Frances
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Everything posted by Frances
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Exactly. My son was very advanced verbally, a voracious reader, and subsequently aced every verbal test he ever took, including on the PSAT, SAT, and MCAT. We were definitely not talking about those types of ideas in kindergarten and first grade in any formal way. At his age, the most important thing is being immersed in a language rich environment. Listening to books that are beyond his reading level and informally chatting about them is much better, in my opinion, then knowing and discussing terms like main idea, supporting facts, etc. I’d be worried that such things would turn him off even more to reading. Given what I’ve seen in most formal reading programs commonly used in public schools, I’m actually surprised any kids emerge with a love of reading. I’d stay with the grammar he likes, do tons of read-alouds with informal discussion, provide him with lots of great books at his level for reading practice, do short practical writing like letters to relatives, and maybe introduce dictation and/or copy work as a way to discuss very basic grammar and punctuation. Unless you find other structured things he loves like the grammar program you are using, I would stay away from any formal programs at such a young age.
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Thoughts and advice on becoming a veterinarian
Frances replied to wintermom's topic in The Chat Board
I have a vet friend who specializes in veterinary dental work. She doesn’t have her own practice, but travels to a few different locations during the week to do specialized dental work. In the past, she also did some contract teaching in her specialty area for the local vet school, as she lives in the same area and is a grad. I think overall she is happy with her choice of career, although she has mentioned more than once that her new grad son with a BS in computer science made more $ his first year out of college than she will ever make. I think her debt load was pretty low due to living and attending vet school locally (she did undergrad and vet school at the same U) and grew up in the area. I also know a student who will graduate from vet school this year. It’s all she ever wanted to do and she’d been doing a variety of animal related volunteer work since elementary school. I have no idea how she has funded vet school. I know she found the program very challenging the first year, likely compounded by the pandemic. I think the advice to not borrow more than you will make the first year is solid. Reading the article linked above reminds me of some of the people we knew when my husband went back to professional school. Personally, I think she was crazy to go out of state and borrow more than the cost of tuition, not that just borrowing that alone wouldn’t have been bad enough. We also had a child, but I worked full time (while homeschooling) and my husband worked summers and we borrowed only enough to pay the tuition we couldn’t cover from earnings and savings (I started full time work the year before he went back to school and we saved everything I made). Being married while attending professional school should ideally mean you can borrow less, not more, since you have a partner who can earn $. I certainly wasn’t earning an engineer’s salary, yet we still managed to borrow so little that it was completely paid by his eventual employer’s loan forgiveness program. In general, I do agree that state funding for state schools is woefully inadequate. But my husband’s professional school tuition was exactly the same as the vet school tuition at his U (tied for highest amounts), despite the vet students’ education probably using 100x the resources. His program used no special facilities at all, just regular classrooms. While the vet school facilities were expansive and had multiple locations both on and off campus. Not to mention that they had significantly more faculty members for a much smaller program. -
You can make estimated payments throughout the year to account for this, since with CDs the interest earned is known.
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The IRS is testing a free (for everyone, not income dependent) direct file program in 12 states this year and some states, like mine, also have free direct file programs. These are very similar to Turbo Tax or other tax preparation programs, just without the fees. Hopefully next year it will expand to all states. If you don’t need help, the IRS also has free fillable forms, as do many states.
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You had MBA classmates who had never taken Algebra!?! I’m sorry, but I find that impossible to believe unless your grad program took all comers and you were basically just purchasing the degree. That they had forgotten most of their Algebra, yes that is believable. But likely the problem solving skills they developed while taking Algebra and other advanced math classes were still with them to some degree.
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I could see math through Algebra II plus Statistics as appropriate minimum college prep high school requirements.
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Stats extensively uses Algebra. They couldn’t have succeeded in Statistics without it unless it was only a conceptual course.
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Having taught it for many years, I would disagree. Solid algebra skills, math sense, and good problem solving skills are what lead to success in statistics.
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I don’t think anyone is advocating for calculus to be a requirement for social workers. But I would certainly hope she’s required to take at least one statistics class for her degree, as it would seem quite important in that field. And that means solid algebra skills through Algebra II.
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I would assume it was algebra based statistics you took, not calculus based statistics from the math department. One still needs two years of high school algebra for algebra based statistics. I taught it for several years and students who didn’t have solid algebra skills struggled.
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You’re absolutely sure neither child will ever need to take a basic college statistics class? An awful lots of majors outside the humanities and arts require it and they would generally need both Algebra I and Algebra II before taking it, although not trigonometry. So I disagree that only kids going into science-y fields need Algebra II. Business and economic majors, psychology and sociology majors, math majors, etc etc would all need Algebra II. I also disagree that only “mathy” kids can succeed at classes like Algebra II. That’s certainly not the view in most of the rest of the world. Most college bound kids in other countries are successfully mastering much more math than Algebra II.
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I’d leave it up to her. For some kids, practicing is as much or more fun than competing at tournaments. Hopefully she gets to participate in most if not all of the practice stuff.
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Resources for teaching reading early
Frances replied to SeekingOne's topic in Accelerated Learner Board
Hopefully her parents will choose a developmentally appropriate play based preschool rather than an academic one. There’s no need for her to be bored if it’s developmentally appropriate and full of books, language, lots of free play, art, music, large and small motor skill activities, outdoor time, etc. While teaching reading early is fine if she’s developmentally ready and eager (and mom is willing to stop as soon as it’s not fun), the most important thing is to immerse her in a language rich environment, lots of talking with adults, read-alouds (picture books and chapter books), audio books, etc. This will have way more long term benefits than learning to read at a young age. Similarly for math, the most important thing is to help a child develop number sense through daily life, games, books, etc. Personally, I think so many kids struggle with math in school because neither they nor their elementary teachers often have much in the way of number sense. While there are likely some programs out there to help with this, daily life is full of so many opportunities. -
If they are willing, would it work for the grandfather or great grandfather to talk to your husband?
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Social Security benefits question (retirement and beneficiaries questions)
Frances replied to DawnM's topic in The Chat Board
It’s not due to taking a state pension, it’s due to not paying in to SS for 17 working years, but rather paying into the pension. Does your SS statement show the income for those 17 years or is it excluded? Before this provision, there were retirees who hadn’t paid into SS for most of their government career but had enough SS credits from often relatively low paying jobs to get both SS and a pension. And since SS pays larger benefits on a % basis to low income workers, it was considered windfall because their SS benefits weren’t calculated based on their true earnings. Thus the need for the windfall adjustments. -
I don’t think hotel chains are the only beneficiaries when say a jurisdiction doesn’t allow entire homes (or apartments in big cities) to be used for short term rentals. Often neighbors are very relieved to no longer have to deal with parties, loud noise, police calls, excessive trash, etc. Having the owner on the property prevents most of this from happening. Not to mention more houses available for locals to buy or rent long term, the main thrust of this thread.
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We get lots of traveling nurses here and there are plenty of full basement apartments in homes or accessory dwelling where they can rent. Before VRBO and AirBnb even existed, people here rented out these kinds of spaces for traveling workers, legislators during session, visiting family, etc. and continue to do so. Month to month apartment leases are also not uncommon here. In a very nice upper middle class neighborhood here a landlord didn’t know her month long renters through VRBO were running a drug operation until the police raided the premises and found a huge stash of drugs, money, and guns. No one called to let her know after the raid, not the police nor her property management company. A neighbor of the short term rental who had previously had to deal with problem renters called her. Incidences like this would be far rarer if the owners and renters were on the same property. In the newspaper article about the incident, police interviewed said people using VRBO and AirBnb for this purpose are becoming increasingly common and they always choose entire houses in upscale neighborhoods. While I infinitely prefer AirBnb type places to hotels when traveling, we now only rent those where the owner resides on the property due to the devastating impact on housing affordability and availability almost everywhere. I’m not talking a room in someone’s home, but a separate apartment type situation either in the basement or elsewhere on the property. I realize even these types of places could provide long term housing if not being used short term, so are not without issues.
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I wonder what the % is for VRBO which was always intended to be full properties, not spaces in someone’s home or on their property? Personally, I think the dividing line should be between those who live in the house or on the property as their primary residence and rent out parts as as short term rental and those, whether individuals or corporations, who are using a property purely for short term renting. The latter is really no different than a hotel from a business perspective. Legally, I think it’s much easier to treat properties used for different purposes differently as opposed to treating different types of owners differently, but there are probably others here who are more knowledgeable.
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That’s nice that retirement is paid by the employers. Yes, I would think that people who are spending 50% of income on rent don’t have much left after paying for all of the basics, even if retirement is taken care of by the employer.
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I don’t think most people paying 30% or more of their income for housing are putting much if anything towards savings or retirement.
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Where I think things are heading here is distinguishing between owner occupied short term rentals and non-owner occupied ones. If you live in the home and want to rent out a room or basement apartment or backyard apartment or whatever, fine. Obviously it’s better for the housing shortage if you do so to long term renters and not short term ones, but it looks the government here is going to leave these alone. They are looking much more closely, however, at any homes used only for short term rentals, so basically as a business. Various proposals are being floated from restricting their number and location to taxing them like businesses rather than residences and several things in between.
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Wowzers, a lot of shitty stuff has been happening here.
Frances replied to wendyroo's topic in The Chat Board
That is so much to be dealing with, you will be in my thoughts. I hope things calm down and get back to normal very soon for you and your family. -
I hope you don’t think I’m implying your grandparents need to move just because it worked out well for my mom, they should certainly stay in their home as long as the like. I will say that my mom saves on a lot more than homeowner’s insurance and property taxes by not owing a home though. All utilities are included in her apartment rent, she has no maintenance or repair costs, and she doesn’t have to find and pay someone to do yard work and shovel snow. Plus, there are numerous free and low cost social activities right at the complex, friends with cars to drive her places live right there, and it’s one block from the major medical center where she gets all of her care. So no traveling over snowy rural roads when she has appointments or wants to go places. Probably the biggest benefit for her has been a drastic increase in the amount of exercise she gets. She routinely gets 10,000 steps per day with her walker now because she can walk indoors over the whole complex compared to worrying about and actually falling while walking outdoors on badly maintained sidewalks in all kinds of weather. My mom primarily lives on SS and a small amount of savings. I keep mentioning this because while it might not be true in all parts of the country, there are affordable, nice retirement places out there. And actually, her place is 55+. Her best friend only stopped working two years ago, long after she moved into the complex. And one of the 90+ year old residents still owns and runs a business in town. I’m sure there are others who still work also.
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I don’t think people are ignorant of the emotions involved with downsizing and selling a family home. I’ve been through it with both my mom and my MIL and although not directly involved, I certainly discussed it with my husband’s grandma. I’m sure I’m not unique in having experience with this scenario.