Today I had a large salad and some tuna at lunch, no breakfast. For supper, I used half a chicken breast to make chicken ala king. I haven't made that in years. It was loaded with veggies. The biscuits were light. Both of us are trying to eat light. We are going on vacation from July 14-23. We do not plan on worrying too much about how we are eating, and just have a relaxing time. I will be cooking since we have a house. However, I also do not want to cook for every meal while we are gone, and neither does Mark. So there is going to be some restaurant food, and convenience breakfast. It is what it is. I need some down time from worrying about food, food prep, cook, and clean up.

286???? Faint. Be safe!

It has been really bad today. We have the air conditioner running to filter that air, and wear masks outdoors. Lewis doesn't feel well, poor dog. I haven't found a way to make him keep something over his snout to help with breathing. Every time he goes out he has a sneezing spell and his eyes water. I feel so sad because I can't explain to him why this is happening, and he refuses to use a puppy pad so that he doesn't have to go out. Mark and I have headaches tonight despite running the air. We did go put a new filter in and hope that will begin helping. How are you all! I hope everyone is okay and not suffering.

This is adorable!

Can each of the other adults make a meal in their off time that goes into the freezer? This way they can do it at non meal times, and then someone else gets it out to thaw, and you can toss it in the oven when you get home. Now would be a great time to have lasagna and what not in the freezer, then keep bags of salad mix and pre chopped veg around. Everyone gets a serving of the freezer entree and makes themselves a nice salad. Frozen bread sticks, steam able bags of veg. Bowl of fresh fruit. Keep it simple, and then with the frozen casseroles and what not, meal time is very very easy. Beef and veggie stew, fried rice with chicken and veg, taco meat and beans, enchilada casserole, lots of options they might be able to tackle without taking up a huge amount of time in their spare moments.

Awwwwwww!!!

This is happening all over. I really worry for young people. How can they compete with this?

As far as writing, my eldest son graduated with a degree in English and Creative Writing. He is not making great money, but he is doing what makes him happy. He is an editor, work from home. But, he was able to get his foot in the door in that industry right away post college because he was able to be the student editor of more than one academic journal at his college, and was already a published author with a major publisher by the time he graduated. In addition, he had numerous academic papers published in peer reviewed journals around the country prior to graduating. He began that trajectory, really pushed forward, from the beginning because he knew his heart's desire was not a very high paying or marketable degree. I don't know what integrative studies is. I do know a couple of international studies majors who are studying at least one foreign language in order to increase their chances of employment.

Me to. The other adults minus the special needs adult have jobs and can contribute. So regardless of their circumstances, I would assign each one a night per week, and if it is take out they bring home, then so be it. They are capable of grabbing a deli platter and salads on the way home. If they lived alone, they would have to deal with feeding themselves even if it wasn't convenient or easy.

Oh my gosh! Imagine when the Road Runner in Looney Tunes does that zip zip thingy and shoots off at mach speed. That would be me!!!!

So I did some checking. That 20% threshold is what our local banks want from a buyer who does not meet certain criteria. The criteria for only 10% down is a credit rating of 750 or above, 10 years of work history, and a mortgage payment that is 25% of take home pay. This also insures a competitive interest rate. Most of our banks are credit unions and privately owned banks. We don't have much out here for big corporate owned banks so maybe that has something to do with it. Many of you have different experiences because you live in or near large cities with corporate banks, lots of money to blow, and willing to take more risk. I can totally see how our rural banks probably function quite differently. I did some checking in our bachelor duo's lower COL city. The rates and thresholds online were 10% down and credit ratings around 725 and 5 years work history, some would go up to 33% of take home for the payment, and interest rates were okay at that threshold but not competitive. For them, a home in a stable neighborhood and decent school district would run for about 1200 sq ft, food shape but probably needing cosmetic work, and including appliances would be $300,000. Zillow estimated the payment at over $2000 a month, 10% down, and around $40,000 due at closing. Assuming a 25 year old graduated in four years - not actually very common as most colleges have an average 5 year sometimes 6 year graduation rate, the young adult only has 3 years work experience post college, and 3 years of paying down student loans. I am not sure it is reasonable to think very many of them can save $40,000 in that time frame, and also achieve at least 725 in credit rating. I also did some other checking in 1980, the ration of home price to median income was 4.86. Today it is 7.79. That is a very significant increase which creates a bigger hurdle since wages have not kept up with inflation. I wish some of the home ownership stats were broken down by regions, cost of living, etc. General medians and averages for the entire US or even at the statewide level aren't as helpful as I'd like. In my area there are absolutely no banks loaning at 3-5% down. Not happening even if the credit rating is perfect.

If is not mathematically possible for me to agree with this more than 100% except it feels like I can agree with this x1000! 😁

They are 25 year olds who are not from low to middle middle class. They are the kids whose parents have enough savings to gift them the down payment on a house which in our area for a young adult without years of work history means the bank wants 20% or more down in order to get a decent interest rate, or were even gifted a house. The banks here are not friendly to people with less than ten years solid work history, McD's employment does not count! I am fairly convinced that these 25 year olds with houses have had the privilege of parents who had the means and willingness to help them. Not all of them by any stretch, but quite a few. Some kids have definitely inherited them, and of course the wealthy can afford to give houses away as well. Our two bachelor sons could easily afford a mortgage in their low COL city and surrounding area. Their emergency savings is almost large enough now for 10% down, and combined income would push them over the six figure threshold. But they both have only been at their current jobs less that two years. Banks would not loan to them anyway. The banks here a quite conservative and like traditional situations, married couples with dual income, not bachelors sharing expenses. They don't even qualify for a car loan without a co-signer. That said, they are not interested in being tied to a house, maintenance, repairs, etc. They are free spirits in that regard. Of course with the banking thing, that can be a regional. I can imagine there may be other areas in which banks are more willing to take a risk on young workers, single people who can't pay cash for a house, etc. Urban.org states that among millennials, home ownership for those whose parents have low income, low assets, is very low something like 14% if memory serves. For those whose parents had higher assets and at least middle class income, that number jumps to 36%, so slightly over one third. But upper middle class and wealthy parents produce kids who have very very high home ownership rates. The Boomer home ownership rate was 60%. 77% of Silent Gen are/were home owners. This roads me to believe that 25 year olds, back in the day, were not home owners much. It was something attained later, again saving up for down payments and getting far enough into employment to feel secure taking the risk. GenZ may yet get there. However, 60% of Boomers owned houses by this same time, 30-40 years of age, that Millennials own which is down 8%. So that tend is down at least according to some sites I looked at, urban.org being one place for statistics. What is really going to kick Gen Z and younger Millennials square in the butt is of course the gobbling up of homes, the bidding of them to the moon and back by investors, vacation rental companies, developers looking to level single family homes and put up luxury housing and multifamily rentals. Side rant. So houses in our area are not expensive. They are not worth a lot, and do not build equity because no employment out here that pays worth a darn. Property taxes are low because the state equalized value is low because the market value is low. Well wouldn't you know it, some dingdongs from Detroit came up here and wanted to buy a place "in nature", and didn't care what they paid for it. The asking price was $125,000 for the place they bought, but someone had already offered $122,000. The sellers had not yet responded to that offer, and their downstate dingaling realtor told them to make a guargantuan bid because they could afford it, and that would knock out the competition. They offered $250,000.00 sigh. Of course the sellers took it. Who wouldn't! But because of that, the entire township had their property taxes reavaluated based on that one sale. One sale. That's it. Every single tax bill was doubled. Every one of them. Some folks practically rioted at the township board meeting, but it turns out that in such a small population 900 people/568 households it is legal to base property values on a single home sale within the township since it was the only recent sale prior to them doing the tax valuation reassessments. Now the dingdongs are mad about the smell of manure (well DUH, you moved to an area with several dairy farms and is largely agricultural), and they don't like the deer because they hit one with their car. They are mad as snot that they can't sell their place for what they have into it. The people who originally want that house and two acres still haven't purchased another place and told them at that meeting that they would offer $122,000.00 for it. 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 Mark was there for the conversation, and said he snort laughed loud enough they heard him. Sometimes a dingdong really ruins it for all the other people. Now we are paying property tax that is bizarrely out of line with what this house is actually worth. I can only imagine how bad it is for people who live in areas where vacation companies have been bidding like a game of high stakes poker.

Last I knew, the NSA was hiring math majors straight out of college. It is math deciding work. Very theoretical. Information theory, cryptology. Maybe that would be an option.

And due to the knew retirement rules with many uniformed positions, that isn't an avenue anymore. I have degrees in piano performance and music education. What am I doing now? Pursuing and aerospace.engineering degree. Good thing I do like math and science, and have the aptitude. I know my son with the anthropology/archaeology degree will never make any money at all. He will do what he loves, and support himself. He is currently comfortable because he and his engineer younger brother share an apartment and expenses. He will always need a roommate or live with a relative and pay rent to them or something similar. He would like to have a PHD, but it isn't like academia pays well, and Indiana Jones may have had an adventurous life, but Indy doesn't make money in real life. If ds is content not having a family of his own, and always rooming in, he will be okay. But if not, he is going to be forced into some sort of STEM direction. He showed an aptitude for forensics when he took his forensic anthro class, and took part in a team that did actually provide new information to LEO's which allowed them to find the murderer in a cold case. So that was pretty cool. He just hasn't so far shown an inclination to actually go to grad school for that specifically. We will see. Our society is going to get pretty dystopian if decide that there is no value at all in the humanities. But that is what happens in a country that functions as an oligarchy with a wild wild west attitude towards and worship of capitalism leaving the entire direction for the nation in the hands of billionaires. They don't give a damn. If they want to attend the theaters, they can just fly to Europe on their private jets. If they want a gallery, they will go off continent and buy them. They don't give a crap if we the people have any access to these things much less that we might want to participate in the production of it.

It is raining again. Good for us, good for our agricultural community, and much needed to keep Great Lakes levels up. But I am also sad because the grass is definitely going to grow, and that means mowing. We really need to plant o get rid of the grass and get a low growing ground cover or just cover everything but a few walkways and a spot for the dog with gardens.

We live rural. They always try to come inside in the fall as it gets cold. Traps and a cat, and eventually they get taken care of. But you could call and exterminator. They bait with some sort of poison that mummified them so they don't smell when they die. Thankfully out cat hunts. She just cannot abide by them or more accurately, she thinks if she finds one, it is a toy that she is meant to play very, very hard with so the play kills them. She doesn't have any intention of actually eating one! Sorry about that! Since you really want to get the house on the market, I think it might be worth it to call the exterminator.

This is for the very oldest of GenZ. The predictions I have seen for later GenZ and for Gen Alpha is a very low rate of home ownership due to so much housing being bought up for AirBnB/Vrbo etc., foreign investment in property, and the lack of housing for the middle class driving prices so high while banks remain conservative about whom they will loan to thus making mortgages out of reach for the next wave of young adults who would normally begin looking at home ownership options. That said, I think a segment of them do not consider home ownership to even be a smart choice because they do not expect the kinds of employment stability that previous generations seemed to enjoy. Moving frequently to follow jobs means they can't hold onto a home long enough to break even. Of course it is a lot of speculation since we don't know for sure how it will play out.

This is my experience. They do not expect to own a home, take the kinds of family vacations many of the middle class used to take, afford to have children, or afford very many amenities. They do expect to go bankrupt from their medical bills at some point, and work until they die because they expect a huge raise in how much they have to pay into social security to subsidize the retirees now, and then get old and sick and be told there is no social security for them. Nine of our bachelor sons' friends are vanlife working remote while they pay off their student loans. It isn't fun. Sure, for a while, and especially when not working and able to "see the sights", but looking at doing that for years and years, not great at all. But it is super cheap living because they stay SW on federal lands, dispersed camping, and have composting toilets. It is a hard lifestyle. But they are paying off their student loans rapidly, and then will begin banking serious savings and start investments. I know there are entitled y/a out there who think they should be comfortable, have toys, and have high salaries and benefits straight out of school. I just don't know any, and my own kids never ran with such a crowd. The crowd they are a part of look at the fascism, wild capitalism and greed, government corruption, and climate change combined with the insanity of our " healthcare system", and they don't have a rosy outlook about their future. They are voting and active this way in the hope of making change. As my one son says, "My vote isn't for bettering my world right now. That isn't even an option. My vote is in the hopes of making it better for my nephews' generation." I don't agree with taking any job just to get started if that job is in a HCOL area. The financial peril of doing that is very real. I have seen young adults do that, and not able to afford even healthy food to cook at home, and go without needed medical care because they cannot pay their deductible and copays to worse, uninsured, make too much money to qualify for medicaid, and have no walk in options that do not require payment on the spot for uninsured patients. It isn't the same world Gen X experienced leaving college/trade school to embark upon independent life.

I forgot to also say that our eldest son got a job out of college, BA English and Writing with minors in history and philosophy, as an editor. He works remote and lives in a low COL. Editing isn't a high paying job. He gets $55,000 a year and benefits but the health insurance is kind of expensive in my opinion for how high the deductible and out of pocket is. The only reason he got the job was that he was the editor of more than one journal for his college which netted amazing references plus a lot of experience, and by the time he graduated, had 14 academic papers published in peer reviewed journals that weren't his college's publications, and had just accepted a contract on a book he finished his senior year. It was enough to get him in the door. He has a lot of classmates who are really struggling to get work in the publishing industry. His partner works as a tech writer. She would like to eventually get some of her works published and give up the tech writing which she finds boring. But it pays well. Much better than ds. They live comfortably because it is work remote so they can remain low COL, and they are dual income no kids. They would eventually like to have one child. I think that is quite a while away. Her job is contracts no benefits. His insurance does allow for domestic partners, but it is such a high deductible and out of pocket, that they need to save all of that plus salary since her time would be off without pay. I think they would prefer to put off thinking about the possibility of a child until she is secure in a position she likes better. Unless one of them writes some crazy popular, fantasy novel and makes a boatload of money, I think they will always need to live low COL and be dual income because English and Writing majors just do not make much money, at least not in the first half of their careers.

Boston? Small apartments aren't cheap. Small with 2 roommates could easily cost each of them $1200 a month not including utilities. When my niece graduated college and got her first job in NYC 20 years ago, she shared a very small, no frills apartment with two other girls, and they each paid $1000 a month. Take home will be roughly without $38,000 without health insurance. Assuming a $800 a month insurance which is pretty typical even if the employer makes a contribution, that leaves $16,400 for transportation, renter's insurance, a small 401K contribution, co-pays and deductibles on health insurance, personal care, clothing, food, and utilities or just over $1300 a month for ALL of that in a HCOL area. That is actually pretty tight, and no frills. And he has to find the roommates. Boston average one bedroom rent when I googled it was $2500 for not so great neighborhood. Food, as a percentage of income is much higher than when you and I were young adults and health insurance is out of sight. One big savings for him would be if he is young enough to remain on your insurance AND you are willing to pay that portion of the premium. This only works though if your insurance will cover him in Boston. If it is out of network, that is going to be very expensive. Two of our sons are employed in the same small city. Our electrical engineer got his first job three months after graduation, $65,000 a year, and will have decent raises. The COL in his city is WAY lower than Boston, by a huge amount. Our middle boy, BA in archaeology and anthropology, minor in history, and expert in several languages, is a museum archivist/historian/something or other...not sure exactly what all it entails. He only makes about $45,000, but he loves the work, and sharing expenses with his brother, they live very comfortably and save money. Both have emergency savings as well as 401K's while paying off their student loans. They only have the federal loans at low interest rates so that helps. Their rent on a 3 bedroom, 2 bath apartment in a decent neighborhood, walkable community, is $1350 a month. They are both still on our insurance and will stay that way until they turn 26, and then they will go on employer provided insurance so that will eat into their play money a bit. More so for the anthropologist. Engineering son will get enough pay raises by then that it will cover his insurance premium and then some. He won't feel it the same as his brother. I think your son is wise to be concerned about that wage in that city and how it plays out especially once he is no longer eligible for your insurance. Unfortunately for your son, if he doesn't get his master's degree and become a licensed psychologist, it is going to be tough for him to live in such an expensive area, and his job options even if lower COL will not be great. That isn't one of those super, marketable degrees.

LOL, Mark has a small, crazy heavy, ceramic grill for cold weather. He has been known to be outside lighting charcoal, hunched over this thing while snow flies when he is in the mood for a good hamburger mid winter. 😂 I am happy to have him make one for me, but I am NOT standing out in the howling wind and snow to do it.

Ya. We have pur backyard fire ring and a tripod for grilling. We like the smoke flavor! 😁 We laid our own pavers for a cheap patio for the table and chairs, and have one my dad's old ceramic fireplaces from his fireplace shop back in the late 70's. It was meant for indoor heating, but we use it outside. Looks just like a chiminea. It produces a lot of heat in the fall when we want to enjoy the crisp air, but it is chilly out. Our property has a 4ft tall, stone wall all the way around, and there is tall vegetation like lilacs growing all along it, so that side of the house has a lot of privacy. On the other side we only have two neighbors who can see, and due to the location of our outdoor area, they can't see much. We have a full acre and half here so they can't hear either. The pavers were not hard to lay. So that is one youtube DIY that the OP could do. Another thought I had was one of those gazebo kits that have fabric/canvas curtains because those could be closed of one had the neighbor lady from the show, "Bewitched". Aldi had a nice one for $169.99.

Michigan, Lake Huron: We have had a drop in temps. In the 70's the next three days, rain last night and again today which was desperately needed. High winds were predicted last night, and we didn't get them which is so nice. It is humid inside due to the moisture. The coming weekend, the temps go up about 5°. If it doesn't rain, it will be perfect sailing weather so we have high hopes. Our kids are coming home for sailing and kayaking.

I know how you feel. When Mark worked for HP, it was just about an annual event, "Hey, we are letting people go this week." It was never because they needed to downsize. the company made ungodly profits. It was always because they wanted their ungodly profits to be even more unholy by letting higher paid workers go, and then in a couple months, "Oops. We needed them!" Followed by hiring far less experienced people, and then shooting themselves in the foot because the newbies can't write good code that fast that ALSO meets all the criteria. We lived on eggshells for the 5 years he was with them! I am so thankful he is with a reliable employer now. Hugs! We went from having a mortgage to no mortgage during that last year of HP. We were just done worrying about it. So I get! I hope you find a place soon.