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We’ve had ask the grumpies for many many years now. Sometimes we give good advice! More often, the grumpy commentariat gives great advice. And there’s always great opinions, especially when Leah asks a fun question.
Have you asked us a question? Any updates? We were right? Wrong? Has your opinion on anything changed or gotten stronger?
Back when we had more free time and it seemed like the US was on a good trend, we had a lot of silly deliberately controversial posts written to provoke discussion on controversial topics. There’s a few from 2019 and a couple from 2017 but these are mostly pre-2016 things. On important topics, like, you know, gift giving. Or whatever drama was happening in mommy-blogland or academia-blogland.
Have a controversial but completely unimportant opinion? Drop it in the comments!
Nicole and Maggie discuss budgeting
Some early popular money posts
The Money tag
#1 used to have a mortgage
Do you have any favorite money posts? Any money questions for Ask the Grumpies?
CG asks:
Cool travel experiences (not just destinations, but specific memorable experiences) for when we can all do that again.
Hopefully #2 is having some right now.
We invite others to share their cool travel experiences and to check out all the yummy food #1 ate in Italy.
Prior to DH’s last unemployment spell, I was feeling uncomfortable about having so much income. I felt guilt because I was one of the “haves” (I probably still feel this, and it’s probably a good thing for me! So don’t talk me out of it with conservative talking points), but also I had this odd sense that I should be looking for things to spend money on. Money felt meaningless and valueless and there was no reason NOT to just order that $80 bottle of olive oil, or two even, no reason not to put money on the nicest AirBNB available for the trip we never ended up taking etc. The only thing keeping me from buying all the pens (and I did buy a lot) was the knowledge that they might dry up before getting used!
Then DH got unemployed for several months and we were living on just my income. We lived comfortably, but mainly because we didn’t have any big expenditures due to luck (being between appliance breakdowns) and the pandemic returning all our travel moneys and preventing us from spending on any new travel or fancy camps or expensive daytrips to the city or even eating out much. (I still bought pens.) It sort of felt like we were back to normal, but with more masks, hand sanitizer, and stationery.
Now we’re back to making more money than we’ve ever made and more than I ever dreamed of and somehow money has meaning and I’m not just buying all the things. But also I’m not freaking out when our water heaters end up costing almost twice as much as they were supposed to. It’s just money and we have money. But also, when it cost $1K+ for DH and the kids to see family from the closest city airport this summer, we decided it was worth the extra 30 min drive to the closest airport to save $500. Was that a good decision? I don’t know! I refuse to feel either guilty or superior about it. It seemed like a reasonable tradeoff at the time– 30 min plus a small amount of gas and car depreciation to save $500.
Several of the extremely wealthy and high income (white male) economists I know are also pretty frugal. They spend money when it’s worthwhile but they also take advantage of sales and bargain down in situations where you can bargain. I’m not sure it’s rational to do that when your consulting rate is $500/hr, but, they seem to think it is.
I’m not sure what caused the change in me. Maybe it was just time. But also I think having experienced via his last unemployment spell the knowledge that this high income really isn’t forever. DH’s current job is a start-up and it may end if it runs out of runway. Maybe it’s the knowledge that DC1 will be starting college soon and we’ll have to cash flow some of it if zie ends up at one of hir top choices. (If zie ends up at the state flagship I don’t know what will happen to all those savings– $228K as of this writing, down from a high of $275K(!)– but I’m sure we will figure something out.)
So what am I doing while we wait for another shoe to drop? Mostly I’ve been putting regular money into the stock market– a little bit more than my take-home pay each month most (but not all) months in order to get down our precautionary savings to what we actually need as precautionary savings should DH suddenly lose his job at the beginning of an unpaid summer (or, alternatively, I rage quit). We’re down to that number now, so there will be less funneling money into the markets next year. Having that money put away also helps the feeling of being artificially middle-class.
We’re still living well, and we’re still in a situation where rising grocery costs just means we shift to buying more luxury goods (that suddenly cost the same as non-luxury products that used to be much less expensive) and we’re still able to not sweat unexpected costs or even stupid money mistakes. But our money situation no longer feels quite so surreal or consumerist.
How are you feeling about your income vs. spending with rising prices and loosened pandemic restrictions?
Titles in British Historical Novels
Early review for Husband Material sounds promising! Don’t break my heart, Alexis Hall!
Activisms:
Gave $50 to donors choose books for Trans kids in red states. While I was getting the link for Donors Choose, it’s telling me that this one in Fort Smith Arkansas is matched right now.
According to The Love Languages, for me, love is acts of service, physical touch, and quality time. For you, my DH, it is physical touch, quality time, and words of affirmation. Basically, I get the better end of this deal because you do nice stuff for me and all I have to do is appreciate it!
Now I have “The Rose” stuck in my head. It’s a river! A hunger! A flower! Such a negative song. Our love is not at all depressing. Our love fills rather than enervates. It encourages instead of dispirits. Our love knows how to dance, even if maybe we don’t.*
Our love is all the good feelings put together. Love with you is exciting and joyous, but also comforting and soothing. You can control my heart-rate with a touch.
When I think of our love, I often think of the Fantasticks. I saw the musical as a high school student when we were having a rough spot in our relationship, or maybe had just gotten back together, and it really spoke to me. You are love, better far than a metaphor could ever ever be. It still speaks to me, because our love has really gone from that teenage romance, which didn’t feel superficial at the time, but perhaps was, to a more mature view. Love is experiencing the world with you, even when you’re not physically there. Time together, while gaining trust, communication skills, and understanding, has removed the tempestuous potential negatives of young love and replaced them with with closeness, and the knowledge that you are there and you will be my anchor and the rock in my foundation. Love is being with you and wanting you to be happy and wanting to see how you experience the world. Wanting to share in our experiences.
You are love, but also, love is you.** “All my wildest dreams, multiplied by two.”
What is love to you?
*Refraining from a dirty joke here.
**Trying very hard not to spoil this sweet sentiment with a Yakoff Smirnoff reference. Which is another thing I never would have experienced had your grandmother not given us a VHS tape.
DH pointed out to me that DC1 will allow hir work to expand to take any amount of time allotted for it. A lot of this is wasted time or hidden goofing off (something I am prey to as well). Basically during the school year zie steals little bits of time to websurf and forum chat etc. and never has large pockets for things that are actually fun like composing or video games or movies or even books. We talked about why that might be and came up with the fact that whenever DC1 looks like zie isn’t busy we always have suggestions for things to do (usually stuff zie should be doing anyway, like hir laundry or emptying the dishwasher, but not always).
It also has become very apparent during the last year that DC1 hasn’t been taught any writing skills since fifth grade when we were living in Paradise. Zie just hasn’t had to write. And hir first draft isn’t generally that great. (We only noticed this in the last 6 weeks because prior to that there were few writing assignments and what writing assignments there were, DC1 would work on verrrrry slowly and not get a draft done that zie was willing to show us until they were actually due.)
Sidenote: some college applications have the option of turning in a graded essay as a writing sample. DC1 does not have a single thing zie could turn in. The most writing zie has done (other than lab reports that “don’t count”) were FRQs (aka practice AP test writing) from hir history classes. I wouldn’t trust hir own English or History teachers to be able to write anyway (with the exception of the late AP US History teacher who was writing rec letters from the hospital before his death). Hir racist World History teacher wrote a terrible rec letter for my friend’s son which was both badly written and made him sound like a jerk, which he isn’t. (She started with basically, “He may seem like a tyrannical leader” and then had kind of word salad and ended sort of, but not clearly, saying but that would be incorrect? It didn’t say what she thought it said.)
My friend’s kid who is going to Brown next year has perfected putting things off to the last minute and then doing a reasonably good job on them in a short amount of time. DC1 does not have that skill. My friend’s kid also put off doing college essays to the last possible second which caused my friend a lot of stress (though zie still got into Brown, so…)
So we decided that this summer DC1 will practice personal narrative writing in the form of college essays. Zie will learn how to brainstorm and how to write a first draft quickly. And, this is important, once zie has a good essay, zie is done for the week (other than picking out the next week’s question).
We started off small with a short Harvey Mudd Essay about the ideal humanities/art class. Brainstorming was a little painful– zie still seems to have a bit of that perfectionist streak. But in the end we got some ideas on paper. I gave hir I think an hour to get a first draft from the brainstorming. The first draft was ok, but it wasn’t very punchy and there were a few items that were obviously clear to DC1 but not to the reader. DH and I went through and cut out repetitious parts, suggested different ways that sentences could be moved around to make the narrative punchier, and requested clarification for the parts that weren’t clear. The second draft was perfect. And we were done for the week.
I’m hopeful that this trend will continue as we get into more obnoxious essays (zie has been looking at the Amherst page– the essay prompt back in my year, “Barbra Streisand sings that people who need people are the luckiest people in the world, but Sartre says that Hell is other people, which do you agree with and why?” was so sickening that I ended up choosing not to apply; it looks like in 2021 they offered some choice, though I’m deeply offended by the anti-math prompt from a physics professor).
There are a lot of guides for writing essays out there, but these essays have kind of an almost flippant tone that neither DC1 nor I like. There’s a sort of sameness to them. I told DC1 that zie doesn’t need to emulate them, but zie does need to have hir own voice come out. Narrative essays (blog posts, essentially) are not the same as technical writing. I’m not sure how good my advice is. My sister’s common app essay, in retrospect, did kind of emulate these essays (she talked about destroying my stuff as a kid and how dance and physics intertwine) and she got in everywhere she applied while mine was more of a “here’s a social problem illustrated by my experience volunteering” and I didn’t get in everywhere I applied. But… my sister had a better overall application than I did (team captain for award wining all-girls poms and math teams, knew she wanted to do mechanical engineering, etc.) so I can’t just blame the essay.
Grumpy Rumblings (of the formerly untenured) 