Finances

It's probably apparent by now why I need to prepare my kids, especially M, to one day leave the nest. Her depression makes me worry that she'll need a lot of support as an adult, so while she's still under our roof I'd like to give her as many coping skills as I can instill in her. But I am also preparing financially so that my husband and I will have the money to enjoy being empty nesters.

Over the past year, I've been doing a lot of research into early retirement. My husband is 39 and I'm almost 41, so while we might be getting started too late to achieve a Mr. Money Mustache-esque early retirement, I still feel confident that he can retire when he's about 58. If I go back to work sometime in the next 15 years or so, he'll probably be able to retire sooner. As of right now, the idea of me going back to work is off the table. I'll explain why another time. Hubby actually enjoys his job as a software developer though. If he were in more of a hurry to retire, our finances would reflect that.

In addition to the early(er than normal) retirement, I also want to be able to enjoy our 40's and 50's. I've had older friends who have told me that their 40's were the best years of their lives, and I want to make the most of mine. I also have friends in their 50's who are still struggling with debt and household finances. I want to be free to help out our kids if we want to, or to travel, or buy a vacation cabin, rather than being tied to debt and financial troubles caused by a frivolous lifestyle.

M had to write an essay about her family recently, and in her blurb about me she said that my hobbies are working out and budgeting. Ha! She doesn't realize that my form of budgeting really doesn't take much work, she just constantly hears about it. See, I tell my kids about saving, budgeting, and the evils of debt all the time. I want them to be financially aware. That's part of my empty nest plan.

So on to the details. First of all, we have no debt other than our mortgage. I'll get into specifics in another post, but over the years all of our debt has disappeared. We have a 2001 Toyota Tundra (I think, it's hubby's truck so I don't pay attention) and a 2008 Toyota Sienna, both paid for in cash. I plan on driving them into the ground. We choose to have less house than we can afford because we'd rather spend our money in other areas, so our mortgage is currently at $137,000 and the payment is just over $1,000 a month, which includes insurance and taxes. We also have a $150/month payment for our daughter's braces, but that comes out of our HSA account, so that money doesn't come into or go out of our monthly budget. So here's what our monthly finances look like.

Mortgage                                                           $1026.00
Cable/Internet                                                        135.00
Cell Phones (3 on Virgin Mobile)                         105.00
Insurance                                                               106.00
Water                                                                       75.00 - 180.00
Electricity                                                              120.00 - 240.00

Our water and electricity vary widely, we live in a hot climate where cooling the house and watering the lawn get super expensive in the summer. I'm currently shopping around for a family cell phone plan that would be cheaper than what we're using, since on Virgin Mobile we have to pay cash for our phones and we'll need to add a 4th phone within the next year or so for C.

So our expenditures are between $1,567.00 and $1,792.00 monthly. Hubby's income is about $5,434.00 a month, not including $200 a month in pre-tax contributions to the HSA and a 7% contribution to his 401k (his company matches 3%). From his take-home pay, we're left with between $3,642 - $3,867 a month. Minus food (which is where we tend to splurge), we have roughly $2,500 a month left. That's not a paltry amount.

The question becomes what to do with the leftover money. Yes, we have personal care items, gasoline, entertainment, all of those things that need to come out of that money, but there is still a lot left that we could use to splurge. But I don't want to splurge, I don't want to look back in 20 years and wonder why we didn't get to truly enjoy any of the money we've brought in. I don't feel like $150 dresses or $450 car payments will help me truly enjoy that money. To me, having experiences with my family and financial peace of mind are much more enjoyable.

To that end, I have several savings accounts with Capital One 360. I put money in each of those accounts every paycheck, before we spend a penny. Then I pay the bills or mortgage. The first paycheck of the month is earmarked for bills and the second goes to the mortgage. Plus I budget $150 a paycheck for tithes. Whatever is left over is what we get to spend for that half of the month. It needs to cover everything, from food to entertainment to the girls' allowance to M's dance class. The cell phones actually come out of that money too, since they're billed at 3 separate times over the month. So here's how that looks.

Monthly paycheck #1                           $2717
Vacation Fund                                        -300
General Savings                                       -50
Back to School                                         -30
Gifts                                                          -40
Cable/Internet                                         -135
Insurance                                                -106
Water                                                       -75
Electricity                                               -150
Tithes                                                      -150

Leftover                                                $1681

The second paycheck of the month looks very similar, except I pay the mortgage instead of the bills, so there's less left over. I budget by half of the month instead of the whole month or paycheck to paycheck, so $1681 for 15 days is a huge amount to expect to spend. I allot ourselves $1300 and the rest goes to the second half of the month, when there's less left over from the paycheck. Anything left at the end of the month goes into our Surprises fund, for things like car repairs, tags, vet bills, etc. That fund was filled a while ago with $1,000 so I use this method to add to that amount only when we can. If that drops below $1,000 I alter our savings to get it filled back up.

As you can see, the bulk of our savings goes into our vacation fund. This covers the girls' summer camps and season passes to the local water park. It will also cover our big vacation to Ireland this summer. I've been saving for this vacation for almost 2 years. I look back at the past 2 years and think of having $600 more to spend every single month instead of saving it for this big vacation, and I'm so glad I made the decision save it. What would I have to show for that $600 a month now? Some new clothes? Maybe a newer car? A more expensive house? Not tempting. I'm not sure what we'll do after this summer's big trip, if I'll keep saving for another big vacation, or if we'll come up with another plan for that $600 a month.

As I said earlier, in addition to our savings, we're putting 7% of hubby's salary into a 401k with a 3% match. We also managed to fully fund a Roth IRA last year and plan to do so again this year. I have a few tricks up me sleeve for funding the IRA, but this post is already so long that I'll save that for another day. We plan on upping hubby's 401k contribution by at least 1% every time he gets a raise. With the 401k and Roth, plus the money from my 403b that I rolled over into an IRA last year, I'm pretty confident that a retirement age of 58 is doable for hubby.

This isn't set in stone by any means. I'm always tweaking, finding ways to save here and there, reigning hubby in so he doesn't over spend, splurging and then regretting it, etc. In other words, this isn't the last this blog will hear about our finances.

Is Unschooling the Answer?

In my last post, I said that M's depression was being controlled by her meds and we don't see the old M very often. Well, I spoke too soon, because the old M has been back with a vengeance the past few days. She's refusing to do her homework, turning a 10 minute assignment into a 2 hour argument, complete with a crying breakdown and pleas for us to figure out some way for her not to have to go to school anymore. Taking away her cell phone and chromebook had no effect, just like so many times in the past. She ended up doing the homework, but I sure don't feel like it was any sort of victory.

The next evening, we got a call from her friend's dad telling us that M was making not-so-subtle threats of suicide during an argument. Now these suicide threats, I just don't know how to take them. She only seems to make them when she's frustrated during an argument. I told her that she needs to talk to us when she feels this way, but to sling it at another person in the heat of an argument just leaves everyone confused. This isn't the first time we've heard threats from her, but it doesn't get less confusing. I refuse to have her hospitalized. The parent who notified us of this had his daughter hospitalized twice in the past year and I'm not convinced it was helpful in any way. The hospital got her on meds and released her after a couple of days. M is already on meds, we see her psych often, so I'm not sure what else to do. I try talking to her, but she shuts me down. It really seems like she's embarrassed that she said something she didn't really mean and she didn't want to get called out on it. Right now I guess we're just in another round of wait and see.

The school issue is ongoing. I've offered to let her do online school from home, but she says that it would be all of the bad things about school without the good (electives and friends). She has said that we just need to pull her out of school and let her take music and dance lessons all day. Yeah, great, who is going to pay for all those lessons? And what about a high school diploma? See, I agree with her to an extent. She's going to have to take Algebra II, geometry, and who knows what other math classes in high school. I never went beyond Algebra I, it just wasn't required when I was in high school, and I've never missed those other classes. She has already topped out on the reading assessment the school uses. It goes up to a score of 13, which is basically just 'beyond 12th grade'.She is a naturally inquisitive kid, she just gets defiant when she's told what to do, which is why she has a problem with school. I refuse to homeschool her, I know our dynamics and I think one of us wouldn't walk away from that situation alive.

So what is the alternative? Well, call me crazy, but I've been looking at unschooling this morning. From what I can find, our state only requires that parents submit an affidavit to county each year if they intend to homeschool. That's it, no portfolio, no testing, no submitting curriculum. So technically, I can submit the affidavit and then allow her to unschool. But then what? See, I'm a big, huge fan of public school. I'm a certified teacher, I loved school, and to withdraw from all of that freaks me out. I think she would explore the things she's interested in, but what would that look like? Days full of teaching herself how to play Jack White songs on the guitar? Reading fan fiction? Is that educational? How will it prepare her for a career? She wants her career to be in music, but is that even realistic? Would I be doing her a disservice by allowing her to 'drop out' of the educational system instead of giving her the skills to work within it?

So now I'm kind of at a loss. I can't imagine spending the next 4.5 years fighting with her about school. It's too damaging and never seems to get us anywhere. And I know that her depression is caused by a chemical imbalance, but how much does the stress of school add to it? And how would unschooling M affect our younger daughter? I'm not going to pull her out of 4th grade to unschool, she works well in the public school setting, but would her attitude about school change if she sees her sister unschooling? There don't seem to be any easy answers.

Depression Sucks for Everyone

As I said in my intro, my 14 year old daughter, who I'm calling M, has depression. This isn't something that just popped up all of a sudden, we knew she was different from a very young age. I can't say that she was experiencing depression already, but it was obvious that she didn't deal with her emotions like other kids. Honestly, when she was younger, I thought we would end up with a diagnosis of Oppositional Defiant Disorder, because oppositional and defiant were two of the words I would have used to describe her. At the time, I didn't realize that being defiant, angry, and stubborn were ways that childhood depression often rears its ugly head.

It started when she was 3. I know what you're going to say, all 3 year olds get defiant. And you're right, but I spent several years before she was born teaching 3-4 year olds in a daycare center, plus I have a degree in Elementary Education with an emphasis in early childhood, plus 5 little brothers and sisters that I gained a lot of experience from. I knew that her defiance was different. It was simply more than I'd ever seen before...more often, more intense, and lasted longer. Timeouts didn't work with her, as long as she was still in the room with someone else, she saw herself as the star of her own show. Calming down was impossible. Sending her to her room didn't work, she would just keep coming out to argue. Holding the door shut didn't work, she would keep pulling on the knob, kicking the door, and screaming far longer than you'd expect from such a little kid. Once she fell asleep on the floor in the middle of a fit, with her feet propped up on the door mid-kick. We tried putting one of those plastic lock things over her doorknob when she needed a timeout, but that little stinker took a pencil and pried the thing off! We tried plenty of positive reinforcement, too. I could go on and on about the methods we tried, but suffice it to say, nothing worked.

Then 5 came along. Ah, the magical age of 5! I could compose sonnets to that age. She miraculously mellowed, and it lasted for about 4 or 5 years. That isn't to say that things were perfect, I still vividly remember her Kindergarten teacher coming to me in tears because M had said she wished she was dead. And her 3rd grade teacher telling me that M was so smart and charming that she loved to see her first thing in the morning, but within 15 minutes she was exhausted by how much M would challenge her. That's M in a nutshell.

Things changed again when she was in 4th grade, so about 9 or 10 years old. She got so defiant and angry around the house. She also started getting in trouble at school, and would argue for hours if we dared to suggest that maybe she wasn't the innocent victim. She usually pushed away any attempts at physical comfort. I didn't make matters any better, because I was convinced that she needed more discipline. Tougher consequences were the answer. But every time we pushed with tougher consequences, she pushed back with more screaming, crying, and refusing to back down from the fight. Again, I wasn't blameless. I was the mom, dammit, and I was simply unwilling to let her walk all over us, so I would get sucked into screaming matches with her. I can't tell you how many times I had to physically carry her to her bedroom because she refused to walk away once she started to argue. Usually she would then collapse on her floor in a screaming fit. I can't tell you how many weeks and months she spent grounded from one thing or another, or from everything, and none of it ever worked.

That's not to say that we didn't try positive reinforcement systems. We tried all kinds of programs where the kids would earn points and privileges, and they would work great while she was in one of her good spells that would last for a few weeks or even months. But as soon as she got into one of her funks, all bets were off. We also tried therapy, but the therapist never saw M in the middle of one of her rages. When M was in a good mood, it's as if the rage never existed, so talking to a therapist didn't help. We needed help while we were in the trenches, not after the battle was over.

She also had more traditional signs of depression, but that's a long story and will need a separate post.

We finally found our answer in the winter of 6th grade. We got her to a psychiatrist, who put her on Wellbutrin. It was like a switch had been flipped. Her therapist said that Wellbutrin worked like a "speed bump", so that when she was faced with situations that used to set her off, the med would give her that extra little time to figure out how to deal with it appropriately. It worked. Things have been better for the past 2 years. We still see glimmers of the old M, but thankfully they are few and far between.

What's This Blog About Anyway?

Fair question. I'm writing this blog for me, and if anyone else happens to read it, that's great. So since it's for me, I knew I wanted a central theme that I could wander from now and then. Right now, my focus in life is on raising my kids and getting our finances in order, so I figured that would be my focus in writing. I realized that the point of all my kid raising and finance ordering is so that my husband and I can be happy and carefree when the ol' nest is empty. I've been seeing so many articles and studies about millenials who either still live at home or rely on their parents financially. What the what? No way I'm going to raise my kids just to have them linger around here! I'm not naive though, I know that we'll want to help them out when we can, which is where the financial part comes in. Having enough money for us to enjoy the finer things will be nice, too.

So who are we? Well, in this blog I'll be calling myself Kay Walker. It's a totally made-up name. The reason I'm blogging anonymously is because my kids are older. In fact, M is 14 and C is 9. And, like I said, I'm writing this blog for me, so I don't really want to censor my stories to make them less embarrassing for the kids. But it isn't fair for me to tell their stories to the world without their permission, hence the anonymity.

So like I said, I'm Kay, but not really. I've gone back and forth between teaching elementary school and being a stay at home mom for the past 14 years. Currently I'm a SAHM and couldn't be happier. When I'm not taking care of the house and finances, I like to read and work out (ok, I don't really like to work out, but I do it every day anyway).

Hubby is a software programmer for a large hotel chain, which means we get cheap rooms. Booyah! He is amazing. If I ever complain about him here, that means shit just got real, because usually we get along like gangbusters!

M is 14 and in 8th grade. She has been my life's greatest challenge, but she has forced me to become a better person. She has depression, and if you don't know how that affects parenting, stay tuned.

C is 9 and in 4th grade. She is a sweet soul who can quickly turn sour when faced with the grave injustices of being a pre-teen. I adore this kid.

Rounding out the family are our dog and cat. I love them, but they both seriously suck.

And on with the show!