Being Nice vs. Being Kind: I just read this short post this morning and thought YEP. That’s my goal in life. Also, I could have written nearly every single word of that post. I love her blog. Definitely go check her out!
TTC#3? Thank you for all of the wonderful comments on my post last week about the conundrum of trying (or not) for another child. It’s a tough decision since my husband and I aren’t on the same page right now. I figure I’ll give it another year and a half, but by the time I’m 35 I want to be trying again or be done. We shall see… It’s comforting to know it’s obviously a big decision that all of us have had to face, and either way at least we have our two awesome kids.
Stitch Fix: Thanks for all of your fun feedback! I decided to keep the Margaret M Emer Pants and send everything else back, especially in light of suddenly having way more bills in our future for not-so-fun stuff. I wore them to work yesterday with heels, and I got SO.MANY.COMPLIMENTS. Nobody ever comments on my outfits, so that was kind of fun. 🙂 I can totally see these being an item I wear every single week in different ways. I’m in love!
Money Crap: The auto mechanic offered us $4k to buy the damn truck as-is (he would to the repairs on his own time for free and try to flip it, which totally makes sense), so now we get to decide if we want to do that and still have to pay nearly $5k on a loan that’s for nothing AND get a $40k loan to buy a new truck that has a warranty that we don’t have to worry about for years…. or if we want to spend the money to fix the existing truck and hope it doesn’t have any other issues coming down the pipe (the truck has 100,000 miles on it), which means another $10k loan anyway. *sigh* This is bringing it to the forefront how much better we need to get about paying down debt and having an emergency fund so situations like this aren’t so stressful. Lesson learned, Dave Ramsey.
The Tooth: For those who are curious, the implant for my front tooth is healing really well, and the new permanent implant tooth should get placed right around Thanksgiving. Every once in awhile I catch myself flipping it in and out of place (because of the teenage habit of using my tongue to pull the retainer off the roof of my mouth – the temp tooth is attached to a retainer), but usually I catch myself pretty quickly, because nobody wants to see my front tooth moving up and down. Ha! Thank God I had been putting money in a HSA account for the last few years, so even though this is costing us thousands, at least we had money set aside for medical issues. Sometimes I can eat with it in, but often I have to take it out, which always makes my husband and brother shudder a bit. The kids find it fascinating. LOL
My Brother: I don’t think I’ve actually written about it on this blog, but my little brother moved from MN to CO and in with us last May. He’s the youngest of 5 and I’m the oldest of the 5, so we’re 9 years apart in age, but we get along swimmingly. The plan was to live with us 3 months, and now it’s September 4th. Oops. I know my husband is ready to have his house back, but it’s honestly gone really well. He’s been working for Charlie and for Charlie’s Dad, so I think it’s just been a lot of 24/7 time for them. Thankfully my brother is fantastic with the kids, we’ve gotten to go on a date night every month, and it’s just been fun to get to know him as an adult. I’m pretty sure he’s moving out next week (his buddy is buying a house that should close next week), and it’s going to be weird to not have him around…though I am excited to have my guest room back! At least he’ll only live 3 blocks away, so I’m sure we will still see quite a bit of him.
House Projects: Charlie and his Dad are just finishing building a house and the homeowners ordered way too much stone. It’s non-returnable, so instead of throwing it in the dumpster, we up-cycled it to our house! Charlie’s buddy is a mason, so he is donating his time on nights/weekends to help Charlie put it on the front of our house (and maybe along the wall to our front door if we have enough), and next year when his buddy builds his own place, Charlie is going to donate his time to help him pour his foundation and walls. In light of the truck hoopla it’s not an ideal time to have a couple hundred dollars of extra expenses (for the material to adhere the stone to the house), but I am SO excited about how much nicer this is going to make our house look. It makes me smile every time I pull up, and it’s not even done yet!
How’s that for a random compilation of thoughts?
Happy Friday, y’all!
So much going on all at once! As always, I applaud your easy-going nature. It’s so funny your brother is only moving three blocks away. Your town is so small!!!
The house looks awesome! And you know, for $200-$500, I’d have told you to do it even if the truck had happened first. Huge value builder there!
Why do trucks need to cost so much? Brian wants a used Tacoma or Ridgeline, and I mean, he’s desperate for one. But they’re so expensive used! They hold their value well, which is great if you own one but sucks if you want to buy one. I don’t even know what you should do. I refuse to buy brand new, I can’t imagine spending $40,000 on a vehicle. But Charlie NEEDS a truck. Ugh.
Enjoy your trip. You need it!
Yeah, I feel the same way, honestly. It’s a huge upgrade to the front of the house for very little money!
I’m super anti-buying new vehicles, but we’ve been looking at trucks for Charlie, and getting one a couple years old that would be dependable and big enough to pull the forms is $30k – no warranty & high APR for a loan… and brand new is $40k WITH a warranty and 0% APR…so yeah, ugh, it makes my skin crawl to spend that much money on a vehicle, but we might have to…
Love the stone! 🙂
Another year and a half is defiantly reasonable to decide for another. So glad your brother will still be close!
Love Dave Ramsey! Hence paying cash for a 2012 Honda Odyssey with 29,000 miles that originally was a turned in lease 😉 Totally get about IF treatments being draining, my losses also cost us a small fortune (2 miscarriages and 4 kids total.) We do stick to 9-12 month emergency fund, minimum 6. We live off salary and bonuses we sock away and save. But we just splurged on a Disney trip for a week, never been on a vacation like that as a family, but we are cash flowing it and won’t happen again for awhile!
Definitely not defiantly lol
Yeah, Charlie is self-employed (so no bonuses!) and I usually get $2k bonuses each year… not enough to build up an emergency fund! 😉 We do need to work on doing that though, because this is stressful when C has to have a good working truck!
So many things going on. Cars and $ are crazy. We don’t spend on cars because we don’t need to but it’s a must for you guys. I stressed when we paid $13k (about US $8K)on our car. The new stone on the house looks amazing! I love that look when houses are close to the mountains.
Yeah, I bought a car when I was 19 for $8,000. I drove that car for nearly 10 years, and then we sold that and I started driving a car Charlie had bought before we were married. I’ve never bought a vehicle since! For Charlie’s work it really is a necessity though.
The house looks absolutely gorgeous. That stone is perfect and a major upgrade, so definitely a good investment.
Ugh about the truck… I’d be inclined to go the new truck route if monthly payments are manageable. Peace of mind is HUGE.
Love the nice vs. kind post. I’m not all that “nice” by nature either. My BFF IS and would make me have “be-nice” days in high school. They just felt so incredibly fake to me though. Now I know why. 😉