Not really a confession but I do miss the old MM. I remember Jan8 telling me my house was too expensive. It is like 1.4x our income (to be fair at the time it was probably almost 2x our income, but still our rate was under 4%).
I miss the financially conservative crazies!! We just have sisugal or whatever left and she is also crazy outside of money matters.
lmao. I wish jan8 would come here so I could tell her what we pay in rent.
lmao. I wish jan8 would come here so I could tell her what we pay in rent.
She would shit a canary.
In her "defense" she knew the city I lived in and said I could get a good house for $200-225k. Which is true but I WAAAAANTED to $280k house.
Now I eat ramen
Our house was 3+ times our income when we bought. And we didn't put 20% down. LOL.
But, caveats that I realized make all the difference in perspective on what's affordable: WA doesn't have an income tax. And our property taxes are only ~1% of appraised value.
And page maybe sneaking is the wrong word to choose. More like "don't ask don't tell." He doesn't ask me what I bought at Target, and I don't mention my cart included clothes. And it's not like I'm blowing our budget on this, it is just Circo and Cherokee after all. And DS has far less clothes than some other MMMs who've posted wardrobe pics lately.
I see a lot of it on the cloth diaper groups I'm in, where people are like "I have to get the mail today, so my husband doesn't see that I bought another cloth diaper." Either you have the money to spend and you are spending it in a way that is enjoyable to you or you don't and then you are just being irresponsible.
I don't feel the need to detail every little purchase to my husband, but I'll be like $25 of that Target trip was groceries and the rest was a new shirt. But that's mainly for budgeting purposes.
I also don't quite understand people who need "permission" from their husbands for a small purchase.
OMG…I wondered if I was the only one who felt this way!!! I don't get it. I buy shit all the time that DH doesn't even know about. As long as we aren't going in debt it's fine.
also I'm not supposed to be doing a birthday party for DD this year because we are doing a trip instead but I really want to throw a Daniel Tiger party
Yes, we are very much like this too. My H read something a long time ago about how you should always tell kids they worked hard, vs. telling them they are smart, which is what we try to do.
DS2 is definitely average or maybe even ahead of average on certain things, and I have zero concerns, but then I'll randomly go back and look at a video of DS1 identifying all his letters 2 months prior to where DS2 is now and I'm like ohhhhh. And I don't even think knowing letters means ANYTHING as far as intelligence goes, but I'm like, why did my older kid know his letters with basically zero assistance from us while my younger kid enjoys the finer things in life like headbutting people and spinning around in endless circles? lol.
Mindset by Carol Dweck is a great book on this topic if you're at all interested. I actually should buy it so I can reread it periodically. She talks about how praising intelligence and ability leads to kids having a fixed mindset--believing intelligence is innate and immutable, and things are only worth doing if you're skilled at them from the get go. Kids who receive more specific praise about process, effort, and perseverance tend to have a growth mindset--believing skills and traits like intelligence can be learned, practiced and improved upon over time.
So a kid with a fixed mindset will encounter a tough math problem and say "It's too hard! I can't do this!" whereas the growth mindset kid will say "Oh, a challenge! I can learn something here and get better!" Kids with growth mindset tend to be more successful at life in general.
I am absolutely a recovering fixed mindset person. I would say at this point I have mostly a growth mindset, but I grew up fixed and I have had to work my ass off to change that, and I still sometimes find myself saying "I'm just not good at this" and having to mentally correct myself. My H has a growth mindset and he has been experiencing skyrocketing success in his career in the past few years, due in no small part to the way he approaches problems.
This is kind of a tangent but it's a topic that fascinates me quite a bit.
This is huge focus in our school board (the work of both Carol Dweck and Jo Boaler from Standford). I love it. I got blasted here (well, MM or CEP) by some people when I suggested that maintaining the attitude some some people are just bad at math is not good practice.
Our house was 3+ times our income when we bought. And we didn't put 20% down. LOL.
But, caveats that I realized make all the difference in perspective on what's affordable: WA doesn't have an income tax. And our property taxes are only ~1% of appraised value.
omg! not only do I pay a chunk on state income tax (extra screwed by being married), I pay 1% LOCAL income tax, AND 1.7% property taxes.
Waiting for NY / NJ to come in and must be nice ME
How do you think all of us Seattleites live the high life? But seriously, the day that clicked for me was huge. I always thought people were being reallllly conservative in their home-buying advice, but yeah, if I had to account for income tax plus 5% property taxes (or whatever crazy amount NNJ seems to work out to), I probably would have followed the advice.
To further rile you up, my aunt in San Diego's property taxes are based on how much she bought the house for. You know, 40+ years ago. Because clearly that's fair and not at all regressive.
I see a lot of it on the cloth diaper groups I'm in, where people are like "I have to get the mail today, so my husband doesn't see that I bought another cloth diaper." Either you have the money to spend and you are spending it in a way that is enjoyable to you or you don't and then you are just being irresponsible.Â
I don't feel the need to detail every little purchase to my husband, but I'll be like $25 of that Target trip was groceries and the rest was a new shirt. But that's mainly for budgeting purposes.
I also don't quite understand people who need "permission" from their husbands for a small purchase.Â
OMG…I wondered if I was the only one who felt this way!!! I don't get it.  I buy shit all the time that DH doesn't even know about. As long as we aren't going in debt it's fine.
I pretty much never tell/ask DH before buying something, even for large purchases. I would ask him before buying a car, a vacation, or something I know he would want to give input on (home electronics, the mattress we sleep on, sofas or chairs for main rooms). Anything else, I just buy it.
OMG…I wondered if I was the only one who felt this way!!! I don't get it.  I buy shit all the time that DH doesn't even know about. As long as we aren't going in debt it's fine.
I pretty much never tell/ask DH before buying something, even for large purchases. I would ask him before buying a car, a vacation, or something I know he would want to give input on (home electronics, the mattress we sleep on, sofas or chairs for main rooms). Anything else, I just buy it.
ditto.
DH has no clue what I spend, nor does he care. I'm not hiding things from him though, and would show him any numbers he ever wished to see.
Not really a confession but I do miss the old MM. I remember Jan8 telling me my house was too expensive. It is like 1.4x our income (to be fair at the time it was probably almost 2x our income, but still our rate was under 4%).
I miss the financially conservative crazies!! We just have sisugal or whatever left and she is also crazy outside of money matters.
Is there some kind of rule about a house not being more than 2x your income?
A very conservative rule. General rule of thumb is ~3x your income. Then there are debates as to whether that's gross or net. (I'll clarify that when we bought our house, it was more than 3x our gross income. And yet we continued to each contribute 15% to our 401(k)s.)
One of my friends is on vacation right now. I am jealous, but am also side eyeing that she is spending her time shopping at baby gap and going to the movie theater. You can do those same things in our boring town!
H is giving me a huge lecture for not using all of the limes I bought before they went bad. Apparently in this household there is no need to hide HA, but it is necessary to hide spoiled produce. Perhaps I should tell him the $3 can be deducted from my fun money.
I don't hide purchases from DH, but he's not in charge of the finances, so he really has no idea. He actually admitted to me he wasn't sure what his pin# was for our checking account, lol.
But he got me a LV as a pregnancy/anniversary gift, so it's not like I have to hide much.
He also didn't bat an eye when I spent $200 on new bras and underwear post weaning.
FTR, DS1 and DS2 are both super smart. Verdict is still out on DS3 . DS1 was by far the more precociously smart, but DS2 has caught up.
Interesting. Thank you!Â
My H breaks the rule too. First brother went to a mediocre college, middle went to mid-tier, H went Ivy. Of course college =/= intelligence, but H is on a different level. His brothers are totally average.
This morning when I picked C up to put her mittens on I realized that she had a dirty diaper. Since I was running late and daycare is less than a mile away, I just put her in the car and let DC change it.
Our house was 3+ times our income when we bought. And we didn't put 20% down. LOL.
But, caveats that I realized make all the difference in perspective on what's affordable: WA doesn't have an income tax. And our property taxes are only ~1% of appraised value.
omg! not only do I pay a chunk on state income tax (extra screwed by being married), I pay 1% LOCAL income tax, AND 1.7% property taxes.
Waiting for NY / NJ to come in and must be nice ME
Obligatory MBN post: House is just under 4x our income (but we put 50% down and I work pt). No local tax but high income tax and property taxes are a shade under $10k.
One of my friends is on vacation right now. I am jealous, but am also side eyeing that she is spending her time shopping at baby gap and going to the movie theater. You can do those same things in our boring town!
H is giving me a huge lecture for not using all of the limes I bought before they went bad. Apparently in this household there is no need to hide HA, but it is necessary to hide spoiled produce. Perhaps I should tell him the $3 can be deducted from my fun money.
Our mortgage is about equal to our annual HHI. I think a mortgage 3x our income would feel really, really tight.
(FWIW, the purchase price was about 2x our income, but we put a lot down.)
We put a lot down and ours is about equal, too.. I think it is about 20k more.
I am glad that we did not spend more now that we are sending my oldest to the super expensive speech/language preschool.
My parents by 90% of my kids clothing. This is especially helpful because OOP speech therapy is expenses ve.
We are in the same position. DS1 and DS2 both go to a relatively expensive private school, and we pay OOP for speech therapy for DS2. School/speech/childcare for DS3 is significantly more than our mortgage. If we weren't committed to private school (and spending fairly liberally on stuff like travel, activities, and entertainment), we could handle a mortgage 2.5x our income, but we couldn't do it while maintaining our current priorities (including saving). Conversely, if we had no kids or plans for kids and lived in a state without income tax, I think a mortgage 3-4x our income would be totally manageable. Which is why blanket rules about this stuff that don't take into account individual circumstances are silly.
Except sorry husband, I'm still buying some new shit.
Once I found out DS2 was a boy, I felt totally justified spending more money on DS1's clothes, figuring I could always hand them down. So don't forget to buy a bunch of overpriced stuff for your DS while you are shopping for the baby.