Extra work hours worth the money?

This morning I got a call as soon as I got to my desk. It was my boss at my moonlighting gig. A coworker of mine was sick, and could I please cover her evening shift?

I said I couldn't do the full 5.5 hour shift, but I could do 4 hours, which means about $130 extra (gross) in my next paycheck. Because I'm such a geek, I'm most excited about the extra $19.50 that will go into my retirement account as a result ($6.50 from them, $13 from me).

So here I am, in hour 11 of a 12 hour work day. I don't have my keyring for this job with me so I have to use the public bathroom instead of the staff bathroom. I bought a really bad overpriced salad for dinner. I'm wearing jeans (this place is usually on the businessy side of business casual) because I was working with dirty old books at my other job all day. I don't have my car here like I usually do, so I'll have a late-night subway ride and train ride ahead of me.

Is it worth it? I dunno. It seemed worth it this morning at 9 AM when I was fresh. Now I'm wishing I was home reading bed-time stories to someone small. He's probably wearing his spaceship jammies and reading one of the dinosaur books we got from the library yesterday. He's probably eating cheerios from a cup as his bedtime snack. In a few minutes, he's probably going to hide under the kitchen table to avoid having his teeth brushed, and his father will have to drag him out and do it anyway.

Is an evening at home with my kid worth $130?

I kinda think that it is.

Progress report on 2007 goals

At the beginning of the year, I reluctantly mapped out some goals for 2007. Because my 403b rollover from TIAA-CREF to Fidelity just went through yesterday (I don't even want to know what time precisely the shares were purchased yesterday) I have finally reached the $50,000 account balance in Fidelity which gives me certain privileges, like cheaper trades, etc.

I remembered that I had set the 50k account level at Fidelity as one of my 2007 goals, so I decided to look back and see what date I wanted to achieve that by. The deadline I set for myself was March 1! What timing!

Now, the other goal that I was supposed to have accomplished (kick my Wachovia checking account to the curb and open an account with a local bank) did not happen by Feb 1 as I promised myself it would. I'm still trying to get around to that one.

Still, go me on the Fidelity thing.

Market plummets, what's an investor to do?

In my case, nothing!

My strategy in this situation is to behave like an ostrich and bury my head in the sand. My investments have been doing very well lately and it's nice to see the money growing, but I'm still several decades from retirement, and I like my asset allocation (thank goodness I completely revised it last year, and thank goodness I didn't have enough money left over to buy an emerging markets fund).

My only regret is that I'm about to quit my job, which means I will barely be adding to my retirement accounts for a while. So I won't be in a position to take advantage of dollar-cost-averaging if there should be a continued market downturn. Also, I am due to rebalance my portfolio later this spring, and I guess it would have been nice to have done that while things were up. But maybe they'll still be up. We just don't know what will happen.

Still, I'm glad I'm not recently retired or trying to time the market. If that were the case, I'm sure I wouldn't have slept too well last night.

Pictures of working mothers

A student at the reference desk just told me I look tired. "Your eyes are all red," he said solicitously.

You're damn right I'm tired. Don't make me list all the errands I ran and all the complicated toddler-logic negotiations I parried BEFORE I came to work today.

While browsing for something else, I found this gallery from the University of Saskatchewan Archives.

I'm pretty sure this is going to be me in, maybe, another ten years:



Right now, I'm this woman, see? She looks stunned but not totally spent yet.

Review of Working Mother Magazine

If you're reading personal finance blogs, chances are you've at least glanced at an issue of Money Magazine or Kiplinger's lately. But did you know that there is a national magazine aimed at working mothers?

Working Mother Magazine provides escapist reading for women who are raising kids and pulling a paycheck at the same time.

Militant feminism this is not. There is an assumption that every woman should be able to succeed professionally, also have enough time for her children and her (straight) marriage, somehow also find the time to pamper herself to help cope with the stress, and look really hot all the time. What reality are these people living in?

The coolest thing about the magazine, in my opinion, is that it recognizes and celebrate companies with family-friendly policies. Each year, they publish a list of the 100 best family-friendly companies to work for. Companies have to apply for this honor, and many of the winners also seem to be advertisers in the magazine. The companies are evaluated on a number of different criteria, and companies with generous parental leave policies are favored.

What can you expect to find in a typical issue of Working Mother?

Stories and profiles of working mothers. They do a very good job of profiling women of different races and in different professions. But where are the stories about working class women? A magazine that made professional women aware of how comparatively easy they have it, now that would be something. And although there's an occasional nod to single mothers, the dreaded H-word (husband) is dropped with nauseating frequency. I know I'm a little prickly about this, but aren't we past a 1950s model where every mother is married to a man?

Celebrity mom gossip. I have a secret weakness for tabloids, and this magazine definitely satisfies that craving. You won't find Britney-dropped-her-baby type gossip here. There's an emphasis on successful motherhood. Think Meryl Streep and Susan Sarandon.

Recipes and kid-friendly activities. When you're not busy running an international non-government organization, check out these helpful hints for projects to do with your kids, and nutritious made-from-scratch meals for the whole family.

Fashion and sex tips. Even the so-called "ordinary" women they profile look like Victoria's Secret models, and the magazine helpfully tells you where you can buy what each woman is wearing so you can "get her look." There's also the requisite article about, quote, "intimacy".


Okay, at this point you're probably asking, why is TBH so damn cranky about this magazine? The answer is that I'm disappointed. I had a bunch of rewards points to use up and there weren't any good rewards, so I got a few magazine subscriptions. Cool, I thought. Working Mother Magazine. That's right up my alley. But where am I in this magazine? I don't have a husband, but I'm not single either. I'm not a lawyer or a doctor. I don't work for a big corporation. What gives?

Still, this would make good airplane reading. It's sort of an interesting convergence of trashy women's fashion magazines, business magazines, and parenting magazines. Pick one up if you're curious. Just don't expect anything too enlightening.

Disclaimer: I have only read a few issues so far, so if they profiled housekeeper moms or bartender moms or something in a past issue, I apologize for unfairly criticizing the magazine.

Related posts:
Companies want to retain parents in the workforce
Family-friendly workplaces
Bringing your family on business trips

The trouble with attempting to be anonymous

...is that I'm really bad at keeping secrets.

The number of people who know me offline and who know about the blog is slowly growing.

First, I said too much to a certain Ms. Tankmartin (a frequent commenter), an old friend from high school who shares my interest in personal finance. She found the blog with Google less than a week later.

Then, I left a comment on a friend's blog and forgot to put my real name in like I usually did. Instead, I signed the comment with my blog name and URL. I actually caught it before hitting "submit" but then decided, what the hell. So now she knows about the blog.

And recently, I told my sister (who is also pretty much my closest friend) about the blog, and she was totally shocked that I'd kept it a secret for a year and a half. I don't know if she's found the blog, and I can't quite bring myself to give her the URL, because surely I said something inappropriate about one of our relatives at some point? Like, oh, say, this post, for example. You all don't know who I'm talking about (I hope), but she would instantly know.

And now, tonight, we had some friends over for dinner. While our kids squabbled over toys, we talked about, among other things, my writing. I'd mentioned before to these folks that I had an anonymous blog, and now they confessed they've been looking for it and had been unable to find it. They were so curious, and it seemed so silly to keep it a secret, so I told them it was a personal finance blog focusing on working families. We agreed that I wouldn't tell them the URL--they wanted the challenge of finding it themselves. These folks know their way around the internet. They'll probably have found it by morning.

So, hi, P and D. Now you know.

Jeez. I need to be more discreet, or just delete old posts that I don't want my mother to read and broadcast the URL to everybody.

For those of you whose blogs are theoretically anonymous, do your offline friends know they even exist? Have you been found out accidentally?

Do tell.

Related posts:
On anonymity
Talking to reporters
Bloggers in the media

Family Pride republishes my article on unmarried straight partnerships

Nina from Queercents just informed me that Family Pride has republished a guest article I wrote for Queercents last fall:

Straight partnerships: Saying no to marriage

I'm glad that people are still finding this article useful. I had never seen the Family Pride Blog before and I look forward to following it.


Related posts:
Index to posts about unmarried finances

Carnival of 30s and 40s personal finance

...is up at Making Our Way.

My post on employer benefits for parents is included.

Atta boy

This morning I took L to our food co-op to buy groceries. He drove me crazy snatching fruit from the low-down bins and then running away, giggling madly. He talked me into buying cheese puffs and a cookie. Guess who ate more cheese puffs on the way home.

While we were standing in line, though, he found twenty-seven cents in change on the floor.

Without thinking about it, I asked him what he was going to spend it on.

He looked at me disdainfully.

"I'm going to put it with my other money, Mama."

In other words, he was going to put it in his piggy bank. What else is money for?

Paying taxes when you're only LEGALLY single

It's that time of year again, and those of us who live with domestic partners who we're not legally married to are going to be doing our usual scrambling to file tax forms that aren't really designed for us.

A question from a reader named Bill reminded me that some of my readers may be wondering how the heck they're supposed to handle sticky issues like co-owning a house with someone who is not recognized by the feds as your husband or your wife.

Bill is having trouble because his online tax software (HR Block) won't let him e-file since he needs to submit a letter to the IRS explaining that he and his fiance own a house together.

Now, I wouldn't really know about e-filing because I'm still a pencil-and-paper tax filer. But it seems unlikely to me that nobody who co-owns a house but files as single can efile. Anybody know how to handle this, or want to recommend better tax software to Bill?

We do submit such a letter, and it reads something like this:

"Dear Keepers of an antiquated and hetero-centric tax system,

I, Tired but happy (SSN 123-45-6789), am co-owner of a house at 123 Main Street, Anytown USA. The other owner of the house, Mr. M. Smith (SSN 987-65-4321), pays for the mortgage on the house, and for its upkeep. Therefore he is claiming the entire deduction for mortgage interest.

Sincerely,
Resentful but law-abiding unmarried taxpayer"

If you want to know other details of how we have been successfully navigating the tax issues related to parenting and home ownership, check out this post that I wrote last year: Tax tips for unmarried families

But don't listen to me, because I'm no expert. Instead, go buy this excellent book.

Good luck!

See also:
Index to posts about unmarried finances

Career change: The specifics

Unfortunately, the specifics of my possibly impending career change from staid and respectable librarian to barely-solvent but happy novelist are still mostly up-in-the-air.

The other day I finally spilled the beans about this madcap idea. I'm pretty serious about this plan, and I thought I'd write about more of my thoughts on how this will work.

First, where is this money going to come from? A brief picture of our finances can be found in my Net Worth IQ profile, but that doesn't really tell you where all that cash is stashed. For this discussion, the important question is, how much easily accessible cash do we have that could be tapped to cover the shortfall while I'm working less hours at my day job? And what will that shortfall be?

The truth is, I don't know what the shortfall will be. I still need a few pieces of information, and even then it will be something of an unknown. On March 1, my partner is receiving a raise and going from working 27 hours a week to working full-time. When we get his first paycheck I'll know what his take-home pay will look like. I know, I know, there are all kinds of handy paycheck calculators that will tell you how much your take-home will be, but that would require me to follow him around the house for days, demanding "What tax bracket are you in again? Your medical insurance premiums--they're going to be what, now? Do you have to pay separately for dental?" Not going to happen. Much easier to wait til March 23 when I'll have his first full-time paycheck in my hot little hands.

As usual, I also don't know how many hours I'll be able to get at my moonlighting gig, which I intend to keep. It's likely that I'll only get one shift per week in the summer, but in the fall I hope to get at least two shifts. I get paid about $176 per shift, but I'm expecting a raise and some back pay later this spring when the union reps will hopefully sign a new contract.

Okay, so having established that I have no real idea what our income is going to be, let's look at our monthly expenses.

Um, I don't know that either. The last time I tracked it for a long period of time (all of 2005) it was costing about $4500 per month to run our household. I've been tracking it again since November 2006, and we've been averaging about $5500. There's been some unusual stuff going on--medical and dental work, a new roof, car repairs, etc. However, isn't there always unusual stuff going on? I am determined that my harebrained scheme should NOT drain our emergency fund. It's bad enough that we won't be adding to it for a while, but there are bound to be the usual number of emergencies and unexpected expenses during my period of less employment and I want to be prepared for them.

Our emergency fund currently consists of $16,500 in a CD ladder, plus about $7500 in a savings account at ING. We have about another $1000 in short-term savings, most of which is already earmarked for a vacation this summer. If we discount the travel fund, our cash and CDs give us enough to live for about 5 months without tightening the belt at all.

I'm assuming that the emergency fund will continue to be used partly as a short-term savings account for major health-related expenses and home repairs, plus it will serve as an emergency fund.

So where am I going to get the money to replace my lost income after I quit my job?

I have a taxable account at Fidelity that I've been thinking of as long-term savings. This is the move-to-California fund, the travel-around-the-world fund, the have-a-second-baby fund, and the get-an-MFA fund. The balance as of today is $12,360. It's broken down like this:

$7000 in CDs
$1610 in cash
$3750 in FBALX (mutual fund)

My plan is to use about $6000 to get through this 6-month period. If I use a little more of it than that, so be it. I'm unlikely to either move to California, have a second baby, or get that MFA. Travelling around the world will probably have to wait a while too. So I'm considering this money fair game to help me do a little fiction writing. The only reason I'm not planning to spend the whole 12K to buy me writing time is that I want to have a nice large chunk left over to help buy me time once I do start looking for a library job again once it's time for my reprieve to be over.

Admittedly, it is probably wishful thinking to think I will only have a shortfall of $1000 per month. Since I don't know exactly what our income or expenses will be, I can't calculate how much the shortfall will be. I don't think my plan will become set in stone until a.) I find out what our take-home will be once my partner goes full time, and b.) the contract negotiations are over at my moonlighting gig. (If the dispute isn't resolved by mid-March we're going to strike, and there is no way I want to quit my other job til the threat of a strike is over.)

There's also the possibility of other side income from my various online schemes, and there's a chance I might be able to do some consulting or part-time contract work in some library or other. I don't want to spend too much time on that because the point of all this is to write, but I'm not opposed to the idea of having my income creep up during the 6-month period, delaying the time when I have to start pounding the pavement again.

So there you have it. The plan is a little half-baked, but hopefully things will fall into place soon.

Questions? Thoughts? Expressions of incredulity that I would be so irresponsible? More encouraging remarks about what a good writer I am? Advance orders for my yet-to-be-written novel? Bring 'em on. Comments are always open.

Related posts:
Major life changes for me this year?

Companies want to retain parents in the workforce

I'm going to send this article anonymously to the head of my employer's HR department:

Every day is Mother’s Day for savvy employers

Wouldn't it be amazing if the kinds of amenities mentioned in this article (paid maternity leave, special support for nursing mothers, help placing your child in daycare or even providing care in the office building) became more widespread?

My only beef with this article is that it seems to be too focused on the mothers. It's a start, but what about the fathers? I think fathers are increasingly making career choices that allow them to spend more time with their families. Climbing the career ladder (and working long hours) is no longer considered the hands-down best thing a man can do for his partner and kids.

What's your best experience with concessions your employer has made to help you balance career responsibilities with parenthood? What one change could your employer make that would make it easier, or even possible, for you to have kids?

My boss has struggled to maintain a career while raising children. She gets it. On my first day of work (I had a three-month-old), she told me apologetically that she didn't have a lactation room set up for me to use my breast pump. She then took me on a tour of the building and showed me three options she'd thought of that might work for my needs. She had keys made to all three rooms so I could choose which one was most comfortable for pumping. And, she said, it was fine with her if I pumped while on the clock.

This was in contrast to my other job, where I had one fifteen-minute break to pump, use the bathroom, and eat my dinner. Not possible, let me tell you. I learned to bring high-protein foods that I could eat with one hand so I could pump and eat at the same time. Even then, I think my fifteen minutes often stretched a little longer. And did I mention that I had to pump in an unlocked conference room? That was a thrill a minute, let me tell you.


Related posts:

Family-friendly workplaces
Bringing your family on business trips

Major life changes for me this year?

Lately, I've been contemplating some possibly cataclysmic events in my life and I'm not quite sure how, or if, I should present them on the blog. I was thinking about waiting for some dramatic moment to unveil all the things that are happening, but everything is developing so slowly and it will probably be at least a few months before there's any resolution.

Today is a perfect opportunity. It's a snow day, and the next door neighbor's grandson has come over to play with my little guy. For the moment they don't need me to mediate in their play (Hold on--L, give that plastic cow back to Chris. Right now. I mean it, L.) They've had their hot chocolate and they're playing with L's Playmobil farm. I should really clean the house in preparation for this weekend's houseguest, but as usual I'm going to put it off til later.

Here are a few half-baked ideas that are keeping me up at night.

Blind-sided by a medical issue. I've had a health scare recently that is almost resolved, but it's still not a hundred percent over so I'm not really ready to write much about it. Suffice to say I had a life-threatening illness as a kid, and recent blood tests indicated that it might be back. Even if it was back, I'd probably make it through a second round of treatment, but who needs that kind of stress and unpleasantness? I'm trying to hold down two jobs and raise a family, for Pete's sake. However, at my first visit with the specialist, she thought it was very unlikely that I was sick again. Whew! I still need some tests and more bloodwork to make sure. Needless to say, I've been a little distracted by that in the past few weeks.

Work sucks and then you die. Partly because of the medical scare and my feeling that I'm wasting the best years of my life doing underpaid and underappreciated work, I've been getting closer to walking out of my primary job. Although I'd still have my moonlighting gig, it would mean we'd be living partly on savings for a while. I am increasingly excited about doing this, but I have hestitated to blog about it because it's not a done deal and I may chicken out for one reason or another. Plus, telling a bunch of fellow PF geeks that I'm planning to walk away from a sweet part time gig with great benefits and flexible hours in order to drain my savings for an indefinite period of time makes me a little nervous. Don't be too hard on me, guys.

Idealistic career dreams. See, before I decided to be all practical and get a degree in library science, I wanted to write novels. I still haven't quite given up on that. For a long time I thought I'd just work full time to pay the bills and write at night and on the weekends. No problem, right? But even before I became a parent I realized I didn't have the stamina and drive to get much writing done after putting in a full day at some day job. I've mentioned before that one of my long-term savings goals is to pay for an MFA in fiction writing. I have about 12K saved up toward that dream, and I have a few unfinished fiction projects taking up space on my hard drive. It occurred to me for the first time recently that I don't have to wait til I have tens of thousands of dollars to get me through another graduate degree. I could use that money to replace my income this year while I write. I don't NEED an MFA to write fiction. It would be nice to get the degree because I'd learn a lot, make good contacts, and have someone else setting deadlines for me for two years which would force me to write. But graduate degrees are expensive, especially ones that will probably not help me earn money in the long run. So I think if I do quit my primary job later this spring, I'll give myself 6 months before I start looking for another librarian gig. I'll reduce my son's preschool attendence (and move him to a cheaper co-op school) to save money, and I'll spend the time while he's in school trying to get enough of a fiction portfolio together to find an agent. Who knows, maybe I'll be the one of the rare, lucky few who actually manages to bring in some money from creative writing. If not, I can always go back to work for some large beaurocratic university library again, but at least I will have tried to do what I actually want to do with my life.

I feel excited and scared. Mostly I feel scared that I won't follow through. Maybe I will be too chicken to quit my job because we so clearly can't afford to give up that portion of our household income. Or maybe my work environment, which has been almost unbearable for the past year, will improve significantly, and I'll find it too hard to walk away from the good things about it (and there are many good things). Maybe I'll quit, but another job I can't pass up will fall into my lap and as usual I'll do the practical thing and take it. Maybe (this would be the worst outcome of all) I'll quit my job, but instead of doing the writing I'll procrastinate and read blogs and play computer solitaire for six months.

Or maybe not. Maybe I really will quit that job, and I really will get that novel underway. Even if it never gets published, giving myself that chance will be something I'll look back on happily for the rest of my life.

Most of the time I make good practical choices that are all about my financial responsibilities. I have a family. I have a house. I have a retirement account that I like to feed regularly. I have a nice emergency fund that I'd like to save for, well, emergencies, not crazy whims like this one.

But what if I just said screw it. What if I just did what I want to do? What if I took a risk that maybe I'm talented enough and savvy enough to make it as a fiction writer?

Life is uncertain. If I did find myself faced with a life-threatening illness for the second time in my life, I know I wouldn't be saying, "Thank goodness I didn't take more risks." Instead, I'd be thinking of all the missed opportunities.

I hope I have the courage not to miss this one.

Happy Hallmark Day

There's an ice storm keeping us home in the Northeast. The university where I work is open, but my boss has asked us all to work at home to avoid driving on the slick roads. Fine with me. My son's preschool is closed anyway.

I hope everyone commutes safely today in the Northeast or can telecommute.

More reasons to work

A family conversation during the childcare hand-off this afternoon. M worked from 8:30-2:30 while I stayed home with the kid, and now I'm working from 4:30-10 while he stays home.

Me: (looking at the weather forecast online) Snow, wintry mix, freezing rain?! I don't want to drive home at ten o'clock at night in an ice storm. They should close the campus in this weather. Then I wouldn't have to go in.

L: What are you talking about, Mama?

Me: The truth is, L, I really don't want to go to work.

L: But you have to go to work, Mama.

Me: You're right. Why do I have to go again?

L: Because Papa already went to work. Now it's your turn.

M: (laughing) He has a point there.

Me: Equality is overrated.

M: Bye, have a nice time at work. And thanks for contributing to the household economy.

Me: $!@^(&#!&*@




Related posts:
As good a reason as any to go to work

Saturdays are my favorite day

It's nice to be pleasantly tired instead of just tired. It's been a long day.

This morning we unpacked a box of dishes from my father. They were a Christmas present but had been backordered. Of course you should never let a 3-year-old anywhere near those little styrofoam peanuts. He broke them into little bits, and still had pieces of them in his hair at bedtime because the static electricity made them hard to comb out.

The cardboard box was the perfect size to be a fort, so we cut windows into it with a penknife and I wrote "L's House" on the side. L took a washable marker into it to decorate the inside walls, and he kept coming out and demanding that I wash the ink off his hands (he's kind of a finnicky kid).

In the late morning we went to the local cafe to hang out with a bunch of families from our babysitting co-op. I made a new friend and exchanged numbers with her. Then we drove over an hour to the next state to go to a baby shower. It was fun, our gift was well received, and it was nice to see our friend looking so pregnant.

After dinner, I put L to sleep and then planted 48 seed starts for my spring garden. I planted several kinds of tomatoes, two kinds of basil, and tried planting zinnias and cilantro even though I'm not sure you're supposed to start those indoors. I didn't have enough trays for all the little peat pots full of dirt, so I put some of them in some extra china teacups that were in my basement. It felt very decadent to use good china that way. I fertilized all my houseplants and trimmed dead leaves.

Overall, a productive and pleasant day. Tomorrow it's housecleaning day, and desperately overdue.

I love Saturdays!

As good a reason as any to go to work

Yesterday, my little son walked me to the front door as I was leaving for work. In his arms he was holding a bunch of plastic toys: an alligator, a snake, a shark, an octopus, and several fish.



L: Mama, can you stay with me?

Me: No, sweetheart, I have to go to work.

L: Why?

Me: Because I have a job.

L: Why?

Me: Papa and I both have jobs. We need to earn money to pay for important things, like food, and clothes--

L: And toy sea creatures?

The value of a dollar

Reference librarians have way too much fun.

Tonight while I was preparing to teach a class from the architecture department how to find resources in the library I came across an old reference book called "The Value of a Dollar."

It's got lists of prices for various items from 1860-1989.

Here are a few interesting ones.

Tinkertoy, in 1951, cost $1.98.
Today's price: $25-95-55.95 (from Amazon)

Zippo lighter, in 1950, cost $1.25
Today's price: $10.50

60-watt bulb, in 1949: $0.12
Today's price: $1.35


(All of today's prices gleaned in a very unscientific manner from Amazon.com)

Kids and dental work

Today, we took our 3-year-old to the dentist for the first time. We chose a well-regarded local pediatric dentist, even though she doesn't participate in any dental insurance plans. Because this dentist was out of network, I opted not to pay the $300 per year to sign my son up for dental insurance through my workplace plan.

The dentist was fantastic. Our little guy was scared, but he did let them examine him. It all went really well.

Except that he has EIGHT CAVITIES. The dentist is recommending that we allow her to do the necessary work at a local children's hospital while he's under a general anaesthetic. Aside from the fact that no parent wants their kid to be knocked out for any reason, it's going to cost us somewhere around $2000.

Do you ever feel that you're walking around with a sign on your back that says "kick me"? I'm dealing with my own dental and medical issues as the moment. I do not want to take my only child to a hospital and let them put a breathing tube down his throat and give him a bunch of scary drugs to knock him out.

But the dentist says he is "not a candidate for sedation", which is the other way that they do major work on small kids. They give them something to make them loopy, shoot them up with novocain, and do the work. But my little guy is afraid of machines that make noise, so even under sedation he is unlikely to let them anywhere near his mouth with a drill. Plus, that much work will probably take 3 separate visits. We are going to do some more research, but we are leaning toward following her advice.

Lessons learned:

1. The rule of thumb that kids should see the dentist at age 3 is outdated. New recommendations are for kids to see a dentist for the first time before they turn one. If you have a small child, or plan to, don't show up 2 years too late at the dentist like we did.

2. Breastfeeding is fabulous for all kinds of reasons. However, breast milk is full of sugar. And of course I didn't wake the kid up and brush his teeth every time he finished nursing. My mistake. If I had another kid, I'd night-wean him sooner (stop nursing him at night but continue to nurse during the day). We night-weaned L just before he turned 2, and weaned him completely on his 3rd birthday.

3. Don't forget about genetics. I've lost count, but I think I have somewhere between 20 and 30 fillings. I have my father's teeth, and my son has my teeth. I should have assumed he'd be genetically pre-disposed to having swiss cheese instead of teeth.

4. You still have to take care of baby teeth, even tho they'll probably fall out. It might seem like madness to spend $2000 fixing teeth he'll only have til his adult teeth grow in, but the bacteria in cavities can cause more cavities, so if his adult teeth grow into an unhealthy mouth, they'll be unhealthy too. Plus, eventually these teeth will start to hurt, if they haven't already. I've been wondering why he doesn't like drinking cold water.

5. You may have those baby teeth longer than you think. I have a baby tooth still in my mouth, because there was no adult tooth underneath. My partner had one too, but he's a little older than I am so by now his is a bridge. It's pretty likely, given that both his parents were missing adult teeth, that our son will have some of the teeth he has now indefinitely. All the more reason to take care of them.

6. Insurance is good. I can't believe I was such a short-sighted idiot, but even if a dentist is out-of-network we could submit claims and get reimbursed for part of the treatment cost. I thought I could get away with one more year of not paying for dental insurance for him. It looks like that will be a costly mistake.

7. The challenges of being unmarried pop up in all kinds of situations. Right now, we're struggling with the fact that we could probably add the baby to his dad's workplace dental plan, even tho it's mid-year. But we're unmarried, so we're not legally a family. Our son is on my health plan and I deduct his daycare costs, so he's legally my dependent for tax purposes. I don't know if we'd be breaking the rules, then, if we tried to put him on my partner's dental plan. I don't even know who to ask about something like that. And besides, if we got him insured now, we'd probably be commiting minor insurance fraud if we tried to have the insurance company pay for this treatment, which is a pre-existing condition if there ever was one. So complicated.

Again, I am shocked at how freakin' expensive life is, and how lucky I am to be able to pay these big unexpected bills. I just replaced the roof on my house, and I'm scheduled to have major dental work of my own on Monday. What's next? Wait, no, I didn't really ask that. I don't think I want to know.

Welcome, US News and World Reports readers

This week, *Tired but happy* was featured in US News and World Reports, along with several other PF blogs.

Here's the link to the article.

It's an expanded version of the article that ran in their online-only magazine in November.

If you're visiting my site for the first time, welcome! I write about the financial challenges faced by working parents.

If you like what you see, please subscribe.

My kid just inherited a lot of money

I'm a little bit in shock after learning that my son is about to receive an inheritance. I knew that it was coming, but not how much it was. It has turned out to be literally ten times what I was expecting. If we invest it carefully now, it will be almost enough to pay for a very modest public college education in 2021.

This is a huge load off my mind. We will continue to save for his education, but anything we save now will basically provide a safety net in case the money doesn't grow as much as we hope it will, or in case tuition balloons even more than expected. And if we manage to save a decent amount on top of this windfall, and if our investments perform well, he'll be able to choose a more expensive school or use some of the money to get an advanced degree.

So why do I feel a little sad?

I know, I know, everyone should have my problems. But the fact remains, I feel a little conflicted about this inheritance.

Like most inheritances, this one comes with a large dose of grief. My son's great-grandmother died almost a year ago, so the wound is not fresh. But I would like to be sitting in her kitchen drinking tea from a fanciful flowered tea cup, and listening to her stories. She had an amazing movie star voice, which was incongruous coming out of an 88-year-old body. I miss her.

Receiving this money is a great thing for our family. I know that in time the sadness will diminish, and I'll be able to enjoy the fact that there is one less savings mountain for me to climb.


Related posts:
How do you plan for an inheritance?

Net worth update for February 2007

My net worth shot up this month, but only because I decided to change the way I calculate it. I decided to take a few small things out of my calculations (personal property and the value of my car), but I added one large thing: My partner's retirement accounts.

I do have my profile listed on Net Worth IQ as a joint profile. So why didn't I include his retirement accounts before? I simply didn't know exactly how much was in them and it seemed strange to just guestimate. But recently, he gave me free reign over his financial files, and he even gave me the password to his retirement account online (insert diabolical laughter) so now I can obsessively check his balances as often as I obsessively check my own! Isn't that great?

There are still a few key things that are not in my net worth report. Probably I should include all of them, but I'm not ready to make that leap yet.

1. My son's UGMA account. This account is worth about 3K and it's not included for the simple reason that it is not my money.

2. The prepaid tuition 529 plan that is in my partner's name. I do include the 529 that is in my name. Why the inconsistency? You try getting financial information out of my partner when he's overworked all the time and has a thousand other things to do. I just don't like to bug him. Probably I should start tracking the value of this account more regularly, especially now that M has given me carte blanche in his file cabinet.

3. My partner's other accounts. I know he has an old checking account left over from before we combined our day-to-day operating money four years ago. I also have an almost-fallow checking account from those days. I have no idea how much is in his but I suspect I'd have a minor stroke if I knew how much money he had sitting there not earning interest. Just like I probably do not want to know how much he has sitting in low-interest credit union savings accounts. I know of at least 2 or 3 other accounts that he has because I live with him and I see the mail come into the house, but I do not know what's in there. He doesn't ask me about my personal money. I don't ask him about his. Almost all our money is combined, but what little we've kept separate is sort of our own business.

So what's our net worth, minus the omissions I just mentioned, but including all of our retirement accounts?

$133,712

I can hardly believe it. We are so loaded. I feel proud of myself but also sort of undeserving.

Related posts:
June net worth report, and some reflections (post includes another discussion of what I include and do not include in my net worth calculations)

Paid review of savings-accounts.com

I accepted this review from ReviewMe because it's definitely relevant to the content of my blog, and because the site I've been asked to review is so simple that I keep looking at it thinking I'm missing something.

Savings-accounts.com is a simple, one-page site that lists eleven online savings accounts. We are given each bank's name, its website, info on the type of accounts it offers, current interest rates, and notes on minimum balances and other basic things you'd need to know to open an account online.

If I were looking to open an online savings account, I would probably start at Bankrate.com to find rates. But if Savings-accounts.com is eerily simple, Bankrate is at the other end of the spectrum. After several clicks and a lot of squinting at a very crowded layout on Bankrate, I still didn't have a basic comparison list of available online savings accounts. There's no question that Bankrate has more information, but if you were looking for a simple basic list you'd be better off using Savings-accounts.com.

A few things jump out at me about this site.

First of all, the links to the banks are not affiliate links. Unless there's another way to compensate referring sites that I don't know about, these folks are making all their money from advertising.

The second thing that struck me is that this site is almost too simple. Why would you go to the trouble of buying a domain, building an extremely basic one-page site, and buying paid reviews of the site on PF blogs? I imagine that the owners of this site (an entity called the A8Media Network) will probably expand this site over time, perhaps after they've bulit up their Google rankings. It certainly seems that they're still working on it. There are a few rough edges, like a broken link at the bottom of the page.

Okay, now let's look at the bank accounts themselves. The list contains polar opposites. There are the big brick-and-mortar banks that have added online savings accounts to their menus, the ones that you or I would never ever keep much money in because the interest rates are in the toilet, like Key Bank (0.15%), Wachovia (0.25%) or Wells Fargo (0.50%). And then there are the low-overhead, high-interest online banks we know and love, like ING Direct (4.5%) or HSBC (6%, yes, that's right 6%!!). But where's Virtual? Where's Emigrant Direct? Why even have this list if it's not going to be complete?

I still feel like I'm missing something here.

But maybe this site is exactly what it appears to be.

A one-page, simple and easy-to-use, not-quite-complete list of online savings accounts.

Enjoy.

A mysterious gift from a blog reader

A few hours after I published yesterday's post about buying plants to cheer myself up, I got a cryptic email from Gardener's Supply Company, the online garden store I mentioned buying some goodies from.

"Dear TBH,

Congratulations! PricelessDharma sent a Gardener's Supply Gift Card to you. This gift card can be used to purchase any items of your choice from our web site or print catalog."

The only gift message was: "Cheer Up"

At first I assumed that the company was sending me a gift card because I had given them some positive publicity on my blog. I was pretty surprised, and I wrote a quick email to thank them. But they wrote back, and denied that the gift was from them.

"The e-gift card you received is from one of our customers and hopefully a friend of yours. It was not sent from our company I am sorry to say. Are you not familiar with the person who sent it to you?"

Um, no, I don't know anyone named PricelessDharma.

My next theory was that the gift was from a blog reader who calls herself TankMartin. We went to high school together and she discovered my blog last summer when I indiscreetly mentioned that I had a PF blog. Darn that Google. Anyway, I knew Tank had seen the post because she latched right on to the passing reference I made to getting a phone call from my doctor and sent me an email demanding details. But no, she also denied any knowledge of the gift. "This is a like some fun valentine's day mystery," she wrote.

Gardener's Supply did eventually tell me the real name of the person known as PricelessDharma. Still doesn't ring a bell.

So the upshot is that some unknown blog reader decided to do something nice for me yesterday. I am really touched. It makes me want to go right out and do something nice for somebody else.

Thank you, PricelessDharma. You certainly did cheer me up. Whoever you are, I hope you're having a fabulous day.

Carnival of Ethics, Values and Personal Finance No. 2

Welcome to the second edition of the Carnival of Ethics, Values and Personal Finance.

While you're here, please browse my archives and explore the site. This post, this one, and this one will give you some idea how my own sense of ethics shapes my financial life. I hope you'll come back again.

I'm honored to be hosting so early in the game. I received a staggering 45 submissions, quite a coup for a brand-new carnival in a relatively small niche. Breaking with my usual practice of using an extremely simple carnival structure, I've grouped the posts into a few categories. I did this mostly because I thought it would be interesting to see what came to people's minds when they heard the carnival's name: Ethics, Values and Personal Finance. Of course there was a lot of overlap between the categories, but I shoehorned each post in as well as I could.

The categories are as follows:
Attitudes toward money (5 posts)
Economic class and low-income workers (3 posts)
Business ethics and career choices (6 posts)
Environmentalism (2 posts)
Charity and donations (3 posts)
Activism and Socially Responsible Investing (2 posts)
Ethical spending choices (3 posts)
When others are unethical (3 posts)
and last but not least, Ethical blogging (1 post)

If you're scratching your head trying to figure out why your post wasn't included, it was probably because I simply didn't think it was relevant. I got a lot of excellent submissions that didn't focus on ethics or values. Those were omitted. Normally I also don't like to include posts that have been in other carnivals already, but in this case, since the carnival was listed as monthly, at least half of the posts had been submitted to a weekly carnival. I unbent just a little--any posts that had already been included in more that one carnival were omitted. And to the people who submitted two, three, four posts, I chose only one from each blog. The exception was Queercents. They got two submissions past me because they were written by two different bloggers.

Because of the enthusiastic response to the first two editions, this carnival will be biweekly from now on. The next edition will be hosted at An English Major's Money on February 15th. I hope you'll consider submitting a post about how money relates to your own values, whatever they might be.

Without further ado, here's the second Carnival of Ethics, Values and Personal Finance.

Attitudes toward money
English Major presents The Symbolism of Money posted at An English Major's Money.

Jimmy Atkinson presents Top 25 Personal Finance Myths posted at Ask the Advisor.

TMT presents The Meaning Behind The Money - An Exercise posted at The Money Tortoise.

Johan Holmberg presents 14 Lessons on Money posted at The Probabilist . com.

ISPF presents The Virtue of Tipping posted at Personal Finance for Students and Fresh Grads.

Economic class and low-income workers
Paula presents What Class Are You? posted at Queercents.

Bill presents A Popular, But Stupid, Idea posted at Ask Uncle Bill.

Adam presents Priced to move posted at The Free Thinker.

Business ethics and career choices
Larry Russell presents The economics of the financial advisory industry posted at THE SKILLED INVESTOR Blog.

David E. presents Why Work posted at Worldwide Success.

Murad presents Diversity is Profits posted at The New Business World.

Donna Jean presents Prelude to a Job posted at The Weight of Money.

Paul Gonzalez presents Living your Values vs Finding a Purpose posted at The One Year Exit Plan.

John Peter presents Value of Your Work: Get What You Deserve! posted at OhCash.com.

Environmentalism
Jennifer Miner presents Luxury Ecotourism Destinations: Ecotravel in tropical spots can make green travel feel like a luxury vacation. posted at Luxury & Resort Travel articles.

Wenchypoo presents Green is Making Me See Red (L-O-N-G) posted at Wisdom From Wenchypoo's Mental Wastebasket.

Charity and donations
S presents Finding a balance between charitable, activist, and political giving posted at The 100 by 30 project.

Mallory presents MissMalaprop.com Charity Fundraiser Kickoff posted at Miss Malaprop - indie finds for your uncommon life.

Fiscal Responsibility presents Giving Back posted at Fiscal Responsibility.

Activism and Socially Responsible Investing
David Gross presents Your War Doesn't Fit Into My Budget posted at The Picket Line.

Nina presents WWYD: Profiting From What We Morally Don't Approve posted at Queercents.

Ethical spending choices
Penny Nickel presents Valentine's Day With A Heart (Fair Trade) posted at Money and Values.

Wanda presents Conscious spending, or why spending $5,000 on shoes isn?t bad! posted at Well-heeled: climbing the networth ladder in heels.

Amy Lin presents The greatest story ever sold is a fantasy covered in blood. posted at Wise Bread.

When others are unethical
Matthew Paulson presents Don't be Stupid! Stay Away from Debt Elimination Scams posted at Getting Green.

Makingourway presents the tide turns against the parasites running class action law suites (the plaintiff's bar) posted at makingourway.

Millionaire Artist presents Integrity and wealth-building posted at Millionaire Artist.

Ethical blogging
Stingy Student presents Stingy Students: Get up off my ads - why advertising sucks posted at Stingy Students.


That's it! Thanks for visiting the carnival.

Please consider submitting something to the next edition, here.

If you'd like to host an upcoming edition, you can sign up here.