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La Condessa

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Posts posted by La Condessa

    S/o Gift Budget

    in The Chat Board

    Posted · Edited by La Condessa

    We don't buy gifts for a lot of people, and we budget and bargain hunt throughout the year. 

    I do budget to the penny.  I don't think there's anything wrong with spending more on gifts, if you can afford it.  But I don't think it's necessary.

     

    ~$50 per kid on gifts at birthdays

    ~$50 for birthday parties (balloons and streamers, food-but I make it from scratch, so it's not too much for a small party, candy for a home-made pinata, home made party games)

     

    ~$100 per spouse for gifts for christmas/birthdays

     

    ~$30 per kid for gifts at Christmas--though this could be a little more, if you considered the chocolate orange for each kid's stocking ($2.50 each from the food budget) and the fabric for their xmas pjs (~$25 total from the clothing budget) to belong to this, it would be ~$40 per kid

     

    We don't do birthday gifts for extended relatives.  For Christmas, we generally do a card or handwritten note for our parents and something inexpensive but thoughtful like maybe a book (secondhand, but on a topic they'd like), or home canned blackberry syrup from the wild berries here, etc. for ~$30 total. We do some very simple xmas gifts for the younger nieces and nephews, about $5 to $10 per family, for two families of five kids each--like blank puzzles for them to color their own picture on or a blank board game for them to design themselves (super cheap when added to a school supply purchase from Bare Books), or craft supplies I know they will enjoy like a hat knitting loom and yarn. 

     

    We don't do gifts for our anniversary or Valentine's--though I do get $15 flowers at the former.  We spend ~$5 per kid on candy for easter baskets and ~$5 to $10 for dh's family "great pumpkin tradition at Halloween, plus ~$30 on costume materials (this is only for two kids' costumes' though, my Mom loves to sew fancy little girl dresses, so she makes halloween costumes for my girls each year and I make costumes for the boys).

     

    I buy things on sale for friends' birthday party gifts and stash them in a box in my closet, then when a party invite comes, I pull out the box and see what we have to pick from.  Used books still in great condition, interesting craft items like rainbow scratchboard, or generic brand lego minifigures are huge hits.  ~$50 per year.

     

    Total: $1165

     

    ETA: I knew I'd missed something.

    • Like 2

    s/o Do you change your behavior due to seemingly genetic odds?

    in The Chat Board

    Posted

    Women in my mother's family have terrible osteoporosis, so I have always tried to be careful about getting enough calcium.  Particularly when I was breastfeeding, and especially with my lactose-intolerant baby, for whom I had to find different dietary sources of calcium than my common ones.

     

    My great-grandmother lived to be 93, but she broke so many bones!  She broke a hip seven times.  Three times she broke a hip or ribs rolling over in bed.

    The budget categories that DH complains about most....

    in The Chat Board

    Posted · Edited by La Condessa

    There are 6 of us.  

     

    I budge $200/month for clothing for 6 of us (this includes shoes and I usually refuse to buy used or cheap brands because I value feet).

     

    $250/month I budget for gifts.  That is 4 kids for birthday and Christmas.  A good bit of extended family that we buy for too for Christmas and some for Birthday too.  We do not usually by gifts for each other.  

     

    $1100/month for food.  This is gluten free, dairy free which is painful sometimes.  We don't each much organic at all.  We limit meat to cheaper cuts.  I am picky about chicken though.  I buy the natural Springer Mountain farms chicken but I wait for it to be clearanced.

     

    $250/month for general household.  Toilet paper, cleaning products, office supplies, etc, etc.  

     

    $450/month for school.  Older two HS kiddos take DE at college and it is a great price but not super cheap, especially the textbooks and I can never seem to find them used.  I feel like this school rigs their textbooks so  you have to buy from them.  Youngest can still use most things hand me down.   He is still pretty cheap, haha.

     

    So here....I open myself up to judgement.  Is this unreasonable?  

     

    Since you're explicitly asking . . . Yes, those all seem really, really high to me (with the exception of the DE college costs, for which I have no frame of reference).

     

    I thought your food budget was really high (we just expanded ours to $700), but thought, well their kids are surely eating a lot more with their ages, and they have some special food needs, so I guess--but then I saw that you have a large separate category for household items.  $1350 per month just for food and household items.  Wowzer!

     

    You are spending twenty-four hundred dollars per year on clothes alone--and probably only two members of your family are still in the stage where they outgrow their clothes and need new before they actually need replacing.  What do you spend that all on?  Even if you like to buy expensive, name-brand shoes, shouldn't that translate into better wear, so that they last a long time and don't have to be bought as often?  If it doesn't, what's the point in buying them?  Do you have runners who actually need specialized footwear?

     

    And $3000 per year on gifts.  You are surely very generous people.  That is certainly an admirable trait, but I doubt that any loving family members would have trouble understanding if you are not free to be so materially generous at times when your finances are tighter.

    • Like 2

    Who pays for college?

    in The Chat Board

    Posted

    In regards to alternates to 4-year university post-high school:

     

    I'd been thinking about this thread and decided to look up the current costs of the university dh and I attended.  Far less than other private schools, as it is church-subsidized, but still an intimidating figure when multiplied times four years and then times four kids.  Then on a whim, I decided to look up the cost of a lutherie school.  (Obviously pretty silly, since he's just a tiny little guy, but my youngest has been telling us for the past year that he is going to be a violin maker when he grows up.)  Three years of lutherie school actually costs half again as much as four years of university!  

     

    I'm laughing at myself, imagining myself years from now hoping he will go with the more economical option of the four-year private university.  :)  

    Who pays for college?

    in The Chat Board

    Posted

    My kids are still quite young.  My dh and I hope to be able to share the cost with them when the time comes, as our parents did for us, but we are not as far along in our savings as I had hoped we would be by this point (ds2's health problems as an infant took all our savings plus a couple of years to dig back out of the debt).  I'd like to be able to give them the cost of their undergraduate tuition and let them cover their living expenses and books.  I'm also not sure how that would work if different kids choose schools with dramatically different costs.  Tuitions vary so widely between schools.  What amount do you all use in estimating what you need to save?

    Interesting article "How I made sure all 12 of my kids could pay for college themselves"

    in The Chat Board

    Posted · Edited by La Condessa

    I would love more ideas of practical ways to let kids work for things themselves for real results (as opposed to mommy-manufactured, I'll-give-you-money-for-doing-your-chores type work).  I think this type of work is more motivating and more confidence-building.  But it is also hard to come up with opportunities for, especially the younger the kids are.

     

     

    Paper routes used to be kids' work, but now they are done by adults in cars.  Ages for babysitting seem like they are creeping older.  I guess there are things like dog walking, if you live in an area where there is a call for that.

    • Like 2

    Interesting article "How I made sure all 12 of my kids could pay for college themselves"

    in The Chat Board

    Posted

    I can see it either way and I think it depends on how the parent presents it. 

     

    Character and skill building are wonderful. But if the parent just hands them a bunch of nice tools to repair a car they bought for them and tells them "this is what it's like for poor people" (paraphrasing, but you get the idea) than it's not a good exercise for that. There's a world of difference between not having the right tools and having to fix a car vs doing it to learn skills. If one acknowledges the difference, it's fine. If one thinks that by fixing up the car they've been given insight into what it's like to need to get to work to keep the heat on in subzero temps and the car won't start, that's different.

     

    I'm probably not explaining it well, but it feels like one of those images like the vase and the two faces. Depending on how it's viewed it's either a good skill building exercise that gives the children pride of accomplishment, or it can lead to hubris and thinking one knows more than he or she does about what it's like to be poor.

     

    I don't think any of the examples mentioned in this thread ever implied that the parents thought they were teaching their kids what it was like to be poor, did they?  It seemed like they all went into it with the intention of teaching their kids useful skills and wanting them to have to put in personal effort to get the result rather than having it handed to them (with the possible exception of MinivanMom's BMW reseller example).

    • Like 5

    Interesting article "How I made sure all 12 of my kids could pay for college themselves"

    in The Chat Board

    Posted

    This still comes from such a privileged mindset. The parent must have the money to purchase the house, the skills & tools & time & money to work with the teen to remodel the house, and live in an economically viable enough area to actually make money by the time you flip it. 

     

    Absolutely--as I said, totally impossible for most people.

    . . . And my question is why? Why would any college-bound teen need to learn "a ton of hands-on construction skills" or the skills to rebuild old muscle cars or the skills to build their own computer. Why? Some teens may have a special interest in that area and that's wonderful, but why would you make your kids do that?

     

    I guess maybe my perspective is rooted in my own personality.  My thought was, "Why wouldn't you want to learn those skills?"  My inlaws think I'm fickle in my hobbies, but I just love to learn new things.  My dad and mom were both super creative, could-we-diy-first mentality folks.  My dad could really make you see how amazingly fascinating everything in the world is, once you get into how it works.  We had so much fun with him as kids when he would come up with a new idea like 'Hey, I have a bunch of pvc pipe scraps left over, let's make instruments!' or 'I was reading about how rope is made, it sounds really cool, let's make our own!' or 'I was wondering how the physics involved work in an IV drip line.  Let's see if we can figure it out.'  I would personally love to learn how to make computers or cars or houses, if I had the time and resources and energy.

     

    If you have the money to buy an extra house or a BMW, put that money in a college account to learn interest and use your upper-class connections to find your kid a real job working with someone besides daddy. Or, better yet, your kid could go out and find a job all by themselves at the local fast food restaurant or delivering pizzas or mopping the floor at Wal-mart.

     

    I'm not sure the cost of buying one run down old house and the materials to repair it, saved up by the time your oldest is 17, would be enough to send six kids to college.  I don't have any kids near that age, but I hear so much about how unaffordable college is. Apparently after all of this dad's kids were launched, he used his seed money to buy and flip one more house alone and then the proceeds were their retirement fund. 

     

    Because I don't think this idea of fixing cars or fixing houses is helping privileged kids develop the kind of character skills their parents think. Maybe if they got a job at an actual auto-body shop or a real construction site and met some real working-class people. But what's being described here? I really don't see it.

     

    Obviously I don't know the family from the article, but the lady I know certainly wasn't like the jerky guy you describe--she and her family were average, lower-middle-class people who were friendly with everyone and willing to do whatever kind of work was needful.

     

     

     

    • Like 2

    Interesting article "How I made sure all 12 of my kids could pay for college themselves"

    in The Chat Board

    Posted

    A friend of my mom once told me about how her father funded college for his kids.  When each kid was an older teen, he bought a house in need of a lot of work, and then he and that teen did all the work to flip that house together.  At the end of it, the kids had learned a ton of hands-on construction skills, and her dad gave them the profits from the flip to use for whatever they chose as far as college, mission, marriage, house down payment, etc.

     

    I thought that was such a cool idea, albeit totally impossible for most people.  I like how I see a bit of a scaled-down version of the same theory here that might be a bit more feasible.

    • Like 8

    Interesting article "How I made sure all 12 of my kids could pay for college themselves"

    in The Chat Board

    Posted

    I didn't really hear sanctimony.  I heard some great ideas, including ones I already value.  That said, I am skeptical. Mostly because I'd want to throw myself off a bridge. All of those *requirements* would exhaust me with 5, never mind 12.  Options? Sure.  Except for the 5:30am thing. Don't you DARE look for me at 5:30am!  Sleeping (and waking slowly) is one of our favorite homeschooling perks.

    It seems very likely that this family is LDS, in which case their teens would have been attending early morning seminary at 6:00am before school.  The unusual thing about their situation is that they chose to get the whole family up and going that early to have breakfast together.

     

    One thing that is HIGHLY underestimated in terms of help is helping with transportation.  He bought them cars.  This is a HUGE help with college that people do not realize unless they have been in a situation of not having that help.  This IS a major expense that makes college out of reach or extremely difficult for many. 

     

    Some people do live in areas with decent public transportation.  I do now and I'm glad this is gong to make things easier for me and my kids.  Where I grew up, forget it.  If you didn't have a car, you had a very very difficult time and it severely limits options. 

    I'm also curious whether any of his kids attended BYU.  BYU is way more affordable than other schools in its class, and makes a big effort to enable students to earn the tuition themselves (as well as offering free public transportation in the area to all students, in case you get a job off campus).  They hire so many students as groundskeepers and janitors, every room is being thoroughly cleaned every night and you can't actually see any difference between the grass that is being mowed and that which hasn't been done yet, because they cut it so often.

    • Like 1

    Interesting article "How I made sure all 12 of my kids could pay for college themselves"

    in The Chat Board

    Posted

    I don't agree with everything in the article, but I did like the themes of letting them learn by not shielding them from the natural consequences of their actions, of teaching them to work, and to not fear failure, allowing them to be independent, and helping them to tackle hard, long-term projects with concrete natural rewards.

     

    I totally now want to let my kids build their own computer some day.  And maybe even think about a car (I guess maybe an older one wouldn't have the computer technology incorporated, and you could have it thoroughly inspected before letting them drive it?)

    • Like 2

    December Frugalistas

    in The Chat Board

    Posted · Edited by La Condessa

    Well, our Christmas tree cost $5 because we got a permit to go hunt it out of the woods. We made garlands for it from popcorn and cranberries, and it looks lovely.

     

    I learned to make my own eggnog, which is saving some money.

     

    I did a little costume work for the local dance school (they needed someone with a serger) and in exchange got to go see The Nutcracker for free with my family--I have wanted to take the kids for quite a while, but couldn't justify the $15 tickets for a student production.

     

    We went to see the lights at a park with some friends last week, $5 donation.

     

    This week is going to be expensive, though. Expensive in babysitters. We have two events down in the town south of here on two different days (one a professional thing for dh with spouses, one a date with friends we've been looking forward to, we do about every other year). Between the two trips, the hour drive each way adds four hours of paid babysitting to the time for the actual events.

    • Like 2

    Singapore Maths

    in Accelerated Learner Board

    Posted

    My dd1 uses the textbook, intensive practice,and challenging word problems. The intensive practice book is plenty for her to retain the concepts, but I highly recommend the challenging word problems--they tend to contain the most interesting and challenging questions in the program.

     

    My dd2 needs more practice at a basic level before going on to the intensive practice questions. She does about 3/4 of the workbook questions. Ds1 needs the workbook practice only for an occasional topic. Really, you just need to feel out your individual child.

    • Like 2
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