one thing in his life that wasn’t a mess. I was furious at my sibling – he didn’t even take care of himself, how could he drag
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May 4, 2017
On Money
Income
Our normal income comes from two full time day jobs.
We experiment with earning money on the side, including minimal cash flow that we don’t touch from an investment property and investing in dividend stocks. Some of our side income comes from Swagbucks, selling clothes on Poshmark which is hit or miss, and tracking activity through Achievement (my introduction to it).
The goal is to replace our day job income before my health declines prevents me from working.
*** (more…)
May 1, 2017
My brokerage is TradeKing, I’ve been very happy with their low fees and service. They’re offering a promotion through my referral link right now: New accounts opened with a $500 minimum deposit get $500 in free trade commission and new accounts opened with a $5000 minimum deposit get $1000 in free trade commission.
- Given my apathy towards the trajectory of my full time job (flattish for now) and the trajectory of my salary (also flattish), I’ve decided to carry on with investing in dividend stocks. It’ll be useful for early income replacement if I were to voluntarily retire, but also in case my health drops precipitously. There’s no guarantee I’ll stay healthy enough to work for as long as I want to work.
- The $15,000 that I was holding finally went into two more stocks in January – both have already paid out their dividends as well.
Year to Date Dividends: $518.20, Fees: $9.90, Net: $508.20
Income Replacement
For perspective, I like to think of the dividends investing project in terms of how much of our income it can replace, or how much of our fixed expenses it can cover.
At a whopping $508.30, this year’s dividends can pay 50% of one mortgage payment. Over the past 6 years, I’ve made a total of $1,940.80. It’s all been reinvested, I haven’t taken any dividends out of the portfolio and won’t for some years yet.
Income projection. If nothing changes, we’ll see about $1500 in dividend income this year.
:: How did your portfolio do this quarter? Would you try to replace income this way, or do you have another preference?
April 26, 2017
Veterinary issues aside, and we have had MANY, Seamus is as near to perfect a dog as we could ask for. He often tricks me into thinking we could have another dog – if only we could duplicate what makes him so perfect!
This month has been a roller coaster of trying to treat an eye problem that stubbornly refuses to respond to the normal medication regimen. If he doesn’t improve by the end of this week, we may have to take him to an eye specialist. This doesn’t come at a good time for our money, of course, nor is it a good thing for him because if it gets worse, it gets a lot worse. I don’t think he or I could take any more misery – he’s sad enough that he won’t even destroy his new plush toy! As a canary in the mine goes, the canary is mostly dead.
I spent days on Seamus Don’t-Rub-Your-Eyes!-Watch until I found this KONG Cloud E-Collar. It’s the first version of an e-collar that hasn’t made Seamus go gorilla-mode and rip it to pieces. Apparently the Cone of Shame is one humiliation too many for the otherwise perfect pupper.
Don’t get me wrong – this looks ridiculous too, enough so that JuggerBaby insists that we take it off for his walks: “No pee-yo!” But it’s soft and he doesn’t hate it with every fiber of his being. It also doesn’t catch on things and serves as a useful bumper when he veers too close to walls and furniture with his rheumy eyes. When the Velcro is loose, he knows that he can take it off and use it for a pillow if I’m sure he won’t rub his eyes. All in all, the best $14 spent this month. In addition to the $450 in exams and medications. :/
Meanwhile! Rather than fret myself to pieces waiting for healing to happen all week, I’m choosing to focus on why I adore him.
Endless patience, plus boundaries
He allows JuggerBaby to festoon him with necklaces, or blankets, or lean on him affectionately. He puts up with a certain amount of rudeness, that ze is immediately reprimanded for by the adults, without more than a blink or two. But in all of his tolerance, he doesn’t stick around long enough for zir push him to the point of being angry, or even irritated. When it’s clear that his fur might be ruffled, he simply and calmly gets up and leaves.
Snap your fingers obedience…
If he understands your command or intent, he obeys immediately. Try shouting stop to him at his most focused on something else moments. I field tested this the other day when he threw his own ball into the middle of the street, as I held back a flailing JuggerBaby from chasing it too. I hollered STOP NOW and boy if that dog didn’t skid to a stop like he hit an invisible brick wall! It was better than a crash test dummy situation, and for my blood pressure. I’ve seen dogs chase their balls into the street and right under the wheels of an oncoming vehicle, it’s the worst sound in the world.
You can trust him with your food at all times – he doesn’t touch your food when he’s told to “leave it.” I’ve literally put his food in front of him, told him to wait and stay, left the room, and come back later to find him standing in the exact same position, gently wagging his tail with a smile. Just waiting, as told! This is
… and helpful to boot
When I was pregnant and half mobile, he learned to come over to lend me the strength of his steady back, so I could lever myself up. The habit’s stuck with him. When he thinks I’m too sick to get up, he comes over, sniffs my head and offers his back for me to get up.
Sweetest of dispositions…
There’s not a thing that could make Seamus do more than rumble at me when he’s grouchy that I refuse to feed him three meals in an hour. I’ve clipped his nails, cleaned his ears, wiped his bum, examined every inch of his body right side up and upside down, bathed him 4 times a week battling his allergies, and brought home a surprise infant. He’s never fazed or anything but loving and loyal.
In the course of his tenure here, he deferred to Doggle with the greatest respect, and never ventured to do more than snuggle by his side since Doggle didn’t know how to dog.
Despite constant little provocations, Seamus has never reacted poorly to any of JuggerBaby’s pokes, prods, or licking. The most he’s done is rolled his eyes at me in a mute appeal for help, with his ears slightly flattened. Part of this is because he knows I’m alpha and will intervene so he doesn’t have to lash out but really, getting my toes pinched or my ear tweaked would irritate me more than he’s ever shown. It DOES, in fact, since ze does that to me too.
… and protective as anything
Don’t come near his sibling, though, being loud or raucous. Ze might be an obnoxious little twerp sibling but ze is HIS sibling.
And don’t come to our house being rowdy, banging on the door, that’s completely unacceptable behavior and his booming barks let you know without a doubt that he doesn’t tolerate that nonsense. His booms surprise me, even, it’s rare to hear them!
I love my dog.
:: Regale me with tales of your favorite beloved pets, would you?
April 24, 2017
It’s been a while since my last rental property update!
I’ve identified a new property manager that I will likely change over to later in the year. It will cost me $150 to make the change and transfer, so I decided not to do it until after June for a couple reasons.
First, the pain of working with the current property manager is low right now, so I can afford to leave this alone for a few months while I focus on our more pressing needs. Don’t get me wrong, she’s used up my good will. It just doesn’t make sense to try to do everything at the same time, and do them all badly, because each project needs a minimum amount of care.
Second, my rent to expenses ratio was pretty low. It was time to reassess the rent against market rates, and we found that we were something like 20% below market.
Aside from that long-running HOA violations debacle, though, they’ve been good tenants with two years of consistently paying rent. I have to make sure that my expenses, now and upcoming, are covered but also didn’t want to hit them with a huge increase so we decided to make it a 6% rate increase with an explanation that we are choosing to give them a lower rent than we might because they’ve been good tenants.
Besides, I wasn’t about to repeat the same mistake that Dad’s landlord pulled. Small regular increases over the years are easier to swallow unless you can afford to leave the rent low for years. I can’t, unfortunately, but it’d be nice to be in that position!
:: What’s the biggest increase in housing cost that you’ve experienced? Was it as a renter or an owner?
*Part of Financially Savvy Saturdays on brokeGIRLrich.*
April 21, 2017
This recipe happening at all was the ultimate in exciting for me – I haven’t had the energy to bake a dessert in years!
When I do scrape together enough energy, it first going toward getting all my work done, then for making dinner, and getting JuggerBaby fed and settled into bed.
Last summer, well, last strawberry season more accurately, I managed to bake something tasty that’s nearly dessert-like (strawberry bread!) once every couple of weeks thanks to simplifying the recipe to the least possible required motion. There was no great reward for being efficient.
This one, though, was purely for me. Also for PiC, because I share with him, but mostly me.
It was both time intensive and energy intensive – I almost junked the plan altogether because of the very first step that seemed like way too much trouble. PiC was shocked when I hauled out the butter anyway and got cracking. There’s something to be said for being motivated by your cravings.
I’d share a photo but is anyone surprised that they were all devoured before I remembered to take one?
Ingredients
1/2 pound unsalted butter
8 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips, unless you want an extra dose of chocolatey goodness, in which case, add 6 ounces of chocolate chips
3 extra-large eggs
1 tablespoons pure vanilla extract
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup peanut butter
1/2 + 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1.5 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1.5 cups chopped walnuts
Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Butter and flour a 12 x 18 x 1-inch baking sheet.
Melt together the butter, chocolate chips, and peanut butter in a medium bowl over simmering water. Allow to cool slightly.
In a large bowl, stir (no beating) together the eggs, vanilla, and sugar.
Stir the warm chocolate mixture into the egg mixture and allow to cool to room temperature. Take a half hour break, I’d say.
In a medium bowl, sift together 1/2 cup of flour, baking powder, and salt. Add to the cooled chocolate mixture. Toss the walnuts in a medium bowl with 1/4 cup of flour, add 6 ounces of chocolate chips here if you want this to be sweeter, then add them to the chocolate batter.
Pour into the muffin tin.
Bake for 20 minutes, rap the tin, then bake for about 15 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean.
Allow to cool thoroughly before digging one out and chowing down, with a glass of milk.
Afterthoughts
This recipe was adapted from Ina Garten’s recipe. In keeping with my cooking style, these actually aren’t outrageous at all because we’re old fuddy duddies who don’t want diabetes. But they’re delicious!
I cut the original recipe in half to make a dozen muffin-brownies, and replaced the sugar with peanut butter to reduce the straight sugar a little bit, so they’re not truly bite-size either but who’s complaining? Not I, said the brownie for breakfast eater.
I buttered the muffin tin but I forgot to flour it. BIG mistake. Never mind, these weren’t for show anyway, they were for eating!
I left out the coffee, 6 ounces of semi-sweet chocolate, and 3 ounces of unsweetened chocolate. It might have been a mistake but we weren’t missing anything. Next time I’d increase the peanut butter, though, that flavor would be awesome.
April 19, 2017
I’m a recovering workaholic and it’s been 6 years since my last real* vacation.**
*defined as a time where I wasn’t required to log onto work and I didn’t do it more than once out of worry that something had become a steaming pile of waste on fire.
**maternity leave doesn’t count as a vacation in any stretch of the word and I will slap you with a wet fish if you try to argue with me about that. Fair warning.
Despite my recovering workaholic label, this isn’t entirely a situation of my own making. I didn’t mean to go this long without a true break. We haven’t just been sitting at home, dully Kermit-flailing at our keyboards in an endless grind. We’ve logged more travel for fun days in the past few years than I have in my entire career before this! It’s just that I’ve been making it work by doing it all, at the same time: traveling, working, and now, also parenting.
It hasn’t been without its flaws but it has included some amazing food so it’s hard to argue against the logic that if I can have it all, by doing it all, why not?
Because when you’re a recovering workaholic, you shouldn’t be looking for reasons to keep your work strapped to your hip!
Truly, the trouble with knowing that you can’t coast on talent, knowing that you made it to this point in life or work by dint of unbelievable amounts of hard work is that it’s incredibly hard to care about the research that says taking a break and refreshing your brain is good for you AND your work. That was my problem, early in my career. Stepping away meant I was losing ground and will have to work harder to catch up on my return. Like Leo McGarry (The West Wing) who didn’t want to take out the time for his AA meetings, I don’t want to be a half hour dumber than everyone else!
But that’s stupid. For one thing, information acquired as it develops takes far more time than catching up on most situations to get up to speed. It actually only took Leo about three minutes to arrive at the same place everyone else was waiting, for their next update. Surely nothing at my job is so complex or critical as Aaron Sorkin’s fictional White House, The West Wing version! (versus the American President version which is a whole other thing).
For another, your brain is a resource and running it continuously without respite is shoddy brain ownership. Even actual machines need downtime and maintenance.
What’s my point? My point is that even knowing all of the above, it’s been six years since my last vacation.
Money is about to be anywhere from pretty tight to OMGTIGHT, but you know me, I’ve already made contingency plans. I have a stockpile of points / miles and I will plan a real vacation.
But my laptop may still come with me because my addiction to being connected is not on the table for discussion at this time. One problem per post, please.
Assuming a small budget and travel companion who varies from being an utter delight to a tiny terrorist, and a preference for being with Seamus rather than boarding him, I think we may be talking road trip!
Colorado? Canada? Washington?
:: Where would you head after a long vacation drought? When and what was your last vacation?
April 17, 2017
There really is a good reason I haven’t had my dad move to a cheaper place yet. There aren’t any cheaper places to be had within a 50 mile radius of his current space (and also family support) so it didn’t make sense to force a move that would further isolate the two of them and save maybe about $50, if that, while also racking up moving costs.
He’s earning minor income on his own which is erratic, to supplement his SSI check which is small, but I pay for all his major living expenses – rent and utilities.
This month, a 60-day notice landed stating that they’re raising the rent by 50%.
As a renter, I’m horrified. As a landlord with some experience, I’m not surprised. We’ve been there a really long time and he hasn’t been good at upkeep these last few years. If he had been, I’m pretty sure they would have just kept on with the same rate. But even if we didn’t have huge house-hunting expenses coming up, we aren’t able to just absorb that 50% increase.
I had to have a conversation about what he’s going to do with him. That conversation didn’t go all that well. But this is a process. I’m weaning myself away from financially supporting him since he’s shown me that I’m not a daughter, I’m the Bank of Daughter from which you just keep taking.
That may not have been his intention, that may not even be how he feels. But it’s how I’ve felt since he royally betrayed my trust.
It’s taken me months to reconcile. It’s taken more months, and a bit of a housing crisis, then to figure out that I had to ask for help. Those were huge, unsettling leaps.
***
Facing down this history, and our upcoming expenses, I had to suppress the reaction that it was another problem that I’d have to handle.
I made myself leave it all in his hands to determine the next steps and what to do, with the understanding that I simply cannot shoulder this increase. That was uncomfortable and unfamiliar but it had to be done. We can’t keep going like this since I haven’t miraculously doubled or tripled my income in the last year.
***
At the moment, his plan is shaky at best.
The apartment hunt has come up dry, nothing within a 30-50 mile radius is reasonable, but he’s finally gotten the ball rolling on applying for housing aid which he should have done years ago. He’s also finally wrangled Trainwreck Sibling into getting evaluated for disability and housing aid as well. It’s about dang time. But this is the state of California we’re talking about – it’s going to take weeks or months for them to approve, if they approve, the applications.
In the meantime, he’s getting a job. It doesn’t pay much but he can probably come up with about half of the current rent for a few months. If it works out, he can come up with about 60% of the new rent after then.
While he’s doing that, he also has to keep looking for a new place.
All of this hurts my heart. I hate every bit of it.
For all the mistakes he’s made, he’s also nearly 70 years old. The idea that he’s going back to work kills me, turning on the guilt like a firehose. It also infuriates me to feel that way because I have been doing my level best for ages. These are steps he should have taken years ago, and in fact, it’s highly likely that his poor behavior of late has come out of his inability to gracefully accept my help. Instead of being glad he had a back-up and working toward independence, he’s spent this time trying to justify his acceptance (such as it is) of the help and acting rashly trying to free himself of his dependence.
This conflict sucks. But after sitting quietly with the discomfort, and talking it over with trusted friends, I am coming to an uncertain peace with it. These steps feel painful but they’re necessary. I’ll feel horrible about it, because I’ll always feel my duty to support my family, but there are times the support needs to be direct, and there are times that it has to be from afar. I’ve been doing direct support so many years, waiting for him to fulfill his end of the bargain and as a result, waited a decade longer than I thought it’d take.
I have pushed him to make changes for years, to no avail. That was all I felt that I could do at the time.
Now, though I hate how it’s happening, he’s finally stepping up to at least try to do his part. That he let it go until this late date was his choice.
So now that it’s finally happening, I can’t, I will not allow my guilt, to push me into putting him back on my soon to be seriously strained household budget. I can’t do everything for everyone and it’s a disservice to them that I try. Everyone needs to feel like they can do for themselves, that they are capable for as long as they want and need to be. Taking over for them when they finally show willing would be the opposite of support.
If this does work, if he does start to earn enough to pay his own way, then maybe, just maybe, we’ll able to leave the money resentments in the past and try to rebuild our relationship. I don’t know if it’ll happen, but this way, there’s a shot.
The other way, we weren’t ever going to have a relationship again.
It’s too soon to hope but I am open to the idea that it might be possible.
:: Have you ever had your housing costs skyrocket? How do you handle sudden unexpected increases in expenses?
*Part of Financially Savvy Saturdays on brokeGIRLrich.*
