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
April 2, 2018
On Money
Income
Our normal 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, infrequently selling on Poshmark, 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.
***
NOTE I didn’t realize many people thought that cutting off Dad meant we’d be rolling in cash. How I wish that were so. We had to cut him off because our expenses skyrocketed (tripled) when we moved last year!
That, in the process, he was revealed to be a terrible person was just the awful icing on a crappy cake.
Tax refund! Our refund is going straight to savings, as it always does, though I did have to temporarily borrow some to cover bills I paid for April early.
March 29, 2018
Kitten photoshoot
Liz, the Chief Mom Officer, had Chief Dad Officer share his story of nearly dying
I try to only invest in ethical companies but it’s awfully challenging when even companies who self-police in pursuit of meeting ethical standards find human trafficking in their second tier suppliers (the mills that take raw materials and produce the fabrics etc): “…considering this, the findings of Patagonia’s audits take on a different cast, a sign not of corporate hypocrisy, but of the near impossibility of treating workers well at every step in the production process, even when a company is genuine in its desire to do so.”
Maggie and her money
This made me laugh: how comparison is the theft of joy, experimental monkey style. This is how I am with salaries in my own field so in some ways I have to force myself to stop looking at what other people are getting paid other than to set a benchmark for myself to reach. Otherwise, I still maintain that social media is what you make of it. I don’t spend time on social media that makes me compare myself unfavorably to a limited snapshot of another person’s life. This is why long form blogging will always be the best for me. And let’s be honest, Twitter is right up there. Twitter and my tweeps have kept us fed, literally, when I couldn’t dredge up the brainpower to figure out what to make for dinner.
Thanos v Cap and Scarlet Witch
March 28, 2018
Back in ’15, I decided to slow churn cards on a regular basis, even if we didn’t have a specific trip goal in mind.
Quick notes:
- We still don’t have a specific trip in mind yet but I have my sights set on some kind of an international trip next year. For about 5 seconds I wildly dreamed about hiking through Patagonia but my body reminded where I live. Hahah, no. Dammit.
- For the purposes of figuring out whether we’ve wasted money on a card or not, I’m estimating the total value of our miles or points for each card to make sure that we are earning at least our minimum profit per churned card but we won’t know the true value until we actually redeem them.
- We haven’t been respecting the “no annual fee” rule for the past several cards as long as the miles or points bonuses were at least worth twice as much as the annual fee, if not four times as much.
- We ALWAYS pay the card balances in full. No exceptions.
- We time our churning activity with necessary spending. We never manufacture unnecessary spending for a card bonus. We’ll pass on a card before we do that. I keep a spreadsheet to track expected large expenses for this. (more…)
March 26, 2018
There’s been a whole lot of chatter on the interwebs about what income level you need to be considered middle class, or more.
My contribution early on was that a household income of $100,000 in most places is what I consider upper middle class. That wouldn’t sustain us or our current lifestyle in the Bay Area. We wouldn’t be able to afford daycare, or travel, or eating out. We probably couldn’t afford this house or our second car. We’d get by but it wouldn’t feel good.
Nevertheless, I started to feel wealthy a long while ago even though our salaries are laughable compared to Silicon Valley friends or more highly educated colleagues. That’s because I truly appreciate the value of certain small things.
BOOKS!
Reading the calendar, I see that our daycare is going to have a Scholastic Book Fair in a few weeks. I asked Twitter if they were pro- or con- SBF because I don’t know much about the program. Penny assured me that they’re great about giving teachers funding support which made my heart sing. Buying a book because we want to read, because our kids love to read, that’s the stuff that feeling rich is made of.
(more…)
March 22, 2018
We’re finally getting winter weather hereabouts, and the Sierras are getting snowpack! As a drought state, as much as I don’t enjoy slogging through the wet, I eagerly watch weather reports every winter hoping we’ll get enough snow and rain to refill our reservoirs.
***
I’d never heard of Mary Seats of Cupcake Mafia before. She seems awesome.
Salted Butter and Chocolate Chunk Shortbread, anyone?
I much appreciated Yet Another PF Blog’s coverage of last year’s purchases. Steering clear of those sweater mittens, albeit sadly.
“It’s a strange phenomenon, but millionaires swear that the more they give, the more will come back to them.“: 2018 is all about 6 and 8. For the first time in my life, I’m going to trust more in the belief that giving back, as the right thing to do with our good fortune, will work out for us in the end, and focus less on keeping the numbers under our strict control. This is a fuzzy sort of thought I’ve never had before and I hope it pans out.
Tanja’s after my ultra risk averse heart with the side hustle year now that that they’ve retired.
Didn’t science say that sharing your goals makes you accountable more likely to complete them? Trello’s got several reasons why sharing goals might be counterproductive. I haven’t pinpointed exactly why that’s how it works for me but I usually don’t share too many goals ahead of doing a good amount of work on them first to ensure that I will follow through. When I prematurely share, I never start. Is that you?
March 21, 2018
What I read
I’ve been subsisting off Kindle First and borrowing from Amazon for months because my Kindle is broken and I haven’t found a replacement yet but we finally made some time to get to the library and get our new library cards. SHEER BLISS!
I’ve been reading up a storm, and losing sleep at night, which coincides with some massive pain flares that make me lose sleep anyway so at least I wasn’t bored. The bad thing is that my phone is too heavy during those flares too, so it’s being bored or hurting my hands a bit more.
The Birdwoman’s Palate, Laksmi Pamuntjak
(free Kindle First book) I didn’t know what to expect but I saw “food” in the blurb and hopped right on it. It did not disappoint. The translation was excellent, the prose was straightforward and imminently readable, the food coverage made me want to visit Indonesia for two weeks. It’s never been on my list before but it is now!
(more…)
March 19, 2018
“…education is the silver bullet. Education is everything.” Sam Seaborn, The West Wing
Is it better to be the comparatively poor kid in a wealthy school district or a relatively rich kid in a poor school district?
I asked this question on Twitter and the responses initially leaned hard toward the second choice, which would be good confirmation bias, except I’m actively second-guessing our decision. Then a lot of responses flooded in pointing out that the first choice is better for the poor kid to have access to connections and better resources.
That brought on a facepalm because I hadn’t thought about it that way and that’s stupid because ….
I lived the first scenario. As a poor kid in a modestly wealthy school district, I got a good education and the relative wealth of my peers wasn’t obvious. Kids weren’t obsessed with designer brand names back then, wealth wasn’t the ostentatious thing that it’s become today between Instagram and new iPhones for ten year olds.
(more…)