I keep checking to see if there are planning threads yet for my kids’ grades. I guess I need to just be the one to start. Ds will turn 12 this summer. He’s pretty lopsided in different areas. English-I don’t know. Possibly level 4 of MCT? My oldest went straight from MCT Voyage level to CLRC’s Writing and Composition class, which I was very happy with, but he is not ready for that yet. MCT level 4 doesn’t look as appealing to me as the earlier levels, and it would be nice if we had something that didn’t require as much direct teaching time from me, but I haven’t seen anything that looks better to me, yet. He will be finishing R&S spelling 6 and starting 7 and he will keep going with the Pictures in Cursive workbooks until he has completed them all. Math-Probably AOPS Intro to Number Theory with me and then AOPS Intro to Algebra B. I hope they come out with the self-paced class by then, but we’ll probably have to choose between the normal class or doing it from the book with me. Science-I’m leaning towards CLRC’s Earth Science and Astronomy class. He would love to also take AOPS’s Intro to Physics course, but I am worried it would be too much for him with the rest of his online course load. History-I don’t know, but maybe literature based utilizing OUP’s World in Ancient Times books. Foreign Language-BYU IS’s Spanish 041 class at a slow pace. Maybe light Latin, too? I keep wondering if I should just drop the idea of Latin. I always planned on having all the kids get some Latin before high school, and it was great for my oldest, but this math and science boy has a different trajectory. Computer Programming-AOPS Intermediate Programming with Python. Logic-Fallacy Detective I meant The Thinking Toolbox, we are doing Fallacy Detective right now. Music-cello Physical Education-judo ETA: I’d also like to add in some geography. If anyone has ideas for an interesting and easy-to-implement geography that doesn’t require much drawing, I’d be interested to hear.

We have a goal to set aside $12K per kid in a combined mission/marriage fund. If our kids choose to serve a mission for our church, we will help them with enough so that they only need to earn $3K of the cost themselves (so we would pay $6K for the girls and $9K for the boys, whose service time is longer). If they choose to get married, we will have the balance set aside to contribute (so $6K for the girls and $3K for the boys), and they can use it all towards a wedding reception or just towards getting started in life if they want. Early marriage is pretty common for us, so it's entirely possible we will be having kids serving missions and getting married in the same window that we are paying for 4 kids to start college within 5 years of each other, so it seemed prudent to set aside funds for these possible expenses. At the same time, we don't have a lot to contribute for fancy weddings, and backyard or no-cost church receptions are the norm for us, so hopefully 3 to 6 thousand will be enough to help.

I was in a car accident yesterday (in the newer, recently paid off car) and spent the night in the hospital. Baby and I are both fine, though for a while there afterwards it was looking like she was trying to come early. I have never caused an accident before. I’m so glad the other driver was okay. I still don’t understand how I didn’t see the other car. I wonder how much they are going to raise our rates over this.

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.