Secular Confessions

[Cosmosmom]

OMG mandy....how are you doing today? Hopefully just sleeping it off. Agreed that a complaint needs to filed with the pharmacy. Medication errors like that are a big deal.

Hopefully you can try a clomid cycle of days 5-9 instead of the 3-7. Or maybe a 4-8?

Myles, I agree with you on the not taking out loans for an often useless degree. I mean my undergrad was philosophy so kind of useless....except that I had always planned on graduate school and it didn't matter as much what my undergrad was.

Um yeah I do not do push ups...maybe I could do one. LOL I am on a roll though...I have gone down and used the elliptical Saturday, Sunday, and Tuesday. And Monday did some floor stretches.

[Suja]

Goodness, Mandy! I would be LIVID!!! I hope you call up the pharmacy and give them a piece of your mind. Although they didn't this time, they could've caused serious harm by giving you the wrong medication.

Myles, I hope PT works for you, and you get your strength back. Frozen shoulder seems to run in the family, so I'm careful about my workouts, but I'm also making sure that I do strengthen my shoulders so it's less likely to be a problem in the future. We're kind of like you WRT our approach to higher education (it might be an Asian thing). I know someone whose daughter just graduated with a degree in dance (some variant of ballet is her specialty; she's 5'2"). In addition to paying her tuition, which was something like 40K a year, he is now paying for her "internship" ($5000 for 4 weeks with the Texas Ballet Company), and I seriously doubt I'd be willing to do something like that for Mira, unless she has demonstrated some world-class talent. Personally, I don't think it's worthwhile amassing a huge amount of debt for getting an undergrad degree. Grad school/law school/med school would be different.

[Smplyme89]

Unless your kid is an ethnic minority under represented in institutions of higher learning (mine isn't either), or good enough to get an athletic scholarship or something along those lines, they'd be taking out student loans, is my guess. Scholarships that pay for everything is exceedingly hard to find, especially if you're a) caucasian b) male.

There are a lot of scholarships out there. It just takes some work and determination to find them. Florida Bright Futures alone (which is not based on anything other than a couple qualifications that you have to meet while in High School) paid for my entire time at the Community College where I got my Associates and still continues to pay out a portion for my Bachelors. Plus I have a number of other small scholarships that I have gotten for doing essays, etc.

I have every intention on saving what I can for Nolan, but I won't even fool myself into thinking that I'll be able to foot the bill, especially if the cost of tuition keeps increasing. If he has to get student loans, that's ok. Most people do.

[Smplyme89]

Eh I would like to help with college, DH not so much. Kind of hard to predict 20 years from now. No plans on paying for all of it though. But I also don't see the need for "top" schools. Or even if my kid will go to university. I wouldn't him (maybe her but most of us think we will have a boy) mind going to the local tech school and becoming a mechanic or plumber.
If our home is paid off and if we are well set for retirement, we will be more likely to help. Otherwise kid might have to wait until inheritance time.


As far as retirement, we both have accounts....Dh has a roth he set up while in college since his 401k at work has no match. I have a 401k but only put in 3% as I don't get a match but right now they have a pension. if that changes, I will change that up. But I don't know that I expect to have too long a retirement anyway.....my closest relatives don't have the longest lives. Hopefully not the case for me....but DH's family does a lot better in terms of longer lives.

I agree. I want to help Nolan with school as much as possible, but my retirement is a top priority.

My employer does pension (no longer offered to new employees, but I was grandfathered in) AND matches 6% of 401k contributions. Probably the top two reasons why I stick it out here.

[Smplyme89]

Mandy that is freaky and I would be PISSED!!! I hope you don't have to delay this cycle

Speaking of school stuff.... Work has officially given me a full time position (I've been labeled as part time since I was hired, but always worked full time hours ) and that means my educational reimbursement is doubling

[missychrissy]

Speaking of school stuff.... Work has officially given me a full time position (I've been labeled as part time since I was hired, but always worked full time hours ) and that means my educational reimbursement is doubling

That's WONDERFUL!

[demigraf]

Christina, I'd be ok with Bodhi taking out a modest student loan if he needs it too. I don't know if we'd be able to cover everything, depending on the institution. The larger the loan, the more sense of direction and purpose I'd expect from him, though.

[Smplyme89]

That's WONDERFUL!

I am SO excited! It should cover the excess that I paid out of pocket last year so that is a big help!!

Christina, I'd be ok with Bodhi taking out a modest student loan if he needs it too. I don't know if we'd be able to cover everything, depending on the institution. The larger the loan, the more sense of direction and purpose I'd expect from him, though.

I agree. Student loans are useful and not really unreasonable to be able to pay back, as long as you don't end up with a ridiculous amount of debt. Plus, he'll always have the option of living at home while he goes to school (I didn't have this), which makes the college experience substantially cheaper. Most of my friends chose to go stay at the colleges they attended. I fear for them when pay back time comes.

[Cosmosmom]

That is great news Christina!

My DH has played around with going back to school before. He has a masters but it's not useful where we live and moving isn't an option right now. He tried one program but decided he didn't like that, tried another one but it's a new area and he didn't gel with the teacher's style...and that teacher taught all the classes. Plus while interested in nanotechnology, not sure that jobs would be there just yet without moving. He didn't really want to put the effort and money into another degree just to be working at the factory doing what he is now.

[Suja]

Speaking of school stuff.... Work has officially given me a full time position (I've been labeled as part time since I was hired, but always worked full time hours ) and that means my educational reimbursement is doubling

Woo-Hoo! That's AWESOME!!!

Did I tell you guys that our FP was telling us about friends, who tied their kid's performance in college to the amount of help he could expect? GPA of 3.8 - 4.5 (didn't know you could do that) = 100% help with tuition/room/board, but the kid had to work to meet his out of pocket expenses. 3.0 - 3.8 = 70% help with tuition/room/board. Anything below, he was on his own. This is the sort of model I'd love to do. The kid did the math and figured that his parents were offering him an extraordinarily good deal.

[Smplyme89]

Woo-Hoo! That's AWESOME!!!

Did I tell you guys that our FP was telling us about friends, who tied their kid's performance in college to the amount of help he could expect? GPA of 3.8 - 4.5 (didn't know you could do that) = 100% help with tuition/room/board, but the kid had to work to meet his out of pocket expenses. 3.0 - 3.8 = 70% help with tuition/room/board. Anything below, he was on his own. This is the sort of model I'd love to do. The kid did the math and figured that his parents were offering him an extraordinarily good deal.

That's interesting. I like that!

Kind of similar to what my parents did when I was in high school. Incentives for good grades. Not that I ever "got" the money, but I was "supposed" too

[Cosmosmom]

My mom just said to get the best grades you could....which was usually pretty good. And that if I got a credit cards or smoked, financial support would stop. And I NEEDED that. And that she reserved the right to stop the support if I started something else she didn't like or started acting like a scuzbucket (her word).
It sounds controlling but really wasn't. Other than the credit card and smoking.....it would have taken a lot. By high school, I was kind of pretty much allowed to do what I wanted.
And end of freshman year of college I started dating DH and they liked him well enough. He's very responsible and nerdy. I mean even after I transferred schools to be closer to him, my grades went up. He basically was in my (private) dorm room until midnight weeknights and 2am weekends unless one of us was working or in a class.....women's college so men visitors had to sign in and out. And seriously a LOT of that time was doing our homework. LOL

[Ky'sMom]

Mandy I am so angry for you at the pharmacy!! A similar situation happened to me when I was PG with Elle, except I didn't take the pills, due to being extra cautious due to pregnancy. The pharm tech even tried to argue with me that the pills were the right ones. I had bad heartburn and just needed an Rx strength generic pepcid. They gave me pills that I found out were for heart patients, I can't remember the name. When I am PG I am generally unhappy (I have tough PGs with hyperemesis and pubic synopsis disorder so I am always sick and in pain while PG) so I was VERY attitude prone. I always joke I get stereotypical when I'm PG, hope no one takes offense but it is a joke I have because I get very b!tchy when I PG and wouldn't care if people stereotyped me as a bad attitude having crazy black women LOL because I am when PG. So I went bat sh!t crazy on the pharmacy tech and the pharmacist came and verified that he did indeed give me the wrong pills and apologized after I was ranting about suing them and how they could have killed my baby. I wish PG me could be there with you to give those pharmacy screw ups a piece of my mind.

Erin

[Smplyme89]

Jennifer I don't think that sounds unreasonable at all.

Erin you make me laugh

[Smplyme89]

Oh, I just met my second ever Suja!! Not nearly as cool as our Suja, but still

[Ky'sMom]

Oh and Suja I agree with Christina about scholarships. If you look hard enough you can find a lot of them and most are merit based or based on writing an essay. I got a lot of scholarships (over $30K because I am a scholarship finding maniac) when I went back to school and none of them had any sort of minority requirements. I applied to over 200 scholarships. I did get one from UNCF because I went to an HBCU but contrary to what people believe, anyone can get a UNCF scholarship if they go to a UNCF funded school. The valedictorian at Morehouse was a white guy the year I graduated, the first ever, in 2008, and he was a fully funded UNCF scholarship recipient, his whole education was paid for by them.

Also a lot of states now have the 10% rule where if your kid graduates with a showing in the top 10% of their class then they will automatically get a free ride to school.

I honestly don't save much for college. I have some money but I am going to pay for both of my kids to go to a technical school while they are in high school for career training. Ky is thinking now and we have looked at programs (I like to plan ahead) and he will probably take an electrician course. In GA and OH you can go to technical school in high school and graduate with certification in a trade. I also want him to go to college, but I don't bet on any athletic scholarship because they are few and far in between.

Ky wants to be an engineer. I know that may change in the future, hence why I am adamant about him getting a trade before high school graduation because that way he will at least have some marketable skills. He wants to be a biomedical engineer and go to Georgia Tech, which is down the street from our house. We also go to a lot of STEM camps that they host for kids on their campus and the people at GT informed me that here in GA, kids can go to a number of lower cost colleges/universities for the first 2 years and then go to GT for 3 years and graduate with a bachelors and masters from GT. They have this program at Georgia State, a cheaper state school and the HBCU I went to, which is also cheaper and about 10 other colleges including some in AL. So if Ky decides he doesn't want to go to GT but wants the prestige of their degree, he can go to a cheaper school (one - Atlanta Metropolitan College is only $3K per year right now) and then graduate with a prestigious degree. GT also has a very well endowed scholarship fund. Like Cornell, over 50% of their students have some sort of scholarship from the institution.

Erin

[Bridget]

Mandy, you ok today?

My parents were more than generous with us, offering to pay for our college and our rent as long as we went to college and worked a part time job. I, however, was a very foolish young lady and did not take full advantage of this. I quit college for quite a few years and then later just took classes here and there but got my child development associates paid for by the job I had at the time which rocked.

Last night when when I was running around getting Savana and Kai ready for bed and swiping through the house cleaning up, I hear Sawyer calling for me ("Mom!" he says very abrubtly over and over again) but I could not find him. You know where he was? Laying in his crib (which is sidecarred to our bed and this is the first time he has ever climbed up alone)! He was laying there and when I walked in he pointed to the spot next to him where I lay so I lay down and he actually went to sleep! Cutest thing ever. I had tears in my eyes at how sweet that moment was.

[girlwonder]

Money puts me in a full-scale panic, so I have been skipping a lot of these posts about responsible money handling. The one thing I read somewhere that makes sense to me is that you should save for your retirement before you save for college for your kid because while you can get a loan for college, no one is going to lend you money to retire.

mandy - I hope you are okay. Scary.

[Smplyme89]

Bridget that is adorable!!!! Nolan has been giving SO many kisses here latey. Just randomly out of the blue, he comes up pulls my face to his and smooches They are even closed mouth ones now!

[Ky'sMom]

Money puts me in a full-scale panic, so I have been skipping a lot of these posts about responsible money handling. The one thing I read somewhere that makes sense to me is that you should save for your retirement before you save for college for your kid because while you can get a loan for college, no one is going to lend you money to retire.

mandy - I hope you are okay. Scary.

ITA with you Katy about the bold, which is why I don't focus on saving for my kid's educations. I would rather they not have to worry about me financially when I am older and so I focus more on retirement savings because I don't think that social security is going to be around by the time I retire so I accept the fact that my SS contributions are paying for some nice old man/woman's very much needed fixed income in the here and now.

Erin

[Bridget]

That is a sweet way to look at social security, Erin.

I'm not going to let you guys take away my zen attitude about money! lol I have no retirement.

[Smplyme89]

ITA with you Katy about the bold, which is why I don't focus on saving for my kid's educations. I would rather they not have to worry about me financially when I am older and so I focus more on retirement savings because I don't think that social security is going to be around by the time I retire so I accept the fact that my SS contributions are paying for some nice old man/woman's very much needed fixed income in the here and now.
Erin

I agree and I am going to really try to look at SS this way for now on. Everytime I think about them taking my money, knowing d*mn well it probaby won't be there for me in the future, the pit of my stomach hurts. I'll try that though, I'l keep some of the cute old ladies we have come in the CU in mind.

[Cosmosmom]

Yup that is why we will not be saving for college. Instead we will fund our retirement and get the house paid off. If my kid wants to go to college and has a lot of loans, well maybe those will get paid off with his/her inheritance. I would rather the kid have student loans for a bit than have to take care of us.
On the other hand, if my house is paid off and my retirement is doing well, I am thinking that we might have some extra each month and could do some plus loans or maybe just give some allowance each month to help pay for things. When my kid starts college, it would probably be just when I am getting my house paid off and my own student loans should be paid off. That frees up a nice chunk each month.

Course we will have to see what our kid will be like. I do not believe that everyone is college material and shouldn't be pushed that way if they are not.

[Smplyme89]

Course we will have to see what our kid will be like. I do not believe that everyone is college material and shouldn't be pushed that way if they are not.

Very true. It is possible Nolan will be hands on like his daddy, which is fine. He would make a perfect fit for getting some sort of technical certificate than. I am not particular about it having to be a four year school, but I will push him to get some sort of skill.

[Cosmosmom]

Very true. It is possible Nolan will be hands on like his daddy, which is fine. He would make a perfect fit for getting some sort of technical certificate than. I am not particular about it having to be a four year school, but I will push him to get some sort of skill.

Yup that is about how I feel. Tech school is definitely a great option to university! For me it's weird because DH and I are both nerdy book types. I would expect that a bio kid would be fairly similar to us because we are pretty similar to each other (I tend to like the abstract...dh likes history and science/math).
We could end up with a child though who is very different from us in terms of talents....and in that case I want to really encourage those natural talents.

Will be interesting to see how much is nature....and how much is nuture!

[demigraf]

Chrissy, can I ask a favor for when you have a free moment (no rush!)? Which of these or these laptops would you recommend? I want to stay under $600.

I have a very old Dell franken-puter laptop that's limping to its grave, and definitely don't need anything beyond the basics to replace it. I run your standard MS Office stuff. I'm not a gamer, won't keep a developer's environment on this system, and don't do a great amount of streaming (though being able to watch Netflix would be nice). I definitely want reliable wi-fi so I can always stay in touch with my secular friends and the ability to burn discs. A good sound card is a nice-to-have, since I will use it as a jukebox once in a while. Disk space isn't a huge concern, since I backup everything in duplicate on externals (and I currently don't have more than 100GB of data in total), but maybe you like one brand of drive over another? Perhaps the most processing-intensive thing I do is work with large files in Photoshop and run Lightroom at the same time. I'm just not knowledgable about the latest processor or if it makes any difference for the way I will use the laptop. One of the klugiest machines I had was an NT box with Intel Dual Processors that were top of the line in their day, so I don't pay too much attention to processors anymore, unless you have a strong preference. I'm guessing 8GB of RAM is better than 4GB. Ease of support is important to me. My work laptops have all been Lenovo Thinkpads, and I think they've been pretty reliable, so I guess that's where I'm leaning. The less costly, the better.

Please don't spend too much time on my question. I'm trying to avoid buying a new laptop if I can, since we have others in the house, so will try to make do with just my work laptop, and the other old box I have. DH has Macs if necessary. But it'll feel weird not to have my own "personal" laptop. (I haven't figured out how to hack system policy on this most recent one given to me by my work. ) Thanks in advance.

[demigraf]

On second thought, Chrissy, I asked you to do too much work. So I'll do a little legwork on my own, and come back with some specific questions for you. Shanksh!

[missychrissy]

Myles, it's ok. I'll look this evening. I'm just leaving work right now. Busy, busy day!

[demigraf]

OK. But right now, I'm going to put Win7 on my laptop to see if that changes anything. How about I let you know if that worked, so you don't have to do any legwork for nothing? Hope you get some rest and relaxation tonight!

[missychrissy]

Unless there's some hardware issue I can guarantee Win7 will be better. Update bios & get at least your nic driver first!