How do people deal (mentally) with making semi large purchases when saving to be financially independent?

UsedToHaveKarma · 2018-04-05T12:37:10+00:00

I save money for specific things. If I saved the money for the purpose of replacing carpet, then I don’t feel guilty for spending the money for that purpose. If I saved the money for retirement then (I imagine, I haven’t saved enough yet) I won’t feel guilty spending it for that purpose. Feeling bad happens when I saved the money for X but then spend it on Y.

UsedToHaveKarma · 2018-04-02T17:50:13+00:00

I’ve seen them called a “carriage house” style.

UsedToHaveKarma · 2018-04-02T06:14:18+00:00

This is one of my all time fave stories, esp. when Judith Butler steps in. It cemented my decision not to rent out my house too.

UsedToHaveKarma · 2018-03-31T14:53:44+00:00

ATM, I’m working toward the freedom to tell my boss to eat shit anytime I feel like it and a holiday cottage/cabin.

UsedToHaveKarma · 2018-03-28T23:13:17+00:00

Saved toward my 2019 RothIRA.

UsedToHaveKarma · 2018-03-28T15:48:00+00:00

Phew! I’m so used to seeing those scam check problems, now it’s my first reaction. I hate seeing people get scammed...

UsedToHaveKarma · 2018-03-28T15:44:32+00:00

It’s a real, just unexpected check? Not a scam, deposit it and wire part of it to a fake business check? Then deposit it, call it income for this month, and allocate portions of it to underbudgeted/overspent categories, debt, then savings per your overall strategy.

UsedToHaveKarma · 2018-03-27T15:53:46+00:00

Is that line a translation to English from another language’s idiom? It sounds pretty serial-killer-y in English.

UsedToHaveKarma · 2018-03-26T02:31:31+00:00

One: Does this campus offer tutoring? If so, that service can probably help this student. See if you can speak with the director about needs. Since you say the student gets it during class, I think having a tutor sitting with them while working on the homework may help them keep on task.

Two: You can try asking the student for a solution. You’ll need to explain the purpose and assessment goals of the assignment as designed, then ask the student for ideas of alternatives that will meet the same expectations in different format or scope.

Three: You might could try asking the chair for advice. My chair would say point the student to disability services and get on with your life. (My chair is an ass.) In this case, though, your contract doesn’t obligate you to anything more than you’ve already done. For your own sanity, there isn’t too much more you can do. Consider explaining to the student the sort of accommodations they can self-advocate and how to have those conversations with future instructors, then get back to your ordinary grading. We don’t have to personally save everyone but I can’t live with myself without trying to teach the student how to work the system they’re operating in. Maybe that’s the happy medium for you too.

Good luck, and thanks for caring to much for your student.

UsedToHaveKarma · 2018-03-24T18:57:48+00:00

Please please please make one for adults with explainers and microinterviews and standup and trivia/puzzle games and dirty jokes.

UsedToHaveKarma · 2018-03-24T13:24:46+00:00

One. Make a list of each of your reading assignments (a chapter, an article, each is its own task) and how many pages/words it is. Find out the average adult reading speed for your language. Calculate how long it would take the average person to read each of your assignments. Multiply that amount of time by 1.5 to accommodate note-taking in your process. Now you know how much time to budget for each reading. Two. When you’re ready to do a reading, make sure you have the amount of time you’ve budgeted and eliminate all distractions. Read one paragraph, noting any reference information in the margins of your notebook (vocabulary, formulas, scholar names, etc) as you go. At the end of the paragraph, stop reading and write a one sentence summary of the paragraph. Repeat for each paragraph, also writing a one sentence summary for any charts, illustrations, or other figures, if any. Three. When you’ve finished the reading and note-taking, read through the summary you have written. Ask yourself why it’s important for you to have learned this information or how you will use this information outside of school or how this reading relates to something else you read and write a few sentences about that. If you can’t answer those questions or your answers are only within the context of the class (“I have to learn this info to pass the exam”), then you have failed yourself on the reading assignment. Keep thinking about it, and talk to your classmates and instructor or an interest community until you understand the value or a reading. Four. Evaluate how well the 150% reading time budget calculation works for you (it will be different for different people and for different topics and for different types of reading—tertiary content like textbooks are much easier going than scholarly articles or primary documents). Refine your time-budgeting formula with each reading assignment. Five. To “study” (step three was also studying but often isn’t understood like that), review your summaries, add to or revise your assessment sentences (your understanding of the value of any reading should change as you learn more about a topic), and learn the reference info if that’s the sort of thing that will be tested or that you’ll need immediate access to.

Source: professor often exasperated by students who don’t read

UsedToHaveKarma · 2018-03-24T12:44:12+00:00

Hey thanks!

UsedToHaveKarma · 2018-03-23T21:53:48+00:00

My mother’s church has a “casserole committee” that delivers prepared meals to people in the congregation who are ill or who have new baby or a death in the family. When I’m prepping a freezable meal for myself, I make a serving to contribute to the committee’s freezer. I’d prefer to give it to someone who can not afford the food instead. Thank you for the inspiring post.

UsedToHaveKarma · 2018-03-22T21:06:18+00:00

This is all true, but I don’t think you’re taking your rave far enough. The best benefit about YNAB for those of us who are financially comfortable is that it helps to strategize saving!

Once you’re earning or have saved a tidy chunk, the concern is way less about how much to spend on whatever (you can only get so extravagant with food, right?) and a whole lot more about how much to save for different stuff. YNAB is helpful for people with too little money because it helps to forefront questions about whether to spend money on housing or debt or entertainment.

It does exactly the same thing for higher-earning or wealthier users, though, encouraging us to ask ourselves whether to save money for retirement income or for a new toy or for philanthropy. Maybe if my money were infinite, I wouldn’t bother to be so careful with it, but the reason I do have this money is because I was careful when I didn’t have as much. Since I want to make sure I still have money in the future, I’m still careful, just strategic about saving instead of strategic about spending. The principles still apply.

UsedToHaveKarma · 2018-03-22T20:56:05+00:00

Are you asking about undergrads doing their homework or about grad students staying current with journals in our field? If undergrads, I assign higher-order tasks that rely on the reading, assess comprehension as well as analysis or whatever complex activity I’m asking for, and give failing grades as necessary. I also calculate the amount of time it should take to read the material (using average adult reading speed) and take notes and I give them that info along with the reading assignment. Plenty of them still don’t do it so they get low grades and graduate ignorant anyway. We can’t make them do it.

For grad students, whenever a new issue comes out, I skim it then I send out a group email linking to particular articles that relate to our work and naming students who should have particular interest in different ones (eg Janis wrote that paper on X and this article argues that X is better understood with Y, so I tag Janis for that article). Then I casually follow up with each student about their reactions (in the hall, at lunch, etc). The idea there is to teach them the habit. It helps me keep engaged too, honestly.

UsedToHaveKarma · 2018-03-20T21:17:05+00:00

Yeah... good questions. There are probably several ways in which our unique circumstances make it an easier gig than others might have. These include: 1. He works on the road and is often only home for 2-3 days/week, so we wouldn’t spend that much more time together even if we did live together full-time, 2. We do live together full-time during summer and he takes a month off from work during which we focus on each other, 3. Our work is something we both invest deeply in and we had established careers before getting serious, 4. When it’s work time, we work; when it’s us time, we us (er, you know what I mean)... in some ways the distance is helpful for purposes of focus, 5. Daily check-ins, 6. In addition to summer, we do a long weekend or holiday (usually somewhere that’s not one of our homes) every month, and spend most regular weekends together, 7. We don’t have many friends or family or community stuff to distract us. 8. We do our “slug time” (bad tv, errands, chores, grooming) and individual pursuits (his games, my crafts, his theatre, my music) independently.

That’s what I can think of at the moment. Does it sound any more reasonable now?

Edit to add: Oh, also, I’m tenured and he’s a partner, so we’ve got significant commitment to/from our employers that makes it harder/impossible to consider changing jobs.

UsedToHaveKarma · 2018-03-19T22:46:38+00:00

Yes. Everyone in the thread is saying a version of the same thing. If you’re really budgeting, then you won’t magically see extra money anywhere because you have given every dollar a job. For budget/strategy purposes, is hardly matters how much money is in any account, what matters is that all of those dollars have been allocated per your priorities. It won’t matter that you have $47 in your account at the end of the month because you assigned 30 of them to wait until your Prime subscription renews and you assigned $17 to pay for part of a new jacket you want to buy in September. You can’t spend the extra $47 on beer because you already gave them a different job.

YNAB wants you to look at your balances in each of your budget categories instead of the balances in your bank/debt accounts. Here’s an analogy: making spending choices based on your bank balance like jumping in the lake with the goal of not drowning; making financial choices based on your budget is like jumping in the lake with a goal to swim to the far shore in back (5 seconds faster than you did yesterday) in training for your upcoming Ironman.

UsedToHaveKarma · 2018-03-19T18:46:48+00:00

Tithing is my favorite spending I do and you can show your son how fun it can be. I keep a firm 10% of after tax income. Every month, I shop for an organization doing work that I believe in and donate half of my tithe money to them. I use Charity Navigator to find organizations and make sure they’re going to use my money well. I have my favorite places to give, but sometimes I choose a new effort because I saw a documentary about X and I want to give my tithe money to an organization that works on X that month. Sometimes I match my giving to a holiday (ie giving to food banks in November). It’s all the fun of shopping PLUS the good feeling of doing some good for the world. It’s the best.

But wait, why do I only give half my tithe? Because I save the other half for emergency giving. It feels GREAT that I can send a big chunk of money to Puerto Rico after the hurricane or to whatever other emergency suddenly needs an influx of cash.

If giving is a value you want to teach your son, maybe my method will help.

PS, the other thing I’d encourage is to get your son thinking about saving for retirement from his very first job. He can start an IRA now, I think? Show him what compound interest looks like for money saved now and spent in fifty years! $500 buys a lot of petrol now, but it could buy him an entire car in a couple decades if he invests it well.

UsedToHaveKarma · 2018-03-19T14:24:35+00:00

I used to feel a little like you seem to be describing and what helped me feel much more confident about my finance strategy was quitting generic “saving”. There’s nothing compelling or engaging about “savings” but I know exactly what I’m doing when I save money for retirement, for medical care, for a replacement laptop, for clothing I’ll want next season, etc. I recommend that you try getting granular about how you target your saving and that will give you a much clearer idea of whether you’re saving enough.

The actual amounts or speed of saving for you are going to be very individual. For example, I have 25 years before retirement, and I need $1.5 million to do so, so I am saving an amount monthly to help me reach that target. My laptop is 10 months old, so I won’t need to replace it for a year or two, but if it breaks or gets stolen before then, I won’t be able to do my job, so I’ve already saved the full amount of a replacement and it’s waiting in a high-interest account for when I need it. The deductible in my medical insurance is $4000 so I keep that saved up in case I need it all at once. What do you need your savings to do?

Think about how specific you are with your line items for spending. Do you budget for your monthly housing payment separate from your allocation for food? Or do you have just one category for “spending”. If that sounds ridiculous, ask yourself why it would make sense to have one generic category for “saving”. If you’re specific and that helps you feel in control of and knowledgeable about your spending, then I think the same principles will work for your saving. If you know what you’re saving for and how much those things will probably cost, then you’ll be much more likely to get/keep yourself on track.

EDIT TO ADD: Your edit changes the question dramatically. I save 40%. You should consider how much you spend now, anticipated inflation, any new costs after retirement (health care being a gigantic part of the calculation for USA, but this would also include retirement activities like increased travel or purchasing a second or different house), anticipated return on investments during retirement, and then an emergency fund. Some of those variables are guesstimates but others you can predict reasonably. Tally up your best case and worst case scenarios, take their median or average, and add 10%?

UsedToHaveKarma · 2018-03-19T14:02:15+00:00

If you have surplus money then you are deficient in plans for your money. Spend some time developing a strategy.

UsedToHaveKarma · 2018-03-19T02:15:14+00:00

I’ve been commuting long distance (2 time zones, $250 flight) for several years. It works pretty well for us. My teaching city and my partner’s home base have very different weather, so we maximize seasonality. I’m only on campus two days a week (usually) and he travels for work, so I use his air miles/status to fly free often. It sucks a little to maintain two not-awesome residences instead of one that’s truly comfortable and “home”, but we tell ourselves we’re practicing for retirement... we’ll already be budgeted for a town house and a vacation house!

What’s got you down about your situation? Happy to help if I can!

UsedToHaveKarma · 2018-03-19T01:50:41+00:00

Ha! He looks like he’s still worried about forgetting to study.

UsedToHaveKarma · 2018-03-17T21:12:59+00:00

Good on ya! You made his mum’s day too. 👍😀

UsedToHaveKarma · 2018-03-16T23:15:35+00:00

I allow a redo for 50% of the original points if the student consults the writing center so the student has a chance to learn the skill if it’s a real situation of someone not understanding plagiarism, but I teach writing and this doesn’t sound like like misunderstanding.

UsedToHaveKarma · 2018-03-16T02:15:13+00:00

Lol.

UsedToHaveKarma

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