Annie G
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Posts posted by Annie G
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11 minutes ago, Heartstrings said:
I use straight talk and I think we can upgrade whenever we want to pay for a new one. I just got the iPhone 11 for $199. It’s not the newest version but it’s a big step up from my old 6! I think I pay $35 a month for unlimited talk/text and I think I get 5 gigs of data. I’ve only run out of data a few times and it’s easy to add more on those rare occasions.
My t-mobile will only be $35 a line and it includes unlimited data. I’m just irritated that it was supposed to be $30/month for life. I shouldn’t complain- that’s a good flat rate, w taxes and fees included.
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6 hours ago, Heartstrings said:
For me repairing the phone is seldom cost effective, but it’s been awhile since I tried. Having my husband replace an iPhone screen is $85-$100 and I can usually upgrade a few levels for $99 and several levels for $199.
That’s awesome- I miss the days when we could upgrade for free or at a steep discount. Our carrier only does good deals on new phones when you do things like add a line or upgrade plans or something. T mobile is cheap for us (though I am currently arguing w them because they have broken their promise on the $30 for life on a 55+ plan) but iPhones are expensive so replacing a battery is cost effective for us.
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He’s adorable!!!! Does he have someone to stay with while you’re on your big trip this summer? I bet your dog will be thrilled to have a playmate!
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3 minutes ago, fairfarmhand said:
I am very very much dreading the time when I don’t have lawn mowing teens. Housework is easy and doesn’t take much, but cutting alllllll that grass…we divide it by 4 people right now.
I added an additional layer of stupidity- when we retired we left the Midwest and moved back south, where the grass mowing season is longer and significantly hotter. And after 25 years of living on the IL/WI line, I am finding it difficult to tolerate the summer heat.
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20 minutes ago, SKL said:
Interesting point. This is one reason I'm not trying to get my teens to take over household matters that aren't directly related to their own actions. Because they may not always be around, and at some point I'll have to take it all back, LOL. I actually enjoy keeping house, so other than making sure the kids know how to do stuff for their benefit, I just keep on keeping on.
And I also agree that there's more housework when two people are home all day. More meals, more bathroom usage, more hobbies, possibly more health-related stuff.
Dh and I learned how to care for a house partly by doing chores as kids. That’s why we had our kids chip in with household chores- partly to be a contributing member of the family and partly to learn how to juggle responsibilities.
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I would grill before I left (or have dh do it if you won’t be back in time) and take grilled chicken, steak, and whatever else you like grilled, and use fresh produce to work around that. Honestly we’d be fine w chicken all week.
Slice it cold and have it on a big salad. Cut some strips and add it to pasta and jarred Alfredo. Slice and sauté zucchini and add sliced grilled chicken, pesto, and a package of fresh cooked filled pasta like tortellini. It’s a 15 minute meal, and delicious.
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4 minutes ago, Frances said:
. I think most working families couples manage to handle household responsibilities while still working, so retirement doesn’t change much there, just creates more free time. From my older retired friends, what I see is the maybe around the late 70s or so, household stuff takes more of their time due to slowly declining mental and physical capabilities.
We’re in our 60’s and retired and home care takes longer than it did when we worked. Partly because we’re not rushing like we did when we had full time jobs. I felt like I was always rushing to finish one task so I could move on to another. But for us, the sweet spot was when the kids were teens and really helped a lot with chores. As they moved out, dh and I took back those chores they’d been doing. Ds used to cut the grass, they all had kitchen duties and other chores. When I had teens in the house I rarely swept, ran the vacuum, dusted, etc. because they did it. Now it’s back to me and dh. The three bathrooms don’t get as dirty w just two of us but they still need to be cleaned, and for years I only did ours and the kids did their own.
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1 hour ago, DawnM said:
Oh, bunking in a dorm type situation would be problematic. I am going to reach out to a friend whose son worked in a national park and they allowed him to either live in the tents or put a trailer on the site for free to work there.
We don't have land to do that with. We live on over an acre but the city ordinances wouldn't allow that anywhere in our town.
I know people who are campground hosts and that might be something he could do. You check people in and out, be sure they set up in the assigned spot, tell people to stop making noise if there are complaints, on checkout you make sure they left the site clean, and there’s no money exchanging hands. All that is done online before they arrive. Campground hosts bring their rv. A small one might be easy enough for you to afford for him. I don’t recall whether the folks I know did it through a state park or national park, but that is easy to figure out. It’s not totally year round, but he might enjoy the winter break.
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My iphone 8 was bought in 2018 and though I have had the battery replaced, it’s still going strong. Will keep it as long as possible.
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What do you snack on? I’d start there. I usually just make a plate of assorted snack stuff. I snack on crackers w flavored cream cheese, sliced bell peppers and cherry tomatoes, fruit, nuts. I usually have olives, too. I always have cheese I can slice.
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Seems like there is a lot going on- not willing to learn to drive, wants to live away from home, doesn’t want a job where he has to do things a certain way. In our situation, we had to take things one step at a time. We had ds find a job- any job- to learn how to be an employee. He needed a lot of scaffolding to train him how to work, and it wasn’t always smooth. Two jobs each lasted under a week. But once he was ok with that, driving was next. And then we combined working and driving. Continued to add responsibilities. He’s about to turn 30 and will soon move away from home- to live with his sister and her husband as a way to transition into living on his own. Will it work? Who knows. Yes, he wanted to be on his own, independent. But it was just too much. He needs baby steps and scaffolding, and might always need that.
All that to say…do you feel that he’s ready to live away from you guys w no way to get places on his own and nobody there to help him adjust to a job? If you don’t, maybe finding any job nearby would be a good start. Unloading trucks at Target or Lowe’s, overnight grocery stocking, maybe a landscaper needs someone to do grunt work. They’re always hiring here.
It’s hard when they’re adults and intelligent, but still need us so much. hard on them, hard on us.-
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@*LC you’re right- family planning should be covered!
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Buy it.
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2 hours ago, Bootsie said:
I am curious as to what types of work people make sure the worker has insurance? Does anyone hire a neighborhood kid to walk the dog? A college student to house sit while on vacation? Someone to walk the dog? A local teen to rake leaves? Wash your car? Babysit your kids? A handy man to repair a fence? Do you make sure they all have insurance? Do you not pay any of them cash?
We verify insurance when we hire people to work on our property- painters, landscape work, roofing, etc. Anything where an accident could cause US to be on the hook for medical bills or errors and omissions costs. We learned that when we hired a roofer who had a legit business but let his worker’s comp and errors and omissions insurance lapse between when we hired him and he started the job weeks later.
Since then we always ask for proof, and several times have had to cancel work because there was no insurance. Our umbrella policy is there for our protection, but I’m not willing to take that risk.-
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1 hour ago, gardenmom5 said:
No. SS benefits are based on what you paid into SS during your working life. (there is a minimum you must have paid into SS to receive benefits) The more you paid, the more you get.
I thought she might be referring to the income limits you can earn while collecting SS before full retirement age. If you earn more than allowed, you lose $1 in SS benefit for every $2 you earn over the limit. $22,320 is this year’s limit.
But the landscaper could set up a business and run all the money through that and pay herself a salary that falls below the threshold if she wants to avoid losing any early SS she might be getting.-
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4 hours ago, SKL said:
I think you mentioned that he's recently out of work. Maybe she's used to having lots of "alone time" / non social / quiet time, and actually thrives on that. Having to be social all the time when that's not your nature or your experience is difficult.
This!
When dh (extrovert) retired, he couldn’t wait to spend all his time with me. I(introvert) had been raising kids and sometimes working outside the home since 1980. I wanted time alone, to do what I wanted. I was tired of making three meals a day for 40 years. Needless to say, retirement was an adjustment, very much like becoming newly married. We had to work through compromises, and now it’s fine. But yeah, the lady might just feel suffocated by too much time with him and not enough time to do what she wants on her own.-
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I’ve been burned by enough contractors to be wary of red flags like this.
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@Arcadia I live a few miles from where it was first found in the US, which explains why we have more than other areas. I’m pretty surprised they haven’t spread farther. When we moved back to GA five years ago the expectation was they’d be all up the eastern coast by now.
What annoys me is that they’re invasive and yet nobody seems to be trying to find a way to eradicate them. They just tell us to remove the webs around our bird feeders or birdbaths. So I walk around waving a long stick…yeah that doesn’t make me look crazy at all. And rejoice in November when they’re gone for the year. -
They’ve been here in Georgia for about 10 years. The most annoying part is the webs are STRONG. And can be large. We have joro sticks that we use to take the webs down. Last year they decided to build webs over my porch entrance, so every morning we had to remove them if we wanted to go out that way. They’re so strong and sticky that a long stick is a good tool.
The females are beautiful.
It’s so hit or miss here- last year they were manageable, likely due to way too much rain. But the year before there were hundreds just on our garage eaves alone.
Thankfully they aren’t aggressive, don’t come inside, and are usually several feet off the ground.
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Kareni, thanks for posting your latest creations! My sister’s birthday is later this month and we give handmade gifts. I’ve been struggling for ideas and these are perfect!!!
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4 minutes ago, Melissa in Australia said:
No
But I was the recipient of old fashioned bullying. Just about every day of primary school I was bullied, punched hit, or verbally abused as was my younger brother. Ah! the good old days! where kids mental health was destroyed for life.
Same. 6th and 7th grade were simply awful. And I had no idea what to do and ended up trying to be really nice to the girl, which in hindsight was so messed up. She picked on me because she found out I didn’t wear a bra or shave my legs (No need to at that age, at least for me) so she targeted me endlessly. She threatened and harassed and touched me in threatening ways.
I think her home life sucked. But that’s no reason to make my life miserable. 50 years later it still makes me mad!-
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My machine is back from routine cleaning, which takes about a month here. It’s ridiculous. Finished piecing the mystery block of the month, which I dislike because the fabric looks straight out of the 1980’s. Finished piecing an Edyta Sitar design to hang in my guest bathroom at Christmas. I do not like the background, and yes, I did cut according to directions. It makes me twitchy. And finally a bag from a pouch club that I’m in. I love making little bags, and this subscription is so fun. It comes with everything, and the finished bags make great gifts.
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Neither dh nor I have ever been in a fistfight. However, my first husband was in one that I witnessed and he started it.
1978, his mom brought McDonald’s home for dinner one night while I was there. Both my boyfriend and his brother had asked for large fries but only one large was in the bag, the rest were small. The brother took the fries and sat down to eat, not even noticing that the other fries weren’t also large. My boyfriend got mad and hauled off and punched his brother in the face for taking ‘his’ fries. Then it turned into a melee.
Yes, I still married the idiot. I was a naive 17 year old who thought I could fix him. Spoiler: I could not fix him.
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3 hours ago, SKL said:
The employers would like for the employees to not be afraid of taking on additional hours.
I think the employees' concerns are more about their kids' healthcare than their own. I think the law requires all family policies to cover a lot of kid stuff regardless of general deductibles, right?
I wish there was a practical way to look it up and advise employees, "even if you lose Medicaid eligibility, you will be eligible for ACA options that will cost much less than the added income you will earn."
It would be very helpful to be able to advise employees about health Insurance options. However it’s not straightforward. You need to know the family income/size/location in order to determine what policies are available. At tax time they have to reconcile what they estimated their income would be, and if their actual income is higher or lower, they either pay back the excess subsidy or get more refunded to them.
Here’s how complicated it can be- in our county, two couples buying the same policy can have not only two different premiums based on the subsidy their income qualifies them for, they can also have wildly different deductibles, copays, out of pocket expenses, and drug costs. ALL based on income.It can be difficult to get them to buy in to working 20 extra hours a week to earn an extra $100 after they pay their insurance premium. And you still don’t know if they would have any out of pocket expenses that can’t even be determined…who knows how often a person will need medical care.
I commend you for trying to help, but the ACA system isn’t set up to be easy to determine cost unless you actually start an application. It’s really ridiculous because people need to see what’s available! (They have an estimator but in our area it’s not accurate at all)
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Anyone help me plan this...
in The Chat Board
Posted
How in the world did you feed 5 people and cover accommodations for less than $150/day??? I think you’ll find that prices are much higher than that now. We’re seeing post Covid travel cost about twice what we spent in 2019.