What a great description. FIL is exactly the same (OCD micromanager) and it is so hard owning your own needs in his presence!

We don't do Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. When the kids ask about parts they've heard about it, we say gently, "Well, that's what people say about it," but don't tell the stories in our own home. (Tooth Fairy lasted about two teeth before I got bored with it, so now DS6 just hands over teeth and we hand over a dollar. ) Honestly, it doesn't feel magical to me, it feels like lying to my kids and I'm so uncomfortable with it I can't sustain the story. My kids have great imaginations and a sense of wonder about the world, it's just not the usual "conventional wisdom" about the usual magical things in contemporary American culture.

I am a horror wuss, but I remember Firestarter being a good read at that age.

For anyone reading this who just wants to offload a lot of books, the Little Free Library network is available and dreaming of your donations. You can look for LFLs in your area using the search function: https://littlefreelibrary.org/ourmap/

Current-edition textbooks have wonderful profit margins. If you can find the current edition of "Fundamentals of Accounting" or "Basic Obstetrics" in unhighlighted condition, you'll pay $1 or $5 for it a library sale and it will go for $100+, easy. The book would retail for $300+ new, so the buyer is getting a deal and the seller is making bank. I really don't recommend book scavenging as a business--you are right about haircutting (or pizza delivery or almost anything else) being a more reliable income stream, but if books are your jam, textbooks are the area most likely to make you some extra cash.

* I only sell through Amazon. It was too much work juggling multiple outlets and Amazon has by far the highest sales speed/rate. * I only sell if the lowest "used book" price is $10 or more. Pick your own floor but even at $5 you are barely going to make a cent. * Check the Amazon sales rank on a book. (Once you are a registered seller you can see this when you click on the "Sell On Amazon" button.) A sales rank of 10,000 or less will sell very fast, a sales rank of 1,000,000 may not sell for years, if ever. * I buy postage and print shipping labels through Amazon because after shipping many books using my own postage and meticulously calculating weight and various stamp denomination combinations and procuring said stamps, I decided my time was worth the few cents they take off the top. * I highly recommend investing in a good food scale for weighing packages. (Postal scales tend to be lower quality and you have to replace the dials when the postage prices change.) The difference between a 12 oz book and a 15 oz book will cost you money. * If you choose to do your own postage, print out the current media mail rates and keep them near your shipping supplies. * I almost always ship in recycled envelopes or cut up brown paper bags. Buying envelopes cut into profit margins; buying shipping tape also cuts into profit margins. * Keep all your sale books in one place. Do not tell yourself "oh, I'll list it but I want to keep it on this shelf instead of in my for-sale pile." * Keep your shipping supplies all in one place. * There is an Amazon Seller app, but I find it tricky because it often suggests a high profit margin but later research will reveal it's a $0.01 book in another format or edition. * If you start buying books specifically to sell, also create an Excel spreadsheet documenting true costs at all stages. There is virtually no margin in book selling so you have to see clearly what brings in what income and what costs you are really incurring.

* Curb-shopped an extra Snap-N-Go (destined for my mom's house) and a "Baby Jogger Universal Parent Console" (retails new USD$30), both of which will come in handy when the new baby comes. * DS6 wanted more books in two series he is currently enjoying (Encyclopedia Brown and I Survived) and by Jove, we used the library! I've been avoiding it lately in an effort to simply (we have zillions of unread books at home), but in hopes of streamlining any future trips, I put together a labelled box for Library Books and clipped the library receipt to it so we are less likely to lose books and have to pay fines. * Hung up two loads of laundry to dry. * Just prepped crockpot oatmeal so frugal/simple breakfast is ready and waiting tomorrow morning.

Looking for money-saving lifestyle inspiration! What small thing(s) did you do today to save money? I think these are mine for today: * Breakfast was overnight oatmeal made in the crockpot from pantry staples purchased in bulk. * Parked on the street instead of using valet parking at the cafe where I had a meeting. * Found a like-new box set of all seven Chronicles of Narnia audiobooks on CD for $20 at the library bookshop and snapped it up. Not a necessity by any means, but a fun find just the same.

Silly kitchen gadgets? I like having a silicone egg ring. It makes perfect round eggs for homemade Egg McMuffins and the whites don't stick. It's non-biodegradable and single-use and I don't care.

I use powdered Tide because I like that it comes packaged in cardboard rather than plastic. I can still find it in large sizes at a local chain called Smart & Final. Target's detergent aisle usually has a few powdered brands as well.

{soapbox} I had ALL the allergies. Like, literally scores of environmental and food allergies. Getting allergy shots for the environmental allergies was the best medical decision I ever made in my life. I didn't do it until my late 20s, just because I was clueless. I wish I'd had the chance to do it in my early teens; it would have transformed my young adulthood. {/soapbox}

This article was a breakthrough for me: https://www.buzzfeed.com/christinebyrne/roast-chicken-rules

Thanks guys. IQ test and achievement test sound like a good starting point. I have concerns (and a lot of emotions) about this, but like wapiti said, I'm not even sure what I want, so I need to sit with those thoughts for a while. The only thing that I know for sure is that I think age-based "grade levels" are absurd. I thought the one-room-schoolhouse Montessori approach was going to allow us to circumvent all of that, but apparently not. Pfft.

Argh. Enrolled DS6 in Montessori elementary so that he could work at whatever level he's at in a variety of subjects. "Follow the child" and all that. First academic thing he reports to me is that his teacher (it's "science camp" now, not "real" school) says he can only read books on the first-grade shelf. I asked her about classroom reading and she told me first graders are limited to non-fiction ("who and what books" in her parlance) during their main reading time, and that "he knows what shelves he can pick from." As far as I can tell, Harry Potter and Hardy Boys are probably off-limits, even though the whole reason I was excited about the "one-room schoolhouse" approach is because I knew DS would want to work "up" to compete with the big kids. I can live with the non-fiction thing. I take that as a personal challenge, and biographies and memoirs are delightful, and I will defeat her system, BUT ANYWAY... He's currently being "allowed" to read Secrets of Droon in the classroom because it's summer. He'll easily finish a book a day, or four books a day, it just depends on his motivation and schedule. He's read all the Magic Tree House and A to Z Mysteries already. I think overall I'd peg him at no less than a fourth-grade reading level, but when I asked about matching reading levels to kid she told me "Well, I go by what Scholastic says the book is." (Hold on a second, I have to collapse on the floor sobbing...WHAAAAAAAAA...deep breath....deeeeep breath.) ANYWAY, I would like to get DS6 professionally assessed by an outside educational psychologist so I can go into a meeting about this prepared. I haven't priced private testing in SoCal, but let's pretend we want to go bananas. What testing should I request? Some options: * Reading level/vocabulary assessment * Weschler IQ (qualifying exam for local private gifted school) * Naglieri Nonverbal Ability Test (qualifying exam for GATE at our home school district) * OLSAT-8 9 (qualifying test for GATE at neighboring massive metro school district in case we ever move there?) Thank you in advance for any wisdom you have to offer.

I sympathize with your guilt, but the answer is NO. We've had requests for large amounts of cash from brothers on both sides, and what helped with the guilt and the firm "No" in our situation was having spousal backup. My husband told his brother "No, we can't lend you money for the down payment on the umpteenth random real estate purchase this decade." BIL pushed and so husband handed phone to me, eventually, and it was very easy for me to clearly say "No, we are not able to do that," about 19 times until he got it. Similarly, I was wracked with guilt about not lending my brother money for some stock options purchase/tax thing, but it was very easy for my husband to be firm with my brother, refer him to outside help and reassure me that we were not being "mean." If you want to help out your brother, send him gift copies of Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover and Tom Stanley's The Millionaire Next Door and encourage his ongoing financial education.

Could someone please point me to the original charter school thread? Thank you! Also, signifying nothing, apparently the most "ideally" diverse school in all of LAUSD is a school in West L.A. that's a Mandarin immersion charter, but apparently the "average kid in LAUSD goes to a school where 83.9% of students are of the same ethnic background." https://schooldatanerd.com/2016/06/22/how-diverse-is-your-school/

Popsicle sticks Pregnancy tests Pirouline cookies

Would be great if more towns organized tool libraries:

2. He doesn't see the house the way you do. He probably never will, but it's always good to try to communicate and encourage him to feel invested in the organization of your home. Best of luck. 3. Toy parachute. Legos stay in the parachute. Any Lego that escapes the parachute space goes in the trash. Kids open parachute to play, close parachute to put away Lego work.

This lifestyle is entirely possible, although you obviously need buy-in from your family members. To see a beautiful example, explore the work of Bea Johnson, author of Zero Waste Home.

Food is not trying to kill you. Use your senses to see if anything looks wrong, smells wrong or feels wrong. Cook food if it needs to be cooked. Wash stuff with soap if it looks dirty. The end.

We did a free week of Blue Apron and really liked it, but I couldn't stand the associated trash production and it felt so indulgent and decadent I couldn't stand it. That said, the instructions and the pre-packaged ingredients were right about at my level of cooking skill, so we got a couple of v nice meals out of it and in some future where I have $25 million but don't want a private chef in my kitchen all the time and have gotten over my #zerowastehome obsession, it would be a great choice.

1. Make him read The Millionaire Next Door (Stanley & Danko) and The Total Money Makeover, and start walking Dave Ramsey's 7 baby steps. He needs a $500 mini-mini-emergency fund to start. 2. Read Kiyosaki's Rich Kid, Smart Kid book together. He talks about how you need a three-pronged approach to life: What is your academic action plan? What is your professional action plan? What is your financial action plan? Professional and financial ARE NOT THE SAME THINGS. Being very alert to your financial position and the cost of things will go a long way to motivating different career choices. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Some lies: Drinking alcohol is dangerous and the path to ruin. (No it's not, it's a great way to remove inhibitions and be socially functional, thus building soul-sustaining human relationships.) Sex is dangerous and the path to ruin. (Eyeroll. Just wear a condom and don't sex people you don't already know and love.) Walking, biking, driving, public transport, eating, climbing, being in the sun, etc. are all dangerous and should be avoided in favor of studying and office jobs and home improvement projects. Part-time low-level jobs build character and teach young people how to manage money!

This thread motivated me to review our cell phone bill and cancel insurance coverage for my three-year old smartphone. Canceling the insurance will save $11/mo or $132/yr.

SoCal, single-family home ESSENTIAL HOUSING UTILITIES Water: $50 ($70 if the damn sprinklers break again) Gas: $10-$70 (summer low, winter heating high) Electric: $50-$100 (increase is usually AC, hottest months are July-Oct) Internet: $60 LIFESTYLE-CHOICE UTILITIES Cell phones: $150 Online TV services: $20 Sewage and garbage pickup are bundled in property taxes. No landline.