Just a little (link) love: Rhino + Kitty edition
August 15, 2019
Glaciers Are Melting Underwater. It’s Worse Than Previously Thought
I admire Elyssa for being able to take a year off. I am not at the place in my life where I’d be able to try that but I can admire it.
Happy four years, Penny!
“Dumb dumb mister” – much cuter than it sounds.
All I read was the headline: “Would You Sell Everything to Travel the World?” I laughed. No. Never. Not if I had a choice about it, anyway. Zero knocks on people for whom that isn’t a laughable notion of course, I used to think a nomadic life sounded great too. I loved the idea of being a city girl, I loved the notion of being location independent. But at this point in my life, I know who I am and what makes me happiest. Even just traveling for up to 2 weeks reminds me who I am. After ten days away, I am awash with fatigue and a burning desire to be left alone. I am a homebody. I am the happiest in my hobbit hole and only venturing out when I feel like it and running back home to nest and read books and eat and read some more. I have no desire to constantly be on the move or even just without a home base. Who are you?
We talk a lot about what constitutes the middle class in the PF world. I consider us upper middle class but reading this WSJ article, it strikes me again (without judgement) that we have such different ideas of what the buying power of an UMC/MC income is. For example:
The two-child couple earned just over $100,000 until 2017. They had a roughly $106,000 mortgage, about $97,000 in student-loan debt and $24,000 in car loans.
Then Ms. Young, 33, moved from a full-time to a part-time faculty position at a university because of its budget cuts. With income reduced to around $70,000, they still felt confident enough in their earning power to borrow $48,000 to finance two cars in 2017.
We have a mortgage that’s twice our combined annual incomes and don’t have any other debt so we have a similar debt ratio to the couple in the article. But for us, at this ratio, I don’t consider ourselves in a position to be taking on additional debt. We will need to replace my car and I have to think quite carefully about what we can “afford” and how we’ll pay for it. We both blanch at the $30k price tags of any newer cars despite our very solid savings program because those savings are specifically for future retirement. I need to start setting aside savings that are meant for spending on a car but we simply can’t get behind the idea of taking on an auto loan again if it doesn’t make very clear financial sense.
That gap between what we think an UMC income, or even an MC income, should buy remains fairly large. Even I wonder why we “can’t afford” (cannot easily pay for, without financial consequences) to just buy a new car when we make and save as much as we do. The reality is still that because we have to save as much as we do, we can’t spend freely. It’s one or the other.
Making friends with rhinos
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) May 21, 2019
Breastfeeding – soooo true. And the money was the least of its costs for me. I wish, O how I wish, that it hadn’t been presented as such a strong Either-Or. I wish I had known then that I could supplement with formula without dooming my efforts to breastfeed at all.
Dumb dumb mister = ROFL!!!
Vehicles – We’ve been considering whether we should try to drive our minivan into the ground or sell our very-old one while it still has some value so we can buy a moderately-old one. Auto repairs of very-old vehicles are expensive; on the other hand there’s no guarantee that a newer one would be more reliable. But now there’s been a tragedy involving a Crock-Pot of soup & the seat upholstery, so the theoretical sale price has taken a hit. 😬 I think we’ll probably end up just keeping it since it’s the path of least resistance.
Ugh, I wish you had known too. I gave birth in a very very pro breastfeeding hospital BUT when it was clear I had nary a drop to give and I wanted it, they immediately approved formula for us and tried to help us with alternate ways to feed formula to keep breastfeeding on the table. So to speak 😀
Car: That’s where we have been buuuut our mileage is dropping pretty dramatically and that worries me.
My mortgage is 1.5x my income and I would definitely not add on debt for a car! But my car is 100% a convenience – I don’t require it for commuting or life maintenance or medical reasons – so it’s possible for me to go without if I have to. I know that is a luxury of its own!
I used to think I wanted to do Big Travel, but 8 years ago, halfway through a 3-week trip I realized what I really wanted was to figure out a way to move back to my favorite place, Portland. I made the move and am so happy to just be here. I still want to travel and am open to bigger trips, but I don’t want to be a nomad at all.
Instead of a career break, my eyes are set on earlyish retirement. I remember the last recession and the difficulties older workers have fighting discrimination – I’m too aware of the risk involved to quit my job! I may try to arrange a sabbatical in a few years, but we’ll see where I’m working and what my employer will go for.
That is quite a luxury! I love that you have it.
I love that you figured out what you really wanted and grabbed it.
Ditto – definitely hyperaware of age discrimination and I suspect it’ll hit me too so I keep on saving and investing in hopes of avoiding it.
Yep, breast-feeding was not free for us either. If you count the lip tie surgery, the breast pump accessories, the visits to lactation consultants… We were in for quite a bit of money, not even including the value of my time pumping.
I have never wanted to be one of those people who traveled all the time. I like being home.
I think I’ve had a few friends for whom it was but is it vanishingly rare for it to be free