Frances
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Posts posted by Frances
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4 hours ago, KSera said:
Surely there must be somewhere doing them?? I’ve never found the idea of a cruise at all appealing, but now even less so! PeterPan gave a lot of helpful ideas for someone who already finds them self on one, but after reading all that, I think that seals the deal that I’m never going on one 🤣. That sounds like a lot of work to take a vacation!
I hope you can find some of those quiet areas and enjoy the rest of your time.
Same here. And the spa, sauna, steam room, hot tub suggestions are my version of a nightmare. Now cookies and tea in a quiet spot I could get onboard with, but I can do that at home, no need to go on a cruise.
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1 hour ago, Tap said:
As adults, the kids would qualify based on their own incomes. Will they not qualify on their own?
Can you claim them as a dependent for tax purposes and still have them qualify on their own for health insurance subsidies? Or are the two not linked?
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3 hours ago, Heartstrings said:
I honestly have more questions about his congregation. Who puts themselves under this sort of man?
I don’t find it too surprising given studies that show how little many Christians know about the Bible and some of the absolutely terrible, unqualified leaders we elect in this country. It seems like lots of people are very willing to follow immoral, unqualified leaders whether in their spiritual lives or their everyday lives. And it’s certainly not unique to the US right now, but can be found across time and place.
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On 4/30/2024 at 5:42 PM, Clarita said:
I would think "Good for SKL and her friends. And when are we going to have a shindig there."
As to multiple homes causing affordability crisis, I'm not sold on the fact that people owning second or third homes is the reason for the crisis. Some financial conglomerate holding on to hundreds of properties because they don't want the price of those properties to drop type thing, yes. In my very unaffordable area there is more at play that just people owning more than one home to cause homes to be ridiculously priced. In my neck of the woods it's immensely obvious that certain policies are holding prices up.
At least in my state, there are multiple reasons for the housing crisis. People owning second or third homes is not the leading cause, but along with short term rentals it’s definitely a contributing factor because the majority of second and third homes and short term rentals are in areas where regular people live, not just seasonal vacation areas as exist in some other states. And the majority are regular homes, not tiny seasonal cabins or huge estates. Our land use laws are probably the biggest current factor contributing to the housing crisis here, although of course corporate ownership of rental homes is also a big contributor. And in terms of home construction, we’ve never actually completed rebounded from the Great Recession. Despite a significant increase in population since then, we are still building fewer housing until per year than we did before 2008.
That being said, I think SKL’s area is very different than my state when it comes to COL, housing affordability, tourism, etc. It seems like a good thing to me if someone is willing to rehab an older home.
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5 hours ago, busymama7 said:
And they are good and hard workers which has at least something to do with being raised in large family with lots of chores and expectations.
Only children or those from small families can also be raised with lots of chores and expectations and become good and hard workers, both my husband and I were as was our son. My son definitely had more chores and more responsibilities than any of his friends (except those that lived on farms), as there was no one to share the chores with except us.
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6 hours ago, SKL said:
Not necessarily. Having learned to share as the default, I assume that impacts future lifestyle decisions.
The above also ignores the fact that a good % of adults don't move out to live alone for the rest of their lives, but often move in with another person or people, and sometimes stay in their parents' home. Mathematically (but simplified), it would make more sense to say 2 families of 4 likely create 2 new households (4 married young adults who may have their own kids). But meanwhile, older people are dying, so all that's happening is replacement in that scenario. 2 households of 8 likely create 6 new households (3 per FOO), maybe fewer. And then, their families may have relatively more frugal habits than folks raised as only children.
An ever increasing % of adults are living alone though. It has changed significantly over the years.
My son is an only as was my mom. I’ve seen no evidence IRL or read any research that being raised as an only makes one more or less frugal.
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41 minutes ago, maize said:
One thing that never gets talked about, that I think needs to be talked about, is that an expanding population has been one of the major drivers of economic growth over the past few centuries. It's not the only factor, and of course the burgeoning human population has been facilitated by some of the other factors (and has in turn facilitated those factors in a feedback-loop manner) such as technological development and increased utilization of both finite and non-finite natural resources. But it has been a reliable, prime driver of economic growth throughout the modern era. And nobody seems to be talking about how worldwide economic systems that are all predicated on continually growing economies will be impacted when this major driver of growth dries up.
As world population growth levels off and, according to predictions, begins to drop--I expect global economic growth to also slow and possibly at some future point reverse--there is an actual limit to how much an individual human can consume in resources and products, tangible and intangible both. It's a high limit, and maybe ultimately less of a factor with regard to the limits of economic growth than are the the impacts of increasing individual consumption and their consequential depletion of resources, contribution to environmental pollution, etc.
In either case, endless economic growth eithin a finite system is not sustainable--but such growth is foundational to our globally-interlocked economic systems. Why do I never see this discussed? Why are we not, collectively, working to figure out more sustainable economic systems? Surely there are economists somewhere modeling what might happen with a long-term slow-down of economic growth?
Not sure where you are looking, but a simple internet search finds plenty of articles on this very topic.
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1 hour ago, SKL said:
LOL dare I admit that my 17yo asked me recently how I fold t-shirts? 😛
But yes, especially certain international students who grew up with household help. My friends grew up having dhobis collect their laundry & return it clean and pressed.
I spent a fair amount of my dorm life teaching friends how to do various household tasks. I've been thanking my mom ever since. 😛
Or international students who grew up without appliances and only know about washing clothes by hand, but not how to operate a washer and dryer.
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On 4/20/2024 at 10:59 AM, dirty ethel rackham said:
Agreeing that micromanaging is going to backfire. Two things that helped us survive my kids teen years:
1) Making sure my kids had lots of hard physical exercise to deal those teen emotions
2) Weekly planning meetings about what they needed to accomplish, any outside commitments to work around, and what their game plan was. I told them that it helped my anxiety if they walked me through their plans so that I wouldn't feel the urge to jump in too much. I told them that it was good life skill practice. The more I put aside judgement and micromanaging, the more comfortable they felt in coming to me if they felt overwhelmed or unsure how to manage.
I'm not saying that I did this perfectly ... I fell down a lot and let my own anxiety pull me back into micromanaging. But by the time I got to my 3rd kid, I was better at it. She was also better at setting boundaries with me.
Your post reminded me that I also did weekly planning meetings with my son. Sometimes we even went to a coffee shop for a hot drink and a treat while planning.
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On 4/21/2024 at 9:31 AM, Dmmetler said:
One thing to consider-Organic chemistry (and biochemistry beyond the basic level) requires a different skill set than physical or analytical chemistry. While physical and analytical chem is heavily based on math skills and innate mathematical reasoning, and is very algebraic, Organic chemistry is much more visual, and if you're not good at 3D visualization, will be a struggle. For many students, those 3D visualization skills don't develop before college-age (and it's recommended now that Organic chemistry be sequenced LATE in the college program for that reason, because the difference between even age 19-19 and age 20-21 is apparently statistically significant.). If a kid is talented in art and 3D drawing, they'll likely find O-chem to be easy. But if they aren't. it can be a real struggle.
Nm
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4 hours ago, pehp said:
Yes-I think that’s it. The lack of efficiency drives me bananas especially when it results in things like getting 4 hours of sleep because he has procrastinated and has to scramble, or missing fun family stuff because he has let his work snowball. The fallout is irritating for his parents, and seems to result in a cycle of fatigue-crankiness-panic-work-fatigue….which I realize describes college for many of us, but still, I don’t like it!
It may be that I need to give him the rope and see what he does with it. He’s certainly old enough. It is hard, particularly when I also see him sullen or super cranky from suffering the bad effects of his poor choices. I almost feel like we are in a push-pull. We never had that in toddlerhood—guess I’m due for it now. But I do want him to get confident that HE can manage himself without me micromanaging. And I know it’s crucial for him to develop his independence from me—& perhaps this is his way?
His EF skills aren’t great (but mine are really, really strong, so could be his are more typical) so I worry about his ability to function well. At the same time, he’s a theatre kid who is never late for rehearsal, never misses his lines, and has huge backstage responsibilities during shows because everyone thinks he’s so reliable. So I try to remind myself that he CAN do well with tasks and responsibilities when he’s motivated to do so. He just doesn’t seem very motivated at home!
I know it’s tough (been there done that with my now adult son), but I think you’ve answered your own question. Letting him suffer the consequences of his poor time management (maybe even getting less than an A in a class) will likely do much more to help him later in college (and preserve your relationship) then trying to micromanage him now, especially given that he seems to have the ability to function very well when he wants to. Honestly, getting less than an A in a class might be just the thing for him to be willing to listen to some of your time management suggestions.
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On 4/10/2024 at 10:34 AM, Malam said:
I don't think a first grader is behind if they used to not know these. What grade level is it at?
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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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.
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6 hours ago, Grace Hopper said:
Colleen was the wife of the (German, I think?) dairy farmer who sold to Horizons. I forgot Julie may have also been married to a dairy farmer.
I do remember Colleen, but don’t recall what happened to her. But I think this is her ex-husband.
https://www.organicvalley.coop/blog/swiss-alps-to-northern-cascades/
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23 minutes ago, Arcadia said:
Something else that make our withholding for Federal dramatically wrong is that the W-4 does not take into account bank interest. We put more money from savings into CDs last year so Federal tax owed is higher than we expected.
You can make estimated payments throughout the year to account for this, since with CDs the interest earned is known.
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On 3/18/2024 at 4:37 AM, cintinative said:
Slightly off topic, but I saw an interesting video a month or so ago about how we (Americans) have all sort of accepted that we have to pay for a software to prepare our taxes. If you are interested: https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000009030739/irs-intuit-tax-season.html The original intent, per the video, was for the government to release a free version of something for us to use. Turbo Tax was free for a bit as sort of a measure to fill the gap until the feds got that going, and then it never happened. I don't know, I hadn't really thought of how silly it was that we are all paying to pay our taxes until that. My kids do use the Turbo Tax free edition, but you can accidentally find the wrong turbo tax site pretty easily.
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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12 minutes ago, SKL said:
I disagree. I took stats in grad school for my MBA. The only thing that touched on algebra II was standard deviations. While it was a nice flex to understand that in some depth, it was not actually necessary for a reasonable understanding of social study data. (And many of my classmates had never taken algebra or had no memory of it.)
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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11 minutes ago, EKS said:
What's interesting is how far do you back off? I mean, that is really the question.
Calculus shouldn't be a requirement for social workers (which I absolutely agree with, btw). Should precalculus be? Algebra 2? What sort of statistics should they understand? You can teach statistics pretty qualitatively, which I would say is appropriate for the vast majority of social science majors.
I could see math through Algebra II plus Statistics as appropriate minimum college prep high school requirements.
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3 minutes ago, SKL said:
My kids are currently taking stats in high school and will take stats again in college and probably grad school. They do need to have a basic understanding of study results etc. Much more practical than the graduation requirements!
Stats is very different from algebra, trigonometry, and geometry. Yes, I've taken all of them.
Stats extensively uses Algebra. They couldn’t have succeeded in Statistics without it unless it was only a conceptual course.
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3 minutes ago, EKS said:
Not really. You need a basic understanding of algebra and an ability to push buttons on a calculator (or better yet, prepare Excel spreadsheets).
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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5 minutes ago, SKL said:
My kid wants to be a social worker. Please explain why she needs to understand integrals.
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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6 minutes ago, Heartstrings said:
My sociology degree required stats but it wasn’t the same as the stats in the math department. It was a stats for humanity majors.
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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2 hours ago, SKL said:
I agree that not everyone needs that level of math.
My kids entered high school in 2020. At that time and until this past year, all high schoolers in my state were required to take at least Algebra I & II + geometry (and my kids' Alg II class included some trigonometry). They also advised that in order to be "college ready," they would need an additional year of math on top of these.
Even though my kids are college bound, they will never use Algebra II (or trigonometry) concepts in their college programs. Really, only kids who are planning to go into science-y fields will "need" that. The only other logic I could see in requiring it would be to prove you have the smarts. But why? Why screen out non-mathy kids from non-mathy professions (or make things extra hard for them)? My eldest needed a tutor (in addition to the teacher's after-school help) to avoid failing Algebra II. As it was, she passed it with a D, destroying her otherwise good GPA and affecting her college scholarship. 😕 It's a shame.
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.
Travel Plans - seasoned travelers enter and offer advice, suggestions, tips, etc.
in The Chat Board
Posted · Edited by Frances
Seconding all of this and adding the Museum of Anthropology (I believe it’s on the University of Vancouver campus). We did bike tours in both cities which were awesome! In Vancouver, we stayed in a basement apartment of a B&B that was one block from Stanley Park. It was a house in the midst of high rise apartments and was a wonderful location. Although we had our car with us, there was so much we could walk to. I think we found it on VRBO. We also stayed in the basement apartment of a house in Victoria. The couple who owned the home and resided upstairs lived in a residential neighborhood about a ten minute drive from the waterfront where our ferry docked. While this was not quite as convenient as our Vancouver location, it was still great and I would definitely stay there again. Some of the other couples on our bike tour stayed at the big, old famous hotel in Victoria and said it was very nice.
Personally, I love to travel in the fall when it’s cooler and school is in session. All of our trips to BC have been in September or October. We didn’t exchange any money, just used a cc with no foreign transactions fees.