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
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July 2, 2025
This Ask the grumpies: How much to put in a 529 redux has me kicking around numbers a bit.
We’ve saved maybe 1-2 years worth of undergrad at an expensive school per kid or maybe 4 years worth of undergrad at a lower priced state school. I frontloaded a large lump sum of savings for JB back when they were born.
When they were 2, thanks to a commonsense hipcheck from Nicole and Maggie, I switched to saving for retirement in a brokerage since I didn’t have a 401K and had missed a decade of retirement savings by that point. No tax benefits but the brokerage was the next best thing when the choice was between saving and not saving. I maxed out our Roth IRA for several years but stopped when cashflow tightened up. The thinking was that our incomes in retirement, and therefore our taxes, aren’t likely to be higher than our highest earning years – our tax rate now is probably higher now than it would be in retirement. But who knows! We can only make our best guesses and hope for the best.
I’ve been putting most cash gifts into the one 529. I also keep a separate savings account for cash for them both to be split equally as well, and have been debating when I split the one 529 into two. Maybe if I split it now when it’s reasonably even, it’ll reduce my math / accounting requirements later.
We’re in between the pole positions, financially. We’re not low income but we also couldn’t afford any $100k/year university.
We’re having some conversations with JB about the kinds of thinking they need to put into the decision of which school to go to, and it will need to extend beyond “bestie is going there”.
They asked about vocational schools like cooking school and about university like Stanford (their uncle is affiliated) and there are so many considerations for each of the things they suggested. We talked about each a little bit, and about how they also have to balance more practical considerations like the cost of the school and what kinds of jobs and salaries they could get after graduating from each of those schools. If they want to be able to pay their bills after school, they have to consider how much their loans would cost, if they spend more than they have in their 529.
They also need to consider what broad types of work could be fulfilling. I mentioned that job satisfaction can come from lots of things about the job. Not everything about a job will be fulfilling, it IS work after all, but if you have enough big/small things, that’s good enough.
They said: I know you get your job satisfaction from yelling at people who don’t do what they’re supposed to.
I had the impulse to argue but…. while that’s imprecise, it’s not wrong. I modified it to: I get the MOST satisfaction when people do as they’re told. But if they don’t do what they’re told, and I want to yell at them, I can. (Not my staff, I never yell at my staff, it’s external clients who suck. They lie a lot. So many lies. So much fraud.) I also get a lot of satisfaction from the act of getting things done. So the parts of my job where I can just get things done, those are good parts of my day. I also like setting policies and teaching other people to think critically about our policies and to make suggestions for better policies. I like it when people learn to do a good job. (I don’t like the act of teaching, I hate that part, but I like having taught and gotten the information imparted to the right people.)
They’re only ten so they have lots of time to mull things. At this point, I just want them to start developing a sense for what things bring them satisfaction and which things feel bad as they build up a profile of possibilities.
June 30, 2025
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 6, Day 63: There’s one thing I hate about our neighborhood. Behind many houses, there’s an easement. Only some backyards actually have access to it. I don’t know if there’s any intentional planting, but I can tell that the birds have spread seeds from some neighbors’ fruit plants along with whatever was there to begin with. There are all KINDS of plants growing behind the fences and they keep coming through the fence and over the fence and *deep sigh* You know what? I paid a hell of a lot of money for a very low maintenance backyard suited to my health needs. Why do I still have to spend a full weekend day trimming back and ripping out the growth that’s not even mine several times a year?? A couple hours of actual work but that took the entire rest of the day and night (plus pain meds, plus a really hot shower, plus a nap, plus more pain meds) to recover. Adding insult to injury, this weekend I find that the deep dark forest behind our fence has put so much pressure on the fence that it’s snapped a board in half. Also, it’s creepy.
My other complaint is less about our specific neighborhood. JB’s summer camp this week requires me to take the twistiest, windiest roads, and I hate them so much. Twice a day, every day this week. Why did I do this to myself. This is probably the last, or next to last, year that JB can do the easy summer camp that PiC can do the dropoff and pickups for.
Year 6, Day 64: I didn’t realize this until I started commenting at Hawaii Planner‘s. I thought we were on 6 months with my trainer, and patting myself on my back for this longest record of consistently doing exercise every week since the fibro took over, ever. Even though I have over 40 weeks of records – that math simply didn’t work out in my head. It’s actually coming up on 11 months of consistently working out minus about 4 really bad weeks where I couldn’t do as much as half of my planned workout. It’ll be a year in August. Seeing as how all my previous attempts to work out in the past twenty+ years has ended up with me bedridden for weeks at a time, this is pretty cool.
I’m trying to get all our FSA claims in order and had to ask a pharmacy for a duplicate RX printout for a couple meds that were accidentally shredded in a moment of overzealous cleaning. They offered to fax them to me. I don’t have a fax number, folks, I’m just a normal person.
Year 6, Day 65: Every so often, even after I have eaten a balanced lunch, my glucose levels suddenly crash and it’s a frantic race to get sugar and protein into me before I collapse. This can happen when I’m at home or working at another site, and when I’m out of the house, it’s a real scramble if I didn’t bring snacks for the kids that I could eat. I finally bought a case of protein bars at Costco as an easy/lazy solution to getting caught without calories.
I loaded two bars in every bag I carry, feeling slightly silly about the whole thing. Since then, every single person except me has devoured one or more of those bars already. PiC scarfed one, SmolAc has had two, JB has had two. I’ve taken to carrying three with me at a time now so that there will still be one left for me. My own Devouring Horde.
This whole week has been unsettled. I’m preparing for a big deal work conference, training new people, trying to get my flood of work done, and we keep having people show up at the house with not a lot of warning to work on various bits and pieces. We need the work done and we have some advance notice but it’s still weirdly(?) disruptive having people show up at random times, coming and going, and having to oversee a little of it at least to make sure they’re doing what we asked for. I will be so relieved to have peace and quiet when this is over. I’m mildly annoyed we didn’t schedule this better – during the school year when I have little to no expectation of peace and quiet. I’m supposed to enjoy a few days of a few weeks of uninterrupted quiet!
We had three sets of tradespeople coming and going today and it was just too much. I need peace and quiet, and I need it now please.
Year 6, Day 66: As much as I complain about this week’s summer camp and the twisty windy roads, it IS a nice thing for my brain that I’ve finally mostly memorized the directions to a new place. I have trouble with my memory with the CFS and it’s reassuring when I can learn a new thing and keep it in the noggin.
This mental map won’t be particularly useful to me later, we’re unlikely to do this camp again because the low price tag was accompanied by a rather sad and unimaginative program where the camp managers would either send the kids outside to eat lunch and just “play outside” for 3+ hours at a time but not let them back inside when it was too cold, or send the kids to sit around bored for almost an hour before camp pickup time. I don’t object to kids sitting around bored in principle, but I do object to not providing any sports equipment for them to DO something with that time and energy otherwise why did we pay money for what I could do to them at home? Also it was meant to be a pool-focused program and the kids weren’t getting nearly enough pool time some days, nor did they follow through on activities they advertised.
Year 6, Day 67: TIL that swapping out oil for melted butter, adding an egg, and swapping out water for milk will vastly improve the result of a boxed cake mix! New knowledge brought to you by complaining on Bluesky that Betty Crocker cake mix just doesn’t do the trick for me these days. The cake always tastes like it’s missing something.
I’ve been spending the week glaring at the long list of reimbursements that were processed but still haven’t landed in our bank account. Come on! Land!
June 27, 2025
1. I took The Inheritance quiz and came up healer. That was a small surprise even if I didn’t go into it with any thought whatsoever.
But “ouchies never stop” is very accurate for my own life.
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June 25, 2025
I’ve managed our finances since, hm, probably always?, definitely since 2010 as a balance between living moderately in the present and aggressively saving and investing to protect against a future recession and/or job loss. Having been through a year-long job loss in the Great Recession transformed my already cautious financial brain to a very conservative brain. I insist on roughly a year of full normal expenses in cash / equivalents. I don’t count on unemployment or severance.
We got a stress test of this recently. What a shot of cortisol.
Like many big companies, PiC’s employer did another sweeping layoff. He had reason to believe he was affected so he texted me immediately. On seeing the news, I cussed a blue streak. Then fretted about all the benefits we’ll lose:
– daycare. Before this year, a layoff would mean losing the subsidized daycare entirely. This year, we would be allowed to continue, but at market rate. At a guess, that’s $3300 a month full time. Could we afford that if we were down to one income?? Big question mark. SmolAc won’t start kindergarten until Fall 2026, we need daytime coverage for at least 12-14 months.
– healthcare. We have good relationships with our doctors and don’t want to change! We could get insurance through my work but I hate that provider and really don’t want to start all over with new doctors. My health is a complete mess to manage and our current GP likes and understands us, that’s hard to get. I also want to use our dental benefit for JB’s next set of orthodontia. We’d have to balance the cost of COBRA against the cost of a new provider.
– healthcare FSA. I’d really been appreciating having a second FSA. We spend more than $6000 annually on FSA-eligible healthcare (mostly mine) and I’d hate to lose that second account so soon.
– Ditto 401ks. We haven’t had 2 401ks for very long, I want to save as much in tax-advantaged accounts as we can to make up for 17 years of not having one.
As stress management, while waiting to hear the official news and information, I started a list of things to do before the layoff was final. I was hoping that we’d get at least 60 days notice before he lost his benefits: submit all remaining FSA claims, examining the house maintenance jobs to cancel, running through the list of things we keep (JB’s sports, SmolAc’s daycare if we could swing it for another 14 months), cancel or cut down on (therapy twice a month instead of once a week, pause the trainer).
A couple hours later, he told me with huge relief that the cuts came unbelievably close but they missed him this time. He’s been working double time for the past several months across multiple departments, a ton of pressure and stress, and that extra stuff could be what saved his job.
Moments of reflection: I am so glad that we tolerated very lean months this year to max out our 401ks. My original reason was I wanted to have that done in case I rage-quit my job sometime later in the year. I’m toughing it out because it’s a crap job market right now but that doesn’t make it any less frustrating. A layoff is also a second great reason! (Also, in that case, no rage-quitting).
I didn’t like that we didn’t have a clear and complete set of priorities for what must be cut at specific time points and at what budget levels. I’ve started a fledging spreadsheet laying out non-absolute essentials (housing, insurance, foods, utilities) like my extra healthcare stuff and activities.
We learned that his company’s severance policy is generous: salary and benefits are determined by tenure. If that doesn’t change, we could have extra buffer. I won’t plan for it because that CAN change at any time but it’d be something to look out for that would measureably push out our panic mode point.
It generally feels like it’s only a matter of time. My job is likely safe for the rest of this year and probably through half or all of next year. I can’t/won’t bank on anything beyond that. For PiC: it remains a complete mystery if and when the axe could fall again and this time take him with it. We have done ok on our cash holdings but I would feel a lot better if our investments were more robust as a second line of defense.
June 23, 2025
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 6, Day 56: It’s my first glorious summer day with both kids away at camp and daycare – fabulous delicious solitude and silence! It’s amazing. There were interruptions. The roofer unexpectedly dropped by. Gave myself 18 minutes to add Miracle-Gro to the garden before planting the basil plants I impulse-bought over the weekend. I even cooked dinner! A pork sirloin roast, scalloped potatoes (cheater style, the Costco premade potatoes which are super cheesy), and green beans with Penzey’s Justice seasoning. Even with half a day of meetings and all those interruptions, this day felt SO GOOD because of the alone time. It would have been better with dogs but the lack of humans in the house for the workday period is so critical to my mental health.
JB is reunited with their former daycare compatriots so they’re also loving that. It’s a bit sad though, the kids are aging out of that summer camp program so this may be their last year together.
Year 6, Day 57: It’s really time we replaced our meat thermometer. Yesterday’s roast was slightly overdone to my taste. Everyone else protested it was fine but I suspect they just felt bad I’d done all the dinner prep while they were out having fun.
We accidentally destroyed our meat thermometer two summers back and I’ve been cooking by guesswork since. Alas, that usually results in my overcooking meat a little by way of overcompensating because I worry about food poisoning. The IKEA lingonberry sauce made a very good addition to the pork, though, lucky we had that on hand.
There was a boatload of stress today, but we still limped over the finish line (dinner, bath, bedtime) somewhat worse for wear.
Year 6, Day 58: It’s been a wild week… month… 👀 Yes I’m going to have to limit this to the start of June. We had two electrical breakers blow so we couldn’t use parts of the house for several days. Thank goodness for the Yeti saving our bacon (literally, the bacon, eggs, and the rest of our food). We attempted to fix it ourselves but that was a no go because under the main panel’s door was a mess the likes of which I cannot adequately describe. Second “thank goodness”: we already needed a tradesperson out to fix several other long-standing problems and so we had them fix this too. Total cost: $25 at Home Depot because I impulse bought more plants and ??? for the tradespeople to fix the thing. We’ll have to return the supplies we didn’t end up needing ($85).
I spent half the day juggling the messages from the tradespeople to PiC and back because he couldn’t be here and needed to make decisions. I could make them but I didn’t want to. I care much much less than he does about the details, so if (when) I get the decision wrong, he’d have to live with the mistakes and I’d have to live with him. One key to a reasonable marriage? The person who cares most about the thing gets to make the decisions about the thing. I have opinions but they’re broader in scope, they’re never about the tiny details.
Year 6, Day 59: This is the first year we’ve all had Juneteenth off and it feels a little like a vacation day. A real one, not one where I have to plan and schedule and pack and pay and organize and whatever else before doing the day which turns out to be exhausting. Possibly also fun, but definitely exhausting. We also expect to have workers here for the whole day to get some maintenance done so my vague notions of going to the zoo or something went out the window before they took real form.
My very tired legs agree that’s for the best. I’d pushed myself to do a good chunk of my workouts earlier in the week and I’ve been feeling it every day since.
PiC even got to sleep in today, his belated Father’s Day gift. It was accidental, SmolAc got him up at 6, but when he fell back asleep SmolAc just carried on reading to themself until I went to the office.
Year 6, Day 60: Well, shoot. It’s a good thing that things shook out the way they did this week because after the tradesfolks started work, they found oh so much dryrot. That’s going to add to the estimate. O_O
June 20, 2025
Helping folks: Looks like Paypal is stealing Friday Afternoon Tea’s operating capital and they need help. They’re an indie LGBT-welcoming third place for their community.
If you’re able to pitch a few dollars their way, I’m sure they would appreciate it. We love their teas, too!
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June 16, 2025
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 6, Day 49: Summer’s here and one parent friend is already sick of it. The kids are driving her up the wall with their drama; her dogs escaped the house and went on unauthorized walkabout; her pipes burst. I’m personally not looking forward to the work portions of summer, I’m back to working too late every night, or the bills for summer camp. But compared to this one friend, I’m doing pretty well. I’m hoping the rest of life stuff will be tolerable or manageable. I’ll take either one!
Smol Acrobat and I are feeling mildly under the weather though, that might be the stress and fatigue. They complain of a sore throat and my head hadn’t stopped aching all day no matter what I throw at it.
I did finally find cord locks that might work for SmolAc’s masks, fingers crossed.
Year 6, Day 50: We did our annual local pickup of the outerwear left behind and thankfully this year some enterprising individuals had already washed nearly everything by the time we turned up. Huge relief for me as the pickup only took about 30 minutes. I’d been bracing myself to do multiple runs this week to gather everything and wash it all while somehow still getting work done.
Back at home, I set up a temporary work station for JB. I was in charge of constructing taped up boxes, opening and hauling the giant bags. JB was in charge of stuffing the boxes full. They forgot to keep count so I only know we have four enormous boxes full of donated books and outerwear. We’ve got one half load to wash and pack up left.
Today was extra tough on that point, I had meeting after meeting after meeting which ate half my day. The donations ate a quarter of the day leaving me with very few hours to work so I squeezed some in waiting for JB to finish their activities and then logged many late night hours. Not fun.
Year 6, Day 51: My back twanged when I got up this morning, because apparently sleeping is an Olympic sport, and my left index finger tendon was strained. Just the one finger. No idea why.
Perfect timing for my free weights to arrive! They have been unpacked and relocated to their home for now.
The kids usually want scrambled eggs with cheese for breakfast (yes I feel a faint twinge of guilt for supporting Big Egg but that’s not a place where I can focus energy right now) so I generally oblige even though it’s not my favorite egg prep. Usually all versions get a “yum” of approval but today’s were so sublime, SmolAc had to stop eating and come to my office to specially say “thank you for the eggs, they were delicious!”
Year 6, Day 52: SmolAc’s daycare had a moving up ceremony for the kids going to their TK program in the fall. They were completely uninterested in it, examining their chair the entire time while other kids bounced in their seats or sang.
Father’s Day is this weekend and I have utterly dropped the ball on that – AUGH. I assigned a craft to JB to do while I assigned the photo printing part to me. It would be great if the Walgreens photo site actually worked, ahem! CVS is too far out of my way to squeeze in a run there before Sunday. Especially since my pain decided to spike today. Maybe JB’s got the right idea to start planning for their next birthday the day after their last one. That’s what I should do for these holidays that happen every single year. O_O
Year 6, Day 53: The final quotes aren’t in yet but we’re looking at a ballpark of $30k+ on repairs between the roof and the maintenance that’s piled up in the last eightish years. Plus another $$$$? for the painting that we’ve procrastinated on this entire time. I’ve got about $24k set aside for this purpose so we’re going to have to make a few adjustments to close that gap.
Now that I’m in the neighborhood of 6 months with a trainer and not quitting, I’ve proven to Financial Me that I’m taking this seriously enough that it’s ok to spend money on equipment. I am excited (emotionally) to use the new hand weights and resistance bands I finally bought but physically I’m about to become one with the floor so actual use will be exciting next week.