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 2, 2015
Change from Jan 2015: 18.7% increase
0.23% decrease from last month
ON MONEY
I use Swagbucks. Here’s a handy tutorial if you’d like to join and earn.
Spending
***
The huge cash withdrawals are still happening: half of our property tax bill was due, the other half will be due early next year, our mortgage prepayment actually went through (though we had a specific amount we took directly out of savings so that wasn’t a scramble).
The large withdrawals for my retirement savings will drop to a lower monthly amount starting in January thereby improving our cash flow by a couple hundred dollars. That’ll be good. I hate feeling like we have zero cash flow cushion.
*** (more…)
December 1, 2015
Friend: What do you want for Christmas, Revanche?
Revanche: THE WORLD.
Not Friend: What do you want for Christmas, Revanche?
Revanche: None of your business, go away.
Blog readers: What do you want for Christmas, Revanche?
Well, funny you should ask! Here, have a seat next to me and I’ll tell you. (No, I know you didn’t ask but I’m going to pretend you did. A polite fiction never hurt anyone, right?)
Real answer #1: Be simple. Be kind. Be considerate.
“Fresh towels!” I hear echo from the bathroom. Laundry is my thing but it’s awfully nice to be appreciated, isn’t it? Centering our lives around appreciating the simple things, contrary to what our very consumeristic acquaintances say, brings them into sharper focus and stops our tendency to inflate our lifestyles. The less complex our lives, the more energy we can give to the things that really matter.
“Clean your plate, there are starving children in [insert location here]” is a common joke. But it’s true! And a lack of appreciation for our own abundance, the insistence on more more more, makes it awfully easy to forget that we can do good in the world.
My resolution: I already give half my annual personal spending allowance to charitable causes. From now on, I’m going to look for ways to expand that, even if I don’t have my huge charitable foundation & empire yet.
Real Answer #2: Of course I still love things
Like books. Boy do I love books. But I don’t have a lot of room so I’m reconsidering my approach of always getting a physical book first and maybe splurging on an ebook later.Another argument for e-books? I only have to protect my device from the drooling crawling creeper that is my child. We have daily races to the bookshelf as ze scampers on all fours, cackling wildly at the prospect that this time ze might get a grubby finger on my books. I shudder for the day ze wins that race. For both of us.
Gosh darn it, I sure do like my geeky gear. Cheeky grammar / literature wear? YES please. Library socks? Yes and yes. You say The Count of Monte Cristo, I see Doctor Who’s The Silence. And what child doesn’t need a cute evolution shirt? Or their very own Hungry Caterpillar?
But instead of succumbing to my baser desires to buy, I went through my closet and reorganized it all. To my shame, I realize that when you put together my casual gear and my professional wear (that gets not so much wear these days), that closet is jampacked full, thus grossly violating my policy that half of my closet space should just be space. Ooops. No gear for me, then.
I will, however, observe our new Christmas tradition: buying dividend stocks and building our portfolio!
Real Answer #3: Be a better me
I like myself quite well, most days. Professionally, I set high standards and I’ve learned to be forgiving as well. Personally, I make solid efforts to be a good spouse/partner, parent, dog-parent, and friend. I still have room to grow. Preferably existentially and less out so I can fit into more than one pair of pants. *lookin’ at you, belly*
Time and time again, I have to body check myself out of my comfort zone. If I leave room for thinking, there’s room for doubt. But I like it here, it’s cozy! It’s got books, and internet, and and and ….! that unworthy part of me whines. And it’s limiting.
Some limits are real, though even I forget they are, sometimes.
Some limits are temporary and are as much about respecting the now as being a growing period.
Others don’t have to be at all. If I can get over my aversion to guacamole (side benefit: not being escorted to the CA/NV border because my existence offends nature), I can do other strange and horrific things in the name of self improvement.
This year, I started small. I did some interviews. One is still to be shared, and by actual voice, I mean my voice that I hear in my head. The other, in actual audio, was this podcast with Jessica. I started #1GoodMoneyThing which was featured on Rockstar Finance. I kept our Tiny Human alive.
What will next year bring?
Travel: our first vacation with a squirmy wormy baby, my first FinCon (sans squirmy wormy, unless I am persuaded otherwise), seeing friends up and down the West Coast.
More important work: I’ve been struggling with feeling static, with being only moderately productive. With more childcare comes more hours freed back up to do meaningful and/or professional work.
The writing project is coming back to the front burner and so is the quest to find or create my next step. It’s weird that I know what I’m good at when I’m being good at it but struggle to quantify it for discussions like if I’m awesome at X, then I should hang my shingle out as Y.
Want to help me fill in the blanks?
What are you looking forward to this holiday and next year?
November 23, 2015
Spoiler alert: If you watch Grey’s Anatomy and haven’t watched recent seasons, and care about spoilers, don’t watch this clip. I don’t think the post is specifically spoilery but I’d need an outside opinion on that.
Onward!
I am HUGELY conflicted about this scene. Mind, I don’t watch Grey’s anymore, I used to have it on occasionally for background and it’s too much life drama for me to really get into. Plus I mainly enjoyed it because of Chandra Wilson and Sandra Oh. Not the sex in the workplace, part, that weirds me out in a lot of ways, but their hard-driving, take no shit from anyone, I will prevail come hell or high water approach to work? Those were good.
And they weren’t caricatures, they were complex human women and I liked that.
On the one hand, I’m all about Bailey’s professional standards:
YES, you can only mentor someone for so long.
YES, a person must stand on hir own feet to know that ze can.
YES, you can be taught and taught and taught, but only YOU can actually put those lessons to use.
YES, you have to learn to work within the system in order to succeed in it and change it.
YES, part of the system dictates that Miranda has a fiduciary responsibility not to just give money away if it’s not asked for.
On the other hand, I’m not about that system AT ALL:
The system as it stands, where every individual must negotiate and with the internalized bias against women for negotiating, SUCKS.
I say this as someone who has negotiated in every single job she’s taken. I’ve fought for every raise and promotion to be at least close to commensurate to the value I brought. I make a decent salary. But the system SUCKS. The system is riddled with bias and is innately structured to benefit men, who are expected to negotiate, and discriminates against women who are penalized for negotiating.
Hell, according to the first study below, women are already penalized simply for being women at the point of application.
Ilana Yurkiewicz’s post Study shows gender bias in science is real. Here’s why it matters: scientists presented with application materials from a student applying for a lab manager position and who intended to go on to graduate school. Half the scientists were given the application with a male name attached, and half were given the exact same application with a female name attached. Results found that the “female” applicants were rated significantly lower than the “males” in competence, hireability, and whether the scientist would be willing to mentor the student.
So I’m firmly on the side of “everyone has to learn to stand on their own two feet”, but I’m also intensely uncomfortable with the assumption that women have an equal chance at the same money that men do, “just negotiate!”
It is NOT that simple.
Obviously, from the lower salaries that women were offered to begin with, they’d have to negotiate for a much larger amount just to catch up to what the men would ultimately receive.
And I’m tempted to say that Ellen Pao’s move to cut out negotiating entirely would be a good answer except that I don’t really trust companies to make a good, fair offer at the outset.
Getting back to that scene, my conflict stems from knowing that you have to challenged to get stronger. Sometimes being challenged results in your failure to rise, your failure to see it through, or your failure to even recognize there’s an opportunity to win in the challenge. Simultaneously, I rage at the fact that there are times it simply doesn’t matter how much you rise, or struggle, or fight, you lose because you fought, you lose because you fought as a women, you lose because it’s not “appropriate” to push back as a woman.
I don’t know what the answer is but I know this: there is a startling amount of bias in the current system and it sucks. And it sucks to see someone being admirable in her growth from a mentorship position to an authority position and realize that the line she’s holding for a damn good reason was drawn, and is redrawn every day, by people who never intended to level the playing field.
My feelings are complex on this.
More on this, if you really need the additional data
From the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Who Goes to the Bargaining Table? The Influence of Gender and Framing on the Initiation of Negotiation
From Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Not competent enough to know the difference? Gender stereotypes about women’s ease of being misled predict negotiator deception: “negotiators deceived women more so than men, thus leading women into more deals under false pretenses than men.”
Harvard Business School on How Benevolent Sexism Undermines Women and Justifies Backlash: “Benevolent sexists, more often than not, are also hostile sexists”
November 17, 2015
A decade ago, dementia stole my mother’s body, and gave it to a stranger. We buried her years later, but on this anniversary of Mom’s passing, the loss feels as fresh as though it happened yesterday.
I think about her, and miss her, every single day. Every time I sneeze, I hear her sneezing. Every day I look at my child, who is hir own person, I see the striking resemblance to hir forebears. Any day that I speak with relatives who remember her, that she loved dearly and would support and defend no matter what it cost her, I’m reminded that she loved me at least that much and more, even when I was a brat. Even when I was a petulant jerk and didn’t deserve it. Every time I learn something new with my Wee Warrior, I realize that she went through this with me or my sibling and understand a little better her hopes and fears and dreams as a parent.
I owe her for giving me life and, more, I owe her for fighting to teach us wisdom long before we needed or even understood it.
My soul may always bear the weight of her death, much as it bears the weight of my sibling’s life, but I am going to make an honest effort to honor her memory with gratitude each year, until I can remember her with joy, as Shelley does her mother.
She was my first and best teacher
I learned that being comfortable in your own skin is much more important than what others see. Make up was fine but she discouraged me from using it as a mask I’d eventually come see more as my face than myself, unadorned. But combing your hair once a day would (probably) be better than not. Were she alive today we’d probably still disagree on that last point.
I learned to protect myself, and my loved ones, fiercely, unapologetically, unremittingly.
I learned that my face was a mirror of my feelings. I could get it under control and make it my shield or refuse to and accept that that readability allowed others to make it a weapon. It was my choice.
I learned that people have to earn my trust and not all are worthy.
I learned that patience is, especially for our family, hard won, but a battle worth fighting within.
I learned that I’d rather fight til the death than be beholden to people who were not worthy of being in my life.
I learned that family is important but not all of them are worth sacrificing myself for. We disagreed on this in practice, she always sacrificed for her own family even when they repeatedly demonstrated they were awful. I would have done, and have, the same for her and Dad. I’d never do it for people as terrible as her siblings.
I learned that bringing your work home may be OK but not if it means making your spouse feel like their boss came home with them. And even if you are the boss at work, you’d better not play out that power differential at home lest you damage your partnership.
I learned that I’d far rather be alone my entire life than to settle for a mediocre partner in marriage. She wanted me to want a husband and a wedding but never asked me to pick someone to suit her.
I learned that we all have to get older, if we’re lucky, but we don’t have to stop having fun. Mom was the ultimate straight-faced sneak-prankster. When LB gets that mischievous glint in hir eye, I flash back to all the times we fought back giggles during the most solemn of events because of something Mom did or was about to do.
Do you have any fond memories of loved ones to share? Please do.
November 16, 2015
2:15 am.
I’m a fool. Was offered the opportunity to go back to sleep somewhat peacefully and I squandered it. LB got up at 1:30, upset about something, nursed hir back to sleep. Ze was nestled peacefully against my arm so it seemed like the perfect time to put hir in the crib.
Ze protested, but it seemed like a token protest. I covered hir up with a light blanket so it wouldn’t feel like a shock going from my body heat to a cold crib and crawled back into bed. No sooner did I settle: *squawwwwwwwk*
I ignored it.
*squaaaaaakkkkk squaawwwwk*
Still not listening.
*SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEE* for ten minutes.
Ok ok ok geez.
Ze was unbelievably pleased to be grumpily bundled back up into bed with me, even after a half recumbent diaper change because who would appreciate their infant to stay STILL when being changed in the dark? No one, says LB, so to show my appreciation I shall writhe and wriggle as hard as I possibly can which is pretty hard since you feed me so well, and it’ll therefore be impossible to fasten that diaper with fewer than five hands and an elbow.
Ze didn’t try to play when we got back to bed, thank everything, but hir idea of “settling down” was a series of flopping from back to front to back to front to back, burying hir face in the comforter I’d piled at the foot of the bed to prevent another Great FaceFirst Launch Off the Bed, squeaking and doing a Baby Gregorian chant. If I didn’t know better, and I don’t, ze could have been summoning the Greater Gods of Baby-induced Sleep Deprivation. I’m tired.
After about an hour of this, LB was content to mostly stay still with one foot propped on my ribs, the other on my chin, hands reached up over hir head in an attempt to create a tiny human bridge between me and hir father, still doing that odd Gregorian chant / kitten yowl every 20 seconds in case I might fall asleep. Cute. But when ze was evicted from this womb I’m pretty sure there was a clause in there about not kicking me in the ribs anymore. Ze is in clear violation of hir parole.
Two hours later. I realize that ze has finally stopped emitting any sounds and movements have slowed to nearly a standstill. Oh blessed sleep.
***
Related: The baby food lie: blast from Nicole & Maggie’s archives still holds true. I vaguely remembered the information in this post if not the post itself and with full endorsement from our pediatrician (which was nice but not strictly necessary), proceeded with not very reckless abandon.
We are working on food and not food categories. Food goes into the mouth and is eventually swallowed. Not food includes: any part of Seamus. Confidential documents. Electronics. Remote controls. Any of my comic books. My toes – dear god why would you chew on my toes?? Head bands. Shoes. The dishwasher. Power cables. Furniture. Seamus’s leash. Seamus’s collar. Seamus’s toys. Seamus has made a bid that anything associated with him should be off limits to being eaten. I agree.
Things that still aren’t food but I can’t be bothered if ze chews on them: Legos. My arm. Tags. Bedding. Pillows. Blankets. The drying rack.
It’s a steep learning curve here.
***
Mimicry has suddenly started happening here. We always echo back at LB when ze vocalizes because it’s funny, ze has started echoing back at us when we do it to hir. Everything is just funnier when you’re an infant.
Actions, too. If we do a thing, ze tries to, sometimes. Right now ze is in an ET phone home phase: holding hir index finger out to touch PiC’s when he holds up his hand. Ze won’t do it with me, though. I guess it’s just a daddy-kiddo thing.
***
Word babbles are happening. Ze suddenly added about 5 more consonants to hir 2 vowels. Conversations are still not deep but they’re entertaining. Except when it’s “I’m putting your legs in your pants. KEEP THEM THERE” or “STOP worming away when I’m diapering you!” Then I vaguely wish for five months ago when ze could barely flip. But I guess that’s less language and more Infant With Shit To Do.
***
Ze thinks it’s funny to elicit a reaction out of us by licking inappropriate things. I just figured out ze was just playing me when ze leaned over to the wall, glanced at me, waited til I looked, then licked the wall. Then chuckled at my expression.
***
Teeth are starting to happen. Ze was remarkably pleasant when they started breaking through. Then two days later, it all went to hell. Ze was clingy, upset, every little thing was the end of the world. Dosed hir with Tylenol while we waited for the teething tablets to arrive and we were back to normal. Getting new teeth is a tough business.
Best part: ze is genuinely curious about this “teeth” thing and occasionally pries open PiC’s mouth to investigate what’s going on in there. That’s also just a daddy-kiddo thing, ze has no interest in my teeth. I think it’s for the best.
Things we love
LB most preferred to chew on my arms when hir gums were uncomfortable but when those teeth finally poked through, that was a no-go. A combination of frozen teething rings, hard teething toys, and teething tablets saved us all. The tablets were miraculous for those middle of the night wake ups when ze couldn’t stay asleep.
We introduced sippy cups a while ago, but while ze is willing to drink water, ze hasn’t quite got the hang of the whole thing.
Earlier…
Month 8: Exploration
Month 7: Ambulation
Month 6: Becoming human
Month 5: Toes
Month 4: Velociraptor Claws
Month 3: Growth Spurts
Month 2: Hates sleep
Month 1: Banshee
November 13, 2015
Like Brian, I’ve been reviewing investing and savings vehicles for LB. As a California resident, my first step was naturally to see what the Golden State had to offer in the way of the 529 plan. Spoiler alert: Nothing awesome.
- California has a 529 savings plan, but does not currently allow a deduction or credit on your state income tax return for the annual contributions you make to the plan.
- There is an overall limit of $371,000 in contributions and earnings that can accrue in the plan for each beneficiary, after which no further contributions can be made.
- Qualified withdrawals of earnings from the California plan are exempt from state income taxes for state residents.
- California residents may also make qualified withdrawals from other state 529 plans on a tax-free basis.
Right now, all of LB’s savings are held in a regular online savings account and we’re going to be paying taxes on interest earned. It’s not such a substantial amount that I’m worrying about having to shelter it from our tax bracket, yet, and there’s still quite a bit to learn and research about the best ways to save this for LB’s future education and care needs.
Has anyone already done this and have some thoughts to share? What are your favorite savings vehicles, with or without children in the picture?
November 6, 2015
Wealth inequality should be addressed from more than just a rich vs poor mentality, this WSJ post says, and shares several charts that look at wealth and age, race, education and generational money.
Disclaimer: I’m not an economist, and I don’t play one in my spare time. (What spare time?) It’s beyond my current brain to intelligently discuss the underlying factors that influence the wealth gaps right now.
Instead, charts! And data points!
How do we stack up? I’m comparing against the next two highest age markers because I feel 80 years old. Ha-ha yes yes, funny funny but no really, I do. And it’s not entirely because every bone seems to creak differently each day. But also because 40 adds an approximate handicap for our bigger extenuating circumstances: my poor health and related uncertain producing future, our three dependents of varying health statuses, our (my) penchant for adopting senior dogs, our high COLA.
Average assets: we are 1-2x the average
Average debt: we are 3x the average.
Wealth gap: I’m a bit miffed that just because whites and Asians trend along the same line we’re just all lumped in under white. I’m not even remotely white. Way to pretend we don’t even exist, WSJ.
Aside from that – I’m the first in my immediate family to have a college degree, while PiC’s at least the second, or third generation, even with a college education. The ability, whether we were self-funded (me) or not (him), to even obtain that education has to be an influence on the ability to make and keep wealth.
Millionaire?: I don’t know where to place us here. I don’t have a higher ed degree and PiC does. This only matters because I insist we’ll hit the million mark by the time I’m 40, come hell or high water. Admittedly, I likely won’t be comfortable with qualifying for seven figures based on a net worth including or even primarily relying on the stock market (our retirement and investing portfolio). That feels risky? No, that’s not the word. It isn’t as if holding everything in cash isn’t a sure way to lose ground, given inflation. It’s just that if the market takes a significant hit, at a certain point you run out of time for it to recover. I talk money with retired friends regularly and it was a sobering realization that even a very healthy portfolio isn’t any kind of guarantee against recessions. I grant we’re still a long ways away from retirement and relying on the portfolio, but it’s a factor.
Inheritance: Nope. PiC has some something from his family but I don’t count it on our net worth because we don’t consider it ours and likely it’d be funneled straight down to LB in some way if we don’t manage to send it back to his mom. I have absolutely no reason to expect an inheritance.
How about you?