Our last month of pandemic spending like super high income people who don’t care about money

Here’s spending from the month prior to finding out DH’s job was winding down.  I’m a little confused about the complete lack of nuts.com orders, but I guess that’s on surrounding credit card bills.

Random Amazon stuff (that DH likely ordered for the house):  40+20+25+ 5 + 17
Ting:  45
Groceries (pandemic groceries are higher than pre-pandemic, but there’s also no eating out):  270+220+230+180
Nintendo (games? probably out of DH’s allowance):  5 +9 +14 + 2 + 4 + 5 + 13 + 16 + 6
Face masks for DH’s sister’s family:  $80
Best buy (modem stuff since ours got hit by lightening):  ~400
Violin rental:  25
Allegro tea bags (we ran out of Hibiscus spice so I got a ton and some coffee beans):  60
Apple storage:  1
Lawncare (last time DH was unemployed we cut this, this time it STAYS):  50 + 50 + 50 + 50
Biden yardsign and mask:  60
Home depot (garage door opener stuff and something else?):  51 + 236
Dentist:  200
Target (school supplies and clothing):  300 + 50
patreon:  2
Teacher giftcard:  1000
Magic coin (DC1 paid for this):  40
Utilities:  465
Yeti straw:  11
Minecraft realms:  $8
Insect control:  $80
internet:  80
Adobe suites:  22
bathmat from gorilla grip:  $31
Netflix: $30
My CC usually has most of our donations and activism donations stuff. Let’s see what else it has…
Ah, it has our annual car insurances: $2321
Amazon books: 7
Stamps (for activism): 90
Activism (you can tell I didn’t have much time last month): 25
apple storage (I think we can probably keep those random subscriptions we’ve added– minecraft, apple, adobe, etc.– which is something that has only recently started because they don’t cost *that* much per year in the end, but I do see why in earlier times I avoided such things).: 1
excessive hand sanitizer (fall scents! I gave away spring and summer scents I didn’t like as prizes in class… I would have resisted if not feeling stupidly rich): 47
More utilities: 30
Ann Taylor skirts (to complete my ability to teach even though I’m a size bigger than last year’s clothing): 55

So all of that is about what DH’s take-home pay was before he was furloughed and it’s a little bit more than his furloughed pay.  It is more than my take-home pay (which has most of our pre-tax expenses taken out and only comes in 9 months out of the year).  Though to be fair that annual car insurance is a once a year thing, but we also have once a year property taxes which is larger, once a year life insurance, etc.  Not to mention the occasional root canal + crown etc. etc. etc.  So any month is likely to have an “emergency”, even when we’re paying attention to spending.

That answers the question of whether or not we can just ignore spending entirely when DH is no longer bringing income.  Probably not a great idea unless we’re willing to dip heavily into savings.  When I’m not throwing caution to the wind and we don’t have a large emergency, we can get as low as 3K/month as spending, which allows for hefty taxable savings even on just my income.  So… I’m back to having to think about money and balance.  Our natural unfettered rate of spending is greater than my take-home pay.  But also we don’t need to cut things to the bone.  Not having to think about money was nice while it lasted.

RBOC

• I like having nice things.  I’m still not used to having nice things.  But I drove my car to the city (not just the airport in the city, but a conference in the city) and it was SO NICE having google maps on apple carplay.  Getting home through a zillion different highways and city streets was stressful, but it would have been insanely stressful without up to the moment instructions telling me which lane to be in with plenty of warning, especially without me having to look down to see my phone.
• I just realized that I haven’t even noticed that I haven’t gotten annoyed by water pooling behind the sink since we got the kitchen redone.  (This was one of my major annoyances with the kitchen prior to redoing the sink and countertops and something we definitely wanted to fix.)  So much of being well-off is being able to throw money at annoyances to make them go away.  And then sometimes I don’t even appreciate them, but also I’m no longer being regularly annoyed by them.  So let me pause for a second to get a little burst of appreciation.  I should probably do a whole obnoxious post about removing annoyances as an update to our previous frugal version, except I just wrote a similar post about the loveliness of the reduced mental load of being well off and there’s only so much obnoxiousness a readership can handle.  So maybe this bullet point is enough.
• DC1 auditioned for, and then unexpectedly got into regional orchestra.  After that was announced, the orchestra director moved hir from second violins to first violins.  Yay DC1!  (How I found out about the promotion:  me:  That sounds like a… melody?  DC1:  Yeah, I got moved up to first violin after she announced regional results last week.)
• Whoever decided that queso and Thai red curry needed to be mixed together is a swearwording genius.  Seriously.  I had it recently while traveling and am itching to try it at home– I’m thinking about using the velveeta recipe with coconut milk instead of cow and adding some prepared thai red curry sauce (unfortunately TJ’s has yeast extract in it now which gives me headaches, but maybe you don’t have that problem?)  The closest recipe I could find online was for mac and cheese.
• The other weekend we had a hankering to go into the city, but my sister had to spend all Saturday cooking for having her book club over that night.  So DH and I offered to menu plan and cook for her while she took care of our kids.  That turned out to be surprisingly nice.  Since our favorite couple moved to jobs at a top university, we haven’t been entertaining at all (not counting DC1’s friends who just play video/board games and DC2’s friends who always have playdates at park or pool), and I find I enjoy the planning and cooking more than the actual socializing.  (In case you’re wondering, the book was Auntie Mame and we went with fancy appetizers.  My sister made champagne cocktails to go with them.)
• I recently saw a talk from an economist (prominent) who used to comment on our blog (but hasn’t been around for years) which was so weird since this blog is anonymous and zie has no idea who I am.  I did not make things awkward by telling hir I know about hir laundry situation from several years ago (I, in fact, did not say anything at all, remaining an anonymous face in a crowd).  The only other time I met a reader, it turned out she’d asked the blog for the same advice she was asking me in person so I was like… that question sounds really familiar!  (She took the advice and is doing really great now ;)  )
• Property taxes this year:  $8,261.12.  Have to pay that out of savings (i.e. where my paycheck deposits to), which means we really aren’t living on DH’s paycheck alone.

A knobby problem: Help me with cabinet knobs! And shelf liner!

So… my thought on kitchen knobs was just to get a pack of 30 of some sort of brushed metal and I’d be done with it.

DH wants a little more excitement in our kitchen.  We have that nice dark blue going around the backsplash.  Why don’t we try to highlight that with kitchen knob accents?  And shelf liner.  We won’t go quite as matchy-matchy as the green gingham that came before, but things will tie together.

None of the home stores in town had anything in the right color (even the knob store– it had exactly zero ceramic knobs, but if we wanted fancy $10 and up knobs made out of glass or metal, they had us covered)(Why do we have a knob store?!?).  So we went to home depot and ordered all their dark blue knobs.

…so… many…knobs (and just a little of the blue trim we’re trying to accent up top)

Unfortunately, on closer inspection, some of the white bits were too yellowy for the white in our cabinet.

Sadly, I’d liked this one enough to take it out of the packaging before realizing the whites clashed.

So we got rid of the knobs where the blue was too light or the white was too yellow.  That left us with the following 5 knobs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here they are separated out into flowery ones that go well with one of our prospective shelf liner papers and less flowery ones on a backdrop of our current prospective shelf liner papers (note that we accidentally ordered the adhesive samples for two of these– we’re waiting to get the two different kinds of non-adhesive samples in the mail).  (Comments on non-adhesive shelf liner paper also welcome.)  (Update:  Comments on non-adhesive shelf liner are MORE than welcome because when we finally got the “fabric” sample, it turned out to also be adhesive and the “matte paper” had no backing AND the two samples we got were really washed out, which bodes poorly for getting an entire kitchen’s worth.)

flowery knobs

Not so flowery knobs (technically the one in the middle has flowers, but they’re white flowers, not blue)

 

At this point you may have noticed that one of these knobs is not like the others.  That’s because one of the knobs came from a company called “liberty hardware” and the rest come from a company called “mascot hardware”.  The only liberty hardware knob is that all blue knob (shown next to a green gingham knob on our most used cabinet and out of the bag in the not so flower knobs picture).

Unfortunately for us, and something we didn’t know before ordering, mascot hardware knobs are different than the knobs we currently have.  Instead of the short screw coming in from the back, a super long screw comes in from the front.  Also the diameter of the screws on the mascot hardware knobs is bigger than those of the liberty hardware knobs.  Which means that we will have to drill the holes to be bigger if we go with mascot hardware, but will be able to just screw in liberty hardware knobs.

Here is what a disassembled mascot knob looks like compared to one of our current gingham knobs.  So long!  So thick!  So complicated!  [Insert risque boyfriend joke here.]

DH said he was willing to drill holes bigger and cut screws shorter.  But there are a LOT of knobs, and those holes would have to get filled in if anybody wanted to replace the knobs with the kind that use smaller screws.  Still, it might be worth it if any of the mascot knobs are great.

I spent some time on the liberty hardware site to see if they had any other blue knobs.  We saw one that we liked enough to order and added that to our pile.

The metal one on the right.

Sadly, not only was this one more expensive, DH less enthusiastic about it, but it also had a pointy bit stationed just so to prick unwary fingers trying to open a cabinet.  We could sand those down, but we shouldn’t have to.  (DH says the pointy bit turned out to be glue.  It was still hard enough to break skin on my finger!)

None of these knobs sing to me.  None of them upset me.  I do not care enough to even justify the time I have spent on this already.

If we were to try another knob, I would order this pewter leave and vine from Liberty Hardware, but it does not have a pop of color, and we might as well be spending less money on boring brushed nickel knobs that go with the appliances.  Plus it looked like it would be a couple weeks before a reasonably priced one could get to us in the mail and I kind of just want this to be done.  (And some part of my brain vaguely remembers that pewter might be contaminated with lead which isn’t something you want on your fingers in a kitchen).

 

One of our friends suggested we photoshop what the kitchen would look like with that all-blue liberty hardware knob, and here’s what that looks like (obviously we have more cabinets and drawers elsewhere in the kitchen).

I am especially impressed with how DH got the sizes right. I find the shadows amusing for some reason.

As much as I would like to tell DH that he just needs to decide and I need to stop looking at knobs, I did say that I would see what the Grumpy Nation had to say before I forced him to pull a trigger.

AND we are back at square one with shelf liner.  I want non-adhesive shelf liner that has backing so it actually lies flat.  We currently have extremely high quality green gingham checkered liner from the previous owners that no longer goes with our de-ginghamed kitchen (though it does go with those green and white knobs).  We had been leaning towards the blue, but the “fabric” isn’t actually fabric and is adhesive and the matte doesn’t have any backing so this company is just a non-starter.  That roll of grey we have is something we picked up at Walmart as a possibility and to, at the very least, line the our new cupboard where the ice maker used to be– DH thinks it is fine but isn’t in love with it; he finds it inoffensive.  DH didn’t like my suggestion to just keep the gingham liner until he found something he loves– it is a negative.  But also he doesn’t like the grey stuff we already got enough to spend a huge amount of money on it.  And switching from green gingham to blue didn’t to over well either.

What do you think Grumpy Nation?  Have any strong feelings about our kitchen knobs or shelf liner?  Any other non-adhesive shelf liners we should be looking at?

 

DH’s family summer vacation this year

After planning a massive Disney World trip last summer, MIL was understandably burned out from planning summer vacation for the 6 grandkids this year.  She gave heavy hints to DH that he was in charge this year (by which I mean, she asked if he had thoughts and then said she was not going to plan anything but someone else should feel free).

DH’s first attempt was a week at the in-laws like old times back when nobody had enough money and there were enough beds to fit all the parents and children (so 4 grandkids and one house remodel that turned a bedroom into a kitchen and another into an office ago).  That went over like lead.  So DH added a 2 day trip to an Historic Site that is ~3 hours from the grandparents and 1.5 hours from both his siblings.  (Oddly, none of them has ever been with their kids.)  MIL seemed … disappointed… that there were only 2 days of things planned.

So after an extensive conversation with DH’s brother and SIL and a lengthy gchat with a friend from high school who grew up near said Historic city, we came up with 2 more days of activities (MIL still disappointed… can the kids really handle that much educational stuff?  But, we said, there’s a water park!  And a summer festival!  And she was happier.)

So we bought plane tickets for DH and the kids.  $1,365.  If we were driving I’d also be going to break up the driving shifts.  But DC2 tends to throw up on long trips and we can afford it… but honestly I don’t see much point in me going too when I could be doing work and not spending $455 on a plane ticket.  If they were going someplace I wanted to go…  Not that I’ve got anything against [Midwestern town], but from what I understand, I’ve been there, done that, and not much has changed since my own childhood.  (There is one Frank Lloyd Wright house I’m a little bummed at not getting to see, but I bet without me there they won’t go see it.)

But it’s too expensive to get all 4 families anyplace in the summer that I’d like to go.  I have some truly ridiculously expensive work junkets this summer that I’m not taking the family on.  One because the plane tickets to [insert fancy outdoorsy destination for economists and east coast elite] in the summer were just too too much, another that isn’t terribly expensive but conflicts with the coding daycamp DC1 really wants to go to… another conflicts with another camp DC1 is going to (Irritatingly, there are PLENTY of expensive day camps for DC1 this summer, but I only put away $3000 in the DDA after last year’s fiasco). Conferences in expensive locations that aren’t on the west coast are completely wasted on me.  I just fly in, conference, and fly out, spending most of the time trying to regulate my temperature with layers.  We might use my frequent flyer miles to fly in MIL so DC2 and DH can go with me to the second city, though that doesn’t seem like a great deal for MIL.

Anyway, back to the trip.  We found a house ($867) that fits three families and its guest house that fits a couple ($265) to rent for about the same price as hotels, which made MIL happy.  Houses are also easier for us to just pay for.  I’m pretty sure this wouldn’t put a crimp in the in-laws budget or DH’s brother’s family’s, but SIL’s family is younger and not yet comfortably off (not to mention used to MIL and FIL paying for stuff like this).  So we don’t have a problem paying for it.  The thing is, DH’s younger siblings don’t think of chipping in for housing when it’s a group house and it doesn’t seem right that MIL and FIL should be responsible for it all when they’re retired and we make so much money.  If we were doing hotels, it would be harder to finagle that trick– everyone would probably pay for their own room except MIL would pay for SIL’s.  (Is it crass that I pay attention to these things?  I worry a lot about people being forced to pay for things in the interest of family harmony when we can easily shoulder some of that burden.  I’d prefer to spend $455 on IL’s housing than on a plane ticket for myself…)

So… family summer vacation of $2,500, plus whatever they spend on eating out.  (DH suspects MIL also wanted to not be responsible for a ton of cooking, which is understandable.)

Seems like a lot just to go to the Midwest, but hey, it’s less than going to Hawaii, amirite?  Or Europe?  Heck, it’s less than we spent at Disney last year.

Man, I suck at vacations.

Do you have upcoming vacation plans?  Who plans your family gatherings?