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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February 5, 2018
On Money
Income: holding steady
Our regular income comes from two full time day jobs.
We experiment with earning money on the side, including minimal cash flow that we don’t touch from an investment property and investing in dividend stocks.
Our side income comes from Swagbucks, selling clothes on Poshmark which is hit or miss, using cash back sites like Ebates, Mr.Rebates, and tracking activity through Achievement (my introduction to it).
The long term goal is to replace our day job income before my health declines enough to prevent me from working.
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February 1, 2018
This teacher’s method for identifying the bullies / targets in her classroom is really quite clever and thoughtful.
I don’t usually love list posts but I love mail so the 21 things you can mail was a bit of fun.
Should I say yes more often as a parent? I dunno, I try for a reasonable balance. We allow small snacks before dinner though if you kept saying yes, JB would have two dinners and four desserts before the real dinner so the madness has to stop somewhere.
dogs only, sorry
A transcript on how generosity in business pays off. It’s a good read but this made me laugh: “The more you can pour into making it a gift about them… Think about going to a wedding. You’d never engrave something with “Compliments of John Ruhlin” or “Compliments of Giftology.” It would be the cheesiest thing on the planet.” An incredibly tacky cousin stapled her business card to some cash for our wedding present. We’ve got some weird relatives.
This made me nod, this is exactly how we approach marriage and parenting which is why our partnership works. We don’t count how many times we’ve done something, we look at what our partner’s been carrying and try to alleviate their burden:
“So often in marriage we’re thinking about our own needs and what we want and what’s fair, and that’s natural. That’s really human, but good marriages come from two people thinking about how they can serve one another and really approaching marriage from a place of generosity. That gets really practical. It comes down to the division of household chores.
Instead of thinking primarily about equity and fairness, in a great marriage where both people are being generous you’re just looking for opportunities to help one another. It’s true of parenting too. Like, who’s going to put the kids to bed? Who’s going to get them ready for school or church? Who’s going to take them to practice? All those kinds of things. The endless driving. Hello. The endless driving. I’m so in that season right now.”
And then I REALLY liked this idea: “One of the things he said to me is the easiest, fastest way to get money to the people who need it the most… Don’t send it to Washington and let them skim off a big administrative charge. Instead, just give all of it to the people who need it the most.”
HEY EMU! HEY DOG!
January 31, 2018
Shutterfly has this feature where they randomly email you “look what you were doing 3 or 5 or 12 years ago!” Sometimes they pick moments like JB’s birth, sometimes they pick a barely memorable random date from our first year together.
It makes me smile sometimes to see how much we’ve changed. You can’t see it in pictures alone (except for the hair – I used to have much better hair and my eyebrows were excellent) but I remember who we were back then.
Our Relationship
I’m so glad that PiC wasn’t as cool as I thought he was. (He laughed at the very thought.) We are both huge dorks, that what makes us fit. We’ve made lots of good memories, and had plenty of downs to go with the ups, but we also appreciate each other more deeply now.
Admittedly we have gone to having just about zero time for each other, solely each other, these days and that’s not good. But we don’t resent it, it’s a result of our choices and we’re still prioritizing each other in the daily choices we make. We’ll make some changes this year, like hiring a sitter on occasion, but I’m not going to worry about it. As long as we keep looking out for each other, we can’t go too far wrong.
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January 29, 2018
On occasion, we receive gift money in varying amounts and while I always know what to do with it, I don’t know how to write about that money.
When it’s a $5 or $10 red envelope for JuggerBaby, that’s easy. Savings, call it side money.
But when it’s a substantial gift to zir 529 fund or to one of us from, say, a relative disbursing money ahead of their passing as part of their estate tax strategy, what do I do with that? It feels somewhat dishonest not to discuss it when I talk about our savings and money strategies.
But am I being dishonest if I don’t discuss it?
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January 25, 2018
Jim’s daughter joins us in the PF blogging ranks, briefly.
There’s sexual harassment in every industry. This is one experience in the professional kitchen.
Penny’s post reminds me of my biggest last-moment-if-only-I-knew-it. The night PiC and I got married, I hugged Mom and told her I’d be back later. She was clinging to me, anxiety-fueled, wondering something, and I gently disgengaged her so that she could get some rest. Honestly, I was still too keyed up from worrying about her the whole time we were getting married. We drove back to SF the next morning after brunch with out of town friends and didn’t stop in on her. A few days later, she was gone. She’d been quite ill for a long time but not terminal – it was a shock for all of us.
She didn’t have any good days anymore, but I thought we still had a chance to reverse the health issues, or stop them from progressing. I was wrong.
I would be great at the crappy dinner party. We do this with my favorite relative regularly. But PiC would seriously be challenged by this.
Some people expect to retire from long careers in the military, but it’s important to understand that there are lots of reasons that might not happen. Military Dollar helps by sharing those stories.
I grew up watching Serena Williams grow up and dominate on the courts and will always be in awe of her. It also enrages me that her medical professionals continued in the same well known vein of not listening to black women about their health, particularly in maternal health.
I love window shopping with Sherry. She’s got me ogling these beautiful Olivia Burton watches which are awfully tempting since I can’t find the dang links to lengthen the strap of my one 12 year old watch I’ve worn for years, worth maybe $50 originally, which now pinches me something awful. Apparently you can retain pregnancy weight around your wrists. The indignities of motherhood abound. This design feels most classically me, though these artsy designs are delightful to look at. Usually designs come across as “clutter” to me, and I doubt I’d ever choose leather because I wear my accessories for decades and never doubt my ability to wear out even leather, but they’re beautiful to look at nonetheless. But don’t worry, old watch, I’ll
Interview with Kristi Yamaguchi. She was a Big Deal when I was growing up and the only reason I was interested in skating. She was also probably the inspiration for my secret Olympian dreams and honestly there’s a secret part of me that hopes that I can regain enough good health in retirement that I could revive that dream. I know, I’m crazy.
AMAZING
January 24, 2018
I’ve been battling back some seriously expensive impulses lately. It’s been months of being grumpy because my rational side knows it’s right. It’s not the right time or it’s not in the budget for us, given our financial goals.
My irrational sliver of self continues to whisper and it’s frustrating the snickets out of me. It continues to say, “yes, but ….” HUSH, YOU.
I make pragmatic decisions every single day, regardless of what I wished or hoped or wanted. It’s easy because my first priority is to be efficient and effective. So why won’t my whole self settle down?
This is my attempt to work out what the problem is.
It’s relatively easy to say that we will go to Japan for a three week food fest or Australia and New Zealand to hike for a month someday but not this year because I don’t want to leave Seamus that long. I’m still traumatized. Those are my castles in the sky. I know the kind of money we’ll need to have ready to spend, and we are not ready to spend 5 stacks of money on a vacation between dogsitting (3 weeks away would cost at least $1000!), airfare for three, lodgings, food, and so on. Time off isn’t easy to come by right now, either, but that’s neither here nor there without the money piece settled.
I’m fine with giving up some things now so that we can have financial freedom later when it’s going to be critical for my health to have that freedom – we moderate eating out and travel, for example. We don’t stop them, we just don’t do it every week. But some thoughts keep chugging around my brain like they’re stuck on a toy train track, refusing to accept the pragmatic “No.”
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January 22, 2018
This is old hat for old hands in the PF blogging world but in direct contrast to my move toward simplification in our investment holdings, I’ve finally decided to “complicate” our cash savings and set up a proper ladder. A CD ladder!
All of 2017, I’ve been fiddling with our cash reserves because it feels foolish to hold so much cash but it also feels foolish to invest when stocks are at all-time highs. Conflict!
On January 1 2017 I rashly threw a huge amount of cash into long term (5 year) CDs at Ally. I had no plans for this cash so why not? Then the neighbor happened. Dammit. When you break a 5 year CD early, you lose 6 months of interest, so I scraped cash together every other way I could before July 1 to pay for the house reno to avoid cashing out my CDs for less than the principal I put in. I knew those terms going in but on Jan 1st, it sure didn’t SEEM like there was any reason to need that money in less than a year. Fool.
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