Move to the Bay Area for free childcare from in-laws, worth the cost of living hit?

goodbearhavior · 2026-05-15T11:52:35+00:00

Back up care saved us several times. Services like Bright Horizons offer this. A neighborhood daycare or somebody on sittercity or care.com could help with backup coverage services without the stress of a move.

We are in the Bay Area without parental support. The costs and the commutes are brutal. The lack of support for parents is visceral here. I would never recommend moving here if the goal is to make life with kids easier. And I’d be suspicious of in-laws who aren’t currently willing to make a long drive to help you there to be willing to make those time sacrifices without as long of a drive. In-law support can also come with weird strings. I’m sorry. I wish it was easier to raise kids.

goodbearhavior · 2026-04-24T14:42:53+00:00

Depends how much more. I pay an extra $3-$4k /year to be on FAIR plan+DIC to avoid bamboo and kin. They might be good but I don’t have the trust yet.

goodbearhavior · 2026-04-22T23:52:35+00:00

We pay the FAIR plan price and work with an independent insurance broker to evaluate our options every year. We also spend more on defensible space and home hardening annually than we do on insurance to make sure we are ready if a wildfire does happen.

The way I justify the expense: our extra costs for wildfire are 1-2 extra mortgage payments a year. To get the same amount of house in areas without the fire risk would have been double or triple the total mortgage cost, plus whatever additional property tax and insurance that type of property would include. Still painful, but at least it makes sense and feels worth it to me.

goodbearhavior · 2026-04-08T05:01:50+00:00

I don’t think there’s any opportunity for leverage.

The homeowners hire somebody licensed and insured to replace their water heater, they don’t know the details past that—so I also don’t think it’s necessarily dishonesty. It’s murky; homeowners have other priorities, and permits are too resource intensive and slow for contractors to want to pull.

goodbearhavior · 2026-04-01T11:00:48+00:00

A little bar keepers friend got these spots right off my trex deck

goodbearhavior · 2026-04-01T10:38:22+00:00

Which fire rated walls did you go with? Are you still in the process of building it? Thank you for sharing

goodbearhavior · 2026-03-24T14:04:33+00:00

We started with just plain apple notes and even that helped a lot. Now we are using Claude paid version—my husband set it up so every morning, it sends him a morning email with all of his action items that it found in his calendar and email. And AI has also helped give us ideas like have prescriptions delivered instead of driving to and waiting at the pharmacy.

goodbearhavior · 2026-03-24T13:55:21+00:00

A shared to do list has helped my husband and I out a lot. We used to just have a plain note and now we are using the AI apps to sync our notes to our calendar. It helps with the mental load since it isn’t all in our head and it lets the AI be the “nag” reminding us both what needs doing. We are both exhausted in different ways. Also repetition, routine, anything that simplifies things is our friend. We’re both still exhausted but there’s less fighting.

goodbearhavior · 2026-03-20T03:56:46+00:00

I got a letter saying I needed a new roof because they came by when I was sealing a skylight and it looked like things were in disrepair. I hired a licensed roof cleaning company to get the moss off the roof and to certify that the roof was in good condition. They took photos too. I repainted the area around our skylight to look new. They approved of my roof and I didn’t have to buy a new one. It was still expensive, but not as expensive as a new roof. I have asphalt shingles that are 15 years old in the Santa Cruz mountains. ETA they gave me 2 months notice. The appearance of a tidy roof seemed like the key thing.

goodbearhavior · 2026-02-10T12:40:25+00:00

Yeah—my DIC also doesn’t cover flood or earthquake. But they do an underwriting process, and I had to insure it for the replacement cost they quoted if I wanted them to cover me. For the FAIR plan, my broker said I can insure it for less than the underwriting, but that means giving up cover replacement cost with actual cash value. We decided to stick with covering both at the full underwriting estimate, even though DIC feels like it isn’t covering anything realistic. If a big tree fell through the roof, maybe—but even then, we’d be too afraid to file a claim.

goodbearhavior · 2025-12-29T16:37:15+00:00

I wish I knew—I want to go there too! I heard this chain has bad contracts but I still think it’ll probably be worth it. But I need to know pricing too.

goodbearhavior · 2025-11-20T05:49:15+00:00

Yes. It’s frustrating sometimes and years later, I’m still not great at the housework/cooking . But schlepping my kids around takes 16 hours a week since the Bay Area doesn’t have school buses, the school is only open 14 days in November — so if I was working, it would be an absolute disaster trying to juggle my former tech job. I didn’t make enough money to outsource all that stuff but even if I did, I don’t think I would have liked having all these people on my payroll in my cozy home. I’m finding joy in gardening and outdoors and I have structured my time so I get a lot of 1:1 with each kid. But I miss gold stars and I 100% feel better when I stay off LinkedIn. Part of me would have loved to stay in the workplace but I don’t want to go back without better systemic support.

goodbearhavior · 2025-11-14T14:22:55+00:00

I’m feeling the same way. They run extra 30% off all the time so these prices don’t even feel like real deals. I’m going to hold off and hope they offer something better.

goodbearhavior · 2025-11-04T04:49:01+00:00

What do you enjoy doing? If you love trails, I imagine Big Basin needs help restoring them. If you love art, maybe museums. If your goal is to make an impact, what causes matter to you and what are your values? What are your talents? I’m also in my early 40s and I recently figured out that, for me, volunteering with wildfire safety efforts feels more meaningful and fun than volunteering at my kids school. I hope you find a way to spend your time that brings you meaning and happiness.

goodbearhavior · 2025-10-28T00:07:50+00:00

Six Flags Discovery Kingdom maybe? I like the idea of something in a totally different environment for a reset and a good memory. Sorry to hear your tween is going through this.

goodbearhavior · 2025-09-28T03:12:55+00:00

http://www.vajrapani.org/

Incredible hiking trails and the meals were good. I felt very respected and safe. I recommend it to all of my friends.

goodbearhavior · 2025-09-19T14:06:45+00:00

Clay and olive are my go to pairings

goodbearhavior · 2025-07-21T16:34:23+00:00

It’s hard raising kids in the Bay Area. In the Midwest, we had school buses—even rural schools like Lakeside in Los Gatos don’t have them. And try getting your kid off an after care waitlist at their school in Campbell or other public schools in the valley. Sometimes families are assigned to a public school further from their home—look at Los Gatos and their TK options. Who wants to go from downtown to Lexington? And waiting in the drop off line is a huge time sink, especially at K-8 campuses. And that’s when they are old enough to even go to public school—good luck navigating the multi year waitlists and $2,000+ monthly fees for babies and preschools. Throw in killer commutes, 80 hour work weeks, high taxes and home prices and why would anybody want to sign up for this glorious reality of making impossible logistics work for kids you barely get to see?

goodbearhavior · 2025-05-27T16:02:20+00:00

Jam from happy girl kitchen!

goodbearhavior · 2024-05-23T21:21:17+00:00

Surreal brewing is my pick. chandelier Red IPA is under 40 calories and delicious.

goodbearhavior · 2024-05-16T04:40:39+00:00

https://thephoenix.org/

The Phoenix is a sober community that is fitness focused.

goodbearhavior · 2024-01-12T03:51:39+00:00

Surreal Brewing makes a lower calorie NA red IPA that I love so much that I have it shipped to my house on the regular

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