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
Read More
February 14, 2019
The Racial Wealth Gap
This measles outbreak is horrifying. Anti-vaxxers are terrible people.
Are You Selling Yourself Short Professionally?: As women, I think we tend to sell ourselves short when we talk about our work, not just because bragging is hard. (Though to be fair, it is.) It’s also because our culture doesn’t value the soft skills it takes to make a company withstand the test of time. And it doesn’t value support work.
Things I didn’t know about RMDs for inherited IRAs. No one in my family has enough money to leave an inheritance so this was all new information to me! Our generation is the first to invest and may be passing money down to the next generation. Though I wonder what’s really going to be around in 50 years, considering climate change.
I didn’t learn about Jane Elliott and her Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes experiment until adulthood but her work is hugely impactful. It makes me sad to know that not that much has changed since she started her work, though.
Luxe’s $6000 rental car debacle: I’ve always used my AmEx for anything that I might need to make claims for and that’s because I absolutely loathe working with Chase. They are the pits and they make everything, like this claims process, incredibly difficult.
By contrast, I have filed multiple claims with AmEx for various things (like that purchase protection claim) and think the most difficult claim I had with AmEx was one that I didn’t bother completing because I got the manufacturer to actually honor their warranty.
Life as an adjunct is intensely stressful – low pay, tons of work, scarce stable work.
I think we know the answer to this
February 13, 2019
The conversation that broke my heart
Checking in with JB’s preschool teacher, they told us that ze was really eager to share zir art with classmates, and oh, by the way, the kids did great in their lockdown drill. They were all really quiet, and they knew not to speak up or answer if someone came in calling for them. They were tested – someone came to the classroom and called out “[Class name!] Hi! Where are you?” and they were all quiet and hid.
JB chimed in: yeah, you don’t answer when someone comes in!
My heart broke into a million pieces and I wanted to set this country on fire. They are THREE to FIVE year olds, being tested so they stay quiet enough that in case of some entitled evil (probably domestic abuser because they usually are) guy coming in with a gun, maybe they won’t be murdered. All because this country won’t do anything about the domestic terrorists allowed to murder freely in schools, churches, synagogues and public spaces.
Learning to give
I sat JB down one day to explain why I was so preoccupied over the holidays. It kind of worked but it also kind of didn’t: “You know how you always have food to eat, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and snacks? (*ze nods*) And how you always have clothes to wear? And how we have a safe warm home to live in together? (*ze nods*) And around the holidays, mommy daddy give you some books? And grandma and grandpa will give you a toy and some clothes? (But just one toy!) Yes, just one. Some kids and families don’t have that. Some families don’t have enough money to buy food and clothes, so they didn’t have money to spend on gifts.”
JB lit up: Then WE can give them!
Me: Yes exactly! Mommy and Auntie Crystal put some money together and we told our friends, who gave us some money to help, and we bought presents for a lot of kids and warm clothes for some families.
JB: I want to give Bestie one of my toys.
Me: Ok, that’s sweet. Your bestie does have a LOT of toys though ….. maybe we should think of people who don’t have so many.
(more…)
February 11, 2019
Two pairs of leggings, four dresses with pockets, a new rug, two serving bowls, a toilet brush, coffee filters and a platter, a set of glass bakeware with lids. A tablecloth and garden shovel. What’s the theme here?
Let’s see… I bought all but one of them using gift cards. They are useful. We’ve needed most or all of them for months and we’ve been making do without. We now need to declutter 15 MORE things to justify adding so many things to our cabinets and closets. All true.
The biggest thing they have in common: They don’t erase that lingering uneasy feeling about how we’re going to weather the next recession and what further job cuts at our jobs may do to our nascent retirement plans.
Discussing my post and this barely contained feeling of discomfort last week on Twitter with Mr. SSC, he pointed out: one has to have a plan but also have faith that it’ll change, so embrace flexibility. Yeeeeees, but that requires a bendiness of mentality and I’m not yet that evolved.
In part, the crux of this being ill-at-ease is my own fault, not the recession’s. Not that the recession isn’t a big thing, it is, but the bigger problem is we have a couple huge life decisions we can’t seem to get a grip on. They’d likely have an equally, or more, enormous impact on our lives as the recession or a job loss or change in careers. Our waffling is doing neither of us any good but I’m not ready to get into it because I can’t make out head or tails of how I really feel about it. My inner turmoil on those points remains a roiling mass of fog.
Mr. SSC also shared that he’s a stress shopper and boy howdy do I empathize. I’ve been scrolling Amazon deals in a badly concealed panicked state, on a quest to get everything we need for emergencies as if that’ll solve the massive problem of not knowing the shape of the next five years. Thankfully my personal money history means that I’m just wildly window shopping with abandon, but not buying anything. Good habits FTW?
(more…)
February 7, 2019
Matt has been a welcome vocal feminist ally on Twitter and talks about how that’s impacted his own life here. Spoiler alert: it hasn’t ruined his life and it HAS generated respect for him, in contrast to what the misogynists claim.
Done by 40 also talks about the wage gap.
A Dying Mother’s Letter to Her Daughters: “While I would have chosen to stay with you for much longer had the choice been mine, if you can learn from my death, if you accepted my challenge to be better people because of my death, then that would bring my spirit inordinate joy and peace.”
As a daughter who lost her mother too early, twice, first to dementia, and then later in truth, this letter broke me a bit. I wish over and over to know what she would have wanted to tell me, as an adult. We had just begun to get to know each other in my adulthood, and see each other as fully people outside of our relationship as mother and daughter, when her grip on her self slipped out of her hands.
Aja Naomi King Is the GOAT
The Spy Who Became England’s First Successful Female Writer
Accidental hug at work – I have a fun anecdote of my own on this. Someone reached over to open the door for me but did it in an awkward way that triggered that “he’s coming in for a hug” recognition in my brain the same way it did for the OP and it was NOT accurate. I blurted out: what are you doing?? Because I don’t believe in keeping silent awkward to myself I guess. He was pretty confused.
On Liam Neeson’s recent confession: “For what it’s worth, I’m glad that Neeson was so forthcoming about this story that he “never admitted” to anyone else. Because it has shed light on a phenomenon that too few understand and that we need to talk about.
Although the actor believes that he learnt a lesson from the ordeal after he eventually thought, “What the fuck are you doing?” I’d argue that there’s something even bigger to glean from all of this. Whether we like to admit it or not, racism has and will continue to have a far deeper psychological impact on society than many of us realise.”
Positivity
February 4, 2019
On Money
Income
Our primary income comes from our full time jobs. We earn money on the side, including tiny cash flow we don’t touch from an investment property and investing in dividend stocks.
Our side income comes from Swagbucks, occasional sales on Poshmark, cash back sites like Ebates, Mr.Rebates, and tracking physical activity through Achievement (my introduction to it). Some posts have affiliate links that pay a tiny commission to keep the blog lights on.
The long term goal is to replace our day job income before my health declines enough to prevent me from working.
***
Dividend income. We received $157 in dividends this month and year to date net dividends are not surprisingly, $157. I currently reinvest all our dividends.
BeFrugal cashback. After a week long tussle with them, they finally paid me my cashback and $10 join up bonus ($31). I’m so annoyed with their irritating nonsensical “verifications” that after I withdraw the last of my money with them, I’m closing my account. Their extra .25% cashback is not worth it. Strong do not recommend.
(more…)
January 31, 2019
An interview with Catherine O’Hara
This family of four’s downsize from a 4/3 to a 2/1 is visually stunning. I definitely don’t have an eye for creating this kind of living space splendor but I’m taking notes!
Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital has shady emergency room billing practices.
We have to try Rogue Dad’s explanation of the value of money for his kid.
K Wright on the idea of job security. No matter how good I am at my job, and I’m pretty dang good, I don’t take my job for granted, ever. Something can always happen. It doesn’t mean I should be hypervigilant like I was for years, but I most definitely don’t assume that my job will always be there.
3 Women on Caring for Disabled Siblings. This was akin to the situation we ran into when Mom’s health precipitously declined: She was cognitively not very functional, she didn’t have control over key functions of her body, and I was running ragged working to keep a roof over her head and desperately trying to figure out how we would function long term. This was before I married PiC, I delayed marriage for years because I was trying to get her in a stable situation before I moved out, but that was a losing proposition.
Do you have the same money anxieties that Tonya and I share?
I’d like to think a bear really did help this child.
SHIBE
January 28, 2019
In 2017, we took on a HUMONGOUS loan. (Was that really two years ago??)
After we signed those papers, we sold our previous home and applied a small chunk of those sales proceeds toward our loan with an eye on recasting the loan – recalculating a new monthly payment based on the new principal amount while keeping the same terms (interest rate and length of loan) at no extra charge.
I made sure, when we were researching loans, to confirm that Chase would do this at no charge and there were no limits on how many times we were allowed to do it.
That first recast, and the second one with double the payment to principal when more sale funds were available two months later, brought down our monthly payment a total of $700. Not TO $700, reduced it BY $700. The remaining payment is still in the multi-thousands. That gives you an idea of how high our mortgage is! YEEKS.
Making those two moves not only reduced the total balance and our monthly payments, it also saved $102,599.54 in interest! (I used this calculator to figure that savings out.)
I continued to pay a little over the monthly payment due to cut down the principal further, little by little, and made the equivalent of half an extra payment last year.
We don’t have any huge chunks of money coming in this year (that I know of. Feel free to bless us, universe) so I was only aiming to pay down a set amount to principal this year but then I got this email from Chase inviting me to enroll in their New flexible mortgage payment options!
Ok, I’ll bite.
I went in to explore and see if they could offer me anything better than we could do on our own. (I can never resist a do better with money challenge.)
(more…)