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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June 20, 2016
Our travel cost breakdown
Lodgings, 48,000 StarPoints / $0 (cost if paid out of pocket, $859.65)*
Airfare for 3, $350
Rental car, $250
Boarding, $450
Taxi, $50
Groceries and eating out, $240
Gas, $20
Gifts and things, $100
total: $1460
* This is why I love my SPG American Express. We pay a $95 annual fee, and redeem an average of $500-$1000 in hotel room value per year.
On food.
Meals were eclectic. Usually our lunches or dinners are the highlight of the food experience but it was flipped this trip. Lunches were picked up from a food truck (meh) and sandwich shop (awesome). Dinners ranged from fantastic Indian food, to average sushi (which still makes me sad to this day, I was so looking forward to it), to sandwiches from the amazing deli. We supplemented with the free Noosa yogurt they kept handing out at the convention center – JuggerBaby is a HUGE FAN.
Breakfasts were the fun stuff. PiC would take JuggerBaby out for an adventure every morning and they’d bring me back some yummy tidbit from Pike Place or something thereabouts. Favorites: Piroshky Piroshky, The Crumpet Shop, Honest Biscuit and Top Pot Donuts.
On tourist stuff and having fun.
We were in town for Emerald City Comic Con and to meet up with local friends. It’s great to be centrally located or located close by one another so we can easily spend a little time on the Con floor and then get back for JuggerBaby’s nap or to have dinner with friends. We still haven’t been to the Space Needle but I’d like to one day, just to do it.
:: Have you visited Seattle? Do you have any must-see or must-eat recommendations? What’s your usual travel budget for a longer than a weekend trip?
June 15, 2016
Hide the china!
LB is walking, wobbly and wiggly and waggly, on hir own. Somewhere, ze also acquired stealth mode, too. I used to track hir movements by listening for the telltale “heh heh heh”and slap-slap-slap of hir hands as ze superspeed-crawled straight into disaster. Now, I might hear a chuckle and then Seamus’s snort of surprise as ze pops up in front of his face, or catch a glimpse of hir peering around the corner, several feet from where I left hir.
This is good for NO ONE.
What’s that you say?
So much communication is happening this month. Once, when you asked hir to sign “more”, you’d get a sidelong glance and a quirked lip sneer. “I’m not waving my hands around like that. JUST GIVE ME THE FOOD.”
This month, ze is suddenly willing to sign to communicate, and more than just “more”. “All done”, “ready”, and “please” have come into play. That doesn’t mean hir primary mode, yelling louder until we magically understand like the stereotypical American talking to a non-English speaker, has stopped completely but if you prompt hir with keywords, ze will sign appropriately, and happily, now.
I’m also teaching hir the age-appropriate formal cultural greeting that I learned as a child. Ze thinks it’s HILARIOUS.
Swimming with the fishes
JuggerLB LOVES the water. Washing hands? Awesome. Taking a bath? Awesome. Swim lessons? Awesome. Pool time with family? Awesome. Ze can’t actually swim yet but acts like ze knows how, pushing off me or PiC as if to say “I can do it!”
Teething is horrible
It feels like we’ve been in a teething phase forever. We used to get by with the Hyland’s teething tabs but lately the teething pains come with a side of high fevers and extra misery. I DID NOT ORDER THOSE.
We’ve spent many a night cuddling after a dose of Motrin and cup of water, waiting for the numbers to reverse course from 105 degrees F. I know some parents prefer to avoid the drugs and we don’t love using medications but if the kiddo is suffering, in pain, and crying when ze normally brushes off most discomfort and some ibuprofen will help, I don’t see the percentage in holding to any such principles.
Live hyenas
Exchanging anecdotes with a friend about our babies, we realized that our children get really violent when they need sleep. I knew that ze HATED being patted for comfort when in the car seat and tired-angry. But since ze still hasn’t learned the sign for sleep, ze resorts to wildly signalling “please” and “more”, and then inflicting pain if you don’t figure it out. The first time, we were up an hour past hir normal bedtime talking to friends. JuggerBaby launched hirself into my arms and bit me. Then I noticed that if we were too slow to prep hir for daytime naps, ze would take my hand and try to tear off a chunk of it. Ouch. We’ve finally learned to catch the subtler signals of hir slowing down and confused signals as TIME FOR SLEEP. If we didn’t, ze might tear off a leg.
:: Is it possible that this is all normal for this age?
June 13, 2016
Hallelujah!
FINALLY.
I can’t express how relieved I am.
Though I’m not always talking the talk, I’m walking the PF blogger walk. We balance our spending and saving, minimize bills, spend consciously, auto-save, invest with only very little reckless abandon, abandon cable, don’t eat out every night. The one thing we’ve not done is cut the “luxury” of having a second car.
For several months, we were a 1-car family and normally I would have reveled in the experiment: lower mileage, less gas “wasted”, no insurance for that car. But it turns out that also imposes levels of restriction that don’t fit our reality. Once, I wondered if it’d be worth the savings to cut our second car. This experimental period highlighted that answer very clearly for us.
The puzzle: We had one vehicle that also held JuggerLB’s car seat. We had a loaner that I couldn’t drive without exacerbating my pain so basically PiC had a loaner.
Inconvenience was also wastefulness
PiC could go to work alone in the loaner and leave us the car, or he could take the car and JuggerBaby, and leave me with a loaner I couldn’t drive. Since daycare is on the way to work for him, and my day goes in the opposite direction, we’d have to double our commute if I wanted the car during the week. It was highly inefficient and I found myself canceling appointments “until we have a car again”. It just wasn’t worth the waste of time and gas.
The grocery store and a few other places are within walking distance for your average healthy person. I’ve tried and deeply regretted making the hike to pick up “just a few things”. Nothing quite like being caught out in the rain, carrying fifteen pounds of groceries because who makes a huge trek for just a couple things? in a rapidly disintegrating tote bag, and with legs and back threatening to give out right now.
Disproportionate burdens
On days JuggerLB was going to daycare, I couldn’t squeeze in errands outside my work routine that would have helped ease the weekend pressure. No grocery shopping, doctor’s appointments, vet appointments, picking up prescriptions, or a gallon of milk. These were all things that PiC had to do on his way home, or we’d have to contort our schedules to accommodate. We couldn’t afford the lost hour or more that carpooling would have added to everyone’s day.
With one and a half cars, don’t check my math, we had to do everything together, or when we were all in the same place. Weekends were a bit easier to manage the “do everything together” strategy, limited to 3 hour stretches, but neither of us felt comfortable leaving the other one home along with JuggerLB and no car in case of emergency. You might remember the Day of the Horrible Raisin? It wouldn’t have been half so exhausting if I had the car.
That usually translates to me staying home and PiC running all the errands in the loaner. Better for my energy, but tough for PiC’s time, and not ultimately sustainable.
The pain of paying is much lower than not paying
This is a strange thought but paying for the use of a second car is far preferable to the disruption of doing without. I’ll admit to being tempted to cave and just buying a new car off the lot, for about ten minutes, but we stayed strong and we didn’t take that shortcut.
Running the numbers
We received a $6000 check from our insurance, $1000 cash from the buyer of the salvaged car, $1200 from the Other Driver’s insurance covering our deductible and replacement car seat. PiC also sold $400 of car gear from the Doggle-chariot.
We paid for the new car seat, 2 car inspections, the cost of the car itself, the sales tax to the DMV, transportation to go get the car, and a substantial overhaul with a trusted mechanic friend. All told, cost ran just over $10,000. The insurance bill just arrived and the new premium is less than the premium for the destroyed Doggle-chariot so it’s good to see that regular expense will be lower too, and by the way writing this up reminded me to go pay it so blogging is still good for my finances!
Useful Tip: Our insurance advised us to keep our Doggle-chariot policy during this hunt for the replacement. The value would be refunded at the end, but doing so would allow us to keep our multi-vehicle discount on the remaining car instead of bumping that premium unnecessarily. If ever you’re in this situation, check to see if that applies to you too.
We did have to buy a few accessories to protect this car from dog and child – they just keep on shedding and growing (well, the child does) which means seat protectors were in order. They were reasonably priced and I used my Amazon GC earnings from Swagbucks to pay for it.
After deducting the cash and checks, we spent almost $2,000 out of pocket for the new-to-us car. That’s real cash, no doubt about it, but under the circumstances, it darn well beats financing a new daily driver at $20,000 plus interest.
Last, there’s no monetary price we can put on the cost of PiC’s time and the goodwill of expert friends who helped us during the search. We burned quite a lot of social capital and I hate doing that, that’s probably the biggest reason I wanted this settled.
We weren’t planning on this expense now – we had hatched plans of upgrading to a bigger car in a few years, but tabled the discussion in favor of saving more money and growing our nest egg. Naturally a month after that agreement is when that idiot driver hit us. Seems my old friend Murphy hasn’t strayed far!
:: How did your last car cost? Will you be on the car hunt any time soon? Do you enjoy the hunt for a new or new to you vehicle? What’s your strategy?
June 8, 2016
I ran across Blue Bloods on Netflix and flipped it on to be background noise. I was surprised to find myself enjoying the show. It’s wish fulfillment. Isn’t most tv?
I’m neither anti-establishment nor pro-police. I’ve multitudes of family and friends in both law enforcement and the military and, as a result, have had the ideals of what police and military are meant to be instilled in me early on. Not all of our police departments conduct themselves with the honor and integrity we should be able to expect from them. They’re in positions of authority, and with that, I’m all about Uncle Ben-isms here: With great power comes great responsibility. I wish more people understood that.
The main characters, the Reagan family, seem to be everything I’m not: white, Irish, Catholic, family with years of service in the police force. I disagree, and sometimes vehemently, with some of the storylines that they run and stereotypes they perpetuate. And it’s not escaped my notice that there aren’t very many Asian faces, if any, in the show. I’ve noticed this more and more. It’s not like there aren’t Asian actors but you wouldn’t know it from watching this drama, or most other shows, on mainstream tv.
It drew me in because there’s a kernel of what I know police can be: balancing fair and tough, trying to do the right thing by the citizens, trying to serve and protect, without seeing the citizens as the enemy. This is what my family LEOs try to be and what I wish we could have confidence in. The Reagans are flawed but fundamentally good people trying to do the right thing for the good of the people, wrestling with thorny ethical problems, held to a mostly higher standard because the patriarchs were both officers who served as police commissioners. And they make mistakes. But they learn from them.
It’s wish fulfillment another way, too. Would you believe there are moments I fight off envy of that family? Envy that the family fights for one another, looks out for one another? Envy for made up characters in a tv show. Can you beat that?
Professionalism isn’t just for sometimes
Jamie Reagan: “On the side of the patrol car that I drive, it says ‘courtesy, professionalism and respect, not judge, jury, and executioner!'”
The public should be able to trust that you practice the ideals you say you stand for. Your customers, your clients, and your employers should also be able to trust that you will make the best decisions you can whether or not someone is watch. Whether or not it’s convenient.
Danny Reagan: “Your money doesn’t make me stupid.”
Having money is, and provides, a certain kind of privilege. It shouldn’t buy you more rights, and having less money shouldn’t mean you have fewer rights. And money shouldn’t dictate how you treat a person, or your job. Or here in California, it shouldn’t buy you the right to squander precious and scarce natural resources because you’re a fat cat jerk who thinks that your money buys you the rights to waste water on keeping a lawn green while there isn’t enough for people to drink or bathe in.
Frank Reagan: “If what she said doesn’t count because it was a she who said it, then it doesn’t belong in police work.”
Sexism has no place in your professional conduct.
Parenting: it’s a lifetime of terror
Jamie, whinging about his dad being overprotective: “You’d think it was him they put a hit on.”
Oh kid, you have no idea how much a caring parent would 1000x rather they were harmed in their child’s place if it would save their child pain.
Financial responsibility starts early
Frank Reagan: You should learn to cook. There are a few years between eating out on your parents’ dime and when you can afford it yourself.
Kids should understand early on that what they’re enjoying now, as a result of their parents’ hard work, is something they have to work up to. You don’t typically graduate from high school or college and have the ability to buy a 3 bed, 2 bath, with a yard and garage, and eat out every week.
Have discretion, always
Renzulli rips into Jamie: You were undercover and you didn’t tell me?
Isn’t the point of undercover is that you don’t tell anyone? I get that there’s an extra bond of loyalty between partners but in general, I think it makes sense to maintain your cover.
PC Frank Reagan to DCPI Garrett: Can you keep a secret?
DCPI Garrett: Yeah.
PC Frank Reagan: Good, so can I.
:: Are there tv shows that you were surprised to enjoy? Does the homogeneity of TV-land match your real life experience? Are there any shows on Netflix or Amazon Prime that would make me feel better about the world? Or that are worth trying?
June 6, 2016
Last year, we managed a tidy prepayment on the mortgage and I was hooked on the taste of paying it DOWN.
DRUMROLL PLEASE
After more than five months of painful paperwork and terrible service, we finally refinanced our dang mortgage!
The process
I shopped rates on BankRate, with Quicken Loans, Bank of America, Chase, Citi, SoFi.
The lowest possible rate offered was on a 30-year 7/1 ARM at SoFi. My internal conflict raged: a very low interest rate equals big savings and a huge increase in cash flow. But an ARM? I’m a low-to-moderate risktaker and at first, the idea that the rate increase could spike to nearly 8% in Year 8, while symmetrical, is risk that I wasn’t sure I wanted. Partly because of my love for maximum savings, I was 80% sure that the ARM was the right way to go and 20% an irrational worrywart because of the high ceiling on the allowed rate increase.
Cut to a scene of me doing calculations on ARMs vs fixed rates like a squirrel hopped up on an illicit stash of nuts.
The math showed that I was right. Even if we only paid the new, low, monthly payment for the next 7 years, in the worst case scenario of the interest increasing to 7.5%, the monthly payment would still be a couple hundred dollars less than what we pay now. In the meantime, our new monthly payment would be under $1000 per month and the interest rate? Under 3%.
A review of SoFi Mortgage
Hands down terrible. Absolutely NOT RECOMMENDED.
StackingPennies had described her experience refinancing her student loans with Earnest: “It was very much a Silicon Valley company designed for millennial who can’t stand bad web design, inefficient processes, or too many phone calls.” SoFi and Earnest are competitors in the same market so I assumed they’d be competitive. I also gave them a shot because several friends had praised them for their student loan refinances.
My experience with them? Awful. No good. Very Bad. I had a better time of it when I bought our investment property with a long distance broker and a traditional lender. They were the total opposite of what I expected.
I asked them to conduct everything by email because I needed everything in writing and my work doesn’t allow for me to stop for phone calls. It took three phone calls and three weeks to get them to comply with this one request. Meanwhile, they kept badgering PiC by phone. Why? I don’t even know.
Their email communication was like risque summer wear: barely there, and totally unprofessional when it did show up.
One of the weeks when we were in contact, we exchanged more than 20 emails because the assistant couldn’t possibly manage to ask me for a complete list of required documents. She had to ask for nearly 20 documents across 7 emails. You’d think she was being paid by email volume. The rest of the time, she was so unclear in her terminology I had no idea what she was asking for. Then she couldn’t possibly make sure that all the files she requested had a home for upload on the submission site. Then the submission site was a total jerk and would eat some of the files that I uploaded.
They kept getting important details wrong, and giving me important information too late. They’d send random clutches of documents for signatures without any explanation. Without fail, they’d ask me for documentation at absolutely the latest possible time to ask and then rush me to supply it. As if I don’t have a full time job, by virtue of which I qualify for the dang loan, and just sit here chewing on my nails, nervously awaiting the next email to fulfill their desires.
Can I remind you that it took nearly half a year to complete this? My last mortgage took less than 20 days to finalize from the point of agreement with the buyer to closing.
It’s like the alien wearing Edgar in Men in Black II. They superficially look like a modern, tech-savvy, version of a mortgage company but the skin barely covers up the fact they are really not human.
Go figure – when I shared my frustrations with some friends, half a dozen told me that they hated SoFi’s mortgage side too. Every complaint I had was echoed, and in some cases, they definitely had it worse. A few of them abandoned ship when they were in their 4th month. I can’t blame them.
The end result
It’s OVER. If I’m lucky, if I work these cards right, the next time I have to talk to them is when we pay off the loan. Wait, I’d better not have to talk to them then. Just send me that dang title.
Our mortgage is now a sane amount.
I’m happy the refinance is concluded but that took so long, I’m ready for the next phase already. Which is what?
Now I take advantage of our extra cash flow to pay down the mortgage even more! My goal is to throw at least $70K in extra payments at the loan over the next 7 years, assuming stable income over that time.
If we manage that, we’ll be within $100,000 of payoff.
There remains the question of whether we might attempt to buy a larger home during that time. We’d both really like a bit more room but it doesn’t feel realistic. I stalk the market monthly. The prices just keep going up, and quality isn’t in line with the cost. We can’t find anything that gives us enough space to warrant a move but also isn’t a dump for under $1.5M. I don’t yet see where I make room in our current budget to save 40-60% of a greater than $1M amount in less than 7 years. (I refuse to take out a jumbo loan.)
I’m also unsure I want to start over with a new mortgage – we’ll be so close to paying this one off! I’d love to be mortgage free and stay that way. Contrast that against my love of more dogs and hope for more space (but not too much) … I’m not sure yet which will win out.
:: Do you have an ARM or a fixed-rate mortgage, or no mortgage at all? What’s your dream home goal? Are you a someday owner or a forever renter?
June 3, 2016
Theme: Adult time, me time
We’ve got a lovely neighbor who is genuinely happy to take JuggerBaby for 10-20 minutes if we need, probably longer if we asked, in the evenings. We’ve exchanged kids a few times now, her family is great with JuggerBaby and ze is totally into hanging out with them. Ze isn’t in the least bit shy of running up and demanding a snack. (The well trained kid in me groans at this imposition. But we are happy to feed their little guy when he asks for a snack so fair’s fair?) Their little guy is much older but he loves the company of anyone at any age, so he’s hung out with us a few times too, sans parents, and he’s hugely entertaining when he’s not running around in circles.
It’d be the perfect arrangement but alas, they’re only here for a little while. It’s hard to find people we consider a good fit: trustworthy, patient and firm, very reasonable, willing to tell a child “no”, and just easy to get along with. We’ll stay in touch, I’m sure, but they won’t be just on the same block anymore and sometimes, we just need a hand from someone who can be there without a long commute or scheduling two weeks in advance.
I mentioned earlier that we found babysitters – yaaayy! But they are only available the occasional Saturday and run at least $25/hour – OUCH.
We’d originally imagined babysitting to be the solution of buying ourselves some free time, some guilt free time, where we happily paid someone to help out with JuggerBaby for an hour or two to do something for ourselves or just get some work done. It’s tough when we’re both timing almost everything on the weekend for hir naps. It’s even tougher staring down the barrel of hir phasing out the second nap. (Say it ain’t so!)
We work at making sure PiC gets his gym time, that’s as important to his mental health as my quiet no-people time is to mine. Thus far, I’ve gotten by with thinking of daycare days as double duty days: It’s when I get my quiet me-time, and I get all my work done.
Once in a while I think wistfully of a time when I wasn’t on the dog or the baby’s schedule. Mostly, I think I’m as rested as I can be given health issues, and as fulfilled on a personal level as I need to be, right now, but eventually I’d like a little bit more. Nothing scheduled, I hate the commitment of taking weekly classes. Just the odd hour once or twice a month where I am solely committed to just doing whatever I want.
I don’t want to say that it’s entirely down to JuggerBaby that we don’t get our time, in that blamey kind of way, because I don’t resent it. The reality is we chose to have a human puppy. That’s fine, it brings a whole load of work and compensates with fun and laughter and snot and drool. It’s relatively even. But ze just happens to be the reason this period carries extra scheduling challenges.
I know this is a problem everyone has to some extent with their families, friends, work, and all their other obligations.
:: Do you get enough time to yourself? How do you carve out time for yourself? Do you prioritize alone time and social time?
June 1, 2016
ON MONEY
I use Swagbucks. Here’s a handy tutorial if you’d like to join and earn.
- MTurk experiment, total earned: $12.65. I originally planned to try it out for ten consecutive days. Since I can’t stay not-sick for more than a few days at a time, that didn’t work out. No big deal, this is still just an interesting experiment. This will be added to our side money when I cash it out. So far, most of the HITs (human intelligence task) have been very low payouts. We’re talking about less than a dollar. I happened across one that paid more than pennies on a Wednesday evening, completed it immediately, and banked $6. I suspect that, for my purposes, if I just use this intermittently as I have time on weekdays, I’ll build up a tiny nestegg of earnings. This isn’t likely to be a true source of income replacement unless I’m willing to put quite a few more hours into it. If I do get past the beginner’s hurdle, and am offered the more lucrative HITs, it’ll be worth the time I put in. Like I said, it’s an experiment and I’m willing to see how it plays out, picking and choosing the higher payouts from this point forward.
- I still hate that daycare doesn’t make it easier to automatically pay them. I still refuse to set up autopay at their site because I will NEVER authorize withdrawals of “any amount” from our checking account, are you kidding me?
- On the subject of being stuck in the Paper Ages, I don’t understand why our new FSA contractor refuses to do direct deposit. They mail a paper check and statement for every redemption. I wish the company had consulted us even a little before changing but it’s done now. What a waste!
- You would think that offending the stomach gods and being unable to eat for 5 days running would translate into savings, but that has not been true at all.
- Three notices from TradeKing this month: Dividends paid! Woot! My portfolio is still small enough that three dividend payouts only add up $100 but we’re heading in the right direction. Bearing in mind that my investing strategy is to buy and hold, I also intend to earn income from the dividends with the expectation that they will provide income before retirement age. My body hasn’t done what you’d call IMPROVE with age so we have to plan for the scenario in which I’m still alive but too disabled to work for income at an early enough age that it creates financial hardship. I refuse to be complacent and pretend that won’t happen in hopes of getting better – that’s not yet done me a lick of good and believe you me, I spent plenty of time in denial.
- We spent money and bought a car. That deserves a post of its own. Especially because it looks like more money is needed.
- We spent money and refinanced the mortgage. That also deserves a post of its own. Coming soon.
- I’ve been just as frustrated as you might imagine with all our free time being monopolized by the car, the mortgage, and the estate planning. So much so that I’m happy we spent money and resolved the issue. Mostly.
- Our net worth is down 0.1% this month. The aforementioned expected, not awesome, spending took us down a tiny peg.
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