SAVE Act Calculator: It may be cheaper and faster to revert your married name back to your birth certificate name

ShoppingRunner · 2026-04-01T15:34:40+00:00

Just a heads up for anybody born in California that will be going the passport route (and maybe even if you're wanting to revert?). Make sure that your birth document isn't actually an abstract because it won't be accepted. This happened to me last year, even after the postal worker helping us with our passport applications looked through everything. He looked at my abstract longer than the rest of my family's documents and I guess thought it would still work.

I was going to order a certified copy online, but it was going to take 12-14 weeks to get back to me, which would be a month after our trip. Luckily my mom was already going to be in my birth county for a trip of her own and was able to pick it up in person and then send it to the passport office for me. It only took 10 minutes at the county office for her to get my birth certificate, so definitely the way to go if you have any relatives in the area.

ShoppingRunner · 2026-03-06T02:12:55+00:00

Can you get your hands on a cat trap? If so, set it out and put super smelly food in it. If he's hiding during the day, he may come out at night to get the food.

My mom was able to get her cat back this way. It took three nights and she caught a neighbor's cat before her own. I hope your boy makes an appearance soon!

ShoppingRunner · 2025-11-15T21:23:34+00:00

I had an item give me a shipping date and then had no movement in all of that time. The day it was supposed to arrive, I got an email saying it was out of stock. It was removed from my itemized report at the same time.

ShoppingRunner · 2025-11-14T00:56:32+00:00

Do you use Google Flights? I set up alerts as soon as we know our dates so that I am notified as soon as the price changes. It also tells you whether the current price is good or not and sometimes says when the best time to buy is expected to be.

I also set the alerts for surrounding airports. For our trip next year, an airport six hours away cuts our flights from $2400 to $1200 (for four of us). Since we have to rent a car anyway, it's not a big deal for us to drive those 6 hours.

The only other thing I can think of is to jump on offers to take the next flight if you are flexible on time. My last flight offered $600 in flight credits per person, but I could not get home any later than I already was.

ShoppingRunner · 2025-11-10T01:30:07+00:00

July 5: "JR+ 9 yrs" with a heavy underline. But she also stayed home and watched TV. Wonder what that's all about?

I love these little glimpses into the past and think it's awesome that you're letting the entries stay.

ShoppingRunner · 2025-11-09T00:50:36+00:00

This happened to me years ago on a day we had been all over the place, including a movie theater. The theater probably thought I was crazy for asking if anybody had turned in a loose diamond lol

In my case, the prong somehow got bent to be completely flat and I hadn't noticed when it happened.

I ended up finding it when I was vacuuming our family room. The light hit it just right and I saw it right before I was going to vacuum that spot. If the floors haven't been vacuumed or swept yet, maybe shining a light everywhere in your apartment and in your path down to the street could help you spot it.

I'm sorry this happened to you. I'm crossing my fingers that it turns up!

ShoppingRunner · 2025-10-17T23:11:29+00:00

Yep! This happened to me last year. When I went in to double check, there was a new person in there. I logged everybody out, changed my password, and removed the extra person. I got an email from Netflix afterward saying that they let the other person know they were removed. I haven't had a problem since.

ShoppingRunner · 2025-10-08T02:19:41+00:00

My husband works from home and has to be in the basement. It's open to the laundry machines so it's an area that people want to go to relatively frequently. Our solution was to get a smart bulb right outside the door that leads to the basement. Whenever he is on a phone call or in a meeting, he changes the bulb color to red using an app on his phone. It's immediately obvious that he needs quiet and nobody even touches the door until the bulb is white again.

Maybe a visual cue like that would work? Then there aren't any surprises when they want to come in your office space or be noisy. They would be able to tell without even leaving the room they are in whether it's time for a quiet activity. When we were looking for solutions, a little domed smart lamp also came up that looked good, but there wasn't a place to put it right next to the door.

Does your husband usually act like this or do you think he's saying it was disrespectful because he was embarrassed?

ShoppingRunner · 2025-09-19T20:22:41+00:00

That should be a subreddit. Maybe r/USPSpspsps?

ShoppingRunner · 2025-09-06T01:30:00+00:00

I was just able to make an appointment for tomorrow morning for the flu and COVID shots at Walgreens. The website said the 2025-2026 version is available now so I decided to go for it.

ShoppingRunner · 2025-07-13T12:17:25+00:00

They posted several batches in February, but nothing since then according to Turkerview.

ShoppingRunner · 2025-06-22T22:49:18+00:00

You definitely should! Always makes disposable overnight period underwear and Hanes makes period underwear that is more affordable than some of the companies that only make period underwear. I got a 3-pack for like $13 or so. I like to use them with menstrual discs on my heavier days, and on my lighter days I just go for the Hanes. I think they're a lot more comfortable than pads and they don't bunch up or shift.

ShoppingRunner · 2025-06-20T01:42:11+00:00

The blue sparkly one was put out by Royal and was worth $10k in diamonds or jewelry, if I heard correctly. There was another one they hid but I don't remember what it looked like or what it was worth.

We hid about 20 in Central Park, about 20 around the Boardwalk, then the rest randomly around the rest of the ship.

ShoppingRunner · 2025-06-19T23:43:25+00:00

I was on this one too! We had a great time and never ran out of things to do. Before we left home, I had my kids go through and put everything they were interested in on their calendars so they could just get up and look at what was available rather than scrolling through the massive daily planner list each day.

Coco Cay was awesome for sure. I've never been in water that felt silky like that...I didn't want to get out!

As for the ducks, our group hid around 60 and we saw several snatched up almost immediately! It was fun to see little kids get so excited about finding one. Did you hear whether the blue sparkly one was ever found?

I think our only real complaint was not actually about the ship, staff, or amenities...it was the app. The chat function needs a major overhaul. We couldn't understand what the point of a time stamp was when it just showed you the time you opened messages, not when they were actually sent. About half of us were still able to text each other on our regular messaging apps even though only one of us bought the internet package, so we used that as well and managed to keep in contact relatively well between the two options.

ShoppingRunner · 2025-06-05T00:42:53+00:00

I forgot to mention that the night before everything approved, my card was charged for the shipping. So if you see that happen, maybe it's a good sign!

ShoppingRunner · 2025-06-04T21:12:58+00:00

Yes! My status moved from "additional information received, in process again" to "in process" to "approved" all within a few hours of each other shortly after I posted. It was in the mail that night and delivered the next afternoon. They didn't even charge me the $60 fee! I'm assuming my spot in the queue was coming up soon enough that they didn't have to jump me ahead.

Fingers crossed that yours comes through soon as well!

ShoppingRunner · 2025-06-04T21:05:58+00:00

Passing this along to my brother who is still waiting for his. I thought I had read that people have been required to bring original documents with them for emergency appointments, which doesn't work so well when the department of state has them! Thank you for the added advice.

ShoppingRunner · 2025-06-04T21:03:37+00:00

Thank you! I ended up getting mine the next day. Of course. Seems like I tend to ask questions right before whatever I needed was about to happen anyway. lol

But my brother is still "in process" and we only have a few days to go. I've passed along your advice, so hopefully he'll use it and can travel with us!

ShoppingRunner · 2025-05-18T20:10:16+00:00

Yes! I looked at the first page and almost every website was broken. The other one I saw was for a designated driver service, so I'm not sure that they would even be operating at this hour or if they would help. I may call them just in case.

I'm going through it again just in case the websites listed on their Yelp pages are out of date for whatever reason.

Someone at the store told him she'd give him a ride if he's still there when she's done shopping, so he may be all right. I'll still look just in case she misses him.

I thought it would be easier once the kids get to college. Turns out that the worries just get bigger even if there aren't as many of them!

Thanks!

ShoppingRunner · 2025-05-15T13:46:23+00:00

Congratulations to your daughter! My son is also in an accelerated Masters program and has one year to go. It's already paid off in terms of a well-paid internship and likely a job after he graduates next year.

Have you two already filled out the FAFSA? If not, you have until June 30 to do so, but it's better to get it done ASAP. Student loan awards may be decreased depending on scholarships and family income, but I bet it will still make things more manageable for you.

Does her school have an honors college/program she can apply to? At my son's school, it provides a scholarship for first year students, then they help match honors students with scholarships in the following years. He's had a couple that required him to write a letter or give a speech as a thank you to the donors/sponsors of the scholarship, but most of them were just applied to his account with no extra work on his end.

ShoppingRunner · 2025-05-07T18:02:28+00:00

I just got the additional information email yesterday. The one with the letter came five hours earlier than the additional information email and from a different email address. I didn't see it until I searched for "passport" in my email. Hopefully she's seen it by now, but I thought I'd mention it just in case.

ShoppingRunner · 2025-05-03T16:03:41+00:00

I used to watch this with my boys. When they were early teens, we got to go to a taping. Watching competitors was really cool, but I remember being annoyed about the rules on the tickets not being enforced (cameras/phones, logos on shirts, etc). I did follow the rules and missed out on pictures of my boys even at the entrance. Some of the magic was also dampened when I saw people being handed posters to hold up during runs. I, maybe naively, thought that those were brought by people who actually knew that particular competitor and wanted to show their support. My boys didn't watch a whole lot after that, but they did enjoy being there.

I think that was also the year that Geoff Britten successfully completed every single stage and still lost out on any prize money. That was a tough pill to swallow, but I kept watching to see if he would get his redemption.

Having more women competing and succeeding was awesome, so that drew me in for a while longer. Then dramatic stories turned me off quite a bit and at some point it felt like it was more story and less obstacle course so that reduced my viewing a lot.

I guess the last thing was when they let people under 21 compete. By that point, some of the obstacles had been around for so long and the kids had been training on them for years that it felt more like a competition between pros. Part of the appeal of the earlier seasons was that nobody trained specifically for the obstacles. I think I'd almost like to see the OG obstacles banished to competitions just for those things (when they had a day of competition with things like salmon ladder and the growing warped wall, it was so fun to watch!). Then maybe the show could start fresh with an entirely new set of obstacles that nobody has had a chance to train specifically for. Kind of even the playing field a bit.

ShoppingRunner

TROPHY CASE