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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January 30, 2015
Change from end of 2014: 1.75% increase
On Money
I’m working away at Swagbucks to earn a bit of extra money for household, Little Bean, and dog things we need. Feel free to join using my referral link if you like!
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I didn’t anticipate having any reason to be pleased pulling together this first of the month net worth summary, but I forgot that my CDs with Ally pay out once a year, so hey! Nice little addition to the bank accounts.
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Had reason to be extra grateful for our health insurance coverage. Not only does it cover all of my prenatal related visits, not only are all the OB nurses much nicer than I expect them to be (I don’t know why I always expect them to be a little mean), the prescription side for the unfortunate plague of spots added up really fast. One prescription would have cost $128! Instead I paid $10.
That’s not to say ALL of them are competent, as I discovered to my chagrin one weekend, but by and large we do ok with the HMO.
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Even with one unplanned burst of generosity, we managed to keep Christmas gift costs down to around $300. This is, I’m pretty sure, a little better than we’ve done in previous years that included last minute panic shopping.
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January 28, 2015
Ironically, one of my what-ifs actually happened just as I was in the middle of dealing with insuring against it….
I was in the process of backing up all our photo files and had recently gotten the first phase done: back up to an external hard drive. I’d been haunted by this horror of losing all the important stuff, sowas on a kick to back up everything I could, work and photo-wise, to hard drives and the cloud.
Work was relatively easy once the first full back up was done – that bit took ages but it was done and the back ups run automatically.
Photos and personal documents, though, are scattered across more than one computer so I started with adding them to one unified hard drive first. This was partly driven by immediate need; my phone was staggering under the weight of the thousands of pictures and videos stored there and was threatening to kick the bucket entirely. All those files were actually automatically backed up via Google but I rather foolishly assumed, and didn’t confirm by trying it, that there was a way to download all those stored files easily.
Having pulled all the files off the phone and saved them to the hard drive, I should have also temporarily stored the whole kit and caboodle to my working laptop. Hindsight, ever is it 20/20.
It slipped my mind, so you can just imagine my mini heart attack when I plugged in the external hard drive this weekend and found that it was corrupted.
After 2 hours of Googling, testing and troubleshooting, it was relatively clear that this was a corruption that’d probably require actual professional data recovery. With all the Little Bean expenses looming, though, spending several hundred dollars on this was not an option if it could be helped so I went another route. If I could retrieve all the data then I could just reformat the drive and save a new set of files (which would now also be backed up seventeen other ways!)
Except there was no easy “Download all” button on Google Plus.
!!!
With thousands of precious photos of Doggle that were now only in one, poorly accessible place, I just went into silent FIX IT NOW mode.
Relatively silent.
Tried Google Drive, no love.
Tried downloading albums, but since I’d not organized all the photos into albums, downloading from there was no good as it ignored anything not in albums.
I flipped out a bit on Twitter, which brought the amazing @daNanner to my aid, with suggestions of using Picasa to pull the whole archive off G+, but alas, still no good.
Further Googling was fruitless, so I resigned myself to painstakingly downloading each image one by one. This was a huge pain, to go from oldest to newest, you have to load the entire archive.
Then @daNanner popped up again with another suggestion: Google Takeout. Her Google-fu is strong, this was the answer!
It took an hour to download everything into zip files, another dozen hours to download the SIX 2G zip files, and yet another five to sort them because the archive files were a complete mess but the photos are saved and destined to be saved as many ways as I can think of: two external hard drives, a laptop hard drive, a backup program like Backblaze or Crashplan.
January 26, 2015
PiC and I finally went to London!
It was a short trip but we’d been talking about doing it for years and an opportunity came up that we couldn’t resist. Besides, with LB on the way, I don’t anticipate international trips figure large in our immediate future.
We had a good wander about: we explored Covent Garden, had fish and chips, and visited with some friends we don’t see often. I loved that display of Paddington Bears – for years, as a child who only explored other worlds through books, the adorable bear in a yellow hat represented England.
Due to my very limited energy, we saw a lot of things in passing but didn’t stop in for a full gander: Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, a statue of Abraham Lincoln (???), The British Museum. We waved at the London Eye, feeling too cheap and pressed for time to actually go up, that’ll be for another time when the weather is more certain.
We spent some time in a smaller neighborhood, exploring the local cuisine and shops, picking up more than a few specialty chocolates to bring home. I’d told PiC for years that chocolate from across the pond was different and he was more than willing to indulge in taste tests with me.
Next time – and there will be a next time! – I’d want to do a little bit more than we did this time but it was a good relaxing visit.
Usually when I travel internationally, I make it a point to learn to like a new food but this time was more about sharing my favorites with PiC.
Travel Costs
We flew British Airways coach, and while it was no great shakes back there in coach class, it was still better than our usual domestic airlines by a good stretch. Maybe not better than Virgin America Main Cabin Select, but we don’t often splurge on airfare, especially on international travel. Someday though, we’ll have enough money that first class won’t be but a drop in the bucket. SOMEDAY!
I tried to use miles for the flight but as it turns out, BA miles are pretty worthless for international flights. They’ll charge a fuel surcharge that is very nearly the same as the cost you’d have paid for the ticket out of pocket. I saved them for another time.
I did redeem a truckload of Chase Rewards points though. I had the option of using them to book flights, hotels and car rentals directly for an extra 20% boost in points but they weren’t any good for our destinations. We weren’t going to drive and none of the areas we’d planned to stay were on the list of redemption hotels.
The best value was to book lower cost hotels and just redeem the points for cash. We had enough bonus and regular points to redeem for a thousand dollars in cash which nicely defrayed some of the travel cost.
Experience-wise, that was the best choice I think, as I picked places with pretty fantastic breakfast spreads. Seriously I think we breakfasted for three hours one morning.
January 23, 2015
We have progress!
PiC really stepped up under (self imposed) pressure.
I’d set my expectations to “sensible and moderation” when we first started the purging and organizing because we’d started so late and my energy levels never came back.
My internal ideal was that we could eliminate 75% of the crap that was piled up to the ceiling in one closet, but I kept my yap shut because PRIORITIES.
But, perhaps feeling the heat of LB’s impending arrival even more strongly than I, he pushed himself to knock off so much on these seemingly never ending internal lists in his head that this place has been transformed. We had some ruffled feathers for a bit, with those self imposed stress levels, but we’re back on an even keel now so I can feel free to be rather impressive how much has been done around here.
- We’ve offloaded so much stuff on Craigslist and made back a good bit of money!
- We donated a ton of good items that we wouldn’t be able to sell in the increasingly short period of time left to us. We found a local homeless shelter that helps families get back on their feet so much of these goods are going there.
- We received duplicates of used baby gear so we’re just going to keep one of each and donate the rest to the homeless shelter since they’re all in really good shape after 1 child’s worth of use.
- He actually fixed our wacko fan! We thought it was needing replacement but nope.
- I’ve picked over a couple boxes of used clothing and we’ve done some baby laundry in advance.
- My mini-office is all set up with storage and stuff.
We’ve spent a shiny nickel at the Container Store on organization. This involved about a dozen trips, all told, between buying things to try and returning things that didn’t work. After PiC’s first trip, I bought a big gift card at an 8% discount, and combined that with ordering the stuff through ebates for cashback and their 10% off sale.
Total we’ve spent about $300 between outfitting: the kitchen with shelves, hanging organizers in one closet, and hooks and doodads for both the bathroom and two closets. Everything was on sale at least so that makes me feel better about not maximizing every single possible discount – time was obviously a factor in these projects.
January 21, 2015
Mrs. Micah briefly returns, like Godzilla from the sea with a rant. She was chatting with Revanche when Revanche ran across an article that pissed Mrs. Micah off so much she needed to respond. The piece was written by Robert Brokamp on Get Rich Slowly, “How to save for a down payment on a house fast.” Now, I’ve been out of the PF blogging “business” for a solid 4 years, but *harumphing sound* back in my day, GRS wouldn’t have published this kind of tripe (just tried tripe in pho, tripe turns out to be delicious, must come up with new metaphor).
This piece is crap from start to finish. First, let’s start with the premise. The couple got married and got pregnant pretty quickly. Either it wasn’t on purpose (accidents happen, even with birth control) or it was a “let’s see what happens.” In the latter case, this shouldn’t have been a “save fast” thing. You decide that after getting married you’ll be opening up the possibility of creating a new human? If you’re being financially responsible, you take into account all the possibilities, like needing to move.
But whether planned or not, the premise here is entirely flawed. A one-bedroom apartment is legally (in many places) too small for parents and a child, though with an infant in the crib and with everything else going smoothly, one may not have to leave instantly. Even if you can’t stay in your current place, that doesn’t mean you should instantly start house shopping.
If you’re going to start this kind of dramatic, unplanned lifestyle inflation once your kid arrives, you’re starting down a really bad financial path. Will you need a bigger car next? A preschool you can’t really afford?
Particularly awful suggestions from the list include:
1. Get help from family. This only works if you have wealthy and financially secure family. You know what I’ll inherit? I have no idea. If my dad lives another couple years max (at 70), maybe a tidy sum. If he lives another couple decades, I may have to support him. And my dad is comfortably upper-middle class…but not wealthy. Only the truly wealthy have that kind of money to safely throw around. I could ask my dad for money for a down payment, but that might well bite us all in the butt in a decade’s time.
4. Use IRAs. What. …you even admit, Brokamp, that this “almost hurts” to type. Yes, you’re absolutely allowed to take money out of various IRAs w/o penalties if you’re a first-time homebuyer. You can withdraw the money you put into a Roth because it’s post-tax. But are you going to let your lifestyle inflation choice take away from your future financial security?
5. Sell your body. Really out of left field. Unless you plan to sell your eggs (not an option if pregnant), this isn’t the kind of thing to get you big money fast. Medical testing carries inherent risks, it’s almost impossible to participate in the more lucrative tests if you’re also holding down a job (I looked into some at NIH), and…really? This is advice for someone who’s holding down two part-time jobs and finding other sources of income, not for someone getting a mortgage. Yay you got your wisdoms pulled for free, but that’s not really helping the goal here.
6. Get help from your boss. ahahahhahahahahahahahah you must be male. Heck, maybe it’s a good time to milk that male privilege for all it’s worth and take advantage of the biases men receive when starting a family. But be aware that your female colleagues are taking negative hits when they have children–in perception, in pay, in everything. This isn’t just the dozens I’ve stories I’ve heard from friends, this is study upon study backing up the stories. Start with “The Motherhood Penalty,” thanks Nicole and Maggie for that link.
Relevant reading: Have I lost my fire?
Negotiating a raise because of life decisions you made, however, strikes me as being the opposite of being a good asset to the company (although some companies will play along with it, at least for “family men”). You don’t deserve more money from your work because you chose to get married/have a baby/buy a house/etc. You deserve it because of the quality of your work.
Relevant reading: Terrible workplaces: A blast from the past
How someone could type any of these without stopping and saying “wait, do we really need to buy a house right now?” is beyond me.
What you can do:
A. Get a bigger apartment. Even if you want to buy a house, you don’t have to do it the instant the baby comes. A 2-bedroom apartment is plenty big enough for most kids. Maybe when you have a second kid or when your kid is getting older, you’ll want a bigger space, but for the first 5 years, minimum, your kid doesn’t need a big space.
(Yards are really nice as options, but a public park will do.)
B. Rent a house. If you really, really have to have a house, look into your rental market. Voila, now you have more space and a yard.
Now that you’re in a place where you’re no longer rushed? Start saving for that down-payment. Put time into planning where you want to buy.
The one decent piece of advice in the list, IMO, was:
2. Buy a fixer-upper that doesn’t need immediate fixing. When my dad downsized after my mom’s death, he sold our family house as a “fixer-upper” because he didn’t want to put in the time and money to make it good-as-new. The house had a good 25 years of family living put into it. Everything worked, but the paint was old, the linoleum scratched, and it needed maybe $30k of work to make it pristine according to realtor standards.
Once you do have the money to buy a house, that kind may be a great starter house for you and your family. If you let some of the more dramatic stuff go until the kid is older, then it’s not as much of a crisis when they draw on the walls behind your back or take safety-scissors to the carpet. But unless you get a great deal on that house, you can still hold off on buying it until you are ready.
You have at least a couple years of your child not having a clue that they’re not living in a house. Where you are, where they live, will be home. Be smart. Don’t mortgage their future buying into the habits of a society that’s drowning in debt.
January 19, 2015
You might have heard of MOLESKINE+MILK. I didn’t until I ran across a deal on MyPoints, and maybe that should have been a red flag, but I let the MOLESKINE name and the initial look of the site lure me into buying a voucher.
Likes
The book binding was awesome.
The paper quality was lovely: thick, high quality glossy paper.
The book was delivered a little bit faster than I expected since they didn’t communicate a real expected delivery date (so I guess this is also a dislike because if I were ordering a gift, I’d need to know when it was going to arrive).
Dislikes
You can work in the expanded page view which takes up your whole screen or your regular browser. Both choices turn out to be frustrating. I always prefer working in my regular browser, but it turns out that you can’t scroll to the relevant stuff at the bottom of the screen to make selections of the style or color sets at the beginning of the book. There’s also no easy way to change your viewing selection when you figure this out so then you’ve got to get back to the homepage and start over. Frustratingly you may also find, as I did, that the full expanded page view STILL doesn’t show you all the options at the bottom of the page but you’re SOL as you STILL can’t scroll. Good luck figuring out how to select your color palette.
Image upload. It takes forever to upload high-resolution files, and you can’t reorganize or filter them in any really sensible or useful way. How they get uploaded is the order in which they appear.
Creating pages and layouts. You can’t shift a created Page 2 to Page 12 if you decide it fits better there. If you add a page, you have to add a full 4 page spread after the spread you’re working on. If you decide to delete a page, the whole spread has to go. It would be MUCH better if you could add 2 pages at a time or delete one at a time and sort out the total number of pages at the end when you’re Previewing to order the book.
Using the images. The used photos are marked with a check in the Edit pop-up box but you’re limited to the 9 images per screen view – they don’t have a handy way to scroll through the images along the bottom of the page so that you can grab all photos of a particular theme while you’re working on a particular spread. You can also only add photos one picture at a time to a spread, so if your layout requires 4 pictures, you have to click on Edit Image for every picture. Shutterfly, again, and other companies do this MUCH better.
You can’t delete a photo from the page without deleting it from the entire uploaded content menu. Instead you have to go into Edit and select a replacement photo right then and there, so you can’t just decide to remove the misplaced photo and come back to the spread later.
The spread options are extremely limited with only a few layout options per grouping of 1, 2, 3, 4, etc photos per page.
You can’t customize the image sizes in those layouts. You can only pick the image and increase the size from 100% to 200%.
You can’t decrease the size to better fit a layout, you can’t crop, brighten or edit the photos at all in the interface. If you didn’t know this and had uploaded all your photos in bulk, then your pictures aren’t going to be of uniform brightness or hue, you have to have edited them all beforehand. And you don’t have any real guide as to how to edit the sizes other than knowing they can only be square, landscape or portrait but if you load a larger landscape image into a square box, you can just shift it up, down, left, or right but you can’t make it smaller so the whole of the image fits.
There’s no option to fade images and create backgrounds, of course, so the really cool thing that PiC did with fading a full landscape photo with images on top for our other photo book? No can do.
Inviting contributors. They should really let you set the type of permissions a contributor can have or at least have more than one level of permissions where someone can basically be a co-owner and make independent decisions vs someone who can make decisions that have to be approved. It was immensely frustrating to PiC to be given contributor access but have to have all his edits require approval.
Overall
It’s a neat idea but on the whole, my experience with it was incredibly frustrating. I’m glad that we have our memory book but getting to that point was so time consuming, I couldn’t do it again.
It’s a shame, the books are beautiful and the interface looks like it’s going to be modern and easy to use but honestly working in Shutterfly or one of those more common book creation sites will be both much cheaper and much less aggravating.
My book specs: (1) Large 60-page Landscape book
Paid: $50 for the book, $9.99 for shipping to the US.
Full Price Value: $125
There are usually sales and coupons but that may just be during the earlier growth period. I can’t say that I could stand the level of frustration that it takes to complete a full book even for 30-40% off.
January 16, 2015
Thanks to the Cuba announcement causing the market to dip, I had just enough cash set aside to buy *nearly* 100 shares of something before the end of 2014.
That was a bit of a milestone since my very humble 10 share purchase beginnings. I could have transferred more money in to make it an even 100 shares but we had agreed on a certain amount for purchasing 2014 stock and I didn’t want to go back on that or take the few days to wait for a transfer and have the prices go right back up. I only keep cash sitting idle in the account when I’m waiting to make a purchase.
Note: I’m not into timing the market, it’s just that I didn’t have a timeline on buying, this stock dropped below my optimal buy price, so I went with it.
I picked our buy last year, so in the name of fairness I went with PiC’s preference. My turn this year! And I won’t necessarily wait for Christmas proper. Christmas can come early, after all! 🙂
