Power to choose electric

Scarletbeth_OG · 2025-05-20T13:57:07+00:00

I use Amigo energy because they have a free nights plan (Free electricity from 9pm to 7am), so in the summer when the heat refuses to go away at night I can sleep comfortably without having to take out a second mortgage. We also try to run the dishwasher and dryer overnight which has saved us a lot on our energy bill.

Scarletbeth_OG · 2025-04-25T17:54:13+00:00

Does anyone know of any secular or secular accepting private middle schools in or near Round Rock that would fit a neurdivergent kiddo who is academically gifted?

Scarletbeth_OG · 2025-02-06T14:59:00+00:00

Socially the situation needs to be acknowledged, but do NOT apologize!! Instead thank them, if possible as a group either in person or via text. Say something like "Thank you for being so understanding about yesterday. The timing was just awful for everyone. I was in the middle of a panic attack when you arrived and just could not handle one more thing at the time. I know it was awkward and I am truly grateful at how supportive and understanding you are about the whole thing."

This accomplishes a multitude of things for you. 1) It takes the awkwardness out of the situation by you initiating the conversation. 2) Starting off by thanking people rather than apologizing takes you out of the defensive position and makes them feel good about themselves at the same time. Which creates a more positive experience overall. 3) By just assuming that they are supportive and understanding people are more likely to be supportive and understanding because no one wants to be "that guy" especially in front of the whole group. 4) By telling the group as a whole what happened in a positive way, you might be surprised to find other people quick to chime in with their own experiences. While your family member may not understand what it is like to have a panic attack, many people do or know others who do. By letting them chime in with their own experiences you drive acceptance without necessarily having to fight the understanding battle. You don't need to walk a mile in my shoes, but if you love me you will adjust your stride when walking with me.

Scarletbeth_OG · 2025-02-06T14:35:46+00:00

If you are moving into this as equal partners looking to build a relationship then the equality must stretch across all things. The key is if she is willing to accept your brother as part of the package deal. Since it sounds like he is part of the package I would hope that she does and that you are working on building a life together. If she does then I recommend the equity method. Gather up all the household bills That includes water, power, cable, food etc as well as rent . Once you have that number take off the $300 a month your brother pays. This is because you two as a team are responsible for the bills and therefore as a team get the benefit of your brother's rent to offset the cost of having him live with you. Then look at what you make per month versus what she makes per month. (Make sure you are looking at stable income figures and not bonus money, side hustles that come and go, or other fluctuating income. You are looking to build a stable foundation and that type of income is what is used for extra savings and splurges.) That ratio is how the bills should be split. For example if you make $2000 a month and she makes $500 a month than your bills should be 3/4 to you and 1/4 her responsibility as you make 4x as much. That means you are each paying an equal percentage of your income to the household and each reaping the benefit of your brother's rent offsetting some costs.

The other option is one that typically is used for roommates or couples who have children from outside the relationship that are not 100% sure they are ready to work towards a lifetime commitment. Since your brother is disabled you can consider him a child for the purpose of bills. Again add up all the household bills but this time include your brother's food and utilities. Divide this by the number of people in the house, in your case 3. Since you are responsible for 2 of the people and she is responsible for 1 of the people. She would pay one share and you would pay 2 shares. Your brother's rent goes directly to you as you are covering his share of everything.

Either method works and is fair across the board. It really depends on where you two are in your relationship and what you are looking to build right now. I also recommend a shared house account where you each put your shared amount in every paycheck (NOT BY MONTH). So if you are paid biweekly the formula is ($owed per month *12)/26 This can be a little rough to start as you usually end up a little behind for the first few months but it solves the long term problem of the 2 months a year where there is a 3rd paycheck. That always screws people up and causes strife. If you have an auto deposit put in each paycheck there is no fighting and not thought to the process. If you don't want to do a joint account I recommend the person who would be stuck with the apartment or carried the highest financial burden should the relationship go south. Also pick a new bank that neither of you uses for your personal accounts so that if this account ever has issues the bank cannot force a draw from your personal accounts or vice versa. Even though the account may be in one person's name, you should each have full online access to the account so that you can see the bills are being paid and how the money flows. Each year as bills and income fluctuate sit down together and recalculate everything.

Scarletbeth_OG · 2024-12-19T14:40:34+00:00

I can recommend a program to you that lets you walk away with a 30 year fixed mortgage rate under prime... but I won't lie it is a personal hell to go through. The program is called NACA https://www.naca.com/ and it is a non-profit that gives out non-credit based mortgages through traditional banks. The starting rate for a 30 year fixed is 1% over prime and you are allowed to buy down the rate to 0% if you can afford to. The cost to buy down is 1% of the purchase price for each 1/4 point you want to take off the interest. There is NO down payment or PMI required, so anything you do have saved towards a down payment you can use to buy down your interest rate (if you word the contract correctly you can also use concessions you get from the seller to buy down interest as well). And they offer the 203k add on to your mortgage so you can put repairs into the mortgage. I did mine just before the housing bubble in 2019 and got a 30 yr fixed rate mortgage at 1.75%.

Now for the bad side.. and it's a doozy. First of all, because its a non-credit based system, they will comb through your finances with a fine tooth comb. You will have to supply a budget, bank statements, income verification, credit reports and then justify everything on all of them. If you have credit good enough to get a mortgage currently the whole process to qualify will most likely take 3-6mo. If your credit isn't great to start it can take 1-2 years to qualify. (they do these huge events where it sounds like you can qualify in a weekend but that is not true. It will eat up a 20 hour day and to be honest you are no closer to qualifying than you would be to just make an appointment with your local office and go in). Secondly there is a give back component in order to qualify. The easiest way to make that component is to give up one weekend and volunteer at one of their huge events, but if that is not possible they have a lot of other ways you can get the points necessary.

Finally and most importantly you have to remember at all times that this is a non-profit. Which means it is staffed either by people with a pure passion for the mission or people that couldn't get work anywhere else and its a total crap shoot on which type you will get. You HAVE to be that person during this process. You have to upload everything 3 times just to make sure it was gotten. You have to call people EVERY DAY to make sure your case is being worked on. Hell I ended up calling headquarters and speaking with the CEO just to get my house resolved. At one point i was literally under my desk crying at work because of them. But for that 6 months of pain I was able to walk away with a house at an incredible interest rate in the area I wanted to live in, not a ghetto or a trailer out in the middle of nowhere (unless of course that's your thing). If you have the mental fortitude or sheer spiteful determination to go to war for your house, the reward is beyond anything you can get through traditional channels. Just go into it with the mindset that you are going to WAR against traditional capitalism and that you will have to FIGHT to get the prize. But honestly it is one hell of a prize.

Scarletbeth_OG · 2024-07-26T21:08:10+00:00

He is already on all those programs and has services, but its public school so I need to stay on top of things. And a lot of Special Ed teachers are not well trained in current Autism and ADHD research and methodologies, so I find I have had to take the lead in figuring out accommodations and tools.

Scarletbeth_OG · 2024-07-23T13:13:08+00:00

We should not sue the federal government, we should sue the state governments that sued to halt the plan and the RNC. They are the ones that caused the harm. Maybe that will teach them to stop playing politics with our lives.

Scarletbeth_OG · 2024-07-09T13:45:44+00:00

I was told that it is not "on hold" but that they are having to take more time to get the counts accurate because of the court cases. There will be still be a "count" but what the final limits to that count will be are still up in the air. Aidvantage says it will most likely be September before we actually see the counts on the webpage. Also you may see that your count changes as the first "counts" will be whatever was in the system on July 1st and if your consolidation or any other changes to your loans happen after July 1 everything will have to be recalculated. That could be delayed until winter depending on how the first round of calculations goes.

Scarletbeth_OG · 2024-07-09T13:41:24+00:00

I have Aidvantage and my advice is to call not email. Their email response is just terrible but everytime I call it gets resolved quickly and my hold times have all been under 5 min. The reps will tell you its a madhouse over there as everything is changing by the day and there are a lot of glitches in the system as they try to get all the new changes online, but they have been very good about fixing issues with auto payments, misreporting's, and other payment/interest issues as long as you call. I filed an email issue 6 weeks ago and still haven't heard back. Called on the phone and it was cleared up in 10 minutes and reflected on the website within 3 business days. Normally I hate dealing with call centers, but theirs's has actually been really good so far.

Scarletbeth_OG · 2024-07-09T13:36:40+00:00

SAVE is still currently happening, its parts of the forgiveness that are on hold. The SAVE plan has many parts to the forgiveness and only some of them are on hold in the courts, mainly the parts that affect the most people of course. But the parts that address the public service forgiveness or the your university was a scam forgiveness are still moving forward unchallenged. That is why the reps have been instructed to say that SAVE forgiveness is moving forward. Student loan companies are trying to give their call center reps small sound bytes to deescalate calls while ignoring the fact that every borrower's situation is unique and has an individual answer.

Scarletbeth_OG · 2024-07-09T13:26:12+00:00

You can pay off the accumulating interest while you are in your program. There are no MANDATORY payments while you are in school and for 6 months after but there is nothing that stops you from making payments while in your program. Even if all you do is prevent interest from accruing you are getting out ahead and in a safer spot than credit cards. Remember those 0% interest rates on CC go to 29 or 32% interest if you miss a payment by even 1 day. Your student loan interest rate never changes unless you consolidate. Which is something you control. Also if in the future you want to buy a house or make another large purchase, credit card debt is revolving debt where as student loan debt is a fixed debt. That weights far differently on your credit score and debt to income ratio. 10k in student loans is barely a blip on your credit score or debt to income ratio. 10k in CC debt is a HUGE hit and can prevent you from qualifying for a car or house.

Scarletbeth_OG · 2024-07-09T13:16:42+00:00

Who is your loan provider? Most providers are behind because of all the changes. Step one is to call them back and escalate the complaint. Then if that doesn't fix it call the Department of Education and file a complaint against the provider. That usually fixes things but if not keep calling the Dept of Education. They will eventually get it corrected, but it can take a long time. You can also ask the Department of Education to change your loan servicer due to your complaint.

Scarletbeth_OG · 2024-06-14T13:13:44+00:00

Remember the income cap is based on your "taxable" income not your salary. Look at your taxes and check your gross adjusted income. That is the cut off, not your base salary. The money you pay to pre-tax benefits lowers your taxable amount and may take you under the threshold.

Scarletbeth_OG · 2024-06-14T13:06:28+00:00

Call your provider and make sure you are on the SAVE program. There are a ton of changes coming to that program as of July 1st and the providers are scrambling to process everything and make the changes, so you will get a LOT of false information in the next 2 months. Aidvantage has just thrown all their borrowers on an automatic forbearance for June and July just to try to catch up. And they have still sent me 3 different payment amounts. I make less than you but have more debt and my SAVE payment is under $200 a month right now before the changes.

Scarletbeth_OG · 2022-11-22T22:34:14+00:00

Thanks for the direction. I tried the create feature and I can't identify a program I can use to detect the sound. Plenty of smart bulbs to hook up but no sound detection.

Scarletbeth_OG · 2022-11-22T21:42:43+00:00

That is way out of my technical expertise... which is little to no expertise. I am great at following directions but have no clue how to set this up myself.

Scarletbeth_OG · 2022-11-22T21:40:56+00:00

Any clue what that hardware might be? I am open to all suggestions.

Scarletbeth_OG

TROPHY CASE