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
I knew Ashley Ford’s name first on Twitter as @ismashfizzle because she does good work for the world there but here’s another facet to love: her interview with Michelle Yeoh.
“America First” – not my America. This piece was hugely resonant for me as a child of immigrants, knowing how much the generation of parent-immigrants gave up in order to give us a better life. I still feel that sense of gratitude even if my own remaining parent has turned out to be a terrible person. It’s weird but I do.
Golden Globes
I don’t watch awards shows but I will watch Sandra Oh in pretty much anything. And Samberg is hilarious. This monologue made me laugh out loud. And they cut to her mom.
The kids spent a long while learning about the idea of filling someone’s bucket emotionally and JB spent weeks asking for validation when ze would do something positive: Momma, am I fillin your bucket? Momma, I am doing great listening, does that fill your bucket?
It’s unclear whether ze quite gets the concept but ze spent a lot of time trying to suss out whether what ze was doing was a bucket filler or not.
Daycare bullies
I wrote about this kid, dubbed Jerkface, early on when I was exasperated at the havoc he wreaked as a 2-3 year old and my opinion hasn’t changed now that he’s five except for the worse. I felt bad for judging in the past but now that we’ve had to share a classroom with him for over a year I just have exasperation. To all appearances he’s not struggling with LD or ED, they’re very open about when kids need accommodations and that’s not the case here. He’s kind of like the Haley.
What I’ve observed is that while he does have high spirits just like most of the kids there, the big difference is that he is also allowed to act in completely unacceptable ways: hitting and kicking his parents, even spitting on one memorable occasion, and those behaviors pass without comment. What follows from that is what I observed in my young cousins with negligent parents: He’s taken swings at me and PiC, trying to hit or kick us any time we’re near him, knocking books out of PiC’s hands, trying to kick a chair at me because I was listening to their teacher instead of paying attention to him. One of the teachers we’ve become good personal friends with confirmed that she’s observed the parents being totally irresponsible and negligent, consistently allowing this behavior between his siblings as well. (more…)
I’ve almost closed out the 2018 budget but there’s one last check to be cashed from December 1st (when is it ok to tell someone to take their damn money already??)
I was fortunate enough to have a choice between maxing out our IRAs this year right away or investing more in our brokerage so I did the former to get it out of our hair.
I’ve calculated our expected cash flow for the first three months of 2019 and scheduled automatic savings to reflect that.
I’ve calculated our expected large expenses for the year and scheduled automatic savings to cover them over the course of the year.
What’s left?
Mostly the everyday things.
Working my job every day with attendant frustrations so I can keep earning that paycheck that feeds our savings and investing.
Feeding my family – meal planning, grocery shopping, thinking about diet stuff.
Walking the dogs – training Sera, making sure Seamus has every possible health need covered.
Making sure to the best of our abilities that JB grows up to be a good and decent human. We also need to get zir into some sports and activities to be a bit more well-rounded and make a few more friends.
Reading all the good books I can reach (more more more!)
We’ve got one big trip for later this year to be planned out. After that? Probably staying close to home for a while. Now that Seamus is showing his age (his hearing is suspect, his eyesight seems to be less sharp, he’s definitely much crankier) we’re going to curtail international travel so we can spend this time with him.
These are good things. I’m enjoying them. I’d like to enjoy more of them. I’d like to be out in the garden ripping out the rest of those weeds now that the rains have softened the previously rock hard ground.
I should be pretty content.
Instead, the past few weeks, I’ve been obsessively sitting here staring at our accounts, glaring at them to sprout 100x their income as if Power Stare is a method of investment growth (it’s not). I’ve been cranky and impatient. (more…)
Katelyn Ohashi, I Was Broken – her recent performance was breathtakingly extraordinary but it was made more so by the joy she has now. This video of her finding her joy again, whew: “There was a time where I was on top of the world, an Olympic hopeful. I was unbeatable. Until I wasn’t.“
I started breaking out the new calendar year goals into a new post last year and I like that format.
{Money Goals}
I don’t know what PiC’s raise will be this year. I assumed he would get something nominal, though that could be wrong and I’m making myself paranoid about assuming right now. They had a few rounds of layoffs and normally that would come with a hiring or salary freeze year but there was confirmation that some raises were happening. I already negotiated mine for the new year, so that’s set and budgeted: we’re splitting it between our regular savings and saving for big expenses. Whatever PiC’s raise is in the spring, that’ll go into savings and cover increased expenses. Daycare will go up again, I’d love to put a little bit more toward mortgage principal, we’ll also need to add (and pay for) some activities for JB this year. If he doesn’t get one, I’ll shuffle our savings rate around a little to take care of those expenses.
Investment vehicles: Max out PiC’s 401(k), both IRAs, reduce contributions for JB’s 529 to the annual $5000 Dependent Care FSA. I’ve got enough left from our cash savings in 2018 that was intended for investing to cover our IRAs right off the top this year. I set aside the cash for JB’s 529 at the end of last year and was able to do that for PiC’S IRA, this year we saved diligently enough that I can take my IRA out of the monthly equation. That will increase our cash flow by $459, which goes straight back into investing. I’m reducing the 529 contributions so I can focus on our retirement contributions this year.
Save 35% of our income in cash for investing. This continues to be a stretch.
Invest at least $30,000.
Reduce mortgage principal by $15,000.
Maintain charitable donations at same level as 2018 or 10% more.
Maintain side income at $3500. This is going to be tough because none of this income is passive and we’re pretty crunched for time with the adjustments to our jobs of late. Edited to note: This is per year but I wouldn’t say no to per month!
Create a FIRE outline. I’m still putting this one off. Our assets are low in comparison to even our lowest milestone goal for being comfortably retired.
{Health & Fitness}
I’m not in the mood for a lot of detail this year. Keeping it simple.
No sugar, low carb.
Walk every day, maybe hike the dogs twice a month.
Put on sunblock always.
Put JB in swim and self defense classes. ($200 a month, I think)
Not Mine to Mold: My children, nondisabled and disabled, are not mine to mold. I wouldn’t subject my bookish nondisabled son to unwanted daily sports training; nor should I force Edmund to stop repeatedly tapping his head for comfort. Accepting Edmund, and supporting him to be himself, means I stop acting so much like a coach, and more like his mom.
I strongly feel this about JB. I am responsible for molding zir into a compassionate and caring human, but not to make zir any kind of duplicate of me.
Everyone in the department knew that this doctor discriminated against women, are afraid to speak publicly for fear of retaliation, and yet they can’t find evidence supporting it. Hm.
This was a lovely description of empathy around the holidays with a child. I keep trying this with JB but ze just gets worked up and angry instead as I describe zir feelings.
I wouldn’t believe him either. Unification Plan From China Finds Few Takers in Taiwan: On the one hand, Mr. Xi threatened military force if Taiwanese leaders grasped for independence. On the other hand, Mr. Xi said that if Taiwan were to agree to unification, its rights would be ensured by the “one country, two https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/02/world/asia/xhina-xi-jinping-taiwan.htmsystems” framework that Beijing used in Hong Kong after it returned from British colonial control in 1997.
…
But neither the threat nor the promised reward seemed likely to sharply weaken Taiwanese opposition to China’s demands, said Jean-Pierre Cabestan, a professor of political science at the Hong Kong Baptist University who studies relations between China and Taiwan.
Max out PiC’s 401(k), my IRA, his IRA, and one parent worth of contributions for JB’s 529. Done on all fronts but we had a cash boost from the home sale.
Save 35% of our income in addition to the above contributions. No but this was always a stretch.
Invest at least $50,000. We had most of this from our home sale, I did cash flow the rest of it and achieved the hardest part – committing the money to investments. I didn’t love buying high earlier in the year but the important thing was getting myself in the mindset to invest whatever cash we’re holding above our emergency fund cash, and that worked out well.
Reduce mortgage principal by another $10,000. Win! Paid down $12,000 to principal.
Increase charitable donations by 50%. Win! We did it.
Increase side income from $2000 to $5,000. I didn’t hit $5000 if you don’t count investment income, I don’t.
I’m having a bit of a patience problem.