RBOC

• DH says:  Detroit has a place called plum market that sells some zingermans products, like coffee cake and candy bars. Detroit may be my new favorite airport.
• Money back from taxes (yay) goes straight back to the government to pay next year’s estimated taxes (booo).  At least we can send direct…  I think maybe next year when our situation has evened out again I’ll start getting more withheld from my paycheck because it’s less painful than writing big estimated taxes checks and takes less memory.  (Why do we pay estimated taxes?  Mainly because we’re earning money in taxable accounts from dividends that get dripped back into their respective indexes.  So, can’t complain about making money for having money.)
• Apparently you don’t get a 7 day grace period when you’ve gotten a kindle book as a gift rather than purchasing it yourself (if you, for example, accept and then realize the book is not worth reading or you’ve already read it or whatever).
• related:  if you’re thinking that a Balogh reissue looks like it might be worth putting on your amazon list because it has a small number of 5 star ratings and no bad ratings, just don’t.
• I think you also can’t loan kindle books you got as a present rather than purchasing yourself.
• I woke up with the theme song to the tv show Benson stuck in my head.  And I thought to myself, that was a show about a black man as lieutenant governor.  I wonder why they don’t make more tv shows like that these days and I wonder why so few people talk about that show.  So I looked it up on Google and realized that I had come to the show rather late and that Benson actually started out as the Magic Negro Trope butler and was apparently canceled by the network just before getting a chance to become governor.  So kind of a bittersweet thing.  I just happened to come in at the right age to miss the more racist stuff.  Also, with the google I was able to put Robert Guillaume the musical theater actor together in my mind with the guy who played  Benson.
• omg.  DH came home with a Kringle from TJ’s imported from Wisconsin and it tasted just like I remembered.  I hadn’t thought about kringles for years.   Sooooo good.  Pecan too, which is my favorite (or maybe cheese or cherry, but pecan seems more standard).  Oh man.
• DC2 has learned knock-knock jokes.  Hilarity ensues.

We are not Mr. Money Moustache

We got a link from mothers in medicine the other day.

The link was about how one of our DH’s has an allowance, but it also seemed to contain a misunderstanding of our financial selves.

In case there are widespread misunderstandings, we thought we’d clarify a few things.  We are not the FrugalWoods.  We are not Mr. Money Moustache.  We don’t think you need to spend nothing.  (Nor do we think you need to outsource everything!)

We have a strong belief that you should spend where your utility curve hits your budget constraint in a multi-period model that includes the possibility of negative income shocks.  We understand that each person has his or her own utility curve and budget constraint and probability of positive and negative shocks.  In other words, do what makes you happy in both the short-term and the long-term (so long as it doesn’t hurt other people).

What we do doesn’t mean that’s what you should do.  Our utility curves and budget constraints are probably different than yours.  Which is a good thing or Paradise would sink into the ground from too many people.

Yes, for our sins, we are doing just fine with our finances.  How do we know?  Our use of money aligns with our values.  We’re on track (or getting on track) with retirement savings and so on.  We have contingency plans and emergency plans and so on.  We’re going to be ok in most scenarios (and have, so far, been financially ok when life throws curve balls).

No, we’re not planning on retiring early.  No, we don’t think you need to pay off your mortgage (or even have a house at all!)

We spend a ton of money.  Are we frugal?  Well, if frugality means spending in accordance with our values, yes.  But we’re frugal conditional on making a ton of money.  What we spend these days wouldn’t be frugal for say, us even 5 years ago (even 2-3 years ago), because we didn’t have as much money then.

Yes, we’ve sacrificed in the past which means we can spend more now.  Yes, savings and other kinds of cushions have helped immensely when job plans have changed and we’ve been grateful to our previous selves.  Savings has meant that one member of each of our family units has been able to escape terrible jobs without a new job lined up.  Money really can buy freedom and peace of mind.

Are you doing ok?

Well, we don’t know.  If you’re complaining a lot, then no, you probably aren’t.

Otherwise, that’s something only you can answer.  We recommend checking out financial calculators and maybe the balanced money formula and so on.  Make sure you’re doing the basic good things with your retirement savings (ex. low fee index funds).  That sort of Money 201 stuff.  If you’re not doing ok, then it’s time to rejigger the Money 102 stuff, or possibly even Money 101.

We’ll only judge your spending habits if you’re perpetually bragging about how much you make, complaining about all your debt, bragging about all the luxuries you spend on, and talking about how nice people who make less money than you do are continually buying you necessities because you had an emergency but spent all your money on luxuries.  We find high income people who complain about the consequences of their bad choices and treat other people badly to be irritating.

But otherwise, you buy whatever lattes or fancy vacations or nice cars you can afford (given on-track savings) if that makes you happy.  It’s your money!

And what *we* do is irrelevant to your financial well-being.  Either you’re saving the right amount for your situation and spending on the right things for you or you aren’t.  What we spend or don’t spend isn’t going to affect that.  So even if we were the Frugal Woods, that wouldn’t matter for your bottom line.

Still, we’re not.  And we like it that way.  :)

Do you feel judged by other people’s financial choices?  Also– did you think we were super-frugal low spenders?

Link love

What a week, or rather, this sure has been a week full of Wut?

as in, Wut?  And wait, wut?  (To quote one commenter,”Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait! As one who believes in UFO’s, a faked Moon landing AND that Obama shot Kennedy (from the Grassy Knoll), I REFUSE to believe that there is more than one woman on this planet who would boink Ted Cruz! EW! “)  Also:  Wha?

insiders to trump

baffling

Obama vs. trump on women

This is some scary excrement.  And here’s some more unconstitutional scary excrement.  People, we gotta start running downstream candidates and VOTING in off-year elections.

so much patriarchy

even more patriarchy :(

the moral of the story

patriarchal equilibrium

VRA still needed today

democrats not as divided as media portrays

Our infrastructure is outdated!

no words

Leave it to Beverly

bet on warren buffet?

financial parenting

Go fund me gave 4K, donors gave the rest.

this is me with forbes now

6 weeks without alcohol

SEP

this is pretty cool

bedrooms

almost makes me wish I had stairs

kittens!

Ask the grumpies: Managing bedtime for an obsessive reader

zenmoo asks:

any ideas on how to manage an obsessive reader? My just 6 year old’s reading ability has exploded over our long holidays. This is great but she gets very caught up new stories to the extent of finding it hard to sleep… I was an obsessive reader at her age too (still am) but it never stopped me sleeping!!

Make sure that your 6 year old has a flashlight that doesn’t get too hot and that hir covers are the kind that won’t melt if say, they have a bare lightbulb touching them. Not that I ever accidentally melted a sleeping bag (much).

You can forbid reading after a certain hour and turn off the light, but one of the great joys of childhood is sneaking to finish a novel late into the night under the covers.  If it interferes with functioning the next day, eventually zie will learn how to regulate it, most of the time anyway.  So long as the next new book isn’t too enthralling.  Fortunately at 6, falling asleep in class is unlikely to result in damage to one’s permanent record.

You also may want to put bedtime a bit earlier so that when you head to bed you can check and remove any lit flashlights or open books from drooling children who have fallen asleep mid-chapter.

Who are nicole and maggie?

 

Things have changed since we last asked this question.

Dancing!

Goodbye Daniel!

I wonder if this is the same girl and her dog as before.

We’re in Henry’s book and we have 10 followers.

pinterest? (whoa, those aren’t us!)

drug dealers!

peach loving singers or maybe dancers

Why I want to make enough money to support myself (and my family) even though I’m a woman with a high earning husband

I mean, besides that I like having lots of money and enjoy my career.  Which I do.  I love having 2x DH’s salary instead of 1x.  But we could totally live on 1x.  I just don’t want to.  And I’m sure after a while I would start writing novels or taking over local non-profits or something.

There’s been a couple of recent articles going around about women making sure they only pick high earning potential husbands.  (“It’s just as easy to fall in love with a rich man…” to quote Marilyn Monroe’s character in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.)  Money matters because you’ll want to stay home with your kids, they say.  Or you’ll want to live a better life than you can on your income alone.  So don’t pick the 40K/year guy, pick the 100K/year guy with upward mobility potential.

Part of it is that I do not ever want to be in a situation in which I have to scramble.  I don’t want to be a 50 year old widow (or divorcee) having to go back into the labor market after an extended absence.  We have life insurance, but getting life insurance that would provide me with true security in a situation in which I could not find a fantastic job after DH’s demise forced me to work again would be a huge drain on just DH’s salary.  And I have complete trust in DH, but if I were married to any other person, that looming potential of being divorced or trapped in a horrible marriage because I needed the money would just be awful.  I never want to be helpless or trapped, especially with children depending on me.

The second reason is not about me.  My BIL is trapped in his current job and his current career trajectory because he has a SAHM wife and two kids.  He has to always make the safe choice.  The one that keeps him employed.  He needs to stay with his company because it’s union and he’s no longer last in/first out.  Contrast that with DH.  When he didn’t like his job he was able to take unpaid leave at first and to just quit without another one lined up later.  He was able to explore working at a start-up and then on his own company and then compare competing job offers that paid 2x as his “safe” job.  Eventually we might have needed him to bring in his own money so as to keep the stress off me (for example, me being on half pay this year in an expensive city would have been a lot more difficult to pull off!), but he had plenty of time to explore different options and was able to wait for one that made him really happy.  If/when this job evaporates, he will be able to go through the process of finding a job he likes again.

A third reason that doesn’t apply to me (but might if I had a husband who felt money more) is that for most people, money is power.  And that means that the person who brings in the money is the one who gets more say in how things turn out in the household.  He (and it’s usually he) gets to say what luxuries get bought, what the household allowance is, and so on.  And for the few months when I was the sole breadwinner, DH did take on more of the household responsibilities (which was nice for me!).  Being married to someone who greatly out-earns you can mean golden handcuffs.  I am much happier having an equal marriage.  And I might be willing to exchange money for power if I had to, that is, me being the one making more and having more say, but not so much the other way around.  (I suspect though that this gets back to point one– I’d rather be unmarried than to be in a bad relationship, but for that, I still need to make my own money!)  (Note that since DH doesn’t really feel money, he could make many x as me and we would still have equal bargaining power, but that isn’t true for every one.)

That’s not to say I want to be married to someone who lies around the house and plays video games all day.  But because I make money, I can value productivity more in a partner than the actual cash he is bringing in.  I would rather have DH produce value than be a hedge fund manager making 5x what he’s making right now (though I suppose if that were the case we could be more active with charity!)  And I’d rather be alone than married to someone who wasn’t making the world a better place.

If I made less money, we’d need to be more frugal, but part of why I chose the profession I chose was because of its potential for income and financial security.  And we’ve saved a lot as a couple to allow ourselves more freedom in the future.  Perhaps if I was less skilled and/or scared of math I might not have the luxury of looking for a productive husband (or having no husband at all!) rather than a high income one.  Caring only about love is a luxury that having enough money makes possible.  Still, I don’t think that finding a prince to rescue me would be the direction my thoughts would go.  I know how to be frugal (partly because great swaths of my childhood had my mom supporting the four of us on less than what a high school teacher makes) and I have ambition.

Of course, I married a guy who had virtually no income in the years we were dating before marriage because we were still in high school and college.  (And who had very little income during the first years of our marriage because we were in graduate school.)  I have no idea what I would be looking for if I, heaven forbid, had to go on the dating market as an actual adult.  But I would still want to keep my career and my income, not just because I love it or just for the money, but because I don’t want to give up that freedom and power.

So how about you?  How do you balance the importance of your salary with the importance of your partner’s?

Link LOVE

Racist Asian jokes are not ok

How bias is built into our daily lives

I should read Angela Davis

The 2016 GOP race is setting a bad example for children

Contrast how hecklers are handled by Obama vs Trump

of all the horrific things Trump has been doing… maybe it will be plagiarism that takes him down (hahahaha) (sigh)

Nancy Reagan and aids

#ponygate

Problems with implementation of free college plan

More people should do literary analysis on The Neverending Story (the book, not the movie)

Don’t tell, but I am totally getting #2 this for her birthday.  Also maybe this.

Planting Our Pennies finances got boring so she’s looking for something to write about.  Suggestions?

5 pivotal paragraphs

My cat would sleep on that

Just a heads up

Don’t be sad

SQUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Ask the grumpies: When to start music lessons?

Alyssa asks:

When is it age-appropriate to put children into music lessons (piano/guitar at this point)? Son is 5 and a bit, and he says he’s interested, but not sure if we should wait a bit more?

Five is a great age!  To be honest, I started at 6 and DC1 started at 6 because of laziness on the part of parents, but 5 would have been fine.  (DC1 did start swimming lessons a lot earlier.)  Most music teachers in our area start accepting students at age 5, and Suzuki teachers will often accept children as young as age 3.  A bunch of the internet suggests that starting music lessons before age 7 is best for various quasi-scientific reasons I’m not entirely convinced by but may be true.

And if it doesn’t work out, you can always take a break and try again later.

A journey of a lot of steps: What I did or didn’t learn from the Feb challenge

I learned that having to think about exercising (and, indeed, to exercise) decreased my work productivity.

I learned that pacing is a lot easier in a 3000 sq ft place than a 1200 sq ft place.

I do like walking, but if I want to do more of it, I think it needs to be in a world where I don’t want to do other stuff as much.

Normally with exercise challenges one wants to know if one got stronger or if one lost weight.  Both of these are really difficult to answer because of two things.  1.  DH decided he needed to cut back on sweets and then gave up on cutting back and then got reenergized to give up sweets again.  Since I have ZERO willpower when it comes to high quality pastries, my weight mostly fluctuated with his decisions.  Who knows what the no stepping counterfactual would have been.  2.  I got really sick the third week with lingering cold/allergies which made it hard to breathe deeply.

Everyone in the house was pretty happy when the step challenge was over, even though for DH it meant more walking chores.  One fewer chore to have to remember every day.

I think I need to go back through previous posts and see if any past challenges have been worthwhile.  And then a thinky post on the nature of challenges.  I suspect that I know the answer– challenges that produce something worthwhile in the short term (money saved, pages written) seem to be better than ones that attempt to change a habit, but there may be other items I need to ponder.

Money philosophy post: Invest in things that will pay off

My little sister worked for a law firm that did repossessions when she was in high school.  She literally called to repossess people’s cars and boats on Christmas Eve (“What?  They shouldn’t have *bought* a bmw if they couldn’t afford it.”).

One of the big things that she learned from that job is to never borrow to invest in a depreciating asset.

When you buy a depreciating asset, you can end up owing more for that asset than what it’s worth.  You can have that car taken away and *still owe money on it*.  So you’re left with no car and a debt.  You would have been better off without the temporary BMW in the first place.

If you’re going to invest, whether or not you borrow, then invest in appreciating assets.  Things that will be worth more in the future.

Why?

Because when you invest in appreciating assets, that means you get to consume more rather than less in the future.  You get to consume more in the future with less effort.  Because your investment is making money for you and providing stability.

Get rid of high interest debt.  That’s a huge drain and is just throwing away money that could instead be keeping you safe or providing for guilt-free career changes or trips or what ever it is you’d rather have than debt.

Invest in yourself.  It makes sense to take a reasonable debt load for education that will pay off monetarily in terms of income down the line.  And it is true that cars depreciate right off, but when you’re starting out if you’re in a place with lousy public transportation, it can still make sense to take out a car loan because that appreciating asset is *you*.  (That doesn’t, of course, mean you should be buying a BMW when all you actually need is safe and reliable transportation.)

Invest in reducing risk.  Have an emergency fund in safe assets like a CD ladder or a saving account.  Buy amounts of insurance that are right for your situation.  That way an emergency won’t put you back to zero or less.

Invest in your monetary future.  Put money away for retirement in tax-advantaged accounts.  Put extra money in the market or in bonds as a FU fund in case times goes bad or you get an amazing opportunity.  Your future self will thank you.

And after you’ve invested, then there is nothing wrong with consuming.  But don’t borrow to consume a depreciating asset.  Let the profits from your appreciating assets fund your extra consumption.  Because then you won’t have to write blog posts about how you can’t make ends meet on necessities because you have all this high interest debt that you’re not paying off (even with your high income) because of all the stuff you buy and trips you take.  You’ll be able to buy the stuff and take the trips without complaint after the debt is gone and you’ve taken care of your future self.

Have you ever borrowed to invest in a depreciating asset?  Do you invest in appreciating assets?  How do you manage risk?