Tiny
Senior Associate
Joined: Dec 29, 2010 21:22:34 GMT -5
Posts: 13,367
|
Post by Tiny on Feb 7, 2019 11:52:31 GMT -5
Well, that and a good income. Especially a good dual income. It's hard to do it all when a large percentage of your income goes towards basic living expenses. My income is good, but the real secret sauce is that my hisband's income is also good. We know a lot of people who make more than each of us, but very few households that make more than our household. That, and we have always been terrified that we would lose an income, so we do spend some of that second income, but it isn't committed spend. Another thing that makes a difference if you don't have the big income and if a large percentage of your income goes towards basic living expenses would be having a good pension plan and sticking with the job for the long term. I know pension plans aren't as available as they use to be - but there are still some career paths that do offer them.
|
|
countrygirl2
Senior Associate
Joined: Dec 7, 2016 15:45:05 GMT -5
Posts: 16,898
|
Post by countrygirl2 on Feb 7, 2019 12:10:53 GMT -5
We always had a nice house, its just we bought run down and fixed them up but we enjoyed them as we lived there.
Hubs is really good about keeping things up. All we need here right now is new floor covering. It's still ok, I get it cleaned
but its starting to crush some, I would think so after 15 years! And another problem don't know whether to get wood or carpet.
2 of the bedrooms don't need anything yet. The living/dining does and our bedroom. We can do it for sure next year, but
I would like it this year if at all possible. We bought this house fairly new so we wouldn't have to redo the whole thing like
norm, I said please don't get another for me to live my retirement years in bringing up to speed and we didn't. But we are
tweeking things like we want.
Now we both have discussed selling to move closer to town, but the inventory here is severely lacking in a house as nice
as this one.
|
|
zibazinski
Community Leader
Joined: Dec 24, 2010 16:12:50 GMT -5
Posts: 47,865
|
Post by zibazinski on Feb 7, 2019 14:53:43 GMT -5
Schools here have started penalizing parents who do that. Ridiculous. It’s not like kids are learning anyway. My friend whose husband is a musician put her kid in a private school so she could take her daughter with them when they toured interesting places. How many 16 year olds have seen Japan and Africa? Hell, I haven’t. She’s been accepted to Stanford. Just curious- penalizing them in what way? I was in a private HS and one girl took a couple of extra days off at Spring break- her sister had been seriously injured in a car accident and they were going to FL because the sister's doc said the warm weather would help her recovery. The school administration would not budge. She had to make up her lost days with equivalent hours of detention, even though one of the missed days we mostly watched movies. Unless you have doctors note, they can actually retain you if you’ve missed the equivalent of two weeks.
|
|
zibazinski
Community Leader
Joined: Dec 24, 2010 16:12:50 GMT -5
Posts: 47,865
|
Post by zibazinski on Feb 7, 2019 14:54:35 GMT -5
Schools here have started penalizing parents who do that. Ridiculous. It’s not like kids are learning anyway. My friend whose husband is a musician put her kid in a private school so she could take her daughter with them when they toured interesting places. How many 16 year olds have seen Japan and Africa? Hell, I haven’t. She’s been accepted to Stanford. I have one in public and one in private and the private school is WAY stricter about attendance. It may just be because the public is a grade/middle school and the private is high school, but there is no taking them out of the high school. Most people just schedule their vacations during summer or one of the breaks. It probably depends on the school
|
|
dannylion
Junior Associate
Gravity is a harsh mistress
Joined: Dec 18, 2010 12:17:52 GMT -5
Posts: 5,195
Location: Miles over the madness horizon and accelerating
|
Post by dannylion on Feb 7, 2019 15:33:31 GMT -5
It's always interesting to take stock of where you are and think about how you got there and what might have been done differently. The thing is, you never know whether different choices made along the way would have led to a happier or better outcome or just a different outcome with the same level of satisfaction along the way. Or maybe less. We make the choices that seem necessary at the time.
Wishing for more fresh flowers in the past doesn't seem very productive. Maybe just be happy to be able to afford fresh flowers now and make sure to get them often.
|
|
debthaven
Senior Associate
Joined: Apr 7, 2015 15:26:39 GMT -5
Posts: 10,328
|
Post by debthaven on Feb 7, 2019 18:34:41 GMT -5
I'm very happy to hike locally, and indeed, it's free. I'm a very frugal person most of the time. I still like to travel though. There's a lot of world, and I hope to see more of it before I go. These things are not necessarily mutally exclusive, IMO.
|
|
dancinmama
Senior Associate
LIVIN' THE DREAM!!
Joined: Dec 18, 2010 20:49:45 GMT -5
Posts: 10,659
|
Post by dancinmama on Feb 24, 2019 12:53:40 GMT -5
I'm not as concerned with grocery pricing as much though I still use coupons and do sales as I find it fun.
skubikky: I still shop the grocery sales and stockpile when I find an awesome deal. Yesterday at the GO, I found 24 oz. McCafe decaf for $1.99. That's over $.12/oz. cheaper than Kirkland decaf. I don't coupon much any more (except for digital coupons at Smiths). The days of what we used to be able to do are long gone, but I still have stockpiles of many everyday non-perishables left from those days and I stopped couponing in 2012!! I'm not "concerned" with grocery pricing either, but I usually can find most of our groceries at rock bottom prices and buy enough to get us through the next sales cycle Old habits are hard to break. OP: The one thing that we do more of today that we did not do as much of during the accumulation phase of our life is go out to eat, but it is because where we live now has soooo many options for fine dining as compared to where we have lived previously. When we lived in the South Bay, driving into San Jose was really our only option, but most of the time fighting traffic to go out to eat did not appeal to us.
|
|