Also, oldest dd has decided on her own that she wants to take a break from gymnastics this summer, and the boys are done with baseball now, so I’m having second dd also take a break from horseback riding for this month. So that is saving us some expense and giving us some more time to get ready for the move. And I’ve been pretty successful with working on keeping our electric bill down so far this summer.

We are buying a house this month. Our first, ever. (Eeeek!) All of our mortgage, taxes, insurance, etc. will come out to about what a same-sized rental house without its big yard does in our area. So our monthly budget won’t be much different, but things are tight this month with closing and moving costs. One good thing is that we will have over a week between the closing and the end of our rental contract to move everything in-town, so this move will be more relaxed than any I have ever done before. I am focusing on organizing and decluttering, and on trying to save some money on the household budget this month to help with moving costs. I’ve been meal planning and cooking from scratch and trying to use up the stuff in the freezer. I have the groceries for the rest of the week, and have spent $132 this month.

I used to have boxes and boxes sorted by age and gender, but eventually we couldn’t afford the space any more. That, and I finally admitted to myself that we weren’t looking like having the big family of stair-stepped kids I’d always imagined. Now my 2 girls and 2 boys are each only one size away from their same-gender sibling, so the clothes go directly into either the younger sibling’s drawer, the trash, or to donate when it is time to move up sizes. I only store 1 box of baby items for sentimental value, 1 box of things I’ve found for cheap but the kids haven’t quite grown into yet, and one box of seasonal things like coats and soccer cleats. It is so much simpler.

Welcome! I would suggest reading The Well Trained Mind (the book). Even if you decide to go with different materials or methods than the ones suggested, it’s great for getting an idea of where to start and how to plan, etc.

We found that the best rates we could find for consolidating dh’s law school loans were with SoFi.com. They also were very easy to work with, unlike some of the other lenders we dealt with. And it would be a good opportunity to get off the income-dependent payment plan so you can know what is coming and plan accordingly. As a bonus, if you go there from the link on mrmoneymustache.com, you will get $300 which you can apply to your principal. I’m sorry if this is overstepping, as you didn’t ask for advice, but have you considered throwing all the inheritance money you set aside for the kids’ college at the principal? Future interest you will not have to pay on paid-off principal debt is the surest return on any investment in existence, far more than interest that college savings might earn.

Well, one loan for dh’s law school was held by a bank that, when we paid more than the minimum, applied the extra towards future interest. I saw they had done this, and after a very long, complicated information chase by phone, learned that we had to send it in as a separate check with “Principal Only” written on it to have them apply it to the principal. Add to that interest compounding from his time in school and a few unemployed (deferred) years coming out of school into the recession, and if I hadn’t been paying very close attention to our loan statements, we totally could have wound up with something like the numbers in the OP.

I do think it’s harder, but probably not that much harder. My dd slowed down some, but from 4-8 weeks to over half a year is a pretty dramatic change. It sounds like your ds has great mental problem solving skills, but he has finally hit the point where the questions are too complex to keep all the parts straight in his head, and so his aversion to writing his work out is inhibiting his progress. This doesn’t sound so much like an ADHD or EF issue as a smart kid struggling with actually needing skills and tools others have needed for a while.

I agree with you, and only find it surprising when I have had feminists try to tell me that I must be a feminist, too, because I am for equal rights and opportunities for both genders.

Interesting. Honestly, it didn’t even occur to me that you meant people could have no stance on abortion whatsoever. I don’t think I have ever known an adult in this country to evince no feelings on the morality of this issue when it came up. And especially not someone who was actively involved in other human rights issues. My oversight, I guess.

She didn’t claim you said feminists can’t be against abortion for themselves, she claimed you said people who are against abortion access for women can’t be feminists. And you did. You said feminists could be against abortion for themselves, but not against abortion for others/in general.

I also have a sister who has tried to tell me I have to be a feminist if I believe in equal gender rights and opportunities. If that were what the modern feminist movement were primarily advocating for in our country, I would be—but there is no way I’m associating myself with a political movement whose members have been the most rude and disparaging of my life choices of anyone I’ve ever met, which endorses social and political views I don’t share, and which has rejected my views on the most basic question of morality we face today. https://womenintheworld.com/2017/01/17/organizers-of-the-womens-march-remove-pro-life-group-from-list-of-partners/

A few years ago when we thought we might be moving back to San Diego I was looking into signing my kids up with a charter there, and at first I was excited to see that they provided more than twice the funds my kids were getting from our charter here—until I started looking at extracurriculars there, and found it would cover close to the same or a little less there than ours does here. All the kids’ activities just cost so much more there. Our charter here in Oregon does some fun, non-educational activities like pizza parties and trips to water parks that are organized by the regional managers, and families can choose to use school funds to participate in these. But activities that families plan individually must be specifically educational. I know our Educational Specialist with the school feels bad that we don’t get to participate in these activities, as we live too far away, but I don’t. We are so blessed to be able to access some of the public education funding to allow our kids to learn things I otherwise couldn’t teach them on my own. And we are happy that the balance of the public funds that would be allowed to my kids if they were in public school are going to help a small, previously struggling public school district thrive. It’s a win-win situation. I don’t understand the pushback against public funding covering educational activities that aren’t available in public schools. Isn’t the whole push for school choice that is fueling the explosion of charter schools and homeschooling based on the idea that there might be better ways to allocate resources to provide the best education possible than what is available in normal public schools? If you can apply the same resources to get either a traditional P.E. class, or a high-interest physical activity that builds strength and skill over time, how is it a better option to provide the basic P.E? And if you can apply fewer public resources by leveraging your own time and efforts to get more high quality, high interest educational opportunities for your kid, all the better! No one in public school has lost anything for having someone else use their time to apply public funds more effectively than a ps can. I am, however, not comfortable with the idea of public education funds paying for Disneyland tickets. Maybe a specific educational class located on the grounds, but not a trip to the theme park.

But they do, they just call them “donations” (at least where my family lives). As in, “We need everyone to give a $100 donation for supplies for art class.” or “Everyone running in cross country needs to donate $250.” Students who don’t pay aren’t kicked out of the class or extracurricular, but the things that the “donations” cover won’t happen—no supplies so they’re just doing pencil drawings all term, or no uniforms and meets. Which means they’re not going to be passing AP Studio Art or competing in cross country without those “donations”. (They do ask for enough to cover a few students with financial need.)

What a good idea! He does work closely with the police officers, but I don’t know if they have a similar setup here. It’s not that he is opposed to counseling, but he is busy, and he is having a better week this week. I think the next time it is weighing him down, I will bring it up and see if it’s time then.

No plans on that yet. We’ll see.

Thanks, all. Just a little update: Dh is still absolutely unwilling to consider taking the promotion in our old town, over his concern for my SAD. He agrees that this career is not going to work long-term anymore. After talking through all the different options, he has decided that he wants to tough it out in this job for the next 2 to 3 years while actively pursuing his writing in that time in an effort to turn that into an income source. I don’t know if anything will come of it, but in the meantime he will be working on something that he enjoys and that gives him a reprieve from the darker stuff he deals with, I will be trying to manage our finances so as to get us ready for a change, and by then he will have logged ten years on the pension program, which will give us 1/3 or 2/5 of the benefits if he stayed in. Not as solid of steps as I might have liked, but something.

Yes, they’re elected, so attorneys from within the county generally get the job, but not always.

I should look in to that. I’m not sure where the closest law school is. Both are in the same state, but the old job was in typical PNW weather, and now we live in the little inland slice of drier, less temperate climate on the other side of the state.

That’s another good one to add to the list.

Thanks, these are helpful. It’s good to know that switching to private law is pretty common. All of these seem like good options. The practical classes would be right up his alley if he were to go into teaching. The article linked up thread sounded like dh would have absolutely no chance of becoming a law professor, as he has not been working towards that in publishing and cultivating contacts since he was still a student, and attended a good-but-not-top-tier law school because it offered him a half scholarship. Honestly, it explained a lot about why dh’s law professors in school were such boring and uninspiring teachers, if they are generally hired for prestige and connections and not for actual teaching ability. It looks like clinical professor jobs are also advertised in the AALS placement bulletin from Lawyer&Mom’s link.

Oh, sorry. It was late, and I missunderstood. That is something it’s possible to watch for, but we live in the Pacific Northwest, so there are only a few sunnier counties in our state.

Yes, that’s how we got here. But it’s the same type of work wherever we go, and he hasn’t been willing to tell a boss he doesn’t want to take these cases any more.

I wonder how one goes about doing this? Food for thought. A good reminder. Thanks for the article!

Sure. I like small town life, and dh doesn’t mind it. Even when we lived in a small county, though, there were enough of these cases that he had at least one and usually several of them going most of the time. . Yes, it really is the reason. If he left though, they would hire another experienced attorney to take his place. (DDA3 or ADA). The way the office pay scale is structured, they get enough funding for one DDA3 or ADA experience-level hire, two or three DDA2s, and several DDA1s, aside from the county DA. So he has more experience than the other attorneys, but if he left they would be able to replace him with another more experienced attorney. He has gone into trial ill before, because he was worried the other attorneys weren’t up to a difficult trial even with his detailed notes, or because he knew a frightened child whose confidence he’d spent months building up probably wouldn’t be able to go through with testifying if a stranger was there instead of him.. He has thrown up in court because he went to trial sick. He was fuming on our recent trip when he heard that another attorney had dismissed a case he had done all the prep work for and left detailed instructions on, because the other attorney didn’t think he could get the conviction.

Thank you very much! Do you know if it makes a difference where you got your education and experience for where law professors teach? Would it be easier to get a job teaching in the state where he is a member of the bar?