How far in advance do you plan? Do you start to think about planning before you plan? How do you make a plan when everything is still speculative? C is about 1.5 years from graduating with his BA/BS. His plan is to apply to a graduate program in pure mathematics. Our local land grant university is in the top 30 of PhD math programs in the country. So while that would be C’s first choice, theyread more…
Every once in a while, I mention something to C with the expectation he will talk me out of it. Sometimes, I even start the conversation with the note that I need him to be the reasonable one. This weekend, we both failed at being reasonable, at least when it came to talking. Saturday. It started with me, not feeling well, wanting to be able to play video games while being on the bed, insteadread more…
I am so excited to make today’s post. I have actually had to stop myself from writing it for over a week now. Because I did not want to write it until what I was saying was actually true. We have paid off my graduate student loans! We will start 2013 with $17k less debt. In fact, our non-mortgage debt will now only be my undergraduate student loans, which are less than $15k and at aread more…
It is the holiday season once again, and with the holiday season comes the holiday advertising. That means that it’s time for one other holiday tradition- my rant against holiday car commercials. Last year, I wrote that Cars are NOT Gifts, and it’s 27 comments make it my most popular post ever (thanks to The Consumerist for linking to it). This year, believe it or not, I have yet to see a commercial suggesting that someoneread more…
Or Why I Won’t Ever Change Insurance Agents I know who my insurance company is, but if you were to ask me who my insurance is with, I wouldn’t tell you a company name, I’d tell you the name of my insurance agent. I don’t worry about the company. I don’t worry about claims being handled quickly or appropriately, because I know my agent is on top of it. All it takes is one phone callread more…
I had really hoped that we would be through the paperwork stage on the adoption by the end of this month. Considering we have not yet heard back from the State ofNVon J’s background check, though, that’s obviously not going to happen. At this point, we’ll be lucky to be through the paperwork and have our license by the new year, considering that the holidays always make things take longer. It’s really hard to be patientread more…
I have mentioned a few times that right now, I think there is a 50/50 chance my current position will still exist by end of first quarter 2013. I have also said I am not stressing about it. How is that? Psychology Well, first and foremost, I currently still have a job. I will not know anything more until January, which gives me plenty of time to get used to the idea that I may beread more…
Today was the home inspection for our foster license/home study. For those who are wondering, yes, we passed. We are essentially done with everything we can do on our own at this point. We have to wait for J’s background check to come back (they messed it up and had to redo it). Then, our social worker completes her report. She calls us in to review it. She submits it to her boss and then submitsread more…
I wrote before about our search for a new car. We bought a car on Tuesday. It was not new. In fact, it has almost 180,000 miles on it. And we paid almost $10k, after a trade in. And yet, I am still very happy about the purchase. Why? Because diesel engines are different. We actually considered a car with almost 300k miles on it. We bought a 2003 Jetta Wagon GL TDI. We expect itread more…
