The first question is always: are we over-committed financially? If we aren’t, then it shouldn’t be a problem, right? We’d just tighten our belts for a while and ride it out with our cash in hand.
Answer: not with two jobs. Also true: to my disaster brain this means yes, we are over-committed. We should be able to handle all our expenses on one income. That’s one area I’m extremely sensitive to – this mortgage really messes with our financial position. I’ve reduced it by nearly 1/3 and recast so that our monthly commitment is several hundred dollars less but it’s still not anywhere in the neighborhood of low and low is what we’d need for me to feel like we weren’t over-committed. Mortgage aside, having children is a serious financial commitment between basic childcare and saving for college for them. If we wanted to add to our family, that’s a huge expense we’d be adding and I hate that we have to look first at the price tag and second at the joy (and pain) of having children.
The second question is: are we prepared for expensive life events and emergencies? In my previous experience, one spot of bad luck is absolutely manageable. We’ve absolutely got that covered. My previous experience also says that bad luck doesn’t tend to happen in ones, they tend to be a streak. I’ve planned just fine for a limited series of bad luck but not beyond more crap than two job losses. Compound that and we won’t be able to hold out as long as I projected. So that’s another sensitive area these fears keep prodding with a sharp stick. See, that’s what fed my cash hoarding. This fear that says putting lots of cash into the stock market now “right before” (except hah, who knows when “right before”really is) a market correction or crash makes us vulnerable to financial ruin and that cash hoarding will fend off financial ruin.
If a friend was ill and you sent them food for a week, would you let them pay you back?
If you visit chosen family every year, they always feed you, and don’t let you contribute, would you engage in a long, probably losing, battle over it? Or is this a thing that family does and you’re supposed to sit down and shut it?
Income and savings
Once upon a time, at least ten years ago, I told a friend “I can’t wait until I make $100,000 a year. Can you imagine how much I could save???”
Answer: Not as much as I had originally planned. But still a healthy amount!
How much could you save on a $100,000 salary and do you have a single income, dual income, and/or any dependents?
Skills
“You know, I lied before. I didn’t really learn to play guitar. I just kinda … gave myself the ability. I did the same when I learned French.” – Chuck, Supernatural
If you could, would you just give yourself talents (musical, lingual, or athletic)? What would you pick?
Massive loans
We’re whittling away at the redwood that is our mortgage and I periodically check to see whether we should refinance for a lower interest rate. Now is really not the time – interest rates are approaching 5%! Our rate is a not great but not horrible 3.875%. I miss our previously pretty great rate that was a full percentage point lower.
What’s the best interest you’ve ever had on a loan?
Small win: The sun came out long enough for me to wash out the garbage bins this week. First time in months! Of course I have mud all over my shoes now but the bins don’t stink.
I do my best to give candid feedback for my teams. Whether or not it makes me comfortable, the most important thing is that they are learning from mistakes and having the chance to improve their performance.
Now that this particular transition is in the rearview mirror, I can breathe easy and be ever so grateful that we never had any trouble with reflux or transitioning JB from bottles to sippy cups to regular cups. (Ze still wanted zir sippy as recently as two months ago but just for fun, because rummaging through the cabinets gives zir nostalgia like it gives me, and has wholeheartedly embraced the late-introduced camelbak.)
A cousin is struggling with their kid’s transition away from bottles. They’re going on three and still refuses milk in anything but bottles and that reminded me that at least on that point, we were incredibly lucky. When I gave JB zir first couple of sippies just to play with around a year, ze chewed up the spout enthusiastically, then THERE IS WATER IN HERE. WHOA!
At around 14 months, I decided that traveling with bottles again sounded awful, so we were ditching the bottles. We started giving only water in bottles, and milk in sippies, then I started giving only water in sippies before naps because we were supposed to avoid teeth rotting from having milk before sleeping. Picky though ze was about many other things, this was a non issue. Within a week, the bottles were phased out entirely and the next time I heard a peep about bottles was when ze discovered the bottles stashed in the closet a year later and was Extremely Curious about what they were and why they were stashed. Thank goodness we had that bit easy.
I’m an introvert, through and through. I’ve preferred to work from my home office, sofa, bed, a dark corner, over going into the office since 2006 and pretty much nothing has shaken my core love of being alone for 8-10 hours a day to work my work thing, dog at my feet.
On the other hand, I adore my little family so I always look forward to seeing them at the end of each work day. In those hours that I’d normally keep working or cut bait and relax … well, no, bury myself in a book because I don’t relax well, my evenings have been wholly subsumed with family time and I’ve been happy with that.
It’s limiting, of course. There’s no such thing as a late night date, or even an early night date, when you’ve got a ravenous wee beastie to feed before meltdown. Spending time with friends is almost entirely relegated to the weekends, as well, though I can’t in good conscience pretend that I was ever a fan of meeting up socially on a school night.
I’m a creature of habit, so all in all, it’s been a good balance of alone time to family and friends time.
Of course, whenever I settle happily into my routine, something comes along to shake it up. Like, for example, PiC deciding to take JB on a trip without me earlier this year.
We don’t do a LOT of socializing and play dates, but we accept 2-3 birthday invitations a year from JB’s classmates. In some, the whole class is invited for a big bash at some place that caters to kids, which is probably at least a few hundred dollars, and for some, it’s just a family affair with a small group of classmates but still far fancier than any birthday party that we’ve had for ourselves in the past ten years.
Either way, they’ve got JB thinking about all the kids that ze wants to invite to zir party. Um … what party? We weren’t planning on doing any real parties for a while, our house still isn’t in any shape for that kind of entertaining. The indoors is simply too small to have more than 7 adults and 2 kids at one time, comfortably.
One day, the yard might be perhaps, but zir birthday is also not in September in those few weeks of the year that may be reliably counted on for warm weather and thus suitable for an outdoor / backyard fun thing. If it were, we’d reserve a BBQ at the local parks and let the kids run wild for not too much money there. But it’s not. I’m pondering what kind of compromise would make sense for a fun birthday that doesn’t cost $300 and a quarter of my brain. It’s not around the corner but if I don’t think now, nothing will happen by the time zir birthday arrives. I know me.
I’m always in favor of tacos again but then again, when am I not in favor of tacos?
We are living in particularly stressful times. 2018 is even worse than 2017. GRAND.
I knew things wouldn’t be easy as we got older but as I told a friend, I never fathomed that we could be spending our middle years (ish) fighting the rise of fascism in America.
And even if we weren’t, living as a responsible adult and parent means that stress is a natural part of our lives. We have to have healthy coping mechanisms, and we have to be able to reset to neutral or happy, or we’ll never make it.
Here are a few things I do.
All things in moderation. I have a sweet tooth but the myriad of carbohydrates that would normally take care of it are now out of bounds. Now I rely on a package of Immaculate brand gluten free cookies, bought on sale. I used to think of this as cheating but that was unenlightened me. A lot of the time, I only want a couple of cookies. Mixing up a full batch is just too much trouble, but pulling out two cookies? Perfect. Which leads me to….
3 cookies. 2 for now and 1 for later. I’ve developed a little ritual of baking 3 cookies from my break apart cookies pack once a week when things are particularly tough. Two get eaten with lunch on that day, and the other one is for the next day.
I’m an introvert, through and through. I’ve preferred to work from my home office, sofa, bed, a dark corner, over going into the office since 2006 and pretty much nothing has shaken my core love of being alone for 8-10 hours a day to work my work thing, dog at my feet.
