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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February 14, 2011
PiC and I are relative failures at the whole Valentine’s Day thing, if you consider that the two paradigms most embraced are to celebrate or to have angst about it.
Once every two or three years, a close friend of his sells him the “do nothing at your own peril” spiel and he arranges a nice dinner, and for in between years we’ve been grateful to see each other if it was possible during our Long Distance Years or grateful to have each other if not.
This is our first year we’ve truly been together for it and the established simplicity, the utter lack of expectations, has been a bit of a godsend. Honestly, in the maelstrom of other life events, a big trip to plan, a wedding to discuss, another big trip to plan, simply not fussing over this day more than any other works so well for us.
Admittedly, I did gift him a surprise set of books I knew he’s been wanting, solely for the sake of surprising him yesterday, which I joke is a selfish gift since I get to read all his books. 🙂
Even better, since I couldn’t wait, it was plopped in front of him yesterday apropos of nothing and he’s now crediting it as an insanely early birthday gift so he won’t feel the need to “make up” a Valentine’s gift. Win win win! 😉
{————Carnivals————}
My thanks …..
to Well Heeled for hosting this week’s Carnival of Personal Finance and for including my post My last year with carefree taxes. Be sure to submit to next week’s Carnival!
February 13, 2011
On my last visit home, amid the other ramblings that have become the norm, my mom asked me an inevitable question: when are you moving me up to be close to you?
Ah yes, a mother’s love, powered by the unmatchable ability to fuel angst within the space of fifteen seconds.
Quite honestly, my answer had to be: I don’t know.
Even more honestly, I have no idea if that’s going to be the plan nor if I want it to be.
I recall, as a young kid, we used to jokingly debate as a family who would get to have my parents live with us when we kids got older and had our own homes. I always insisted that they would live with me, primarily, because I was an egotistical brat who was sure that I’d eventually grow up to be more successful than her older brother who had historically always kicked her butt at everything to date. (It’s a shame that that pre-adolescent script actually played out to the extent that wherever I move my parents, I have no idea where he will live.)
Now, though, moving my parents in with us, to a 2 bedroom apartment, though the financial savings might initially seem sensible, would probably not be a wise decision.
To start off by being completely selfish, I need the distance for my sanity, at least for a while longer. During the years of living with my parents through my twenties while I supported them because it was practical, despite the constant compromises and emotional churn, it took exiting the situation to appreciate the value of my own space. Yes, the years of sucking it up yielded a fair measure of savings and stability, and gave me the foothold I needed to take the next step in my career. But I’m now not willing to give up the peace that half a state’s distance buys.
Practicality plays a role
I didn’t need to move to the Bay Area to confirm that the cost of living truly is, even for a diehard budgeter like me, much higher than it is where they live now.
A big part of why she wants to move up is because she misses me. Moving her up here for that reason, though, doesn’t really make the most sense. I’m still going to be working at least 40 hour weeks, probably 50 or more, and I’m not going to be around to spend time with her the way she imagines. PiC won’t be either.
Moving her up here also means moving her and Dad away from all their existing support network, such as it is. All our family and their friends are down there. Even though she may have alienated most of them through her behaviors, they’re still supportive in other ways and try to help my dad out when and if they can.
What she truly needs is more round-the-clock medical care and attention than my dad, or we, can provide, and just being around us isn’t sufficient. In fact, the area we currently live in isn’t terribly safe and we don’t have understanding neighbors who are willing to look out for her and bring her home when she pulls a disappearing act.
Rationally, the sum result of moving them up here would probably be negative all around.
And still, without a doubt, the moment she finds out we have a guest room, she’s going to plead with us to be allowed to live with us.
What would you do?
In Asian cultures, it’s been quite normal for the older generation to assume that they’ll live with their children when they become less able to live independently.
In American culture, it’s much less common for the older generation to take it for granted that the younger generation will move them in when the time comes. However, the Sandwich Generation has certainly experienced a great deal of the stresses associated with the care of their parents even without having to share a roof.
Having grown up in a rather traditional household, I always assumed my decisions would be wholly informed by those traditions but they’re being vastly molded by the pressures of today’s economic and practical realities.
I know what my dad prefers – the cheapest possible option that causes me the least burden, and I know what I want for them – the safest and most attentive care, and we have to find a compromise that is safe and affordable.
Do you have a plan for when your parents reach a point when they’re no longer able to care for themselves? Have they already discussed with you their preferences and how to achieve them? Are you already dealing with anything like this with your parents?
February 9, 2011
As I’ve mentioned on Twitter a couple of times, we have a dear friend coming to stay with us soon.
She’s older and can’t
camp out like our usual friends are willing to on the sofa, the fold-out bed, or the air mattress. And, well, she’s accustomed to the finer things in life. As she should be, she’s been comfortably retired for years after quite a successful career in the financial sector. She’s been incredibly good to us for the years of our friendship, too, not just because she’s financially able to but she’s been ever so giving of her time and energy when we needed support.
Thus, PiC’s immediate reaction was: Sell the fold-out couch! Buy a new bed!
I sort of thought he was kidding … but he’s not. We’re now going to have a real guest room with a full size bed and all that.
The sofa’s listed on Craigslist for about $200 less than the store price (it’s still available in stores, it’s in perfect condition since it’d hardly ever been used) and he’s getting all the usual slew of poor written, can’t-follow-instructions, didn’t-read-the-ad responses. Here’s hoping that it sells quickly because he’s now doing his research on a new (also Craigslisted) bed frame and mattress, using Jonathan’s guide to
decoding the Heavenly Bed.
Who knew it’d take panic shopping to send him to PF blogs? 😉
On the matter of mattresses, would you ever buy a used mattress?
February 8, 2011
In nearly ten years of attending Comic Con, I’ve always been a budget traveler.
I was lucky that it was a relatively local event, because it was easier to keep costs down. I started out volunteering in order to get free admission to the first few conventions, and rarely ever bought anything unless it was a gift. Even then I was on a strict budget. The experience was souvenir enough for me.
The biggest expenses were lodgings, parking and food with lodgings ranging from $100 per night to an insane $500 per night at some of the premium hotels. If my friend’s family hadn’t generously hosted me every year in San Diego, six or seven years running, I could never have justified those early years as a broke college student. To avoid paying ten dollars parking every day, sometimes I would park way out on a dusty road, near the railroad crossing and just off the highway to trek almost a mile in.
At first it was just me geeking out alone, save for friend’s younger sibling who was entrusted to my care a couple days of the convention. A few years later, my friend C eventually started attending too, then other siblings, the odd cousin and friend joined the stream toward the Convention Center and suddenly we were a proper group with schedules and everything.
Every year I’d drive down and spend a couple hours in the early afternoon with C’s parents, then I’d be off to pick up my badge from the convention center for Preview Night, sometimes with C’s sib, sometimes without. C would show up with his SO whenever he pleased, and we’d convene on the Con floor. That night, we’d have a post-Preview Night rehash over dinner at the house.
Every morning we’d pack our lunches from the supplies that C’s parents had more than generously laid in for us, and every night we’d meet back for dinner and banter.
Even when I started bringing PiC and a friend or two of my own, and there wasn’t enough room for everyone even to camp out so we branched out into another set of lodgings, also generously loaned to us for a stay, we always came back after a long day at Con. Not for us the after parties, the Gaslamp gatherings, home was where we headed. It’s what you do. It’s what we did.
It’s not quite the same now, C’s dad is gone and we miss him terribly. He was never a demonstrative man but he had a hug, hello or goodbye, for me in the later years; a sign, I think, that we’d become more than just kids who showed up to invade his house once a season.
This year’s going to be even more different.
We have to fly, now, of course. That’s kind of a pain – I can’t linger for the last gasps of Con anymore as I have to join the sad departing hordes to the airport.
A friend of the heart from the ‘nets will be coming out to join our group and I really hope she feels just as comfortable with the group as the other additions have become. And we don’t have our lovely loan of a condo this year so I’m scrambling a bit to find ourselves a new set of lodgings.
This last, while I never take the loan of the lodgings for granted, caught me by surprise and PiC and I have to figure out how to lodge our newly formed group. Wish me luck, I’ve run out of any decent number of hotel points, and paying for hotels in San Diego around one of the biggest comic conventions ever is rather intimidatingly expensive.
January 30, 2011
 |
| WORDLE! |
With every 1099 that pops up on my screen, with each box I check off on my list in the “For Tax Filing” folder, my excitement grows. I’m going to get my taxes out of the way soon!
Stacking Pennies and Well-Heeled shared my excitement on Twitter but mostly (or only) because they both knew they were getting money back; I’m a fool who’s just excited to get them done solely to have them done. It’s the excitement of crossing the finish line, and chucking the folder, never mind the penalties potentially associated with filing when you aren’t expecting a refund.
Adding to the weird tingly eagerness is the knowledge that this may be the last year I have a relatively simple tax situation. It just dawned on me, as I was doing the 1099-dance a couple weeks ago, that PiC’s taxes are always still lingering incredibly, disconcertingly late in the year. When I commented on this, he mentioned something about “complicated” and “extensions” and I’m sure there were other words in between but the buzzing of denial quickly set up shop in my brain. Not quickly enough to prevent me from realizing – *sob* – we’re going to have to file together, late, once we get married. (Technically, that should make me savor this last filing, one supposes.)
Now … I’m not saying, that I’m going to put off the wedding as long as I can so as to enjoy as many years filing head of household as possible, I’m just saying I’m going to miss nearly being able to do my own taxes.
To be honest, previous years weren’t entirely my own work. I cheated because I only handled the dry run and double (triple) checking the forms after they came back from the family CPA, but there was still satisfaction in knowing whereabouts the numbers should fall.
After marriage, let’s just say these eyes can’t handle that much crossing and still be good for anything.
Is anyone else happy to deal with their taxes this year or any year? Does the bliss of having them out of the way make it worth the trouble?
January 27, 2011
Q1. Will it be a traditional wedding? (in my head, on my dad’s mind)
A1. I opened negotiations with family on this point, especially the formal engagement, and settled that for the most part this is going to be done my way: practical, simple, budget-friendly. Every dollar in cash, not a penny for debt!
I quite care about my parents’ feelings, which is why I always felt obligated to do this wedding thing the traditional way. This year, though, I had an epiphany: “No.” Why be held hostage to the traditions that require months of preparation, stress, loads of fussing over frills that mean nothing to us solely for the sake of the approbation of masses of distant relatives I’ll never see again?
My dad and I agreed that all of the protests that we expect from 500+ relatives should they be left out is hot air. If we thought for a minute they were sincere or actually cared, I would make an effort to include them but he assured me that it’s nothing more than a cultural expectation and if we navigate carefully he doesn’t have to deal with too many guilt trips.
PiC may weigh in on what he would like to retain but other than that … /snkt snkt!/ Ye shall hear the ruthless snipping and trimming of globs of the cultural Wedding Industrial Complex.
Q2. Do we want a professional photographer?
A2. We’re still on the fence. We don’t even know if we want anything that’s photographable.
Q3. Cake or cupcakes?
A3: Cupcakes are far more fun as long as we can get someone to make them without three inches of icing.
Q4: Location?
A4: If we do any kind of reception, it makes more sense to do it down south rather than ask most of our family and friends to travel up north. Even if we decided to do just a civil ceremony here, PiC would want our families in town for a dinner afterward and I honestly can’t imagine asking my dad to travel with my mom in her condition. He’s harassed enough as it is with his daily responsibilities. I just can’t fathom adding travel to the mix.
Conclusions? None. Except that I’m so annoyingly detached about most of the details that PiC is starting to get after me about actually having an opinion.
Oh! Yes, there IS something. I’ve ordered a sub (barely) $200 dress to try on from J.Crew, and then at a dinner with friends the other weekend, I was offered the loan of her dress which is really close to my size. Score! It’s way fancier than anything I would have picked for myself but I’m absolutely willing to consider just borrowing a dress. I think that’d be pretty cool.
Would you consider borrowing an article of clothing for what’s purported to be the most important day of your life?
January 23, 2011
We’ve been paying what I’d call an outrageous amount for cell phone services.
PiC has an outmoded phone with lots of talk and messaging, no data, with Verizon and pays $63/month with the occasional overage;
I have the legacy iPhone with unlimited data and pay $63/month;
MY PARENTS have a family plan: two phones, 700 talk minutes per month, and I pay $67/month.
Total: $193
My goals:
1. Consolidate our three services onto one service;
2. Replace both our phones as PiC’s ready to have a phone that doesn’t have an antennae that breaks off and my iPhone maybe works 60% of the time;
3. Save Money.
Any non-legacy data plan with the usual Verizon/AT&T services will cost at least $20, more likely $30, per phone so I wasn’t particularly hopeful about our outlook but I was determined. ‘Cause that’s all it takes.
My parents are already on T-Mobile and so far my research bears out that they offer the best plan options for our needs: Combination talk, text and data family plans for 2 lines with the ability to add up to 3 more. In this case, adding my parents as the additional lines with talk and text only as they definitely don’t need data would keep the cost down between $5-10/line. I’d researching Sprint options but they are all inclusive for all lines which is great for the wholly techie family but not suitable for our hybrid needs.
PiC and I were happy with the special deal being touted on Twitter as good through January 20th for the free after rebate G2 Android phones, but apparently T-Mobile’s idea of what January 20th meant didn’t extend to 6 pm PST.
Once known for their top-notch customer service, in my experience, I was less than impressed by the current state of their service now. Aside from their shoddy response to the inquiry regarding the miscommunication or mistake or whatever you’d call the issue of an offer yanked before the stated end of the promotion, I had to get my parents a pair of replacement phones and change their account to my responsibility for easier access since I pay the bill anyway.
Every department’s aim was incredibly siloed and tightly focused and this didn’t produce more efficiency. Rather, it meant that I wasted almost two hours on the phone with each representative explaining what I needed every time I got transferred. And honestly, the majority of the reps were simply neither bright nor competent and failed to completely note their actions for the next CSR I was transferred to. It gives me pause whether I really want to give them any additional business. At the same time, I figured that if the savings outweighed this initial aggravation and I rarely had to deal with them again, perhaps it’d be ok.
The sticking point that kept me from pulling the trigger was the activation fees for the new phones for PiC and me now that we’d missed on the really nice two new phone deal.
Searching on Fatwallet, I found that you could sign up for the Freelancers’ Union for free (and I do freelance work, so it’s legitimate) and reap the following benefits with T-Mobile:
-No activation fees (savings: $70)
-10% off talk, text, data plans monthly (savings: pretty much taxes/fees)
-Discounted equipment (might be better than what you can get online, might not be)
We could potentially pay $100 for the G2 that PiC still wants, find a free one for me, and switch to 3000 minute, unlimited text and data family plan for $170/month (including two lines with talk and text only at $10/each).
Since the monthly saving is only $20/month, it’d take us 5 months to break even on that deal. I’m not thoroughly impressed with this, on balance, so I’m going to take a minute to call and see if the Freelance Union discount on equipment does us one better on the online pricing and then double check if being an AT&T Premier member actually does me any good. 😉
Squeezing money out of stones is hard work, but darned if this isn’t going to be satisfying when I finally strike the best bargain I can find!