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
In hindsight, it’s incredibly obvious: The ladder should have started with 6, 9, and 12-month CDs, not 5-year terms. Duh!
My five year CDs were held in my Cash category but they’re so long term that, if I hold them to term, then they don’t actually make sense as my liquid reserves! I don’t know why I didn’t math out the whole plan before… oh, wait yes I do. I was impatient. Antsy, even, after a year of massive spending. That was foolish.
What I did earlier only makes sense if it was part of a 5 year bundle of cash and cash alternatives, though we’d then have to talk about the wisdom of having that much cash when we’re still far away from retirement!
Reclassifying those CDs makes our Investments category a little bit stronger at the expense of the Cash category but we truly needed the balance anyway. Across all our investments, our portfolio is incredibly heavy on stocks, I hold only one bond fund. That’s less than 1% of our portfolio and that’s way too aggressive.
(Literally. I’m a lunar calendar dog. I was born in the right year for my personality.)
The actual first day was Friday but I’ve never paid attention to that because we observed it in my family loosely – anytime in the two weekends immediately after counted as the New Year holiday period. That makes it a lot easier to manage all the expected family visits.
During my childhood, we were obligated to make the rounds of nearby family, and there was a rote formula to it all. Kids and unmarried adults were entitled to receive a red envelope from married (or widowed) adults in exchange for an acceptable new year greeting. It was usually something along the lines of (loosely translated): Happy New Year, I wish you a prosperous year with good health and happiness.
At some point I should have realized that you could memorize two lines and repeat them ad infinitum but stage fright always took over and I’d go into a bit of a fugue state. No clue what I actually said.
In hindsight, aside from the money part which I loved, obviously, it was one of the less endearing parts of my culture – the forcing of each child to perform in front of a crowd whether or not they were confident in doing so. It was never mean-spirited but to someone who was virulently antisocial, shy, and introverted, it felt horrible. I made myself do it because not doing it wasn’t a choice but at least there was a monetary payoff at the end. Totally into the spirit of things, that was me. (more…)
We tried tax loss harvesting in 2017 and I’m pretty sure I did it wrong in retrospect. I’m not sure if we’ll be trying tax gain harvesting any time soon but just in case you want to know, J Savvy talks about how he did it.
A dramatic story of dodging the FUBAR bullet (Part 1 and Part 2)
There’s a lingering thought that one of these days, I’m going to do something worth selling so I keep reading these articles on selling and pitches to tuck the knowledge away. I’m mulling over what kind of parenting article might be worth pitching to a magazine but nothing has bubbled to the surface yet.
I mentally categorize our money like Jim’s Time Capsules. It helps me decide each priority and what to do with them.
Recently, I pondered whether this blog serves a real purpose outside of being a personal money venue and a bit of therapy when my family is being my family. It definitely serves a personal need, but I also spend precious hours on blogging every week and I regularly assess if how I spend my time and money is appropriately aligned to my priorities.
A friend offhandedly joked that of all people, I should be best placed to analyze the cost-benefit of blogging in comparison to formal therapy. As it happens, as a good human who doesn’t want her boundless depths of rage with her estranged family to spill onto her beloved family, formal therapy seemed called for. I scheduled a few sessions with a therapist to help me work through the issues raised by the Dad issues.
Our first appointment was an intake session. This appointment was to go over the background of my issues, share what services she could provide, figure out what I was looking for (I don’t know … stop being so angry?), and assess whether I was in crisis.
Neither of us thought I was in crisis but there’s also a better than even chance I was doing therapy wrong because the therapist thinks I’m dealing really well with a “shitty situation” (her words) and that this much rage is normal. She pointed out that the definition of dealing well included: not self sabotaging, taking logical steps to protect myself and my family, facing the truth now that I’ve heard it and acting appropriately to enforce boundaries.
Please vote for my post (Father) on Rockstar Rumble, live today and tomorrow (Friday). The link still works, I don’t know why the blog likes to strike through links occasionally!
Kathleen’s moving to Arizona and says some quite true things about kids. We’ve gotten past some of those hurdles by having family visit and adjusting our expectations, and PiC works out of the home so we don’t feel trapped. But it’s true that without a supporting cast, it’s hard having kids.
I am always thinking about ways to teach JB good money habits and self control. We might give this one a try when ze is older.
Keep Thrifty’s Chris didn’t replace their pizza cutter. We work on not having specialized tools in the kitchen too but we recently added a food processor and it was sheer heaven when preparing a veggie heavy meatloaf and my Hainan chicken recipe. So much time and energy saved! Two thumbs up on that.
After I knew he had the signed title in hand, I emailed instructions on completing the process. I’d done everything needed short of signing his name, including filling out the statement of use, verifying that this was a family transfer and therefore should be free, but of course it still took him five days to bother to confirm receipt and, naturally, offer an excuse not to complete it.
The registration was due in a month, which is no impediment to transferring because you don’t have to pay til the due date, duh, he claimed he wouldn’t be allowed to re-title without paying the registration so I’d have to wait for him to scrape up that money.
Recently, I pondered whether this blog serves a real purpose outside of being a personal money venue and a bit of therapy when my family is being my family. It definitely serves a personal need, but I also spend precious hours on blogging every week and I regularly assess if how I spend my time and money is appropriately aligned to my priorities.