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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December 19, 2016
I’m not big on Christmas gifts like I used to be. I used to overcompensate for loneliness and being poor by trying to give as many gifts as I could, wrapped and tied up with a nice bow.
These days, I have as healthy and happy a family life here in the Bay Area as I could hope for, and supportive friends all over.
I still love giving gifts but only when they’re truly meaningful, usually practical, and serve a purpose in the lives of the recipients rather than taking up room, gathering dust, or being regifted because who needs a fourth coffeemaker in their kitchen? I know some people have go-to gifts they give everyone for simplicity’s sake – I give books, for example, but can it please not be a huge, clunky, appliance that only one person in the family can actually use?
At this point in life, my money wants to go toward retirement investing, building our real estate empire, and helping people and animals.
Fantasy gifts: if money and space were no object
$290: Seamus would get the 93-inch plush bear from Costco. Currently on sale for $260. It’s a tossup whether he would sleep on it or tear it apart. Probably both.
$70: JuggerBaby would get this magnetic tiles set. But ze would have to donate or pass along at least three other toys.
$290: I would get this Kindle Oasis. Just kidding, I don’t need all that flash. I’d get the Paperwhite for a third of the price. (But the Oasis is so LIGHT.)
$5000: PiC would get that super fancy bike he admires from afar and we’d get a sitter twice a month so he could go on super long rides on the weekend.
$2000: We have five favorite daycare full time teachers, and five part time teachers or support staff, who have been amazing with JuggerBaby. They’re warm, caring, attentive, all things that make it possible for us to leave zir and work on the weekdays. We’d love to be able to give them each a substantial thanks.
$5000: There are several charities I’d like to support with more than just a small bit of cash.
Reality gifts: because money does matter
$250: Family gifts. I think all but $50 of this is frivolous and we should skip doing it altogether but we have yet to convince the family of this so here it is. The remaining $50 goes towards clothing for the kids so I don’t mind that, since we all pool the clothes we use and pass them along.
At least $100 of that $250 will be gift cards that I purchased at a 4% discount, using GiftCardGranny. The second $100 will mostly be covered by a gift card we received, and the last $50 was covered by gift cards that I earned through Swagbucks and the Carter’s Rewards from last year’s gift purchases. Most of these gifts won’t cost much out of pocket at all, I’ll just have to wrap them.
$75 + $100: The daycare organizes gifts for the center by way of contributions from parents, requesting $60-75 per child, per family. They pool it, then split it across all the teachers and staff at the center. We give the $75, which works out to about a dollar per person, but we’re also going to give some small token of appreciation to our favorites. A card, and perhaps a small gift card? I’m not sure yet but we have about a day to figure this out.
Making new traditions
While I work towards a gift-free holiday season, PiC and I splurged on our own Christmas tree for our home. We went with an artificial tree, to my inner sadness because I miss the smell of a fresh new tree, but the deal was good enough for what we were looking for. We found it at Target, originally $67, marked down to $42 which was covered with a gift card. Add a couple strings of lights and a few ornaments, and voila, 4 weeks of wintery, Christmassy cheer in our living room.
It feels very splurgey, we don’t typically spend money on decor, but it’s a long term happiness thing.
:: What are your favorite winter holiday traditions? Do you typically exchange holiday gifts? What’s your perfect gift to give or receive?
December 14, 2016
JuggerBaby has been transformed partly into the Unstoppable JuggerBaby with the addition of a cast. It’s a club that’s bashed about with great vigor, never mind who gets in the way. It’s made zir approximately 15% more reckless. It’d be worse but ze hasn’t discovered the extent to which ze can take advantage yet. Cross your fingers that ze doesn’t catch on before it comes off.
We just hope that amid all zir fun, ze is also healing up well.
The really annoying thing is that ze has been congested for about two months now, and so have I, and I don’t know what it’ll take to kick this dratted thing. Ze is taking Zarbee’s for the resulting cough because there’s nothing you can really safely give a kid zir age, but it’s not that effective. We still have reports from daycare that ze is coughing a lot during zir naps, and every night, it wrenches my heart to hear the hacking cough issuing from zir crib.
Since the cold set in, I’ve been doing remarkably well. I was pretty sure I’d adjusted to San Francisco type weather. Then I wasn’t. This Sunday’s temps were exactly the same as they had been for the last two weeks but this chill went straight to my bones, then from there zapped my muscles so that nothing from neck to toe didn’t ache. Literally down to my very toes and the tiny bones in there – ache ache ache ACHE.
It was a point of pride that I’d only had to bundle up to endure the ever-so-frigid days and nights that drop as low as (horror! gasp!) the 40s and 50s. I know, I know. But look, I’m from the tropics, genetically, this is unnatural for my people. I’d adjusted mostly but my fibro gets eccentric at times. All this wind-up means we had to run the heater for more than ten minutes. We had taken to running it for a little while to take the chill off since JuggerBaby can’t wear sleeves, and then leaving it off for the night, and it makes me grumpy to know that we had to run it longer just so that I could feel mostly human again. I know it’s not a big deal really in the grand scheme of things but there’s that knee-jerk frugal reaction of no! don’t waste money like that!
Meanwhile, PiC’s got a thing going on with his back, and his vision (unrelated). I’m hoping that it’s nothing serious, although I think it’s safer to say I hope it’s something that will resolve itself and go far far away soon, because we have trouble enough on our hands. Also he’s not used to being in pain for prolonged periods of time and it makes him grumpy.
Under the mental health column, I hit a glacier of Zen this month. Lots of things could irritate me but with the exception of one Friday, it hasn’t bothered me enough to even shout at the computer. That’s new. Also it’s appreciated by Seamus who is not at all convinced by my “it’s not you” reassurances. He’s a smart dog but I don’t think he quite grasps how the box I stare at all day could be getting itself in trouble.
I don’t know if the weird calm comes from having maxed out my stress receptors after November, or maybe I have gone numb from the three month long series of working more than twice my usual hours, but it’s kind of nice. Bizarre, but nice.
:: How long can you go before you have to run the heater when winter sets in? How’s everyone doing at home?
December 12, 2016
I can’t make a decision on my property manager just yet, I need to run some projections on the potential costs and benefits, so I moved along to do quick research on the other list items.
This turned out to be a great idea.
Refinancing! or not.
I ran some initial numbers with Quicken Loans, they wanted to give me a 30-year-fixed loan with $4899 in closing costs and 2 points for a rate of 3.625. I’d save $238 monthly, but with the closing costs, it’d take 21 months to break even.
My current company offered me a 15 year loan, 4.25 / 4.38 with 2 discount points, and the monthly payment goes up by $247. Not the goal.
They also offered a 20 year loan, 4.375 / 4.25 points with 2 discount points, and the monthly payment goes up by $250. Also not the goal. These loan costs are before we calculate the other costs of refinancing: an appraisal running somewhere between $575-625, and closing costs.
Overall, it seems like it’s just not the time for refinancing.
New home warranty
My old home warranty company was bought out by American Home Shield who tried to increase the premiums by 20% at the time of renewal. Even if my profit margins weren’t quite slim, that wouldn’t be acceptable.
My property manager found me a second policy with First American Home Buyers Protection Corporation, at a lower rate than I was paying before, for just about the same coverage and lower call-out costs. Savings: $200 for the annual policy, and $10 off each call-out.
New property insurance
I’m usually all about automating bill-paying so I went for holding the property taxes and hazard insurance in escrow. Pay three bills in one, what’s not to love?
Here’s what – I didn’t see the bill, therefore I didn’t think about it much, therefore I didn’t put it on the list of bills to attack. It did catch my attention briefly when the bill went up bit at renewal time, then it slipped back off my plate shortly after.
No more!
In a burst of productivity, I have …
- gotten a quote from a new insurance company,
- started a new policy
- submitted a request to remove the property taxes from escrow,
- had the new company send a cancellation notice to my old insurance company to avoid having to tell them that I’m dumping them, but we’ll see if they make me talk to them anyway.
The new insurance agent was very responsive by email, exactly how I like doing business, which meant I wrapped the whole process from quote to finish in 9 days.
With any luck, I’ll come to a decision about the property manager soon and then I’ll have shelved a year’s worth of administrative maintenance stuff – woo!
The unfortunate thing is that this stuff always occurs to me at the end of the year. Because what better time is there for sorting out all your paperwork and paying big lump sums like insurance policies then at the end of a long year? The only good thing is that, for the rental at least, I keep all the expenses and income in a separate account so it doesn’t impact our personal finances.
:: When’s the last time you evaluated your insurance, property, auto, renters, life, or otherwise? Do you carry any other than the required auto insurance?
December 9, 2016
Honestly this feels a bit like cheating because who doesn’t know how to make pasta? You just cook the pasta al dente and add interesting things. For some reason this particular pasta bake was a huge hit.
JuggerBaby decided that this was the night ze didn’t want spinach and picked it out occasionally but ze got more than ze avoided. PiC, on the other hand, had four servings and ate all HIS spinach, so on balance, I’d call it a success.
Ingredients
garlic cloves
1 medium onion
1 lb of pasta,
1 lb of ground turkey
1-2 bunches of spinach
4 slices of cheddar cheese
1/2 Tbsp garlic salt
1/2 Tbsp onion powder
1.5 cups tomato-based pasta sauce
Optional: 1/2 cup of mixed cheeses (romano, parmesan, etc)
Directions
We’ve been eating a lot of veggie penne and whole wheat penne lately, and it works really well for this recipe.
Mince the garlic, and dice the onions, toss both in the heated, oiled Dutch oven set to medium-low heat. Boil salted water for the pasta, which takes about 9-10 minutes while washing and chopping up your spinach – just a rough chop to discard the stems and cut down the leaves to 1/6th or 1/8th a large leaf size.
Toss the chopped spinach into the Dutch oven, and stir until the leaves settle down into nice green, add the ground turkey, onion powder and garlic salt, cook til done. Add the pasta sauce and sliced cheeses, stir to distribute evenly. Your pasta should be cooked through by now, add it to the pot and stir til it’s mixed in well. Top with a generous sprinkle of cheese on top, bake uncovered at 350 degrees for ten minutes.
Total time from prep to serving: 35 minutes.
December 7, 2016
There’s something about the cold, real cold for a Californian, the kind where you can see your breath, and stop feeling fingers and nose. Whenever that winter feels truly here, my bone deep memories surface.
It’s 40 degrees outside, and I needed socks inside, so I’m remembering other nippy mornings, going way back to when I ventured out into that cold because adults made me. Some memories are of junior high, 50 cent cups of hot chocolate to ward off the chill, shivering in too thin jackets.
Some are about recalling my ancestors.
My entire extended family, aunts, uncles, cousins, lived by the Lunar calendar. I myself had no idea how it worked. All I knew was that when the cold settled down in California, it would be time. The one day a year that was designated for families to go to the graves of our family with food, symbolic money and clothes. Each family would bring a dish made potluck-style, and we’d light incense in remembrance of our loved ones, burning paper money and clothing for their use in the afterlife. We’d have one-sided chats with our deceased loved ones, telling Grandma about what we’d been up to that year, who was sick, who was doing well, who had grown three inches. We’d ask them to remember us, too, and send us their blessings.
After the incense burned out, indicating the end of the spirits’ meal, we would eat the meal together as a family, picnic-style.
This was part of the Buddhist culture I was raised in, though it wasn’t really shared as a religion or a belief system. It was a familial custom to honor and respect our loved ones’ memory, much as others might leave flowers at the cemetery, keeping them alive in our hearts and teaching the next generation the wisdom that would have been passed down from the deceased elders.
I remember this from when I was very young, too young to know that running around the graveyard playing wasn’t respectful, and I remember a cousin jokingly restraining us by saying that if we ran over people’s resting places, they would reach up and grab our ankles to make us stop. It was effective. To this day I still instinctively walk in very specific lines above headstones. He’d probably think that was funny.
We were exposed to the idea of death very early on, making it a normal part of life, without making it rule our daily lives. That distance I learned to be comfortable with became so ingrained that it’s difficult to follow any mourning rituals that dictate weekly and monthly visits to graves or temples or churches. More frequently than once a year is overwhelming.
I think my cousins still carry on the tradition because they’re still local to the graves, but we’re not, and so I can’t share it with JuggerBaby as I would like to. As a poor alternative, I started a journal after ze was born where I share memories of my mom and others whom I would have honored on that day and why I remember and grieve their loss.
:: When did you learn about death? Do you have any family traditions to handle loss?
December 5, 2016
On Money
Income
Our normal income is two full time day job salaries. We experiment with earning money on the side, including minimal cash flow that we don’t touch from an investment property. The goal is to replace our day job income before my health gives out and prevents me from working.
Our incomes which I am exceedingly grateful for remain the same. This is good from a stability standpoint. There have been too many nights lying awake after working a 100 hour week for the overtime and wondering how long it was before I fell apart completely and could I get us to a safe place before then? So I’m grateful for what we have.
I’m also aware that the clock could run out on my particular job, whether it be my patience or my professional stagnation, so there is some internal buttkicking going on in trying to nail down the important things I need to address when crafting my next step. (more…)
December 2, 2016
It’s almost embarrassing to admit this but I buy my shrimp from Safeway. My Asian card just caught flame. But there’s a good reason, I swear! One, the nearest Asian market is 99 Ranch and that parking lot is, if possible, as terrible to navigate as any parking lot in Rowland Heights back in Southern California. I’d rather walk to the store. Except it’s ten miles away so that’s not happening either. Two, their shrimp are deveined! This was revelatory.
I can devein shrimp, I’m good at it. Or rather my 13-year-old, pre-fibromyalgia hands were great at it. Now? Hah! I save my fine motor control for things like not slicing off more than just the tip of my finger. That’s not hyperbole, by the way, I did slice off the tip of my index finger two weeks ago. It got better.
Anyway, shrimp from Safeway, saving fingertips, and even more importantly, time across America!
(If you don’t know why I’m mocking myself, it’s because I’m probably the only person in my family who buys their seafood from a not Asian market. Growing up in Southern California nearish to LA meant that Asian markets abounded and growing up in a traditional immigrant family meant we never cooked anything but our home country cuisines. And no non-Asian market carried Asian food fixings beyond soy sauce, so we always always always went to an Asian market. And stopped by for a passel of banh mi on the way home.
My shrimp were destined for a decidedly non-Asian ending though, because I adore this dish!
I keep this one super simple, just as it was intended.
Ingredients
1 cup polenta (grits)
3 cups water
Swish of salt
Half a small onion, halved again and sliced
Several cloves of garlic
1/2 pound of shrimp, deveined, shelled
Doing it right
Boil 3 cups of water, swish your salt in, and when it’s boiling, stir in the cup of polenta. Let it boil at medium to low heat, stirring every 20-40 seconds to make sure it doesn’t stick to the pot. This is something I forget every other time I make it and end up scraping regret off the pot. Actually no, I cheat and boil water with some baking soda which lifts off almost all burnt-on guck. So don’t burn your grits.
Mince your garlic and slice the onion while the grits are cooking, unless you’re smart and/or had a sous chef do this already. I shooed my sous chef away to chase JuggerBaby around so I had to do the dirty work. Toss garlic and onions into a hot pan and let them cook for a few minutes. You could also toss in your tomatoes now, if you’d diced any. I always err on the side of cooking a little longer at this stage because I don’t want raw onions or overcooked shrimp when I realize I’m going to have raw onions. Because the next step is tossing on the shrimp and on medium heat shrimp cooks through really fast. I hate overcooked shrimp, it’s rubbery and awful. As soon as your shrimp are starting to curl up and the split deveined side turns outward, it’s nearly done. Usually it goes from translucent to solid white too but some don’t, and you don’t want to overcook it seeking that solid white. A few minutes will do the trick.
In the meantime, your grits. Once the pot is hot and smooth when you’re stirring, it’s just about done. If you want (and I usually do), throw in your cheese at this point, stir it well so none is sitting on top and turn off the heat. It’ll thicken in no time. (Actual time: one to two minutes)
To serve: a generous dollop of your cheesy grits on a plate, with a little hollow for your grilled onions and shrimp on top.
I added a handful of too-crispy, slightly burnt kale chips to our plates for our brown-greens. Still edible but those should have come out if the oven a few minutes earlier.
Total time to serve: 45 minutes, and only that long because I was poky and inefficient. Normally I’d have gotten it served in 25-30 minutes.