2squared
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Posts posted by 2squared
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I'm not sure I understand the whole convert to a Roth IRA advice. I hear Suzie Orman and some others always repeat it but wouldn't it depend on your taxes now? I'm not particularly savy at this stuff though and would appreciate an explaination.
I figured if you were young, maybe in your 20's or early 30's and weren't at the peak earnings of your career it would make sense to pay the taxes now since you are in a lower tax bracket. If you were late 40's on up and were at the top of your personal career ladder and bringing in a decent amount of money you wouldn't want to pay the taxes now but rather wait until retirement. I know everybodies earning curves are different but in general it seems like you would pay the most taxes the decade or so before retirement.
This is the advice I’ve heard also. Since I live in a high personal income tax state, and we are a two earner household both in our 50s, the tax savings right now for us are very significant with a regular 401(k) when maxing out our contributions. Who knows where we will be living at retirement. If I was going to covert to a Roth, it would not be now with a high federal marginal tax rate and living in a high tax state.
On the other hand, I’ve encouraged my young adult son to do a Roth IRA every year since he started earning a paycheck. I know several parents who fund them for their 20 something children once they have enough earned income.
In retirement a best-case scenario would be to have some pre-tax (401k) and post-tax (Roth) income flows. However, you don't want to pay taxes at a higher rate now to avoid a lower rate in the future. If your income is higher now than it would be in retirement, you are usually better off investing in a pre-tax 401k. I would only convert an existing 401k to Roth IRA if you had an unusually low-income year. Paying the tax hit now on a conversion (and potentially pushing yourself into a higher tax bracket in the current year) to save future taxes wouldn't be a gamble I would take. A bird in the hand and all that jazz.
Generally employer 401k plans have higher expense ratios and less investment flexibility than a Vanguard rollover IRA. The one exception I know of is probably the government TSP.
When we had no tax liability, we contributed to Roth IRAs. Most of our earning years, though, we contribute to pre-tax 401k plans. Never give up a free employer match.
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Tackled some of those baskets of clean laundry today --- purged my towel collection... I know we now have 15 nice bath towels for the 5 of us. I kept just 8 "trash towels" for cleaning up messes, 4 upstairs and 4 downstairs, and purged out all the bad hand towels that were all worn, stained and tattered too and still have enough for 3 for each bathroom.
I am sure I have at least a dozen more towels about the house somewhere that haven't even been washed yet -- can't wait to purge those too. Also glad to finally get rid of the nice but smaller towels that have lived in the bath towel shelf, it was always awful to have one of those be the only clean one available after a shower. That won't be happening anymore!
Along with one sheet set per bed, we have one towel per person. Even with a 1:1 ratio, we have towels in the linen closet because my younger kids don't shower every day/night.
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I have seen such a thing. A law firm where I worked had such an employee. As long as she could produce the requested file or documents when the lawyers wanted it, they did not appear to care one jot how she organized it.
I would say business and legal documentation is 90%+ electronic now. Businesses don't store paper records....except maybe banks? The company I work for rents out our unused document storage space to a local bank.
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If someone is sick and we know it, they sleep on a 4x5 waterproof pad. We have two of these pads, and they were originally purchased for my bedwetters. I only have one bedwetter now, so he sleeps on one of the pads every night. The other pad lives in his closet.Practically speaking, what do you do when someone is sick and soils their sheets?
When the kids are little (11yo and under), the sick kid usually sleeps with a parent so we avoid most vomit messes. we haven't had any issues with vomit messes for the 13yo+ crowd.
Otherwise we just shift bodies around in the middle of the night and/or sleep on blankets until the sheet is washed. It really hasn't been as issue, even with a larger family. Not having extra sheets hasn't reduced our sleep hours in any way.
ETA: We live in MN so we do have extra blankets. Every bed has a blanket and a comforter plus we have lounge blankets...blankets are a necessity for us, extra sheets are not. :)
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O.k. this morning I emptied two of the baskets. I realized one reason I consistently drag my feet with putting away the sheets basket is that the sheets I don't need right away go on a top shelf it is hard for me to reach and standing on a chair means going to get a chair plus it is dangerous because of my damaged knee. I have decided to rearrange placement of the sheets not being used. I'm going to clear out a lower shelf and relocate those items.
Towels and clothes already got unloaded so at least that's done.
I got the dishes done last night as I had committed to. Yeah! Two nights in a row. So nice waking up to dishes already taken care of each morning.
When I wash sheets, I put them right back in the bed before bedtime. I save time by not folding, and I get the sheets put away every time.
I also save storage space since I don't need multiple sets of sheets with this method. Each bed has one set of sheets.
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Stay hourly and open a consulting business on the side. Absolutely do not move to a salary position!!!!!!!!
When they need his skills, offer them the option to pay him overtime or to get a bid from him a a consultant.
To have a business, you usually need more than one client, Have him start offering occasional bids to other companies, just so he can legally work as a consultant. Do mind the 'do not compete' clauses in any contract he has signed for his employer.
One of three things will happen:
1. He will find his consulting business more than makes up for the difference in wages.
2. His employer will grumble and threaten about overtime, but still pay it. My employer screams about 'no overtime' but I have almost 200 hours of OT this year because no one wants to work for them (lower than market wages), so they are forced to pay me OT to keep it up and running. I have More OT than any other year I have worked for the same company (21 years).
3. They will pay his consulting fees because it comes out of a different budget and while it makes no real sense to pay him as a consultant instead of an employee, it does when you have a money in one budget and not in the other.
I wouldn't play this game in a one-income family. If the business doesn't value his skills now, there's a high chance they aren't going to come running to him as a consultant. And....what do you do while you wait for them to figure out they want not just those skills, but those skills from this provider? If you have savings to cover that time period and a desire to be self-employed, it's worth a gamble. If not, I wouldn't make this my plan B.
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While looking at these four categories seems reasonable, I would sit down with your dh and examine every line of the budget. My guess is other areas can/should be cut down as well. Maybe start with your new income at the top of the page and subtract expenses in priority order, discussing each one and possiblities for reduction as you go. When you run out of money at the bottom, everything not funded gets cut. It'll be a difficult discussion, but sounds like it needs to be done. You could talk about what a bare bones grocery budget looks like as you determine how to fund it. Same with gifts. Some gifts will make the list, but which ones and at what funding level?
If you have 5 phones at $200/month, that seems like an expense that can be significantly cut. I see a lot of people with basic cell plans for many lines for under $100/month. I'm sure other expenditures should be evaluated in a similar way.
FWIW, your spending is in line with ours for our family of 7. If you don't have the money, though, something will have to be cut.
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I think it's interesting to see opinions of people who are not that close to having DC making decisions about college. Everything is different where you are eye to eye with a situation.
Having some fluidity on handling the variety of circumstances DC throw at you is important. All kinds of things could happen.
I was a much better parent before I had kids.
This was me. Of course, back when I had different thoughts about college all mine were littles and I loved staying home homeschooling them. My heart broke when I had to go back to work FT. But, now I can see that change was probably for the better. My kids are thriving in their public/parochial schools, our income has tripled since then, and we can now afford the things I want for our bigger kids. We just started college savings when my olderest hit high school, and the decision for me to go back to work four years prior gives us financial flexibility to make room for college savings.
I used to think they would find a way to pay for their own way through college. Dh and I did it, and we didn't have room to save anyway. It was so far away; mothering and teaching my five littles were all-encompassing at the time. I hadn't looked into the actual cost of today's college or how limited funding options kids actually have. I also hadn't thought through how standard college degrees would become and that my kids will likely need masters for their college degrees to get the same financial lift I received from my undergrad degree. so much has changed since then. I look at my 15yo today and my thought processes about funding college are completely different than they were 5 or 10 years ago. .
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Our funding will be a mix of resources:
They earn their spending money
They take out subsidized loans (if needed)
1 year paid by dh's GI bill (first four)
1 year paid by grandparent savings (all five)
2 years paid by parents (first four)
3 years paid by parents (last one)
I am determined to not reduce lifestyle or retirement, so that means increasing income. We only have $7k saved so far, but dh is underemployed. He's taking a temporary assignment in 2018 which should allow us to add $40k of college savings next year. I expect him to continue earning at a higher rate after 2018, but anything can happen.
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Yeah, I get this I'm not stupid. I never said he would be sitting on his ass aftet retirement. He will just be more free to have a job that is more enjoyable without the pressure to provide as big an income. We have rental properties for additional income. Most people that retire there end up working security or something. Guys this is not what we are discussing. We are deciding whether or not I should expect my dh to devote 1-2 hours to his wife and kids on work days or not, not his retirement or if he needs a new job or not.
Who is handling the added work of the rental properties - you or him?
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With an oct bday, I think you will find he is closer to the middle of his grade rather than on the older side.
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I have two boys with sep and oct bdays. My other three have March and April birthdays. My fall birthday kids have a lot of kids older than them in their class. My spring bday kids all have kids more than a year older than them in their classes.
Being older in a class is a clear benefit imo. My spring bday boy is gifted. Academics at school bore him no matter which class he is in (as an 8th grader he is in some 9th grade classes), so he has to find challenge in other ways. This would be his fate whether we had grade skipped him or held him back.
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We are huge wooden Thomas fans. My oldest ds played with them for years. mixing other brand or off-brand didn't work for him b/c they just didn't fit together well enough. The trains wouldn't run smoothly with other track, so watch for that.
I am keeping our extensive collection of Thomas trains forever. My memories of the hours oldest ds would make tracks are priceless. Those tracks spanned rooms. He was amazing with them!
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Yes, and that plan would have had to start more than three weeks before birth, which apparently hadn't happened.The bolded was what I was talking about. If she hadn't gone anywhere else prior to giving birth and made a plan, CPS would have been involved and she would have had no say.
Once born, CPS would be involved and the mother wouldn't have a say in anything. She may offer up her thoughts like any other citizen at that point, but she gave up her opportunity to impact the result by not coming up with a solution before birth.
Also, in our state, once the courts have severed your parental rights with a child, CPS will automatically take future children as well. ** My dh works with these situations, and they are beyond terrible. A very, very low percentage (nearing 0%) is drug addicted parents are able to turn their lives around enough to keep their children once the children have been placed in foster care. The real tragedy here is the children, and prefer laws and procedures that protect their rights over the parental rights. My dh is devastated every time his clients lose their kids, but it's always a better situation for the kids and the parents have had numerous opportunities to change the outcome. The kids don't have five, ten, twenty years to wait.
**involuntarily. If parental rights are terminated voluntarily, then future children are not taken automatically.
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If your boys are 16 and 17, I would wait until they are out of high school to build. It'll be a stressful period for everyone, and I would prefer to make the last year or two at home filled with family memories and closeness rather than the stress of moving and building a house. Seems like you only have a year, maybe two until they graduate. If this were my choice, I would table the entire thing until we moved into the next season of our lives since it is right around the corner anyway.
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My sons stutter is tripped by anxiety. Asking him to repeat what he says is the opposite of what should be done. When he is in stuttering mode, we slow our pace of conversation down.
When my son stutters, he isn't making a mistake that needs to be corrected. He is feeling stressed and his speech gets disconnected. He knows what he wants to say, but he can't get it out fluently. That's why slowing the pace down is important - it gives him time to use his speech therapy strategies.
Like others have posted, his stutter isnt noticeable now at 13yo. I hear it when he goes through stressful periods, but few people would be able to identify him as a stutterer unless they spend significant time with him. Even then, they may only notice it subconsciously.
My son was 65% disfluent at his worst in 2nd/3rd grade. He will always have a stutter, but he is 95%+ fluent most days now. I remember how scared I was for him, and I am so very, very glad to be on this side of that issue. I probably should mention that we also found meds to help with his anxiety. Speech therapy and meds were a successful combination.
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I definitely discuss how much we make with my teens. As they make college and career decisions, I want them to understand how far money goes as far as supporting their desired lifestyles. We go through our budget and talk real numbers. We also talk about other careers and income possibilities with those opportunities.
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We moved when my oldest was 11yo, so she started sixth grade in a new town. It was terrible for her, not great for my 4th grader, and fine for the younger three. My oldest is in 10th grade now, and has finally recovered. We moved her schools in 7th grade to try to improve her situation, and that did help. She spent the last two summers mostly alone at home recovering from her school years.
4th grade was OK for my ds, but 5th and 6th got worse and worse. We moved his school this year, and he is recovering as well. I think he will be back on track by the end of the school year.
We have some great job opportunities which would require us to move again, but we are passing in them. It's not worth it now that everyone is mentally healthy again.
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You're right of course that it's not just the phones. The phones do not cause kids' poor decisions that lead to bad consequences; they just open their choices for far more wide-reaching and long-lasting consequences, or for others to blackmail and exploit them with their childish indiscretion, or lure them into addictive behavior.
Yes, social media can have wider-reaching and longer-lasting consequences. From what my dh deals with at work, his clients have the same struggles with phones as adults as the teens do. Their social situations are so different than what my family lives that I can't compare their decision making and choices with the decision making and choices my family makes. I also can't view choices I make for my kids through that lens.
If my kids start going down a path that would mirror that of dh's clients, then we will radically alter course, but their phones won't be my primary concern. We would have some major lifestyle/decision making issues to deal with first.
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Dh has met so many teens through his work as a D.A. whose lives have been destroyed, starting out with smart phones. It is just so common and so tragic. The parents usually think they are supervising things closely enough, but are not really able to keep up with all of the ways that things can get through. We will not be allowing our kids to have smart phones before adulthood. We'll probably do some kind of dumb phone for our teens, but frankly I've got some hesitancy about not just internet access and apps, but anything with a camera in it.
Are you sure the cause of these misfortunes are the phones and not other issues in the teens' lives? Are these teens that otherwise wouldn't have any problems?
My dh has worked as as county attorney and is currently a public defender. Phones are not the cause of the issues his clients face. His clients do dumb things with social media and phones, but they would be doing similar dumb things without phones. Social media and phones just provide evidence of the dumb choices.
My dh likes to say, "What you call Facebook, I call evidence." I don't know why his clients put evidence of their crimes on
facebook and other social media sites, but they do.
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My two oldest received smart phones at 12yo, and I assume the others will wait that long as well. The phones are on our family plan, and we share data. I have limitations on each person's individual data use, and we rarely need extra data since wifi is so prevalent.
My younger three have iPods with wifi access.
We don't have any restrictions on use other than "don't do dumb things" and some age restrictions for the younger kids. For instance, my 7yo has Snapchat, but he is only allowed to friend/snap our immediate family. My 9yo and 11yos love musical.ly, but they have private accounts. My younger three spend most of their online time interacting together. All five of them watch out for each other and let me know whenever a sib needs guidance.
We talk a lot about behaviors and social media risk. They share what they do online and ask for guidance a lot. I prefer to give them access now and guide them through as teens and teens.
I love group texting with my kids and snap chatting them. I don't love all the Minecraft talk, but that's only because I'm not into it. It bores me.
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Anyone have one of these? We sat on one at our Children's Museum and loved it. I'm ordering one for our house, and I can't decide which color. Any recommendations? I prefer the orange, but I'm worried it's too light and will show dirt too easily.
Anyone have a negative review?
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Group text isn't just for adult kids. I group txt my clan. The 7yo doesn't keep up yet, but It's been hr at fothe communicating with the older four. Life is busy, and group text helps keep us connected at all ages.
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Are you working? If not, a part time job would offset the increased costs and slow you to save for retirement.
I would work more before I would go without health insurance or retirement savings.
Teenaged psychology, attachment, and expectations
in The Chat Board
Posted
I would not mistake time together as closeness. You aren't automatically attached to the people you spend the most time with.
My 15yo spends much more time with her boyfriend and friends than she does with me, but she is more attached to me than she is to them. We have a strong bond that isn't dependent on face time. She regularly comes to me for advice and to share her confidences, and I know for a fact she doesn't share the same things with her friends. Your bond should be able to weather time apart by the time they are teens.
My 13yo is definitely pulling away from his mom, but he always circles back to me when he is struggling. We don't spend much time face time together right now with our busy schedules, but we are still very close and attached.
I have to also say that texting helps keep me close to my kids. We text each other about little and big things throughout the day (me at work, them at school). I love that they feel comfortable texting me when they need extra support.