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Archive for August, 2011

First Paycheck

September 1st, 2011 at 03:04 am

Today I received my first paycheck from my new job. Woohoo!! I get paid at the end of every month so the paycheck was for half a month's work. I am so excited to have a job that I really like and the paycheck to go with it! I took the kids to Wendy's as a treat since Dh was out of town on business. It feels so great to have some extra "fun" money after so many years of penny-pinching.

Most of the paycheck will go straight into retirement savings as soon as DH and I figure out how to allocate the money into the retirement plan. Some will be our fun money and I am keeping track to make sure we don't overspend in that category.

So excited to be able to save more to retirement. So excited to start the college funds for the kids. So excited to start a car replacement fund. So excited to start a home improvement fun. AND, especially so excited to be able to treat the kids!!

I am soooo lucky!!

Busses, Baseball, Boys, Budget

August 27th, 2011 at 12:50 pm

I am still taking the bus to and from work for now since the kids are still not back to school and their fall activities did not start yet. It is still taking me 80 minutes to get home. I have started listening to the radio and that really helps pass the time. DH and I are going to share one parking permit and definitely not get a second one. We have decided that we have to keep one parking permit but may be able to reduce down to a part-time permit (3 days a week) if the road construction ever is finished. We live in an area where the construction crews are small and take forever to complete a project. We are still waiting for the parking office to process our "carpool" application. Right now, only DH can drive because the parking lot requires the use of our employee IDs to open the gate and mine has not been registered through the carpool application yet. It is driving me crazy! Our employee IDs are also what we use for free transportation on the bus. So, I can't just take DHs ID and drive the car home as he would need his ID to ride the bus. So far, we have not been able to have the same work schedule - my job is basically just 8am - 4 pm but he has a job with a lot more responsibility and has had meetings lasting well after 5 pm. I am hoping that this wave of meetings is over and he can try to schedule things to leave by 4 pm.

DH is leaving this morning for a yearly conference that is very important in his line of work. He is hoping that Irene is not going to impact his flights. He will return on Wednesday night. I hope that the damage from the storm will be minimal for all who live along the East Coast.

Of course, since Dh is out of town, the kids' activities just started and I will be solely responsibile for getting them everywhere. We just got the baseball practice schedule for the next week. My one son has practice Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and a game on Wednesday. He gets Thursday and Friday off and then has practice again on Saturday and Sunday. Seriously?! One of the fields they use for his age group is very close to our house which is a huge help. The other one is a 15 minute drive across town. We should be getting the soccer schedule for my other son any day. I am betting that he will have practice/games the same times as my other son. We have plans for Labor Day weekend and I don't want to feel like I have to stay in town just so the kids can attend practice. That's what is weird about where we live: everyone is from here so they never go anywhere over holidays. The kids always have practices/games over Labor Day, Easter and Memorial Day. They are almost always the only kids that are not there during those times as we are NOT from this area.

My boys have spent this past week at home without any supervision since I started my new job two weeks ago and my DH had to be at work full-time this week. They are really good boys. My 13 y.o. DS push-mowed our entire hilly, 1 acre yard and did not complain one bit. He was not allowed to do the steep parts himself. My ten year old did some laundry and dusted. He did a little complaining. Last night I brought home pizza for them and they told me how bored they had been being home by themselves. I told them that is why I wanted to get a job - that I had been bored at home by myself and the only thing to do was cooking, cleaning, and maintenance. That was a real lightbulb moment for them. They didn't think that that sounded like a lot of fun! We did discuss how sad we all were that I was not there to take them to do fun things during their summer break. We would do all kinds of fun things and we always really looked forward to summers together. My DH will have to be the one to be taking them places next summer as he has the flexibility with his job. Honestly, he just isn't as much fun and does not enjoy the things like the rest of us. He'll have to loosen up a bit and just start taking them to do other things that he may enjoy doing with them. He doesn't have to take them to do the same things.

I am thinking the month of August is a bust to our budget and I am not even going to put it into my yearly spreadsheet that I use to calculate the following year's budget. This was caused by several reasons:
1. The housesitters caused quite a bit of trouble. We had to replace our dryer, coffee maker, some baking pans, and our lawn tractor's transmission (it is being worked on now). Just writing that shocks me that they could mess up so many things!
2. Re-stocking the house with staple items. We gave away all of the sauces, condiments, and a lot of food when we left as it would have gone bad or past it's expiration date while we were gone. We came home to a completely empty refrigerator. Buying all new sauces, etc. took a real bite out of the grocery budget.
3. New clothes for my new job.
4. My DS 13 is getting braces so we had to pay an up front fee of $350 for molds, x-rays, and photos that the insurance will not cover.

So, I will start "fresh" in September and track those budget numbers. I am anxious to settle into our new budget and see how it goes. I am focused on saving almost all of my salary. I am anxious to get that started and enroll in my employer's savings plan but they have not given me a password to get into the system and register. I will post back and keep myself responsible for keeping my savings on track.

I am off this morning to Payless to get soccer/baseball cleats for the boys and perhaps a cell phone for them to share. If DS13 is going to walk to practice or I will have to drop him off while I am with DS 10 somewhere else, I need to be able to get in touch with him.

Rethinking taking the bus for now

August 19th, 2011 at 01:01 am

I have been taking the bus this week to my new job. I can ride for free - a perk offered by my employer. It is supposed to take 53 minutes to get from the suburbs where I live to the front doorstep of my employer in the city. The return time is the same. It would take a minimum of 45 minutes to drive and often it takes an hour. The traffic is miserable. On the weekends, it only takes 25 minutes to drive there.

Getting to work has been taking the 53 minutes and has been fantastic. However, the route the bus takes from the city to the suburbs is a giant traffic snarl right now from various lane restrictions due to road construction. It took me 80 minutes to get home the last two days. I don't know if my sanity can take it. And, when the kids' fall activities start, I just can't spare that extra time. Perhaps my DH and I will need to keep the same work schedule for a while so we can drive together until the construction is over. The route we would drive is unaffected by this construction.

That would mean not as much gas savings but our time and the time we have with the kids is worth more to me.

Job training blues, 403b choices, budget windfalls

August 18th, 2011 at 12:25 am

I started my new job on Monday. It requires a ton of training classes and paperwork to get started. I am so anxious to be able to contribute to my department. I spent the entire day today taking 3 online training courses and the required assessments. Honestly, it was totally exhausting to do that for 8 hours. I am now qualified to take the advanced training classes required to actually do my job. They will be done in the classroom at some point. In the meantime, another staff member is going to get me started tomorrow on some real work. I hope I can catch on fast and start making a contribution. My boss told me that it would take me at least 6 months to be competent and a whole year to really know what I am doing. I won't be truly happy unless I know that I am doing a good job so I hope to get my training in and really do well. I'm pretty confident in my abilities to catch on fast. I just don't want to be a pest to the people who currently know how to do the things that I need to be doing.

I get my first paycheck on the last day of the month and am really looking forward to it.

I need to figure out how I want my retirement plan contributions allocated on the benefits enrollment form. I am super excited to be able to start contributing to retirement savings again. They offer a Roth fund in the 403b so I am seriously considering putting most of my contribution into that while my DH has his in tax-deferred accounts. This way we can diversify our tax liability in retirement. I haven't quite decided what to do yet. I may go to the forums and ask.

My DH also works for the same employer. In looking at the health and pharmacy plans, it will be cheaper for us to enroll one of us as a single person and the other as a parent with multiple children. It is less by almost 50%. Our budget is looking so good. In addition to the lower health care costs, we are saving a ton by riding the bus. I did find out that we both can ride for free. Our gasoline usage will go way down as well as our oil change costs and maintenance frequency. And with our younger DS in public school this year instead of private school, we are saving a bunch of money there, too. I feel so rich! We ate out to celebrate my first day of work and I let the kids get whatever they wanted and even let them order an appetizer. No more getting the smaller portions or splitting plates or always eating off the kiddie menu for us! It is so great after 12 years to not have to worry about how every single penny is spent. It is so wonderful!!

Lastly, I thought we'd have to delay my retirement contributions until the first of the year to build up our emergency fund. When we were in Sweden, we did some extra traveling and took money out of the EF. However, the tuition refund from removing our DS from the private school has replenished the fund. I am so glad we did the traveling but even more so now.


New Job & Other stuff

August 14th, 2011 at 11:23 pm

Tomorrow I start my new job after being a stay-at-home mom for 12 years. I will be working full time. I am really excited to get started but a little sad to not be with my kids as much. The job has flex hours so I hope to be able to get home a little after my youngest gets off the school bus so I won't really be missing that much time with them except in the summer. I have been looking for a full time job for the last 3 years. There is not a lot out there especially for someone that has no recent work experience. Did I say I am really excited?! I feel like I hit the jackpot with this one. I get 17 paid-time-off days and have to work 37.5 hours per week with flex hours. Plus, I can work from home occasionally if I have a sick kid or doctor's appointment. I was expecting to get just the standard 10 vacation days, 40 hours at a minimum, and very little flexibility. I feel really lucky!

I was also really happy to see that I will be able to take the public bus to and from work. I think I will get to ride for free. I will find out tomorrow. This will save me the cost of a parking pass, gasoline, and wear-and-tear on the car, plus the headache of city traffic. A total win win win for me and our budget!

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The bankruptcy sale took place for the property that my father had to foreclose on. No one came to the sale so the ownership reverts back to my dad. I am very happy about that as he will now control who buys it since it borders family property. I do feel badly for him because he now has the hassle of getting it ready for sale. On the plus side, he does need something to keep him occupied.

Day of fun and under budget, bankruptcy hearing

August 5th, 2011 at 02:14 am

Today I took the kids to an amusement park geared toward younger kids that also has a water park. We met my brother's family there. I took the $40 left from the big amusement park visit on Tuesday to spend. I came home with $7. We packed lunches and drinks so I just had to buy some snacks, dinner, 2 drinks, ice cream for the kids on the way out, and highway tolls. Another bonus was that they replaced the large swimming pool with a wave pool. The kids have been wanting to go to the local wave pool but it had been postponed twice. Now, I don't have to take them at all. This park is wonderful and the wave pool made it that much more fun for my kids. I miss the old pool, though.

I went to the doctor yesterday and he prescribed an antibiotic for my sinus infection. It was a one dose, drink-the-whole-bottle in one shot drug. Quite convenient. It was also free as the doctor sent me to the local pharmacy with a voucher from the drug company. I am feeling a little better but not as good as I usually do after taking an antibiotic so I am wondering if what I've got is viral or allergies or if this new antibiotic works more slowly than what I am used to.

Tomorrow we are taking one of our cars in to have a recalled part replaced. Afterwards we are driving to my father's house to spend the weekend with him and to visit my family and attend the family reunion on Sunday. My father is going to be at the county court house in the afternoon for a bankrupcy auction. He had sold a piece of property and held the mortgage. Meanwhile, the people took out a second mortgage and have had to declare bankrupcy. I am curious as to how this will work out. My father said that the bank that holds the second mortgage will probably end up buying the property and paying off the first mortgage to my father. At least that is what his lawyer had conveyed to him. I am also interested in what happens to the property because it is adjacent to family property. I wouldn't want someone to put in some loud, ugly, or smelly operation in there. There is no zoning in this area as it is rural.

$40 left, weather, decluttering

August 3rd, 2011 at 04:12 pm

The kids had a great time at the amusement park with their old friends yesterday. It was so hot and humid but uncharacteristically uncrowded. The kids did just about everything they wanted to do and were asking to go home at 4:30. We usually stay until 9 or later. So, we ended up only spending $35 for parking, drinks, and some snacks. That's $45 under the day's budget.

It is sooo hot and humid here! It would be hard to take the heat under normal circumstances but since we have been back from Stockholm for less than a week (where the weather hovers around 70 with no humidity and a light breeze), the weather here is killing us. It rained some last night but it hasn't cooled off much. It looks like it will storm today so the wave pool outing will probably be postponed again.

I have not tackled anymore outside yard work because I have been sick. If it weren't so hot, I'd get something done but just don't feel like facing the heat with clogged sinuses. I do hope to cut the grass today if it dries out and doesn't storm. We have a lawn tractor so it makes cutting our one acre hilly yard pretty easy. I'll get DS13 to do the trimming and pushmowing of the parts that the lawn tractor can't do and DS10 will do any raking if it's needed.

DS10 and I spent the morning going through his closet and drawers. We filled 1.5 large black garbage bags of clothes to give to a relative for his boys. We threw some old damaged and/or stained things away and put the rest of his Catholic school uniforms in a large kitchen garbage bag for a friend. After the cleanout, he has enough clothes for school, play and church so no school shopping is needed for him.

When my sons outgrow things I put them into storage bins in their closets. When the bin starts to get full, I sort through it and send things to charity or to basement storage (for later use for the younger boy) or straight to my younger son's closet. The bin in DS13's closet is piled really high so I need to go through that next. It feels so good to get these things that we do not need out of the house!







school registration, kid fun

August 2nd, 2011 at 12:01 pm

Yesterday I registered the kids for the public school and got the vacuum cleaner that the housesitters messed up fixed. It only cost $12 for the vacuum repair.

The amount and kinds of forms I had to fill out at the school district were interesting. One was to gauge their level of English fluency (how many years have they been in school in the US, what languages do they speak, what language is spoken at home), and on another I had to swear and have notorized that my children had never been expelled from another school for violence, drugs, vandalism, and something else quite serious. Their eyes got as big as ping-pong balls when they heard that question! So, they are now registered and now I wait for the guidance office to call about my DS13s schedule. I would like for his math teacher to test him and see if he actually finished Algebra 1 in Sweden. This will be a real headache to make happen. His Swedish school had to individualize the math program for each kid which meant they were learning on their own. They did this because these kids (in the English-speaking section) were all immigrants or temporary residents coming from an assortment of different countries and math programs. I am not so sure that he actually has a solid foundation in Algebra since he was teaching himself. That is a real shame because we moved him to the public school so that he could be in their accelerated math program. It's not the end of the world though if he has to repeat Algebra 1 this year. He will still get all the way through calculus in high school. I keep telling myself it is no big deal and it is better if he is a little bored and repeats than if he doesn't have a solid understanding of these math concepts. I also found out that orientation for new elementary students including my DS10 is at 10 am in late August. How do working parents manage to get their kids to stuff like this? I will have no time off yet and my DH may be out of town. I may have to ask my neighbor to take him and hope that she can do it. That's just not the same as me being there and asking the right questions pertinent to my kid.

DS10 had his best friend from the Catholic school over yesterday. He stayed until 3 pm and was asking if he could go to the wave pool with us. His mother could not stay for that but she said that we could go together on Wednesday so the kids wanted to do that instead of going after he left. I hope the weather holds out for these kids.

This week is my last week at home before I start my new full-time job. We will be leaving Friday for 8 days to visit our families since we have not seen them since Christmas and my kids are really missing their cousins. I start the Monday after we get back. I have scheduled all of the fun things the kids love to do in the summer in this one week: wave pool, amusement park, water/amusement park #2, play dates, mini-golf.

Today we are going to the local amusement park and meeting friends that are here for their once-a-year visit with family and friends. They had to move about 6 years ago with a job relocation. My kids look forward to going to the amusement park every year with them. This day is always so expensive. I budget $80 for the day. The kids have a ritual with the day. Certain foods (mostly junk) are a must and are expensive. I indulge them as this is a once a year extravagance. If I get home with $20 I feel pretty lucky! We do pack lunch but have to buy drinks/water once we run out. The kids always buy pizza for dinner, and for snacks during the day they get some fries, ice cream, and cotton candy. With parking, that comes pretty close to $80. Crazy I know!! I have always taken this out of our eating out/entertainment budget for the month so it was a planned expense. In the past, the kids knew how much money per week we had for "summer fun" (usually about $30) and would have to save up the fun money to go to this park.

I am looking forward to the week of fun with the kids but am sad because this is the last summer that we will be together all the time and having lazy summer fun days.

With the new job I was told that I have to work 37.5 hours per week and that I need to be there between 10 and 3 but can start and leave whenever I choose. DH works at the same institution so it would be ideal to have the same schedule. For the kids though, it would be best if I worked 7 - 3 and DH worked 9 - 5. That way he'd be home in the morning until they got on the school bus and I'd get home pretty close to when DS10 got off the bus. Until I get this new job figured out, I will need to work the hours most of my co-workers choose to work which are 8-4. Many things to still figure out.

change of schools, shopping trip for clothes

August 1st, 2011 at 10:56 am

I mentioned that we will be moving our DS10 from a private school to a public school this fall. We sent our kids to this academic, Catholic school (not a parish school) after DS13 finished 3rd grade in the public school and DS10 was starting 1st grade. We did this because they have an excellent academic program and our kids needed the challenge. We had always planned on moving them to the public school once they started high school in 9th grade or middle school in 6th grade when the academic programs divided the kids according to ability. We moved DS13 last year in 7th grade to take advantage of their advanced math program. It turned out that it was not really that much more advanced than the Catholic school and the other academic subjects lagged behind the Catholic school. We are moving DS10 this year because he will need after school care since I start my full-time job on August 15th. He was severely bullied in after school care the last time we did that when I had a seasonal job. The bully and the teacher are still there. The school was about to expel the bully from daycare when this all happened in the spring of 2010. But, after the lawyer dad came in and met with the principal, suddenly my child was equally responsible for being taunted, isolated, and humiliated. The academic program there is not worth the depression and hurt that my poor child suffered during that 3-month period. Plus, he will be able to ride the bus which will help logistically with me now working. We plan on having both kids at home until we get home. Does anyone have suggestions on how to keep them busy after school? I don't want them to be playing electronic games and I don't want to have to confiscate the games, etc. every day to prevent them from doing that. They currently have a one hour per day electronic entertainment limit.

After church, I helped DS13 as he tried on all the clothes in his closet. Just as I thought, almost nothing fit. However, because we know after our 7 months living with very little in Sweden that we can live with a lot less, all he needed in the end was a pair of nice shorts or pants to wear to church and a pair of gray shorts for school plus some new underwear. He had 8 short-sleeved shirts, 3 pairs of jeans, several pairs of track pants, 3 pairs of shorts, a dozen pairs of socks, and a pair of sneakers that all fit. Plenty for school. We will be keeping up with doing laundry once per week so he will be fine. He can wear his pants/shorts more than one day before they need to be washed as he does have a gym "uniform" that he leaves at school and plenty of clothes that don't fit to use as play clothes at home.

I think DS10 is okay on clothes but I still need to go through his closet. I needed a couple of skirts and several nice tops to start my new job. I also wanted to find a white and/or cream-colored sweater to wear in the overly air-conditioned building. So we headed to the local outlet center after church to get what we needed. I sent my DH with a list and the kids while I went looking for things to match what I already had. The plan was to then go home and go to the county park wave pool for the afternoon because it is still so hot here.

I was able to get everything I needed for work at the Talbots outlet. Everything in the store was 30-50% off and I did something I never do: I opened a Talbots credit card to get an additional 15% off. I will pay off the card and then close it immediately. I have been so frugal on one income for so long that I have not bought myself new clothes or spent more than $15 on an item of everyday clothing in at least 10 years. It was actually hard for me to buy things that I would have considered too expensive. Normally, price is the number one criteria for me when I buy clothing. Well yesterday, fit, style, and price were the priorities in that order. I will end up returning some things as they did not match what I had at home but I ended up spending $400. I almost choked when she said the total. I ended up with the white and cream colored sweaters I wanted, 3 skirts, 7 tops, 3 other light layering sweaters, 3 fall/winter sweaters, a scarf, and a blazer. That adds up to costing $20 per item which is not that bad really. I will be taking back at least one skirt and 3 tops. I can wear these clothes all year round because I got the sweaters to wear over the summery tops. With the new job, I am not going to beat myself up on the total cost. I have not spent that much on myself in the last 4 years total. I will wear these clothes until they wear out.

When I met up with my family, they had just finished their shopping. DH had found his shoes and the shorts for DS13. We still need to get the underwear at a department store. Even DH had a hard time paying $55 for the pair of Timberland shoes. We are just so used to being frugal and shopping clearance sales that it is hard to buy something you "like" instead of buying it because of the price. I also think that is why my kids had 20 t-shirts each: because I got a bunch of them for $1.29 at Target during a clearance sale since they were cheap. Now we'll get things that are reasonably priced but are what we like.

After we got home, the kids went to play with the neighbor kids who just got home from vacation. So, this was the first time they'd seen them in 7 months. We will try to go to the wave pool on Monday. DS10 has his best friend coming over to play so it will depend on how long he stays. I can't watch three kids at the wave pool. It is way too dangerous. I normally stand next to DS10 and keep an eye on DS13.