Slightly chewier than stew meat would have been, but still soft enough that I could easily cut my toddler’s meat into smaller bites with the edge of his spoon.

It was already cut up. They also had whole hearts for 10 cents less per pound, but I went for the shortcut.

My kids love beef stew but I haven’t made it in a while as I haven’t seen beef at a price I was willing to pay recently. They have been requesting it and I was looking at beef yesterday, and the cheapest cut was over $5 per pound, except they had beef heart for $2.50 per pound. I’d never eaten or cooked with heart in my life, but Google said that it has a nice beef flavor but can be tough unless cooked a long, slow way. I decided to give it a shot, and the stew was amazing. Everyone loved it. The meat was tender after long cooking, the broth it made was amazing, and I think that is going to be my go-to way of making beef stew from now on.

Maybe homemade granola bars? With nuts to include some protein?

Yes! My due date is actually April 5th, but we’re aiming for 37 to 39 weeks because of the blood pressure issues I’ve had in the past, so mid to late March. But so far my blood pressure has done really well. Baby is a girl to even things up at our house, and we’re going to name her Abigail and use Nabby as a nickname.

Baby is coming next month! I was offered some hand-me-downs for her that turned out to be in absolutely perfect condition. Many actually still have tags on them. Other than a few odd items like socks, we are set for clothes now. I got one of those plastic drawer sets for her clothes. I need to give the bassinet and car seat a good scrubbing and get a few more swaddle blankets, but other than that we’re ready. I was gathering paperwork to get taxes taken care of and discovered I had missed a change in a 529 tax credit for our state that meant we needed to contribute more to get the full credit, so I borrowed the difference from our emergency fund. I also have the IRAs topped up for last year now. It will take a while to refill the EF and to catch up with starting this year’s retirement contributions. Hopefully there will be a profit distribution from dh’s work sometime in the next few months that will help with that.

My oldest is considering coming back home from ps to homeschool again for 10th, which I would love, but prep for that will have to wait until she makes a decision. My second daughter will be going to ps 8th grade. My two older boys will be 12 & 10 and will be homeschooling 7th and 5th grades. The toddler will be three in the Fall and we will add in preschooly activities whenever he starts begging me for them, whether that’s next school year or a later one, but I already have ALL THE STUFF for littles from my older kids and it won’t take any preparation on my part. Ds9 is still on watch-and-wait protocol for his cancer; every three months we scan and find out whether it is time to jump back into chemo yet or if he gets another three months off. Every day he gets off treatment is a gift, and it has really affected my attitude on schoolwork. I prioritize playing and enjoying life more. He is possibly my most gifted kid, but has missed so much school time due to medical issues that he’s not ahead except in math, his love. Here are my tentative ideas: 7th Math-AOPS Intro to Number Theory and Intro to Algebra B. I think he’ll do at least NT from the book, then we will assess his workload with online classes before deciding whether to do the class for Algebra B or just work through the book +alcumus. English-??? Maybe Classic Literature level of MCT?, R&S Spelling History-probably literature based, maybe with something to tie in some geography with it Science-Maybe CLRC’s Earth Science & Astronomy course or AOPS Intro to Physics course. He would love to be signed up for both, but I think it’s too much. Foreign Language-BYU SPAN 041 at a slow pace, maybe some light Latin? Logic-The Thinking Toolbox Computer Programming-AOPS Intermediate Programming with Python Music-cello lessons Physical Education-Judo 5th Math-finish AOPS Prealgebra self-paced, start Intro to Algebra A English-finish MCT Town level, start Voyage level, AAS, Pictures in Cursive History-Literature & maybe OUP Ancient World series Science-??? Foreign Language-He’s requesting a more formal class rather than just language Convo for Japanese. Maybe some light Latin. Logic-Fallacy Detective Music-violin lessons Physical Education- Judo. Maybe something else during judo’s off season. He needs constant work with his nerve-damaged left side to prevent strength and balance deterioration. Judo has been so good for him that he’s been able to stop physical therapy, but during the half a year when they don’t have judo he will probably need to either find another sport that fills the same need or to restart PT.

I’m trying to figure out the big picture early this year, as I am having a baby next month. I would love to see others’ plans and ideas, too.

What has worked best for me was combining kids at a similar level and running 2-3 groups. (During the pandemic we had foster kids and I was homeschooling 6 or 7 kids grades 1-6). Trying to keep everyone together wasn’t possible with the difference in levels, but having 2 or 3 together worked well. My oldest was her own group. History was the same era, but not the same topic. Everyone was welcome to listen in on read-alouds. My oldest would often choose to listen in on read aloud, though she also had assigned independent reading at her level.

I mentioned to dh that ds11 is finishing AOPS Intro to Algebra 1 this week and starting Counting & Probability next week. Dh questioned why we would immediately go on to another advanced math class instead of focusing more time on ds’s areas of relative weakness, language and humanities. I am satisfied with our plans for this semester and am not planning on making changes, but as I am planning for next year I am considering the positives and negatives of allowing a kid to devote the majority of his school time to areas of interest. Ds11 is an intense kid who excels in his interests of math, science, cello, and judo. The time he spends on humanities is high quality, but only a very small fraction of what he spends on his interests, and is often slanted to intersect with his interests. For example, the last few months he has been memorizing the bill of rights, reading The Story of Science, working on The Fallacy Detective, and slowly working through On the Origin of Species with me, plus some spelling, handwriting, and the tail end of Essay Voyage that we were pretty casual about getting around to. He spends probably 5-10xs as much time on math and science as he does on humanities. I want to let my kids run in their areas of interest, but how little time in areas of less interest is too little?

I have always had a hard time making friends. I am super introverted and it takes me a very long time to get close to people. I’ve never had a lot of friends, but would usually make one really close friend after a few years in a new place. But since ds’s diagnosis, it is harder. We lived here for a few years before his diagnosis, but not long enough before the pandemic for me to have made a real friend yet, and at this point we’ve lived here for almost six years and I don’t know if I’m ever going to make a real friend here. It is just harder to get close when you have difficult experiences that others don’t relate to.

The first home purchasing thread has clarified things for me. I can certainly agree that the experiences people describe there of being able to purchase homes in their early to mid twenties straight out of college or after only a few years of working a job not requiring higher education would be very unlikely now. I don’t know how typical those experiences were. Ours were very different. Dh and I came out of law school into the Great Recession when no one was hiring with a new baby and lived with my parents for the next two and a half years. I left my baby with my mom to go and care for other people’s kids while dh did every job that was willing to take him, working part time at subway and a frozen yogurt shop, eventually as a paralegal, before dh finally managed to get a job in his field. We dug our way out of medical debt twice in the early years of our marriage. We had to move to an area with a lower cost of living before purchasing a home was possible for us at 33 and 38. This doesn’t seem out of the ordinary to me. The recession timing was especially tough, but it’s in line with what our older siblings and prior generations experienced. Each of our sets of parents had three kids and 8-12 years of marriage behind them before they could purchase their first home and took decades to pay off their student loans. Both sets worked very, very hard and lived very frugally in their younger years, and both are very affluent now. When I see statistics about how much more wealth Boomers hold than the younger generations I think, well, obviously, isn’t that the phase of life when that normally happens? When you are past the starving student phase, the church-mouse-poor young married life phase, the paying off school debt and getting a home phase, and the putting your kids through college phase? I wouldn’t expect our kids to buy homes in their twenties. They may need to live with us after adulthood while going through difficult times or saving up for the next step. They may need to move to a less desirable area or work a job that they dislike. If they can work hard and do these things and have a good shot of making it financially (barring the unavoidable financial disasters that strike sometimes), then I am satisfied. If they can do all of these things and still be unable to move beyond living paycheck-to-paycheck to become able to build up reserves to weather financial crises, the situation is indeed dire.

I'm amazed at how many were able to purchase homes directly out of school or shortly thereafter. How did you not need time to save up first? This definitely sheds some light for me onto the perspective of the folks on the living paycheck-to paycheck thread who feel that getting started in life is so much harder on today's young people than it was in the past. I just didn't see it. Sure, inflation and housing prices make things tough, but it doesn't seem all that different. But it seems that our experience wasn't typical to this group.

33 and dh was 38. We had been married for 13 years and our first four kids were ages 10, 8, 7, & 5. We used a USDA rural development loan, and still live in the house. It is a 1700 sq ft 3 bedroom.

But other subscription services that send you physical items don’t work that way. Magazine subscriptions, meal plan subscriptions, monthly science kits, even our pest control service. You don’t get additional service or shipments after the cancellation date, but you own the magazines, food, science kits, and mouse poison that’s already in your house.

I have thought about this many times, but I do not think it can adequately explain it. I don't think that you can surprise yourself with your own idea. When I did hide and peered out, it was a moment before the car came around the bend. I couldn't possibly have heard it coming from that far. Why would my brain have told myself to stop my flight to hide with no way of knowing yet that there was a need to hide? Besides which I looked for it in the opposite direction from where it was coming, expecting that if he were to come back, he would have turned around and come from the direction he had driven towards.

Ds2 broke ds11's cello. I thought it was safe, hanging on a wall mount higher than the toddler can reach, but he managed to make a stack of couch cushions to reach it without either of the older kids in the room noticing. It's bad. The neck is snapped clear through. This is the most valuable item we own outside of our house and cars.

But not having an emergency fund can be the result of not having room in your budget for an emergency fund, or of choosing not to set aside money in an emergency fund. Those two groups of people are in radically different positions financially. Frankly, your ideal DR budget looks very comfortable to me.

I thought that living paycheck to paycheck by definition didn't include things like putting money into retirement and giving and having hundreds of dollars monthly to spend on personal expenses? I thought it meant it basically taking everything you earn each month to pay necessities, without anything left over or room in the budget for unexpected/intermittent expenses. Is that not the accepted meaning?

Dingos?

I don't think anyone is just blaming it all on bad decisions. There are tons of things that can negatively impact our finances that we have no control over. When they strike, it is rotten, and when many strike at once, it can be crippling for years. But I think it's important to balance that knowledge with the knowledge that our choices and actions over time can also have a great effect. We are not powerless. It is not a hopeless struggle to try.

I'm not sure why you think everyone here is talking about young adults. The original article wasn't about people just starting out in life, but people in general. I am not talking about things that happened a long time ago, I am talking about within the last four years.

It's complete and utter nonsense that, to some degree, differences in financial situations are based on choices? People's choices in life have zero affect on their long term finances? No one made a personal attack on your child. No one said "They're just making bad decisions". You're setting up a strawman here.

No, I mean that this exact situation happened in my extended family. Two families, same numbers of kids at the same ages, living in the same area, both single income, had similar incomes, family A dad had two years on family B dad career establishment, family B literally chose to live more frugally to get into a house and family A chose to eat out all the time, rent a much larger home, go on vacations. Which is truly fine. There is nothing wrong with having different priorities in life. They see it as enjoying their time now while their kids are still young and building memories, so taking their crew for interesting outings+eating out every weekend and going on a couple of family vacations per year is their priority right now, not making choices to try to ease their financial situation long term. I don't see a problem with that, but when they bemoan the impossible, unavoidable rising costs of living and how it's just not possible for a family to get ahead, get into their own home--I sympathize that rising costs stink and I'm not going to say anything else unless my opinion is directly asked for, but I'm not going to agree that it's just the inevitable forces of economics causing disparities here.

While I do agree no one should be looking down their noses at others, to some degree, those differences are based on choices. Not always. But the reason one family has a low-interest mortgage while another has ever-increasing rent might be because the first chose to forgo vacations, eating out, and renting a nicer, more spacious home while saving to get into a house (the situation of two branches of my family). The reason one family might have daycare costs for one and another has them for three is a choice. The reason another family has six kids and no childcare costs is because they chose when young to plan ahead and lived frugally with one spouse working to put the other through a higher degree before beginning to have children so that they could have a career that could support a family on one income. While many things outside our control do happen that affect our financial situations, many others are within our control.