A mouse in the house

I’ve made no secret about my struggles with anxiety. I worry. Constantly.

Less than two weeks after moving into our new home, and I’ve come to the conclusion that homeownership, while wonderful, has extended my list of worries by about a mile.

At the top of my list? A MOUSE. In my kitchen. At least one, probably more, likely living behind the dishwasher. Tony came face to face with it last night before it scampered under the counter behind the dishwasher.

After the mouse encounter, I seriously considered packing up and moving in the middle of the night like the family in “The Amityville Horror.” Because seriously. IT WAS A MOUSE.

So far it’s been suggested that we get a cat or set up traps. But the idea of finding dead mice freaks me out way more than a live mouse. I mean, I used to have hamsters when I was a kid. This is no different, right? Except he feeds himself. And doesn’t require a cage.

I’m not sure a cat would help anyway. My parents live in front of a corn field, and they used to get field mice in the basement in the fall when the weather started turning colder. We had a cat — a very lazy cat who didn’t seem to mind the mice. In fact, my bedroom was in the basement, and I distinctly remember waking up to see a mouse getting into the cat’s dish while the cat lazily slept next to me.

I like the alternative even less. A cat who actually hunts mice? When I was a kid, I had a neighbor whose cat was a skilled mouse hunter. It wasn’t uncommon to find a random mouse head on the porch. No thanks.

Not to mention, my husband is deathly allergic to felines, and it stands to reason that our son will be, too.

I don’t suppose there’s any magical, humane solution, is there? Because I was just kidding about letting the thing roam my kitchen as a pet.

Please, help, Internet! I don’t want to move again. But I also don’t want a mouse for a roommate.

Is college worth it?

Lately, there have been tons of headlines touting the idea that rising unemployment, high tuition costs, and overcrowding in the post-college job market have made college degrees a poor value. Proponents of this theory believe that other career tracks — such as internships and entry-level positions that don’t require a degree — may be a smarter idea to get students into the work force faster without spending thousands of dollars.

I think this Time article does a pretty good job of dispelling this theory:

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2010, the median weekly earnings for someone with some college but no degree were $712, compared to $1038 for a college graduate. That’s almost $17,000 over the course of a year and there is an even bigger divide for those with less education. College graduates are also more likely to be in jobs with better benefits, further widening the divide. Meanwhile, in 2010, the unemployment rate was 9.2 percent for those with only some college and more than 10 percent for those with just a high school degree, but it was 5.4 percent for college graduates. The economic gaps between college completers and those with less education are getting larger, too.

These statistics paint a pretty obvious picture. It appears that college graduates are not only less likely to face unemployment, but their salaries are thousands of dollars higher than non-college grads.

That doesn’t mean I don’t acknowledge that there’s a problem, though. As someone who personally made the foolish choice to unnecessarily borrow thousands for a college degree, I think college debt is a serious problem in this country.

That doesn’t mean I regret my decision to go to college. My college education opened doors for me. Not only did I learn valuable skills during my time at college, but I was able to find a job afterward that taught me even more valuable skills — and allowed me to support my husband and me while he earned a master’s degree, which is what allows him to pay our bills now. Do I regret the debt, though? You betcha.

You could argue that a college degree isn’t required for my freelance income. However, it’s unlikely I’d have the skills necessary to earn my freelance income without my degree and previous work experience. Not to mention, I don’t plan to be a stay-at-home mom indefinitely. When my youngest child starts school, I’ll be back in the job market. Depending on how many children we have, it could be a while, but I’m glad I won’t be starting college at that point like my mom did.

I think the question of whether college is “worth it” is silly. The more important question is whether college debt is “worth it.” And to me, the answer is no. The debt isn’t worth living beyond your means as a college student.

Skipping college isn’t the answer. The answer is skipping college debt (or at least as much of it as you can). Attend a state school or community college for all or part of your education. Apply for grants and scholarships. Work as much as you possibly can. Live frugally. Do not use student loans to subsidize your beer and pizza fund or buy expensive gadgets or a car you can’t afford. Work full time and attend school part time for longer than four years.

I’m not naive enough to claim that graduating with no debt is an option for everyone. I acknowledge that middle class students without a college nest egg often have limited options. As someone who attended a state school, worked two jobs in college, received financial help from parents, and still didn’t have enough to pay for tuition and living expenses, I understand that avoiding all debt may not be possible if you want to graduate in under a decade. But the point is to borrow as little as you possibly can — and the ideal is to borrow none.

If you’re a graduating senior, please trust me when I tell you — your first job will not pay you enough to make those student loans payments easy. But don’t feel discouraged enough to skip college all together. An education is absolutely worth the hard work required to pay for it — the debt, however, is not.

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Judah and the oatmeal

We started introducing Judah to some solid foods this week, which has been exciting for everyone. His first food — mashed bananas — was a big hit. The oatmeal we tried today? Not so much.

Learn first aid to save money and avoid trauma

Let me start this by saying I would never condone risking the health of yourself or anyone in your family to save money, no matter what the cost. My family’s health is our top priority, and we will spend whatever is necessary to keep all of us well.

That said, emergency room visits are outrageous. Even with good insurance, our copay is $200 for an ER visit. If we were uninsured or paying 100% out of pocket until we hit our deductible, a single trip to the ER for something simple could easily cost over $1000. Not to mention, you’ll often sit in the waiting room for hours. Before spending that kind of time and money, you need to know that the injury really does warrant a trip to the emergency room.

Last Friday while packing some glasses, Tony accidentally broke a glass in his hand, and it cut him. It was deeper than the average “put a Bandaid on it” cut, but it didn’t look deep enough to require stitches. Again, if I really thought he was seriously injured, I wouldn’t have questioned taking him to the hospital. But we just didn’t know.

Judah was already in bed, and we were in the middle of packing and moving. The last thing either one of us wanted was to sit in an ER for hours for him to be bandaged up and sent home.

Both of our moms are nurses, so I put a call in to each of them. The consensus seemed to be that based on where the cut was on his hand and the fact that it wasn’t terribly deep, he would probably be okay with some butterfly bandages.

I’d never done anything like this, and I was incredibly nervous. The last thing I wanted to do was screw it up. My husband is better at this sort of thing than me, but he couldn’t do it one handed, so it had to be me. We put pressure on it with a clean towel, and he sat with his hand elevated for about 30 minutes to stop the bleeding. We cleaned it well, applied the butterfly bandages, and put Bandaids over it to keep it clean.

I think the bandages could have been applied better by someone with more experience, but it seemed to be good enough, because a week later it’s healing well. He will probably have a scar, because I didn’t get the butterfly bandages quite tight enough. But because of where it is on his hand, it won’t be easily visibly.

Would they have given him stitches? Maybe. Now that it’s healed, it looks a bit deeper than we thought. But it seems that in most cases, the only reason a clean cut with no jagged edges or increased risk of infection would need stitches is to stop bleeding or minimize scarring. If you can get the bleeding to stop and it’s not in a place where a scar would be noticeable, a butterfly bandage will fix the problem most of the time. If you’re skilled at applying butterfly bandages, scarring can sometimes even be reduced with a butterfly bandage because there are no jagged Frankenstein lines from the stitches.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized I need to take a first aid class. Part of our problem is that we were clueless. We could tell the wound wasn’t too bad, but we still weren’t sure if stitches were necessary. I can see how that doubt and fear would be even greater if the wound had been on our young son.

I’m sure we’ll encounter many bumps and cuts as Judah gets older. I want to know more about first aid not only so I can know whether professional medical care is required, but so I can provide him with basic first aid instead of rushing to the ER for every little thing.

When I was a kid, my dad was excellent at patching us up. He was an expert butterfly bandager. When I was 7, I busted my chin on the side of a dresser when he was out of town on a business trip. He later said he probably wouldn’t have bandaged it himself, because the chin is such a tough place to heal without stitches. My mom rushed me to the ER. We waited forever, and I was panicked and scared after my sister jokingly told me they were going to stitch me up under a sewing machine. She was trying to make a joke, but I took it literally, and I was terrified.

I think in most cases, getting first aid treatment from a parent at home is less traumatic and scary for a kid than a visit to the hospital. If I can learn to provide that basic care for Judah myself, we can avoid putting him through a traumatic ER visit unless it’s absolutely necessary.

Learning first aid can also prepare you to provide first treatment for serious issues that require professional medical care. Driving to the hospital or waiting for an ambulance takes time, and it’s important to be able to take the right steps immediately after an injury.

I’m looking into first aid classes now. Even if we pay a good chunk of change to learn these skills, I think it’s valuable beyond the money we’ll save in ER visits.

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The real cost of buying a home

If you’re planning to buy a house in the near future, then I’m sure you’ve heard this from a million people already, but I’ll tell you again: it ain’t cheap.

So what does it really cost? Well, you’re probably already saving 5-20% of your purchase price for a down payment and 1-3% for your closing costs. That’s not a small chunk of change. Unfortunately, that’s not all you’re going to need to save. Here are a few of the costs we encountered on our little home buying adventure.

Emergency fund

Up until now, you’ve probably had a landlord. If your heater stops working, you call the landlord, and they send someone to fix it on their dime. Roof leak? Call the landlord. Broken refrigerator? Call the landlord. Now that you’re a homeowner, the landlord is you. Don’t plan on spending every last cent of your savings account to move into your home. As a homeowner, access to an adequate emergency fund is more important than ever. Negotiating a home warranty into your purchase can relieve some of this responsibility for a year or so, but it won’t cover everything. Make sure you have some cash on hand to avoid getting in over your head.

Appliances – $500 and up. The sky is the limit if you want to get fancy Food Network appliances!

These days, the housing market is full of foreclosure properties. Sure, you can get a great house for a low price, but often these homes don’t include appliances like a stove, refrigerator, dishwasher, washer or dryer. Sometimes if you’re buying from a seller instead of a bank, some or all of the kitchen appliances will be included. Sometimes they’re not. We saw several houses that didn’t include some or all of the appliances. In our case, we were lucky to buy a house with a stove and dishwasher. We already own our washer and dryer (bartered from a friend in North Carolina in exchange for moving help). But our home did not include a refrigerator, so we had to purchase one.

Sometimes a good deal can be found at secondhand or consignment shops. However, you are taking a risk that the appliance bought will be missing one or more vital parts. Luckily, no matter what brand — Kenmore, Electrolux, General Electric, Jenn-Air, KitchenAid, and others — it’s usually possible to find replacement parts inexpensively. You may even be able to get an old refrigerator running like new for only a few dollars.

Lawnmower – $200 – $5000

If you’re moving into your first home after living in apartments, you’ve never experienced the joy of yard maintenance. Now instead of cursing the landscapers for kicking up pollen and noisily mowing away outside a few times a month, that will be your job. We have almost an acre of land that’s quickly growing out of control, so we’ll have to buy a mower before we move in.

Window coverings – $200 and up

Some homeowners will leave things like blinds, curtains, or other window coverings that were custom-made for the home. Often they don’t. Because our house was recently remodeled and new windows were installed, there’s nothing covering them. Unless we want to give our neighbors a peep show, we’ve got to invest in some blinds. As much as I love our dramatic, custom windows, I learned the hard way that fancy windows are more expensive to cover. We had to order custom-cut blinds to fit our unique window sizes. If your windows are standard size, mini blinds can be a cheap option to cover your windows until you can save up for something fancier.

Propane – $500 – $1000 depending on the tank size

I’m a city girl, and I assumed that everyone in the world has access to a natural gas line in their homes, and they just receive a heating bill every month. Not so. If you’re moving into a house in the country, you may have a giant propane tank next to your house that needs to be filled. Rates are lower in the summer when demand is lower, and in our case, the first fill has to be paid upfront. After that we can get on a monthly “budget” plan to build a credit and cover the next fill-up.

Optional costs – Prices will vary.

Paint

If you hate the colors the previous owner chose or the paint needs a touch-up, be prepared to invest some money and elbow grease into repainting. Our house was completely repainted as part of the remodel. They’re not the colors I would have chosen, but it’s fresh paint and I don’t hate the colors, so we chose to leave the walls as they are for at least a year or two.

Decorations

If you don’t repaint — or you choose a color much different from your previous home — you may discover that the decorations you bring no longer match your decor. You can always choose to add decorations a little at a time to reduce the upfront cost. If you don’t have the money to decorate right away, be prepared to live with bare walls for a little while.

Furnishings

The square footage of our new home is almost double that of our apartment. When you suddenly gain that much extra space, you realize just how much furniture it will take to fill it. We’ll have to live with an empty den for a while until we can find a nice used sofa or save enough to upgrade our living room furniture and move the old stuff into the den.

Thankfully, we’ve been saving for the past 5 years, so even though we underestimated the amount of cash we’d need to buy our house, we can afford the extra costs. Be sure you count on some extra costs if you’re planning to buy a home.

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What I learned about parenting from my own mom

For new moms, today is pretty much like every other day. Wake up earlier than you’d like, change diapers, feed the baby, step over the boxes in your living room, pack your entire house, deal with your husband’s wounded hand after he sliced it on a broken glass. What’s that? That’s not what you’re doing today? Well, that’s what I’m doing. And it sort of stinks. The parts about the moving and the flesh wound, that is. I don’t mind the baby stuff.

But it’s okay, because today is a day for reflection, too. As much as today feels like any other day, it’s the first Mother’s Day since I became a mother myself. My own baby is too young to express his gratitude (though he did sleep for 7 hours straight last night for the second night in a row!), I can be grateful for my own mother and reflect on what she taught me about motherhood.

This is my mom, Peggy.

And here are a few things she’s taught me about being a mom:

Don’t feel intimidated. My mom has four children, and we’re all about two years apart. She was pregnant or caring for an infant for about a decade. And it only got crazier as we got older. I can see how it would have been easy for her to hide out at home until we were old enough that we wouldn’t make her crazy in public. She didn’t, though. She got up, got us dressed, and got us out of the house. She carted all four of us to the grocery store while my dad was at work. We went on fun outings in the summertime. She was counting heads constantly to make sure she hadn’t lost anyone, but she never let herself feel too intimidated to live life with four children.

Play. We were always doing arts and crafts, playing games, and having fun. It helped that there were enough of us — including the neighborhood kids — that our house felt like a small daycare. It was never boring, and she was always right there with us playing and having fun.

Foster independence and individuality. None of us ever had an interest or hobby that my mom didn’t encourage. But she never pushed us. She gave us space to figure things out for ourselves.

Understand. Looking back, I realize that my mom never forgot what it was like to be a kid (or a teenager), and she tried her hardest to relate. She understood that we were going to make mistakes and get into trouble, and while there was discipline, she didn’t overreact.

Respect. My mom never talked down to us, even when we were small. She’s always said that you should talk to children like little adults, and it stuck with me. She never used baby talk, which is part of the reason we all ended up with an above average vocabulary, I’m sure. There was no idea or concept that we were “too young” to understand. If we had a question, she had an answer.

Trust your kids. My mom recognized that I was a good kid, and she gave me a lot of freedom and privileges because of that.

You don’t have to be irresponsible to be a “cool” mom. We’re all familiar with the cool mom stereotype. The immature, irresponsible mother who flirts with her daughter’s boyfriends, serves alcohol to minors at parties, and thinks being an irresponsible parent is a good way to hang on to youth. That was definitely not my mom. But that doesn’t mean she wasn’t cool.

She remembered what it was like to be young, and I could always depend on her for understanding even when it came to things that most other parents wouldn’t get. There were rules, and she didn’t make it easy for us to break them, but she did know that we probably would. She gave us room to make our own decisions and mistakes. When we made the wrong choices, she taught us about real world consequences without being overbearing or unyielding. She understood that breaking the rules is part of growing up, and she gave us room to make those mistakes, but she always held us responsible for our own choices. Most importantly, she knew how to have fun.

Let your kids grow up. Now that we’re adults, my mom still offers advice and guidance, but she really is more of a friend than an authority. This seems like a simple obvious thing, but I know there are parents out there who can’t let go of their authority role over their adult children. Now that we’re grown, she doesn’t admonish or judge or push her advice. She recognizes that we’re adults who are free to make our own choices without her interference. She let our relationship grow as we did, and I’m thankful for that.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Home

In the past eight years, I’ve lived in seven different apartments in five different cities. Each time I moved, I squirreled away my stash of moving boxes. I stuffed them under the bed, used valuable closet real estate, hid them behind the washing machine. You see, if there’s one thing I hate more than moving, it’s finding moving boxes. Once I found good ones, I didn’t want to let them go, because I always knew the next move was imminent.

For four years of college, I moved every year. Then Tony and I moved to North Carolina — another temporary home that we planned to leave as soon as Tony graduated. When we came back to Indiana, we spent a year in flux. Two weeks in Europe, six weeks at Tony’s parents’ house while he searched for a job, six months in an apartment in northern Indiana where he accepted a temporary teaching job, and now almost four months in an apartment here in southern Indiana after he accepted his full-time position.

I’ve struggled to make connections with people, knowing we’d be moving on soon. I never really felt settled. And through it all, I hung on to those moving boxes, because I knew I’d need them again soon.

After all that, I can’t tell you how good it felt to sign on the dotted line today finally securing our permanent home. Will we live here for the rest of our lives? Probably not. But we’ll be here for the foreseeable future, nestled in our adorable brick ranch on an acre of peaceful land in the country.

We’ll roast turkeys at Thanksgiving and trim Christmas trees in December, grill hot dogs on the back porch and roast marshmallows at backyard bonfires in the summertime. We’ll celebrate Judah’s birthdays, sign him up for Little League, and send him off to kindergarten. Hopefully we’ll find a community that we can call our own. And I’ll finally send my pile of moving boxes to the recycling center.

We are home. Finally.

Why I’d rather spend less than earn more

This post was originally published on May 13, 2009. Now that I’m a stay-at-home mom, this post is truer than ever for me. I needed a reminder of why my priority will always be finding ways to cut our spending instead of increasing our income. I thought I’d share it with you, too.

When you’re working to save money or get out of debt, there are two main ways to do it: spend less and earn more. When you’re struggling to make ends meet, the solution is to cut your spending or find a way to increase your income or some balance of both.

I’ve always favored the spend less approach on my blog and in my life. I’m not a big fan of Dave Ramsey’s advice to go to extreme measures to increase your income. I’d rather work hard to cut spending than pick up a second job or extra hours to increase our income. Here’s why:

My time is worth more than money.

If we took on night jobs or weekend jobs, we could speed up our debt repayment and savings. But at what cost? We’d lose our only real quality time together, our only time to relax and recharge. As I said yesterday, frugality is about improving my quality of life. Working nonstop isn’t what I think about when I think about my best life.

Being short on time can cost money.

When you’re constantly rushing around, you’re more likely to cling to convenience. From picking up take out at the end of a night shift to paying more in childcare to cover your long hours to skipping money-saving habits like menu planning and coupon clipping because you don’t have time, rushing around can get expensive.

Higher income leads to more spending.

Obviously, the point of frugality is to avoid increasing expenses as income increases. But the harder you’re working to bring in that extra income, the harder it can be to tell yourself, “No.”

Even if you can avoid spending money on unnecessary things, there are some natural upgrades that come along with a better income: home ownership, vacations, little luxuries. If you put more of your focus on earning than saving, it’s likely that those little upgrades will add up to a lot of extra spending. By focusing on saving instead of earning, we’re living comfortably without being tempted to splurge to much. As our income naturally increases and we continue to spend less than we make, we’ll find a way to fit these upgrades into our budget.

What about you? Would you rather spend less or earn more?

Because the past 12 months haven’t been crazy enough

I figure, we’ve already moved three times in the past 12 months. We might as well might it a nice even four!

Based on the topics I’ve chosen for my last few blog posts, I’m sure you’ve figured out that we’ve been in the market for a house. Well, we found one. Much faster than we anticipated.

It’s a gorgeous little brick house, completely renovated in the past year, sitting on almost a full acre of beautiful land with lots of trees. Wood floors, whirlpool tub, and a fireplace.

When we used to dream about the kind of house we’d live in one day, I used to tell Tony that all I wanted was a whirlpool tub, a fireplace, and enough land in the backyard for a garden. I didn’t imagine the first house we bought would have all of those things, but it looks like that’s what’s going to happen.

We’re currently under contract. The inspection went fabulously. Now we’re just waiting for the bank to do its thing before we close in the next 30 days. I can’t wait to move in!