Wednesday’s Workwear Report: Shelly Cardigan
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Our daily workwear reports suggest one piece of work-appropriate attire in a range of prices.
This beautiful cardigan from Artizia was suggested by a reader. I love the scalloped edges and have found that the Aritzia knits are pretty good quality lately.
This would be a great item to have on hand for April days where we seem to experience winter, spring, and summer over the course of 24 hours. Layer over a sheath dress for the office or wear with denim for the weekend.
The cardigan is $110 at Aritzia and comes in sizes 2XS-XL.
Some of our favorite classic cardigans for the office as of 2025 include those below. Check Talbots and J.Crew Factory if you're looking for plus sizes, and Quince if you're on a budget. Veronica Beard and Brooks Brothers both keep a bunch of options in stock. Two other reader favorites: Anthropologie and Sézane.
Sales of note for 4/21/25:
- Nordstrom – 5,263 new markdowns for women!
- Ann Taylor – 25% off tops & sweaters + extra 40% off sale
- Banana Republic Factory – 50%-70% off everything + extra 20% off
- Boden – 10% off new womenswear styles
- Brooks Brothers – Friends & Family Sale: 30% off sitewide
- The Fold – 25% off selected lines
- Eloquii – $29+ select styles + extra 40% off all sale
- Everlane – Spring sale, up to 70% off
- J.Crew – Spring Event: 40% off sitewide + extra 50% off sale styles + 50% swim & coverups
- J.Crew Factory – 40%-70% off everything + extra 70% off clearance
- Kule – Lots of sweaters up to 50% off
- M.M.LaFleur – Earth Day Sale: Take 25% off eco-conscious fabrics. Try code CORPORETTE15 for 15% off
- Madewell – Extra 30% off sale + 50% off sale jeans
- Rothy's – Final Few: Up to 50% off last chance styles; new favorites added
- Spanx – Lots of workwear on sale, some up to 70% off
- Talbots – 30% off entire purchase w/Talbots card
Those pants seem like what generated a lot of column inches in our 1999 summer casual Friday attire memo.
But I have a recipe question. What goes with Brunswick stew and corn muffins to make a more complete and filling meal. Banana pudding? Or a side? I am doing the first two per the family’s wishes for a meal train that will be for a mom and two teens (one boy). Will make a dozen muffins (good for breakfast and snacking) to include but I feel like it’s a bit too “girl dinner,” if that makes sense.
Fruit salad; green salad; vegetable side.
There are already a LOT of veggies in Brunswick stew though.
Yeah but they are hot, mushy veggies. You need something cool and crisp for contrast.
With any stew I would do a big salad w/ some kind of crispy component, or vegetable. Dessert can be anything.
Crisp roasted potatoes are always appreciated.
Oh, yes.
Cold cucumber salad, slightly acidic, I agree with the crunch idea to vary up the textures. Not sure if I agree with fruit salad but that could be a dessert, too, I guess,
Yes! I had a great one with vinegar and onions. I don’t have a recipe. Does anyone have one they could post?
What’s Gaby Cooking has a good recipe.
Layer salad. EatingWell has a healthyish version.
I agree with the salad idea. The prefab sweet kale salads you can get at most supermarkets are tasty, might appeal to teens because of the slightly sweet (but not overly so) poppy seed dressing and they keep very well, unlike most tossed salads.
Give me tips on how to grey rock your mom.
I’m 30, single, living in a big city that my parents live in the outskirts of. My mom and I have never gotten along well, but now I’m realizing that I just do not want her input on anything and it isn’t going to help. For years I’ve tried to see her as little as possible and always with someone else (my sibling, aunt + cousins, etc) around.
When I try to keep the topics to neutral topics or other family members etc she specifically calls out that I never talk to her about my life. She is very anxious and regularly projects that anxiety on to me. In her head she wants us to be BFFs + thinks she could offer me emotional support but we’ve never had that relationship so idk what she’s thinking.
Do I just stick to the neutral topics, and then when she gets upset about me not wanting to talk about anything personal, just say no? She will get very angry and upset and not let it go, but I’m starting to see that there is no other option. I don’t want her out of my life entirely, but I absolutely cannot talk to her about any life decision.
This new trend of deliberately, forcefully drawing extreme boundaries with blood relatives who haven’t abused you (correct me if I’m wrong) is pretty troubling. Do you really need to do that just because she’s anxious and wants to get closer? It isn’t abnormal to want a closer relationship with family.
This isn’t a trend – I’m just explaining a situation.
She regularly drives me to tears with how harsh she is when talking about personal things. I do not want that to happen anymore.
A relationship is two ways. If she wants to have a close relationship then she has to contribute to it being a relationship anyone would want to engage in.
Have you told her this using “I” statements? I haven’t seen that in what you’ve said. The worst that happens is you hurt her feelings? Try it – “mom, I feel judged / dismissed / like a child when you get very anxious about my life! I’m actually really confident and aware and have thought this through. You did a great job raising me! Please just be happy for me and don’t tell me all your concerns about me. That would help me trust you more to tell you more.”
Alternatively, “mom, I love talking to you about (work, Taylor Swift, home decorating) but you know me – I try to keep my private life private! I know you worry but it’s just me and my quirkiness!”
Yes I have done that. She does not like I statements. She says that since she’s my mom she has the right to always tell me her concerns.
Ugh, that is really crappy, OP. I don’t blame you for wanting to draw tighter boundaries if that’s how these conversations go. She wants the honesty to go one way only. Agree to focus on doing activities together rather than catching up.
Personally I see it as a trend of women standing up for their own mental wellbeing and not kowtowing to whoever in their lives is most forceful. I’m like OP, and our moms sound somewhat similar (although my mom and I do see each other one-on-one). When I was younger I’d let her extreme emotional reactions dictate my behavior. And therefore, I was living my life according to what I thought would make my parents/ex-husband happy, rather than what would make *me* happy.
I love my mom a lot, and have a relationship with her, but I keep some distance between us because I am a much happier, more pleasant person to be around when I’m not letting her overbearing anxiety rule my life. Sure, in the past there’d be more social pressure for me to be close to my parents even if it damaged me, but I’m not sure why you think that’s preferable. I have a great, close relationship with my sister and many other people in my life.
Your “when I was younger” is my exact situation. And now I’ve realized that which is why I want to change it.
“Who haven’t abused you” is an incredibly low bar.
Agree. I think it is sad how many folks rush to gray rock status before actually putting in the work of having tough communication. Avoidance is easier than candor, so I get it. But some relationships count more than others. Part of growing up is recognizing these things often take work. It is OK to tell someone they are making you feel bad and why–it’s actually the right thing to do. Boundaries are one thing. Cutting off relationships because you’re not ready to learn actual healthy ways of establishing better communication patterns together is another–and these days it does seem like there is a huge push to do the easier way out. That’s one thing if it’s a minor friendship that’s no longer serving you. But another when it’s one of these higher priority relationships in life. And the same people tend to be conflict-avoidant with other important relationships. Not all obviously. And there are certainly monster parents out there. But if the worst thing is “my feelings get hurt,” that’s a sign there is still room to improve the relationship. If the desire is to be treated less like a child, then the best way is by showing them by using actual words how you want things to shift–not giving the silent treatment or acting petulant under the guise it is being more evolved.
Maybe. I think it’s very often that a lot of tough communication already happened? Mom, I’m not the right audience for your musings about how much our mutual relative spent on veterinary bills when back in your day, a beloved family pet would have been put down. I’m not the right audience for hearing about how our mutual relative might not struggle so much with disordered eating if they weren’t so fat. I’m not the right audience for a discussion on whether people we know who died by their own hands should get to be buried in a church cemetery. We’ve already had these conversations, and I can’t keep talking about it forever. Talk about it to someone else.
Sorry, but these examples pretty much demonstrate how it can be healthier to learn how to communicate your boundaries than cut off a high priority relationship. That’s not abuse. That’s hearing a view you don’t agree with.
I didn’t say it was abuse, and I did communicate my boundaries and didn’t cut off the relationship? I do believe it’s harmful to some of the relatives targeted by the criticism. But believe me when I say that it took hanging up the phone, physically walking out, and not taking phone calls to get away from these topics, because merely communicating boundaries did nothing. Maybe you would call that the silent treatment or acting petulant, but “hearing a view I don’t agree with” for the seven hundredth time, and every single time I answer the phone, was also not healthy.
My mom has serious anxiety that she refuses to treat. Whenever I tell her real information about my life, it means that she will spend hours/days/weeks anxiety dumping on me. I still see how and do activities with her, but she is not someone I have serious conversations with. And I think that’s healthy. Just because she is my parent, doesn’t mean I need to deal with her untreated anxiety as a middle age adult.
Projecting your anxiety onto your adult child is problematic, whether or not the recipient of the anxiety dump is prepared to label it “abuse”. Example – my mother is convinced to this day (I’m 40) that I will get kidnapped and trafficked/murdered the moment I step outside my door. I was raised to think there are evil men lurking in every shadow waiting to prey on me. It took a long time to be able to even go to the grocery store alone with comfort. When business travel became required, I was beside myself with worry for YEARS, and talking to my mother only exacerbated those fears. I’m still a nervous traveler to an extent. I made the mistake of telling her when I was going on my first solo trip – I was single and wanted someone to know where I was and have a copy of my passport etc just in case, basically, I was trying to be safe – and she flipped out. Because I was raised with that anxiety, her flipping out dredges up all the anxious feelings I’ve worked hard to overcome. It’s not the same as if a stranger went on a crazy rant. It’s not healthy for me to expose myself to her, it would open the door for her to be the crazy voice in my head again. I have to have boundaries to protect my mental health. If you can’t understand that then idk what to tell you.
I usually use a breezy, “Oh, my life isn’t super interesting. Just work, make dinner, watch TV, sleep. Speaking of, I made this great dinner/watched this show the other night…” and redirect the conversation to easier topics.
I prefer not to talk about work outside of the office, so this approach has been a pretty successful transition away from it.
‘Not much new. Work is good. Friends are all settling into their careers as well. Speaking of friend’s, how is name of mom’s friend?’
Keep it neutral, casual and divert.
This makes sense. Usually if I say something like this she’ll respond “but how is YOUR dating life” but I basically have to just keep re diverting.
Ugh. I’m so sorry.
When I grey rocking my mother, what works as well as anything is saying in a light breezy tone of voice “Oh no real changes, life is good!” Very bland and uninformative.
I’d add a rule- you divert X times to likely topics, then you can get off the phone or leave ‘to deal with an emergency’.
+1 I ask my mom if she’s tried any new recipes lately or read any good books. There are lots of topics that can be very neutral and fill up time.
+1. It’s this. No matter how much she tries to dig and push, keep redirecting back to her. She won’t like it, but you deserve as much privacy and peace as you want. And if she’s harshly critical, she’s probably not going to drop that behaviour any time soon. I’m sorry. My mom is also like this, and I understand how it pushes other people away.
I keep it casual, grey rock (surface level info only, nothing more than what I would share with a co-worker). If she pushes for more information I ‘have to go’. I will also usually call my mom while out running errands/driving so ‘sorry, gotta go, just got home and need to feed pets/start dinner/say hi to my partner/etc’.
My mom once bemoaned that we were not as close as other mother/daughter pairs and I simply said, ‘you told me my whole life you weren’t my friend, you were my mom. I have friends I talk to about my personal life, I don’t plan to discuss it with you.’ Mean? Maybe, but direct, truthful and I shut down whining/guilt trips by telling her I’d get off the phone if she kept bringing it up. And then hung up on her when she started yelling. It’s amazing how quickly people learn to change their behavior once you prove that you’ll enforce your boundaries.
Yeah honestly things improved a lot once I started hanging up whenever she started saying something mean that I had asked her not to say. I know thats extreme but literally nothing short of that was getting through.
This is what worked for me too. It felt really extreme, but it saved our relationship. It’s been years since she harangued me about those topics.
I’m sorry, but that sounds really childish.
It’s what a PhD psychologist recommended. I was skeptical, but apparently this is known to be what gets through.
How is it childish to tell someone, please don’t say mean thing, they say mean thing, and you respond, if you say mean thing again I am hanging up/walking away, they say mean thing again and you hang up/walking away.
If that’s childish, how do you recommend handling it? Continuing to tell them, that is mean please stop, after you’ve told this adult repeatedly, that is mean please stop? What’s childish is to continue to say mean things!
This is not childish. It’s setting a necessary boundary.
What’s the best day/conversation/visit you’ve had with her as an adult and can you lean into what made it good? Like, do you more enjoy your mom when you have a *task to accomplish* together, or if you are doing an activity together (some lend themselves to more or less chitchat, like going for a bike ride or seeing a play?), or certain conversation topics (judging celebrity gossip instead of “your life” gossip)?
Once she came into the city and we went to a show and lunch together. It went astoundingly well and I do think of that as a high point. We had agreed not to talk about anything personal before.
Politics is actually a great conversation topic because we are more or less on the same page so all the drama is clearly someone elses fault and not related to us at all.
My mom is judgmental and projects all her anxiety onto me. I love her and want to have a relationship with her, but I cannot talk to her about my work (I am a criminal defense lawyer and she cannot understand how I can defend “those people.”) And I cannot talk to her about traveling, most parenting issues, or anything related to money. But we have the same political views and even though I don’t love discussing politics, I can sit there while she rants about the latest thing that has happened. I also let her gossip about the neighbors and people from back home, etc. I mostly share things like a new recipe I tried or a new show I am watching. I limit my visits with her to about 2 hours, and they usually include a meal so that we are doing something else.
Hello! I completely understand where you are coming from. After years of longing for a closer relationship, I grey rock my father, with the caveat that I am always open to a deeper relationship when and if he drops the judgment or puts in the effort for it to be more mutual.
I do discuss a lot of neutral topics and other family members, but also I actively ask him a lot of questions about his own life. It makes him feel that the relationship is still very close and keeps the heat off of me. That way we have plenty of personal things to discuss without him needing to get into the details of my own decisions/etc. I would love it if our relationship could be more mutual, but I accept that he is the way he is, and I do this to maintain a relationship with him that is peaceful for me and still allows us to remain connected.
After setting boundaries/grey-rocking my mom this is basically the relationship we have now. She gets to pretend we’re ‘super close’ to her friends AND gets to monologue all about herself (her fave!). I set time limits (one call a week for ~20 minutes with a hard stop to ‘start dinner’, ‘walk the dog’, or ‘give the baby a bath’).
Every now and again she’ll try to push for more personal info but has mostly given up. I also redirect by asking her more about her life ‘what was it like being a working mom when you were my age’ and then she happily goes off on that tangent for a good while.
The time limits for a phone call and never being alone for more than an hour have helped me with my mom. I will never let her drive me in her car alone again after she trapped me in a parking lot one time. I won’t stay at my mom’s house overnight, and haven’t for a decade, after several incidents of her ranting and crying until midnight. She did the same thing to my sister as well, and now my sister also won’t stay overnight at her house if she’s traveling by herself. My brother started hanging up on my mom after giving her multiple warnings.
To all of the people saying this is harsh, they don’t understand the issue, etc., you’re dealing with reasonable people. You’re obviously not dealing with parents who don’t respect boundaries.
Most of us with these hard limits and ridiculous plans for every phone call already tried setting more reasonable boundaries and being vague and asking about them. It doesn’t work. And even if it works for a few months, eventually, you end up trapped in a car or living room at a late hour.
Now that I’m in my 40s, I’ve learned that I can hang up or call a Lyft or sit silently if I can’t figure out how to leave. But when I was in my late teens and early 20s? I didn’t have the money or technology or confidence to do that.
If you’ve never had to physically remove yourself from a crying, ranting, berating conversation, you don’t understand why these responses are necessary.
Yep. With the caveat that you cannot complain to her, about anything. Complaining in many social circles leads to advice or questions or soothing. You may want the latter but you need to accept your mom’s conversation style is not lining up with yours, and you can’t expect good/comfort if you are not willing or able to go through her bad/tirades. I am not saying you should tolerate the bad – but if you want grey rock, you need to accept that you are aiming for neutral, surface level, from both of you. Practice 2-3 sentences that you repeat ad nauseum. She will eventually expect your answer. If you miss any of her in six months, or she expresses what you read as genuine interest in change, then I would suggest a new-to-both-of-you family convo coach. Aka counselor but there are less heavy titles now. As a mom, this pains me, but I would rather have consistent conversations with daughter than none at all. “Let them” did not resonate with me but may resonate with you. Good luck.
Yeah I get the no complaining part. Which is fair then.
She is adamantly against the idea of any type of family coach. Doesn’t believe there is a problem or in bringing outsiders into family business.
I’ll have to practice the sentences. I think thats part of the issue – I don’t have something clear and neutral to say and then it devolves.
Obviously you will need to workshop these and make them your own.
“I’m comfortable with my decision process on this.”
“I would prefer to talk about something else.”
total topic swap “Have you watched any new shows since we last talked?”
Or end it every time “Well, I am going to go start some laundry/get home to do laundry. Love you, talk later!”
+1 to all of this. It is still painful to me that I cannot ever rely on my mother for sympathy or soothing in any sort of difficult situation. It is either my fault for (insert reasons) that bad thing happened, or the real tragedy is the impact that my bad thing has on her life and she needs to tell me all about how badly she feels.
Option 1: limit when you see her
Option 2: see her more, make new memories with her instead of just catch-up moments. Eg. Plan a trip together or something where you can focus on planning and enjoying it vs nitpicking your life. Meeting up for lunch or calling to “catch up” is what you want to avoid if you want her in your life without all the mom drama.
She loves calling to catch up and does it a lot. It’s definitely a big source of stress for me. Especially since there is no topic to talk about it turns into mom drama.
We don’t meet for lunches and when together do a lot of activities! So I guess the main time this happens is on the catch up calls. If she had it her way she’d like to speak every day and does speak to her mom/siblings every day.
That is so much time. You don’t need to “grey rock” your mom; you need to just put some space in there. Make plans and then don’t have all these calls with her in between! If she feels lonely, or you do, send her a silly meme, or a link to a recipe you liked or whatever.
This is also where the little white lie as discussed yesterday can come in handy. Make up a story or two to share. If she criticizes you for something in the story it can just roll off your back because it really didn’t happen or at least didn’t happen to you. I’m a good cook but my mil always puts down my cooking, so I always have a fake disasterous cooking story to share with her. She gets to criticize me and it means nothing. Win-win all around.
This is brilliant love this.
To be clear – she wants to talk every day. We talk once a week. There is also a family group chat that everyone is generally active in.
I’m generally with the commenter concerned about the trend but also this is way too much contact for a 30-y.o. and her mother, especially if you are not thick as thieves and you both know it. Adding daily contact is not going to help. That’s nutty. Your mom needs friends and hobbies.
As far as advice, I have a mother who responds very badly to any reference to a problem – she hears it as “this is now my problem, my personal failure, and something you have made me take on in my life to and now I have to live it and bear the stain of it and I do not like to be uncomfortable ever in any way why did you do this to me?!” So, I have learned whenever possible to share only good news and to report only on things in the past.”I bought a house” “I have adopted a dog.” “Meet Chad, who is going to be my boyfriend until further notice.”
Captain Awkward has great scripts for these situations.
The same ideology that caused the Democratic Party establishment to sink Bernie Sanders in 2016 is still alive and well. Despite everyone screaming for the party to start focusing on the economy and class issues, leadership (such as it is) keeps digging down and insisting that the only reason it lost in 2024 was that too many people stayed home. Whether there was any introspection as to WHY so many people stayed home rather than vote for a boring, normal Dem candidate is unclear. I personally believe racism and sexism played a big part too, but maybe not even as much as voter revulsion at a party perceived to be so, so elitist.
Bernie wasn’t my top candidate, but he would have won.
Lol this is delusional. Bernie would not have won, there’s a huge block of centrist Dems and independents that wouldn’t have been able to vote for someone so left wing.
Agree that it wasn’t just about turnout and Dems need some serious introspection and to abandon some of their less popular social causes like fighting to include biological males in girls/womens sports, but embracing the socialist label is not it.
Also on the whole the results from last night don’t seem bad for Dems? The Florida losses are disappointing but not surprising. Those are dark red districts. Keeping the WI Supreme Court is a big win and Musk put a ton of money in that race.
I despise Trump and would’ve voted for a ham sandwich over him, but I also don’t like Bernie at all. Musks’s lack of return on investment in WI made me happy last night (how is the amount of money he spent even legal). A lot of people just didn’t like Hillary. I think Biden would’ve won in 2016, but I also understand why he didn’t want to run. Speculating on 2016 at this point is kind of a waste of energy.
+1 to all of this.
Bernie would not have won in 2016.
Isn’t Bernie a boring centrist by international or historical norms?
Price of eggs was a fair criticism of Biden and Dems are too sold out to stand up against corporate greed.
Hahahaha no.
Even if we’re talking about policy and not rhetoric or style? In the swing states where I know people personally, Bernie is much more popular among voters who normally vote Republican or stay home than centrist Democrats are, who are seen as looking out for the haves. Discourse and culture wars are not as big an issue for people who don’t care about politics as a past time.
I think part of the struggle of the Democratic party is that people claim they need to do more introspection and then everyone starts pulling in wildly different directions. I’m not a Bernie fan either (but would have voted for him against Trump). I also don’t think it’s fair to describe Kamala as a boring, normal Dem. If anything, that was Biden, and he won. I think the way the campaign was handled was a mess, and I agree that racism and sexism played a huge part. I also wish the Dems would rally around their candidates in the way the Reps do – I feel like Dems are more likely to stay home if they aren’t 100% happy with one position (like the whole Middle East thing – and now we have Trump and I really don’t think anyone is better off). I’m not sure how I feel about dropping issues like women’s sports – I think we should try to do the right thing, but at this point, whatever it takes to win elections honestly.
Well, in that case the right thing aligns with what will win elections – and even still, Dems won’t drop it!!
One can think Kamala Harris was a bad candidate without being sexist or racist. I voted for her because I despise Trump, but I wasn’t happy about it. Democrats really need to move on from it wasn’t their fault but that voters stayed home, or a racist, or sexist. Democrats lost because voters don’t want what they are selling.
I get that people could think Harris wasn’t the best. But faced with the alternative, I wish people had still gone out to vote. I think lots of people don’t love Trump and still voted for him for whatever (in my opinion misguided) reason.
I also think the interesting question is: If Dems lost because voters don’t want they’re selling, what should they be “selling”?
There are a lot of polls out there on what Americans like and hate. Private equity takeovers, corporate landlords, and for-profit health insurance are all extremely unpopular.
Most Americans love the policies Democrats espouse, until you tell them the policies come from Democrats (see: Obamacare vs. ACA)
Obamacare aka ACA has only been a good thing compared to the nightmare we had before. It’s a good example of Dems trying to skate by with Republican policies while ordinary people are still facing medical bankruptcy, having their physicians replaced with NPs, or having whole hospitals shut down.
You’ve lost touch with reality if you think Bernie would have won. The fact that a non-D was running at all is evidence of how much people hate women.
Maybe worry less about stuff that happened ten years ago and more about current members of congress with wanted posters of sitting judges in their office windows.
I don’t know if he would have won, but I know he was less hated than Clinton by people other than her loyalists. The contempt that she and her supporters broadcast for anyone who was not 100% enthusiastic about her was not calculated to get out the vote.
He ran against Clinton and lost so I am not sure how you get to “less hated.”
If someone can’t convince enough people to vote for them to win a primary, how on earth could they win an election? He lost the primary and would have lost the election.
And it was TEN YEARS AGO. Stop living in the past.
Loyalists are overrepresented in the primaries. Democrats always want independent and Republican voters so long as it’s because they’re running somebody way on the right of the Democrat party, but would rather lose than accept the votes of independents and Republicans who want someone more populist. Clinton also lost, and had such a bad read of the situation that she actually promoted DJT thinking he’d be easy to beat, and yet she still has influence in the party that’s led to additional defeats since then. IF ONLY this were all in the past!
What is the messaging or platform of the Democrats exactly? Besides “we’re better than the Republicans”? No one knows. I admire Cory Booker for his stand yesterday but as I was watching, I was thinking there is nothing pithy or quotable here. Admittedly I didn’t watch the whole thing. It was thoughtful and articulate but if a random person tuned in, they most likely would not be drawn in. I don’t know that it would resonate. It’s absurd to blame voters who were turned off by our complicity in genocide. Let’s not support genocide, period. I keep hearing Biden was a good president, but what did he accomplish? Did he fix the Supreme Court? Did he fix women’s health issues? Did he protect voting rights? Please elaborate if you feel Biden was a good president.
It’s wild that ‘not fascists actively trying to dismantle the structure of government’ is not good enough for you.
In only one small example, they deported multiple people despite judicial orders to the contrary.
GOP is tearing apart the fundamental structure of government with crazy EOs and trying to impeach judges. But you’re stuck on messaging??
Democracy. That’s the message. That’s it.
What’s not good enough for me is a party that for years has been delighted when Republicans lower the bar since it means that they get to lower the bar too. That’s not serious opposition and it shows and it’s part of how we ended up here in the first place.
The reason we ended up here is that people are too busy navel gazing about what happened 10 year ago to focus on confronting the current dismantling of democracy.
See the post yesterday where people were like, sure make friends with MAGA. 1/3 of people voted for him and 1/3 of voters didn’t care enough to go to a polling booth. We apparently don’t actually care that much about learning, voting, or democracy.
America is a gun.
Right. And I’m exhausted at pretending that the real issue isn’t that half the people in this country would rather live in a dictatorship if it meant they could use slurs with impunity. I’m sick of scratching my head at why folks who drive hundred thousand dollar cars are supposedly being broken by the price of eggs. They’re not. The reason no dem can get through is that we continue to assume people are motivated by things they aren’t really motivated by.
Right. Add to that the conservative media ecosystem and the profound lack of literacy, media literacy, and critical thinking skills among adults.
The reason this seems like an inscrutable, highly complex mystery akin to trying to discover how the brain works is because no one wants to admit to these obvious reasons. They’re ugly and very hard to address. We’d all prefer a reality in which changing the messaging or policy position was the solution. We assume people are smarter than they are. We assume they have a greater appreciation and respect for our system of checks and balances than they do. We assume people care more than we do. Trump appeals because he plays on people’s base instincts, and in particular, the base instincts of a demographic that is well situated to act as the tail wagging the dog in our political system.
Yes rants on fashion blogs are notoriously effective.
Ha! True.
I don’t think people who are uncommitted/persuadable are going to vote for a Democratic presidential nominee unless they think that candidate is going to materially improve their life. Getting a couple of checks in the middle of a global pandemic is more valuable to some people than some idea about democracy.
Maybe Bernie would have won in 2016 if he’d been the nominee. But not supporting Hillary when she became the nominee, talking all the time about her corporate ties and “but her emails” and how she is shrill, etc., sure didn’t help her win.
The emails thing felt silly at the time, but now I kind of wish we’d normalized accountability for people in power a bit more.
Please help me gain some perspective on a relationship issue I’m having. DH grew up in a household with a terrible cook, and he basically does not value home cooked food. He also does not know how to cook at all – before I met him, he was living off a combination of take out, PB sandwiches, and fruit. I’m from a family of great cooks and basically never eat take out. I think I’m a pretty good cook, but I work a demanding job and we have a toddler, so while I will always make something for dinner, it’s not always a gourmet meal. DH will sometimes eat a bit of what I make, but 3 nights out of 4, he ends up ordering a burger or something from UberEats around 9pm. He is super slim and apparently very healthy, so I can’t really bring up health concerns. I take this really personally. I feel like I put in a lot of effort to make reasonably tasty and healthy food every night, and I really value the idea of eating dinner together as a family. I find it super insulting that he will vaguely push food around his plate and claim he is not hungry, then order food later. I also feel like it’s such a waste of money – we make decent money, but have expenses and are trying to save like everyone else, and I find it absurd how much he will pay for a burger or sandwich or something. But maybe I need to let this go? He is otherwise a great dad and husband, but his relationship with food is so odd to me.
Ugh, that would really bother me too but I don’t know how to resolve it without coming off as controlling. Just wanted to say you’re not alone in being bothered!
Thanks – I appreciate that :)
I am your husband in this situation (except that I don’t do takeout, I just… don’t eat or do snack dinner). That said, it is pretty annoying when my husband makes a big deal about me not sufficiently valuing the time and effort he puts in. Because you know what, my standards are a lot lower so it feels like he wants me to praise him for spending time on something he wants to do, that yes benefits me, but is not even close to the top of the list of where I’d actually want his time to go (we also have toddlers). The money thing is a different point so can’t help with that. It’s fair to want to eat as a family, or to eat healthily, or to save money, but it seems like you need to include his viewpoint on how to do that in a way that he is excited about too.
This is my problem with my husband. I think I have fairly low standards (only cook for the family on Sat/Sun and our nanny does it during the week and I pretty much only cook quick/easy meals). The kids need to be fed, and there’s absolutely zero value placed on the time and effort to feed them
I’d approach it from the financial perspective. I strongly prefer restaurant food to all but the most elaborate homemade meals, but it’s not realistic to order it 5-6 times a week because we’re not made of money. I think pointing out how the spending on this is impacting your ability to save is totally fair. I’d focus on that, not on feeling insulted that he doesn’t eat more of your food.
Set aside finding it personally insulting and… ask him about it? Is he not actually hungry at early family dinner time? Is worried he’ll make you feel bad because he doesn’t like your regular quick-dinner options?
Fair enough. We have discussed it. He basically says: I love it when you make a nice meal (usually on the weekend when I have more time), but I’m not a fan of the quickly thrown together meals (for example, he doesn’t really like pasta). He also tends to graze throughout the day instead of having defined meals. I have tried to listen and come up with easy ideas he would like, and feel like I invest a lot of energy into trying to plan and cook something he likes and am just continually failing at it. It’s causing me stress and I’m tempted to just cook whatever I feel like and let him order a burger later if he wants to. But I feel sad to give up on the idea of family meals, which was such a foundational thing for me growing up.
Yeah that’s exactly what you should do. And he can still sit at the table and talk to people
Agreed. Girl, he doesn’t like your weekday dinners. That’s okay, it’s not some big personal insult. You have a choice here, let him order his dinner and make your own or cook something you know he’s gonna like. But he’s entitled to eat what he enjoys.
if budget isn’t the problem, and it’s the food itself, why can’t he order his burger to eat with you at the table?
This got more loaded now that we have kids. My kid will happily eat broccoli and salmon, but if dad is eating a burger, she’s going to want a burger too.
So let him graze at your meal and order a burger later after the kid is asleep.
Can he sit down with you without eating? He doesn’t need to be eating to participate in a family mealtime. My husband doesn’t order takeout, but he always does evening sports and doesn’t want to play on a full stomach so he pretty much never eats at “family dinner” but we all still sit down together and have that quality time.
If the money spent on takeout is not a big deal for you guys, I’d cook what you like first dinner and let him order a burger later. If the money is a big issue I’d focus on that.
It sounds like he does sit down with the family and “vaguely push food around his plate and claim he is not hungry”. So let him continue to do that, and just don’t take it personally. He is an adult and likes to eat later and other food than what you cook. That is fine.
Can’t he just make a burger at home to eat with you? I don’t eat meat, so I’m a very good cook but have only ever made veggie burgers. It’s not that hard, though? The idea of getting one delivered daily seems ridiculous!
I make burgers sometimes, and he will usually eat those. I guess an added challenge is that I am trying to eat healthier and make sure our child eats healthy too, and so I’m not going to make burgers, pizza and steak every day. When I do (for example we typically have a nice steak dinner on the weekend) he will happily eat that. But outside of that repertoire, he won’t really eat anything.
I wasn’t suggesting that you make the burgers, but that he make a burger and eat it with you, though I understand that might cause issues with your kid. Would he eat a peanut butter sandwich instead? Or something else that at least would be cheaper and healthier he could eat with you, like some other kind of sandwich, or a frozen meal he likes? I absolutely understand why this is frustrating (I don’t know if I could have married someone like this, tbh), but I agree with everyone else that you can’t police what he eats, just try to get the budget and and timing under control.
“But outside of that repertoire, he won’t really eat anything.”
I’d probably mentally reframe this as: he’s a very picky eater and only accepts a narrow range of dishes. That doesn’t give you any new solutions, but maybe takes away the sting of your food being rejected.
I’m the anon at 10:12 below. Homemade burgers are healthy, especially if you buy a leaner ground beef mix and grill them! If he really wants red meat as part of his meal, that’s not a big ask in the scheme of things. Would other meat-forward options like tacos (made from a kit), beef stroganoff, or meatloaf work too?
I think if there are homemade meals that are weeknight-levels of commitment and he is happy to eat and you still aren’t making them, then you really can’t fault the guy for in-sourcing his own food.
Can he order the burger earlier so he can at least sit down and eat with you?
Idk if that is the best message to send to your kids though. Dinner is usually not an a la carte thing.
You’re right, we used to do that when it was just us but that won’t work with kids. I have a pretty good eater who will eat whatever is served, but if burger and fries are option, she is going to want burger and fries, and I don’t want her having that every day.
I think what you are doing is the best solution. If money is not an issue, it does not seem like that big of a deal for OPs husband to sit with them while they eat (she says he vaguely pushes his food around, so he must be there), and then order his own food later.
Is nice meal code for steak? And are the meals he doesn’t like carb heavy? I don’t have a lot of evidence for this, but could it be that he fundamentally wants a different balance of macros and doesn’t know how to put that into words?
More to the point, I’m confused why, if this man loves burgers that much, you aren’t just making burgers together on weeknights. They are a quick and easy meal too!
I do make burgers and steak! Just not every night. But yes, “nice meal” is usually code for steak. I will also make tacos/fajitas/etc with beef. I’m not making salmon every night. I aim for fish once a week, veggie meal once a week, the rest is usually some sort of chicken or beef. But for example he won’t go anywhere near meatloaf or meatballs, or anything in a sauce like beef Stroganoff or beef Bourgignon (all things I will happily make).
Ok, I think your issue is that your husband is a picky eater. I am also not a big fan of meatloaf and would generally prefer not to have beef Stroganoff or beef Bourgignon. I don’t have a suggested solution for you, but I agree that this isn’t a personal rejection of you or your food.
Then make steak. I eat 3-4 small steaks a week. You can also make steak tacos or steak and eggs, or steak and roasted potatoes. It might not be healthy eating for you, but it’s a healthy way of eating for many people. Burgers once or twice a week also hit protein and fat targets.
Can you guys take a cooking class together? That could be a lot of fun.
Otherwise, this is literally why meal kits exist. HelloFresh is cheaper than a taxi for his burger, and healthier too. It’s quick.
Pick out meals together, you cook, and he helps and learns. Keep the recipe cards; if specific meals are a hit, buy the ingredients yourselves.
You do need to let it go. He is allowed to eat what he wants just like you. You are two whole different people. If it is actually a budget issue, discuss that. But otherwise just stop cooking for him if it bugs you and let it go. This is the man you married, this is who he is.
this would make me bonkers and seems like a HUGE waste of money. and food. does this actually impact your budget? if so, I’d discuss it from that perspective.
How is it a waste of food? Presumably he’s eating it all or saving leftovers. The money argument makes more sense, although I will say that with the price of groceries these days, cheaper restaurant meals like pizza and burgers are often comparable or even less than a nice homemade meal. I did a meal train meal recently and spent $150 on ingredients for the meal, and that doesn’t count stuff I had on hand like olive oil. Granted, that was for a bigger family (5 people) and I made them a very complete meal including sides, bread and desserts, but still… $150 buys a lot of burgers.
He’s wasting the food OP cooked by pushing it around his plate and then throwing it out.
“Graze” doesn’t have to mean wasting food. Maybe he’s only taking a little bit on his plate. If he’s taking a huge helping and not eating or saving it, its fair for OP to ask him to put less on his plate. But I don’t think that’s the big issue here.
It definitely impacts our budget a bit. I mean, we’re still paying our bills and everything, but that money could be allocated to something else.
It’s bonkers though to think that one adult gets to control what another adult should eat just because they think they are “right.” The food waste is coming from pushing food he doesn’t want to eat. Whether the food is healthy enough, diverse enough, etc. shouldn’t matter if he doesn’t want salmon or meatballs or what have you–and to make it worse, OP is tying it to her view of self worth. It’s not a personal insult. But he gets to choose what he does and doesn’t want to eat. You either compromise on a meal that will make you both happy or you live with the fact you’ll be eating different meals.
Is he just not hungry when you are eating as a family? I ask as my husband, left unattended, would eat lunch at 2pm and dinner at 8pm – whereas I’m like when is too early for dinner. Other things that work for us is that all delivery food that is not for the family comes out of that respective person’s discretionary budget. So, if he wants to spend all his discretionary money on doordash and nothing else, I’ll be quiet about it.
Part of the issue is that he tends to skip lunch and then snack on the way home from work (he keeps nuts and crackers in his work bag). So he gets home around 5:30-6pm, which is when we are having dinner, full from his snack, but not full enough that he won’t get hungry later.
I would just let this go. If he is sitting with you and otherwise participating in dinner, you do not need to police what he eats. You can police what your children eat, but not another adult IMO.
Is cooking one of your love languages? Do you cook for people you love and you feel like he’s rejecting that message of love when he doesn’t eat what you cook and replaces it with something else? I don’t have a solution, but perhaps this is a perspective.
Especially with a child, I would struggle with what you’re describing as much as you are. If he has lived his life eating highly processed food, he probably does not like food that isn’t highly processed. The food industry trains our palettes to only like the highly processed food that they create and sell, which makes homecooked food made from scratch not taste very good by comparison. I’ve seen my husband struggle with this as he grew up in a family that sounds like your husband’s (including he has no idea how to cook anything) and I grew up in a cook-from-scratch family of great cooks. I would guess that your husband actually doesn’t like your food, but it’s not because it isn’t good; it’s because his mouth has been trained to like the flavor bombs of restaurant and packaged food. Unless he wants to retrain his mouth, which can be done, I don’t know that you can make progress on this topic.
As a child, I hated that we ate home cooked food and loved going to my friends’ houses where the food was “better” because it was either restaurant or purchased. As an adult, I am very grateful that I was raised on home cooked food, and I’ve told my parents that many times. I hope you can teach your child to cook, which I consider a life skill, and enjoy real food.
Yes, cooking for people is absolutely my love language, and other people seem to love my food, so I’m honestly hurt that he doesn’t. My MIL makes really bland food, and he spent his whole childhood thinking “when I make my own money I can have restaurant food every day!” and I guess he meant it. But it strikes an emotional chord for me for the reasons you described – I grew up in the kind of house where everyone comes together to share a meal that was made with love, and I want that for my child (and potential future children) too.
It sounds like you are making bland fast meals though. You have the answer – you need to lose the quick pasta dinners and make something more like whatever you do on the weekend. Or, let it go.
I don’t think my pasta is that bland :) But there is no way I can work a full time job, pick up my child from daycare and make a fancy meal every weeknight. I feel like part of being an adult is accepting that you don’t get 100% of what you want every day? But I get it, it sounds I need to let this go.
OP – I don’t have a magic answer for you either but the idea that “you don’t get exactly the food you want always” is kind of where I come from too, and in my family it was tied to gratitude – not “you absolutely must finish this thing you despise” (as one extreme); but a “we’re grateful to have nutritious, adequate food”. And part of that is being grateful for those who helped us get the food – the people who grew it, the truck driver, and yes, mom or dad who cooked it – even if it’s not exactly what we wanted. And part of responsibly receiving the gift of that food is eating what’s available to us (again, assuming it meets our nutritional needs, respects what our bodies are telling us, has room for sometimes making or eating something tasty just because it’s tasty, etc etc). Is there any additional values like that you’re attributing to home cooked meals your spouse might not think of the same way?
For me, being an adult is that yes, I do get pretty close to 100% of what I want every day. That’s the gloriousness of being an adult.
10:50, that’s not being an adult. It’s being Elon Musk.
Hugs, Anon OP. DH and I have started couple’s counseling primarily because our love languages don’t match and I feel that expressions of mine are dismissed or ignored. Without having a solution for you, I understand.
Thanks for this. I think this is the right way to look at it, our love languages are mismatched on this.
Cooking is also my love language and I also struggled with wanting my family to eat meals at home that are healthy while catering to my family’s picky tastes. For us, dinner happens every night unless it’s date night or some other activity gets in the way. I focus on six to seven dishes that the family likes, i.e. pizza with homemade pizza dough (different toppings depending on the eater!), chicken Milanese with salad on the side (no need to eat the salad!), etc. Once you can hone in on the favorites, then everyone is happier. And BTW, I would go batsh-t crazy if anyone in my family started ordering food out at 9 pm.
Even if cooking is your love language, you don’t get to dictate how that feels for the other person though, right? He’s not receiving it as love and that’s perfectly fine. Doing an act of service when it’s a service the other person neither wants nor expects and then being sore about it doesn’t seem fair.
Yeah, this misapplies the love languages. You should respond to him in HIS love language, not yours.
When my kids don’t like my dinner, or I cooked it wrong, I literally say out loud “that’s ok, it’s not personal” to remind both me and them that they are complaining about the food, not about my effort or me.
Sometimes it is personal! But usually it just feels that way because of the effort involved. I don’t care if they eat the dinner just because I work hard at it – that doesn’t seem right. It is nicer if they respect my effort but sometimes they don’t like it and it’s not personal! Really
That would bother me so much. It is very disrespectful to dismiss your partner’s efforts like that. (And just because his health is fine now does not mean it’ll always be that way! Things tend to catch up to you eventually.)
I will admit to being salty about this because I feel like I eat so well and put in so much effort and I’m slightly overweight, and he apparently has the magical metabolism where he can eat burgers and fries not have any issues. So all in all, food is a slightly emotional topic for me.
Completely ignoring the weight aspect, his behavior is objectively rude. You are not wrong to be insulted. Don’t let the weight issue make you second-guess your own feelings.
I completely disagree. He’s trying to be polite by sitting there, doesn’t like the meal and isn’t making her fix his problem, he’s handling it by ordering what he likes. They can afford it. It’s hardly rude. Anon needs to accept that he doesn’t enjoy what she’s making and focus on fixing that if it is important to her that he eat her food.
It is actually rude. If he doesn’t like the food he needs to say what he will eat. If it’s steak, let it be steak. If it’s burgers, let it be burgers. It’s a more expensive food budget, but it has fats, proteins, nutrients, and still cheaper than uber eats.
That definitely makes it harder. Commiseration. I also am slightly overweight despite eating well and exercising (hard exercise!) 3-4 times a week. DH exercises, like once a month and thinks he’s done something amazing. He watches his diet when he feels like it. He’s perfectly within normal range. It’s honestly hard on my psyche at times.
Sympathy to you on this, we struggle a bit with this as well, though just because he doesn’t gain weight doesn’t mean that it’s healthy to eat a burger and fries every day. Now that we’re getting older, I still have to pay more attention to my weight than my husband, but my cholesterol is MUCH lower than his.
I relate to this! What’s worked for us: my husband now makes dinner. When we met ten years ago, he ate out most meals and didn’t know how to use a gas stove. Now we have two toddlers, and he makes most weeknight dinners–so it’s a long journey. Making him responsible for planning, prepping, and serving dinner was a gamechanger, along with our shared desire to model healthy eating for our kids, helped along with many easy-to-follow and easy-to-repeat meal kits. He still prefers restaurant food, and frequently eats lunch out. But when we aren’t eating out together, he pays for his food out of his “fun” money that he can use for whatever he wants (e.g., lunch out, new videogame, guitar lessons). Now that he has to budget for food delivery, I think he’s more aware of the monetary implications of daily restaurant food.
This is great and I want to implement this too. He seems to think raw food is gross and just doesn’t know where to start, but I might try something like “hey can you be in charge of dinners on Tuesdays? You can get lasagna from the deli and make a salad”.
Anon, if you assign him a night to arrange dinner, you don’t get to pick the food! He gets to try different things until he figures out what works.
Fair enough, 10:26 anon. It was meant more as a suggestion, but maybe I won’t say anything at all and just let him pick.
We used meal kits like Hello Fresh, where DH could go online and decide what he meal he wanted delivered that week for him to prepare. https://www.hellofresh.com/menus He started just making one meal a week, and increased from there. Now he has his own binder of Hello Fresh recipes that he loves and uses to cook dinner 4 nights a week, and we no longer subscribe since he has the recipe and ingredient list. Once he learned how to cook salmon (some trial and error!), we now eat salmon, broccoli, and couscous at least once a week, along with his usual favorites of burgers and steaks and tacos. My kids are picky, so watching them eat salmon and broccoli makes both DH and me feel proud. :)
That is extremely weird, rude, unhealthy, and wasteful. If someone cooks dinner for the family, you eat it. If you don’t like it, you make yourself a snack later in the evening. If the cook is really terrible then they need to improve their skills or trade roles, but that’s not what’s going on here.
What the actual eff. Are you a family, or are you just roommates?
FWIW, my husband and I eat different dinners on a fairly regular basis, and we are definitely a family, not just roommates. That seems like a weird leap to me.
This is extremely weird. I grew up in a house where the only food was bland and overcooked and there was never enough of it. We ate out maybe once a year. It would never occur to me to rebel as an adult by ordering takeout every night, and certainly not as a separate solo meal. My rebellion has consisted of learning to cook good food and of going out for dinner once a week with my husband.
I wish his rebellion had been learning how to cook! Sadly not the case here.
Appreciate everyone input on this. I appreciate the validation from people who said this would hurt them too, and also am hearing that I probably need to let this go.
I think what I’m going to do is cook what I want, let him know what’s for dinner, he is always free to have some, otherwise please just sit with us and chat (and maybe have a bit of salad or bread or something), and if he wants to order something later, that’s fine (but it’s coming from his discretionary spending). I may also gently suggest that he sometimes just make himself a sandwich at home because of both money and health, but ultimately he is a grown-up who can make his own decisions – we aren’t on the verge of bankruptcy and his doctor did not raise any concerns. I will admit to this bugging me more now that we have a child, but I love him and I know you can’t really change people.
Just a caution but pushing people to be different because you now have a child is the fastest path to divorce. Pick your battles wisely. I know a lot of second wives who don’t nag their spouses about their meals…..
Sounds like the solution I would come to. Super frustrating, especially because it’s something I would have broken up with a boyfriend over, but not a husband and co parent. Sorry you have to live like this, and hopefully he brings a lot of good habits and attributes to the table we’re unaware of.
That sounds like a more than reasonable solution to a situation that would bug me, too. One tweak: MIght it be possible to decide on a night or two a week when you agree that you will make something he likes and you all eat dinner together?
Hugs! This would bother me so much (the money, the health considerations, and the rejection of your daily efforts). Both DH and I cook and we engage our little in helping us prepare meals. I agree with others that your husband is his own man, but I empathize with your frustration and hurt. Maybe back off on his UberEats but also ask if he would be willing to help you cook once in a while (on a weekend when there is more time)? If he can learn to make a dish exactly how he likes it (even something very simple), that would open a lot of doors in having dinner at home as a family. It would also offer some appreciation for how much goes into preparing a meal. It might be a stretch if he has no interest, but it’s worth a try.
Yeah, I really think it would help if he at least tried cooking every now and then, even if it was just something like burgers and some other simple dishes he likes. Cooking is an essential life skill, and even if you don’t love it or actually do it much, to be completely incapable of it really makes me think less of someone (absent a disability or some other justification).
Yeah, I have a young kid and if I had to be completely responsible for all meals while my husband opted out of that aspect of parenting I would lose my mind! And I enjoy cooking.
Yeah, if he’s not cooking he should at least be washing the dishes and cleaning up the kitchen after OP cooks. In front of the child so she grows up with the proper expectations for spousal behavior.
Let it go. My DH loves to cook and came from a home where Food=Love. I grew up in a home where Food=Fuel. He puts so much investment in when he cooks and I could care less. I pretend to appreciate it and he has realized that my not being as interested in what he cooks does not mean I don’t love him.
But do you eat the food, or reject it and order takeout?
Put DH in charge of family dinner 2 nights/week. Set parameters together. Then let him deliver within those parameters. Also, it’s time to discuss how you want your kids raised around food, together. IE is home cooked the priority? Objectively healthy? Fed?
My kids are 7-12 and our rule is that we have one dinner (cooked or bought) and if kids or DH or I don’t want it, we have to check the box on dinner: one carb, one protein, one veg (can be swapped for a fruit depending on circumstances). We are all allowed the “out” as long as we are polite about it. Sometimes this means the family has chicken pot pie while Kid 1 has a turkey and cheese sandwich with sliced cucumbers. Or the family has pasta with salad and meatballs while I have leftover tacos (which includes lots of veg).
As your kids get older you’ll have to cross the food ordering bridge. Like, my kids are welcome to make themselves an alternate dinner but I’m not paying for them to door dash chick fil a as a swap.
I would also consider talking to him about this from a parenting perspective. What behaviors/attitudes are you trying to instill in your kid about food, about spending time together, about not always being able to have everything you want?
I would talk to him about the idea that he may be able to eat whatever he wants and stay thin, but you want your child to have healthy eating habits. About the fact that you don’t want your kid to learn to be rigid and uncompromising.
And then listen to him too. Has he thought about how his behaviors now have added weight because he’s a father? About what is reasonable to expect when you are part of a family unit?
In our family, we value eating together for dinner. We value eating a wide variety of healthy, homecooked foods. We value treating each other with respect for efforts expended, and understanding that sometimes you get what you want and sometimes you go along to get along. Since I am the cook, I ask my husband to pick one meal per week (from a list of things I can competently make after work) and my son gets to pick a meal. Then I pick the others to fill out types of food and based on how busy my schedule is. Sometimes husband or son don’t love a meal. They eat some of it (see, respect) but then might supplement with a yogurt or PBJ that they get themselves. My husband will directly remind my son at times that mom puts in the time and effort to cook (and they don’t), so that comes with an implicit agreement that they can provide feedback but not complain.
This is a very niche answer, but my husband also doesn’t cook and at this point, I don’t think he’ll ever learn. We have used 5 dinners 1 hour, where you prep everything at the start of the week and cook it fresh each night. They have a section for “kid friendly” foods, which may be more on the simpler side and more appealing to a steak and potatoes kind of guy. If you’re willing to prep the meals, he could be put in charge of cooking them 2-3x a week which would give you a break from worrying about it (since it’s all prepped, it’s easy enough that a teen could probably pull it off – it’s things like, dump on sheet pan and bake). And if he doesn’t eat it, fine on him. But sometimes it’s so nice to have a plate of hot food put in front of you that you don’t have to make yourself. That might help with some of the resentment on your end.
The responses defending his behavior are as wild to me as all the posts about separate finances. Why do people get married if they don’t want to live as a family unit?
Well in my one pot marriage, I don’t insist on cooking dinners that I know my husband hates. The OP has a very obvious solution to get what they both want and she just wants to be right.
+1
Huh? Who says you have to eat the same dinner foods in order to be a family unit. In my one pot marriage, my husband likes to eat significantly more meat than I do, so of course we end up eating different things on many, many nights. He also gets home right before dinner and will just graze at the kids meal, and then eat his own food later. I have never thought of this as not living as a family unit…..
Living as a family unit doesn’t mean you get to force each other to do things just because you want it that way. In fact, I’d say that’s a level of control that isn’t healthy.
You can still see she is looking for reasons to justify why she gets to dictate what dinner should look like.
In my house the cook plans the menu with an appropriate degree of deference to others’ preferences. That means that I don’t serve my husband beets and he doesn’t serve me beef because he hates beets and I don’t eat beef. But it’s simply not appropriate for me to say “I don’t feel like that salmon dish you made tonight so I’m going to order in.” It’s not controlling for the cook to do their job of planning and cooking!
In my one pot family, we meal plan and populate the instacart together on Saturday or Sunday morning while drinking coffee. My husband learned to cook around the same time we combined finances and I learned to cook some of his childhood favorites.
This would also bother me a lot. DH and I both highly value home cooked healthy meals eaten together as a family. We cook most weeknights (both of us are good cooks in different ways). Sometimes our meals are great, others are average, others a bust, depending on if we’re trying new recipes or having standbys. If a meal is not great, we all (adults and kids) try to eat what we can and then whoever is still hungry might make a sandwich or have a bowl of cereal, and we’ll laugh about it. I think it sets a good example for the kids that we eat together as a family and they need to at least try everything and make an effort, but of course if truly not good we’ll find alternative. It is incredibly rude to just not partake in a family dinner and order something separate.
Also, I would caution about assuming all is well health wise. Just because someone is not overweight, doesn’t mean eating burgers and fries every night is ok for their health. How old is he? Health issues can build up slowly and present themselves over time. We’re in our mid-40s and absolutely see that we can’t eat junk like we used it without it really affecting how we feel. Also, DH is seemingly the picture of health (marathon runner, very lean/muscular, always active and eats healthy meals), but it turns out he is genetically pre-disposed to heart disease and despite all his great lifestyle choices, he already has some buildup in his arteries.
I think you should tell him how you feel (without accusation) not blaming him but just stating how cooking is your love language, plus your concerns about health and budget, and ask if he would be willing to eat the family dinners if you make more of an effort to cook things that he is likely to enjoy more.
I would be upset about the expense. Assuming every uber eats order is $25, that’s approximately $75 a week, $300 a month or $4k a year. That level of spending would absolutely be something that my spouse and I would expect to discuss and be in agreement on.
I would not care if my spouse actually ate the meal I cooked as long as we were on the same page in terms of making our kid eat healthy foods and participated in dinner conversation, prep, and clean up in a meaningful way.
Look, if cooking for your husband was truly your love language you would make foods you know he enjoys. Instead, you are making things that are easy for you (not a gourmet cook then, at least on weeknights) and that you think he “should” eat. That’s not love language by any means.
That is saying gifting is your love language and gifting someone dumbbells that were $10 at Target since it was quick and easy for you to pick them up, and healthy for them, then expecting him to be grateful for it!
I’m on your husband’s side here. Even though he is a picky eater, this is not your love language. You are trying to control what he eats.
If a woman wrote in here saying my husband insists I should eat his quickly thrown together pasta meals on weekdays, and pouts otherwise, we would tell her she had the right to eat what she liked!
Yup!
+1 million
Has anyone successffully changed from a sweet-breakfast person to a savory-breakfast person? I get that this seems…ridiculous but I really, really need to start eating healthier and one huge problem is that I like to sit down with coffee and a sweet breakfast, like pancakes with syrup sweet, or waffles with peanut butter and syrup, or a pastry. It worked fine when I was in my 20s, but now not so much. But I just hate eating anything savory in the morning. For a while, I made an omelette and toast and while I would have loved it at any other time of day, in the morning, I felt like I was forcing myself to take every bit. Anyone have this problem and made a sucessful switch?
I’m not a savory breakfast person and never will be, but I have successfully cut back on sugar in the morning as someone with a big sweet tooth. So that means I will have yogurt with granola and fruit but add cinnamon instead of sugar, I will have almond butter on toast without adding jam or honey, I choose cereal with less sugar, I don’t put sugar in my coffee, etc. I have gotten used to it and now if I eat something really sweet, I get a bit nauseous.
I think swinging all the way to omelette and toast is too much. How do the things Anon @ 9:04 mentioned, like peanut butter toast or granola and yogurt work?
I don’t think you’re going to make yourself an eggs in the morning person, but less sugar is definitely possible. And it is true that once you stop eating as much sugar things will start seeming too sweet.
yes i agree with the other responses. there are even ‘heathier’ waffles you could use, or sweet oatmeal, etc.
I’m prone to queasiness in the morning, so I really just want carbs first thing, but that doesn’t mean that breakfast has to be completely unhealthy. If you want waffles or pancakes, make them with whole grains and top them with fruit, or try a smoothie or chia pudding, whole grain toast with peanut butter and fruit or jam, oatmeal, etc. All of those are still pretty sweet, but you’re getting a decent amount of fiber and vitamins and other nutrients from the fruit, not just empty calories.
You can still eat a sweet breakfast, just don’t make it a pastry. Eat a protein waffle topped with fruit or an oatmeal “sundae” with fruit, nuts, cocoa nibs, honey, etc drizzled in. Maybe a greek yogurt parfait, superhero muffins, a smoothie bowl, homemade oatmeal bars, chia pudding, banana toast, etc.
I make a porridge mix that isn’t savoury but isn’t super sugar-y, so maybe a halfway house. It’s oats, oat milk powder, pb powder, flax seed, nuts and seeds. I add a bit of brown sugar and raisins, so it’s sweeter so you can dial this back. I make a big batch, and just add boiling water. It’s great travel breakfast.
I am not dissimilar – I am not ready for a “healthy” breakfast until a few hours after I am up, but need something in my stomach soon after waking or I get nauseous. My compromise has been to have one or two of those Belvita biscuits (please don’t come after me I know they are not nutritious). These satisfy the need for something carby and then later, eat something good for me – eggs with lots of veggies, greek yogurt with blueberries, etc. The biscuits are not super sweet (I forget which variety I have). I have also found the less sugar I do in my overall life, the less I need in the morning.
(please don’t come after me I know they are not nutritious)
Your comment makes perfect sense but I hate that we have write this. I often wonder how thin I’d have to be for people to stop lecturing me on food.
I’m not even sure it’s true that they’re not nutritious insofar as they’re pretty heavily fortified. But yes people will food shame.
There is no level of body size excempt from people who wants to lecture on food or other people’s bodies.
I love me a savory breakfast, although I’m too lazy to make it most days. For “sweet” and healthy, have you considered a smoothie? Mine is: half a banana, frozen blueberries, unflavoured protein powder (usually need to buy online), milk, unflavoured greek yogurt, and a bit of peanut butter. No added sugar but definitely still tastes “sweet” from the fruit and banana.
Overnight oats can be sweet and healthy! I use vanilla Greek yogurt and add frozen blueberries. It has protein and fiber. If you want more crunch, add granola on top when serving.
I love this, too. Also add some chopped nuts.
Can you take a middle ground? Like instead of syrup, eat oatmeal with berries and cinnamon? Or toast with peanut butter and banana?
My husband is a sweet breakfast person and he switched to oatmeal with some frozen fruit, a little greek yogurt and a few chocolate chips or some maple syrup tossed in. It’s healthier but still sweet.
I also love a sweeter breakfast, but I think there is a way to have one that’s a bit more wholesome? Just as an example, my go-to breakfast at home is granola with milk or skyr and maybe some fruit. If I’m going the coffee shop route, I love a morning glory muffin. They’re still sweet but they’re lighter, and I stay full longer than if I were to have waffles.
How about overnight oats with apples and cinnamon (and a dash of salt) to transition from sweet to savory? Cottage cheese and berries? Yogurt and fruit with granola (but no added jams/jellies/syrups)?
Thank you for the replies everyone! I appreciate it. I will try swapping the syrup for a low-sugar or no-sugar jam, and try out some yogurt/granola combos. Sadly/weirdly, I just hate pretty much all fruit (a texture reaction vs. taste). I had to google superhero muffins, but will give those a go too! I think mostly, I need to say good-bye to syrup, a sad reality to face in middle age lol.
I don’t like savory breakfasts, either. I also don’t like substituting “healthy” versions of the thing I really like (i.e., low-fat oreos do not check the box when what I want is double-stuf).
That said, if texture is the issue, have you considered making a breakfast smoothie? I like this combo, which is sweet but doesn’t have any added sugar:
1 banana
1 shredded carrot
1 cup water or milk
1 scoop plain, unflavored, unsweetened protein powder
1 tsp chia seeds
1/3 cup frozen diced mango
Blender it all up and away you go.
No and I tried! My solution was sugar-free vanilla syrup (the kind people put in their coffee) in my Greek yogurt with fruit and nuts.
I love savory breakfast items – just not in the morning. But I need protein, or I will be starving by 10 a.m.
I’m team savoury breakfast, but I can recommend my grandma’s breakfast: homemade whole meal bread with butter and honey.
Hi friends, fired federal employee swinging back around with a bittersweet update and seeking advice.
After my (illegal) termination as a federal employee back in February, I’ve now been reinstated with backpay. I started back at my duty station on Monday. The vibe of the office is grim, and I feel as if I could lose my job at any point in the upcoming weeks. I’ve got fairly marketable skills and am actively job hunting.
I’ve been offered the deferred resignation 2.0 (aka fork), but don’t like the ethical implications of receiving taxpayer money without working to better the public.
Any thoughts on the ethics of accepting a deal with the devil?
first of all, hugs, this situation is just beyond ridiculous. has it been confirmed that the deferred resignation package is even legal? you need to do what is right for you.
i’m also quite perplexed how terminating people, bringing them back with backpay, etc. and creating so much chaos is improving government efficiency, but i know i’m preaching to the choir
At this point, do what’s right for you and damn the ethics. These are unprecedented times and NO ONE will take care of you.
Waiting to lose my fed-adjacent job in the decimation of HHS over here.
Omg get over yourself. You literally already got fired by these clowns. If the fork in the road works for you take it. No one is sitting around to give you a prize for being a martyr.
please just stop with the mean girl vibe. OP has been through h*LL, and you telling her to get over herself is not helping. OP, thank you for thinking through the ethics of the situation – put yourself first here.
Go take a walk and get yourself a treat. You’re acting like a jack*ss and you might need a nap.
I’m fine. And I’m not throwing away money I need because of feelings
That’s so great! You seem like you’re nailing it in every way!
What if you then didn’t take time from your incredible decision-making capabilities to snot all over a blog post? Maybe you’re snotting all over a blog post because you’re looking for feelings?
Not who you’re replying to but you’re not fine. You’re being unnecessarily mean and you should reflect on what the heck is going on that’s making you act like this before people in your real life start pulling away.
I wouldn’t worry about the ethics of this on a personal level. That’s something to worry about on a federal level, which isn’t happening anyways.
Just do what you need to do.
Omg, take the money.
+1.
Take the money in exchange for compromising on ethics?
Who else has done this? Who else might serve as a template for the triumph of money (and it sounds like money that isn’t for a survival scenario, it’s not like OP is going to be impoverished or lose her house) over morals?
Gosh I just can’t think of a single Big Law company, public official, sellout celebrity, or Big Tech billionaire who has done something like this. I’m so sad they didn’t make that exchange because surely if they chose the money, that would have no impact on me or my life at all, nor any impact on my community or fellow Americans — and the money would be worth it in any case!
Or even on the smaller scale. I’m so sad that the only people between a ruthless + destructive admin and vulnerable American populations aren’t accepting all this money in exchange for letting the admin walk all over them. Omg they should just take the money! Enrich themselves at the expense of others! It’s such an easy decision. How much difference could one vote, I mean one person, make anyway? Might as well take it! Other people surely wouldn’t, right? Someone (not us) would stop bad things from happening!
Get a grip.
What on earth. How does any of this apply? Is this satire?
I have to admit I don’t understand the qualms about the fork. I assume your salary is less than $200k. That’s a fraction of a penny rounds to 0 for any individual taxpayer. Offering severance (such that it is) is the bare bones ethical thing for the government to do in this situation, and I encourage you to reframe your thinking about it.
Do what’s right for you, and go where you think you can do the most good. My husband took the fork because he thought he would be prevented from working toward goals he thought were admirable, and asked to contribute to things he felt were unconscionable. His next step is community-minded in a different way, and he’s considering his severance “seed money” to pivot to a new way to put good into the world.
Has anyone actually gotten the fork money? If so, is there a danger it will be clawed back?
Yes, people are getting it. they’re just coded as administrative leave, and their timesheets are being processed as normal.
Aren’t they afraid that their paychecks will be clawed back at some point? And/or that their terminations will be coded in some negative way that will prevent them from ever working again?
No, because being paralyzed by “what ifs” is counterproductive. Everyone I know who has taken the fork is relieved to be out of the toxic mess that is federal employment in 2025, and going full steam ahead on their next step. The money is currently paying their bills while the move toward something new. If it is clawed back eventually, they’ll cross that bridge when they come to it.
also, I don’t understand “prevent them from ever working again”? I guess it’s possible they could be blocked from re-entering federal government work, but no one I know is planning to do that, and there’s a whole big world of other employment opportunities out there.
I know a lot of us who are hoping and praying to eventually return to federal service under a new administration
I do not think there is any ethical problem with taking the offer if you want it.
Any employment relationship has a risk of liability. Even in normal circumstances, public entities may provide severance to departing employees. Assuming the deferred resignation / severance includes a release, meaning that you cannot sue regarding your employment, the public entity and taxpayers funding the entity benefit from removing that risk and associated cost.
This is my perspective as a lawyer who frequently deals with employment issues for public entities. I don’t know the details about this specific offer.
Genuinely looking for options and advice from the hive mind here, as I have done for years. I don’t need internet points, I need counsel.
I feel conflicted about voluntarily leaving, as well as taking money away from programs and missions I believe in. This feels like a trap and walking into the administration’s talking points.
“Feds are lazy and don’t work”
“Feds don’t want to come into the office”
“Feds are enriching themselves on taxpayer dollars”
“Feds are defrauding the government”
There’s something about taking the fork that feels like I’m agreeing with these statements.
My counsel is, as previously stated, stop fretting about philosophy and take the money you presumably need for your bills.
I’m the poster above whose husband took the fork. I’m not sure what was in the latest emails, but the original comms included language encouraging federal employees to stop being lazy and go pursue “higher-productivity” work in the private sector. There was a time when it was uncertain whether his agency would actually process the resignation and it was a running joke between us that he’s trying to do what the government asked him to do, and they’re slowing him down. Public sector work is important, but it is not morally better than any other meaningful work. I don’t think anyone who would delight in a fed losing their job is going to take your deferred resignation as proof that you or any other federal employees are lazy – those people think the govies sticking around and continuing to suck off the govt teat are the lazy ones.
You seem really determined to talk yourself out of this, and that’s fine, you do you.
Just remember that no one else is going to read anything into your decision, and no one except you and your dependents really cares one way or the other.
I feel for you . But at some point don’t you have to point out that the same folks who deemed themselves efficiency experts and you lazy successfully managed to pay a hard working employee for…not working? Figure out where you want to stay or leave but at this point it’s not an ethical calculus.
I’m so sorry.
I’m at an agency thats planned to be eliminated. I know I need to leave but I can’t bring myself to pull the trigger so I’m waiting for the RIF.
We spend our entire careers dedicated to the mission and the public. We’re taught to always be good stewards of taxpayer dollars. It’s hard to make the switch from decades of that to “take the money and run”.
Everyone (most people…) recognize the good you’ve done. No one will it against you. You have to do what’s best for you.
No advice, but solidarity and good vibes.
I don’t blame you… I still think the fork is a trap.
Legally, we can’t be paid for work we don’t do. I think they’ll pay out the money and then come after those who took the fork for fraud.
I hope I’m wrong bc several people I like took it but…
I tend to believe this, too. By this administration. The next administration will be spending a lot of time cleaning this mess.
People accept severance at jobs they are fired or laid off from all the time, along with unemployment benefits. Some people accept packages to retire early by choice. This is pretty equivalent. They are doing this to save the government money in the long run (that’s the argument anyway) so you shouldn’t feel bad if accepting the deal makes the most sense for you. Take care of yourself.
Yeah but for the thousandth time – federal employment is not equatable to the private sector
I think the Trump administration can’t walk back their own offer, that would be absurd. Even mean-spirited MAGAs might have an issue with the bait and switch, and everyone else would be appalled. And a future administration is going to recognize what an odd (I hope) time in American history this was and will not penalize the individuals who, generally, were acting in good faith on an offer that was endorsed as real & legit by the President.
It’s literally illegal for federal employees to be paid for work they didn’t do. Admin leave is limited to 10 days a year.
I absolutely think this administration would claw back the money or file charges against people who take the fork.
So the obvious answer is to take the money, set it aside and find a new job asap. If it’s clawed back, you have it ready to go; if not, you have a pot of new savings.
Exactly. severance is a one time cost the administration has chosen to accept in order to decrease future run rate.
Take the money. Those taxpayers elected Elon Musk. They don’t deserve your hard work and dedication if you’ve got other prospects.
No hard feelings, thanks all for your thoughts. You’ve given me a lot to think about.
It’s been a disorienting time, I really feel for everyone who is caught in the administration’s crossfire.
Philly people. Does anyone have a rec for brunch/lunch on a Saturday with kids near the Liberty Bell? Perhaps someplace that takes reservations
PJ Clarkes, Red Owl Tavern, Talula’s Garden (fancier)
Revolution house, especially if you can get on the roof.
Can I wear a full but not poofy “ball skirt” type skirt in a shiny fabric and a coordinating blouse to a wedding? Or is it too costumes for a guest?
I feel like a lot of the other things I’m finding are black or white (or those colors predominate). But longer skirts are having a moment it seems (like fancy jumpsuits were).
COVID broke me for fashion.
can you link what you’re talking about? that sounds kind of… “1995 David’s Bridal wants to make sure an older matron of honor has a matching ensemble with the others that covers her arms” but maybe looks better IRL…
I’m picturing Bianca’s prom dress in 10 Things I Hate About You, but I am probably wrong.
I mean that’s an iconic outfit and if someone showed up to my wedding in it I’d be thrilled.
I missed this movie but now I want to see it.
I’m an elder millenial getting married this summer and am immediately going to send screenshots of this outfit to my friends – I would be delighted!
Yea, I’d have a hard time with that as someone who wore that trend the first time around in the 90s to prom.
Can you swap in a coordinating a-line midi skirt in lace, or silk instead?
They definitely sounds like a costume and I would not wear. Just search the Nordstrom website in their “wedding guest” category.
Agree. If you have to ask, you have your answer.
I think this sounds lovely. Just make sure the skirt and top don’t look like Snow White, but more like quiet luxury. Keep the look understated and tasteful and you will look great.
I have a whole collection of full-but-not-poofy skirts and I would definitely wear one to a wedding. But I’m an Old, so…
Unless the skirt has a poodle on it, I’m not getting a costume vibe from your description.
Microsoft Word’s spell-check has just flagged a perfectly common, correctly spelled word in my document as incorrect. Word declines to offer any alternatives, presumably since the word is already spelled correctly. This is why we should all be very, very cautious about just handing our work over to AI.
Oh hi English teacher from 1994! Glad to see you on here! I do remember you teaching this lesson and have definitely integrated it as much as I can, thanks, I just press “ignore” or add to the dictionary or whatever, no worries! Ok, go back to watching “Melrose Place” now
Ok, so it’s going to be one of those days here.
Hahahahaha
Sometimes it flags words before you’re done typing them and then takes a beat to catch up.
I’m most concerned with autocorrect adding apostrophes to every plural word, which I worry is teaching people to do that on their own. What is this world coming to, I tell you!
I did a lot of research into this a few years back, figuring in fragrance sensitivities and ecological impacts and at the time biokleen free and clear was the winner and I’ve been using it ever since.
I’m picturing Clippy using Stridex pads…
You can add words to the MS Word Dictionary, so that it won’t be flagged again. I’ve used this feature for unusual last names when I run a spell check, or Latin phrases.
Sometimes my Word changes the base spell-check language from English to some other random language. It mostly happens if I copy/paste from somewhere else or reuse a document. It doesn’t always apply that other language to the entire document, sometimes it is literally just one word but somehow is on every instance of that word in the larger document.
My autocorrect has been changing words to spanish and weirdly capitalizing words.
Sometimes the language auto-changes to another language dictionary for some reason, so it’ll flag words that are correctly spelled in English. It’s not frequent but occassionally that happens. Since it didnt offer alternatives, it might be worth checking that to confirm the whole document language is set to English?
What laundry detergent do you use?
Tide is ok. I really really dislike the smell of gain.
Is there something with minimal or no scent, cleans kids clothes well, and has “safer” chemicals (I am not a chemist so all the concern about specific chemicals makes no sense to me, but people seem to have opinions).
Thanks!
Usually All free and clear, Tide free and gentle, or some generic version of the above.
Tide free and clear, plus washing soda, plus vinegar is how all of our clothing gets washed. My kids and I have eczema and this is the only way we get the sweat/stains out without triggering skin issues.
The chemicals are safe. Just by tide free and clear
+1. The chemicals that are biggest issue are the scents, so avoid those, and you’ve avoided most of the potential problems while still getting a detergent that works well.
Nellie’s Laundry Soda. It has no scent or things that bother DH’s sensitive skin. And a little goes a long way.
+1 this is what we use too!!
Bought a 5 gallon bucket of it from Costco a year or two ago and we’ve not even halfway through.
We use Arm & Hammer Sensitive Skin Free & Clear, but I’m sure the Tide and All options work fine too. In fact, when we do laundry while travelling, I usually grab the Tide free and clear pods. We also use Lysol laundry sanitizer on some loads to help remove smells and that also has a free and clear option. I can’t handle scented laundry detergent either.
Another Arm & Hammer fan. We alternate between that and the free and clear iteration of Purex.
I have very sensitive skin and these are the two options that have never caused me to break out in hives while even the comparable versions of Tide, All, and Gain have caused me problems over the years.
That’s exactly what we use, too. I have a small bottle for laundry detergent that goes in if I’m expecting to have access to laundry facilities when traveling.
All free and clear — it’s constantly recommended by dermatologists for allergies, contact dermatitis, etc, and no scent (which as someone says above is the most irritating chemical addition!)
The scents are such a strong migraine trigger for me. I would honestly support a ban.
Dogs make my airways close. It’s awful. But they bring others joy and I get that. I love scents.
There are safer and less safe scents for most people, so I think we could figure this out if we tried. I think it’s one thing to look for treatments and cures to allergies to “dogs” and another to expect people to undergo extensive medical treatment all so that we can keep “chemical first synthesized a generation ago that’s only used because it’s marginally cheaper and that no one actually prefers.”
If people who doused their clothing in allergy-triggering scented laundry detergent were as easy to distinguish from the rest of the population and therefore avoid as dogs are from humans, that would be lovely.
Tide free and clear. It actually gets my family’s stuff clean. Honestly, this is one area where I can’t even with the arguments about chemicals. I just need it to work.
Proctor and Gamble developed a line called EC30 that was more eco-friendly – not sure what the certifications were, if any. I tried it as a sample a few times and it was great – a larger packet of powder that went into the tub.
You can try other brands that are Green Seal or other eco logo certified, or sold in Europe or Canada that might have stricter standards. I usually go for “free and clear” for sensitive skin (but that isn’t necessarily better for the environment) or arm & hammer brands. A thing I do also is use vinegar for fabric softener in the wash cycle, and wool or similar dryer balls in the dryer to cut down on the need for fabric softener sheets there
All Free & Clear has been my go-to forever. I started added a scoop of Oxiclean to get out the random stains on my kids clothes.
That’s what we use, too. The oxy clean helps with funky workout clothes.
I have friends who use and like Branch Basics and Blueland.
I use BB for cleaning and Blueland for the dishwasher and they work well for those purposes, but haven’t tried them for laundry. I’ve been satisfied with Tide / Tide Free & Gentle
The store brand generic “free and clear” kind. I find the smell of laundry detergent very overpowering.
+1 to store brand fragrance free for most clothes. I use powder.
For clothes that get really stinky, I use Rockin’ Green Active Wear powder.
I am currently a free and clear Tide “Hygienic” detergent, which is free & clear but also enzymatic which I seem to need to get odors out of synthetics.
Regular detergent is unsafe for me (asthma trigger, not to mention eczema though that’s less of a safety issue). This seems to be fine.
I use the powder Arm and Hammer free and clear detergent. I have a kid with very, very sensitive skin and this does not cause any problems.
We use the Kirkland brand of free & clear. No issues with smells, feels fine using it for my five year old.
this is what we have used for 10 years. We like it.
also would love a ban on laundry fragrances as it is a huge migraine trigger for me and my oldest daughter.
Big fan of biokleen free and clear. Made in the US, cheaper than Tide, and has all the same environmental/chemical certifications as Tide. Just can be difficult to buy in store if that’s your jam, since it’s not carried in a lot of stores.
I smelled and tested many detergents recently. I am now happily using Dirty Labs in the signature scent. I also considered The Laundress in their classic scent and may end up switching to that later.
Tide purclean in honey lavender scent
I use Persil Free & Sensitive – no scent, cleans great.
clean people
Just a vent, really. I’m tired of living really frugally. We have a HHI of about 280k gross. We have 3 kids in daycare which runs us 60k a year. We have also saved for major home renovations (bathrooms and kitchen/living room) to the tune of about 200k. We save about 50k a year outside of retirement and all of that has gone to those renovations. (1958 split level, last updated in 1986). Home prices in my area are high, and renovating was a better financial choice than buying a newer or larger home.
We live very frugally. I get the kids’ clothes for free on Buy Nothing groups, we cook every meal at home, and we haven’t taken a vacation since 2019.
I just can’t shake this resentful feeling that objectively, we have a good income and yet I’m couponing at BJs while people who make far less than us are vacationing twice a year and live in nicer homes. How?!
Commiseration. We also have a similar HHI and only one child but DH has a lot of student debt. We have very nice lives, but I definitely expected to feel “richer” at this stage in life and instead we still need to budget and watch our expenses. I think it’s just life these days, and I try not to get stuck on people living nicer lives – maybe they make more, have family help, are in a ton of debt, or made different choices that serve them somehow.
Daycare and home renos are eating up a giant chunk of your income, that’s why!
Why don’t you get a nanny instead of 3 daycares? Even in my VVHCOL area that would cost less than 60k/yr.
What?! I paid a nanny 65k/year for one child in a LCOL area more than 5 years ago. My friends in HCOL areas typically paid more like 80k-90k and that was a few years ago and only 1-2 kids. I don’t know what kind of nanny you have in a VHCOL for less than 60k, but it sounds like an unethical arrangement, like an undocumented immigrant who doesn’t have any negotiating power or something.
Consider me corrected, I’m realizing my data is outdated- my friends paid about 40k/yr but I’m realizing this was about 10 years ago.
Because I work from home and need the kids out of the house. Also, I like the stability of daycare and have zero interest in a nanny giving two weeks notice and leaving me without childcare.
Would you and your husband be able to sit down and remake some of those budget decisions, so you can loosen up some discretionary spending for clothes, eating out, and vacations? It sounds like slowing the savings down a bit might do your lifestyle a world of good.
(Are both of you together driving the frugality, or is one of you primarily the frugal person and the other is going along with it?)
How? Because you chose to have three children in rapid succession and plow a huge amount of money into your house. Like. The how is obvious.
Did we choose 3 kids? Or did we have unexpected twins? Let’s hold off on one of those judgments, thanks.
There are options.
+1 as someone with only one kid, the risk of twins on pregnancy #2 was a non-trivial factor in choosing to stop where we did. We knew we could not handle three financially or logistically and didn’t want to be in the position of having to terminate. It is a choice you made. Maybe not the same way someone who had three pregnancies did, but it’s still a choice.
Haha truly only on this board can someone post that they’re venting about frugality, and someone’s response is that she should have aborted or adopted out her kids. Yall are such rays of sunshine!
Why in the world would you say that to someone who already has her kids here on this earth?
Because she still made a choice and is acting like this life was thrust upon her.
I made the very difficult choice to terminate a twin pregnancy not just to economic reasons (it was also very high risk) but it was a factor. We rent in a VHCOL area in an apartment most of you probably wouldn’t even want to set foot in. It was a hard choice, but I did have a choice.
Then don’t come on here and pretend to be perplexed by your budget? Spending 200k on renovations is a luxury choice.
OP here and is it? As I mentioned in my post, our home is a 1958 split level. 2400 square feet. It was last updated in 1986 (we have the records). Is it truly a “luxury” to have a home that’s not a time capsule from the Reagan administration? That’s part of my cognitive dissonance here.
Yeah, if the house isn’t broken. Repairs aren’t a luxury but updates absolutely are.
Yes it’s absolutely a luxury to have an updated house. It’s not a luxury to have a functional house, but if these upgrades are cosmetic, 100% it’s a luxury. My parents just retired with multi-million dollar savings and part of why they saved so much on modest incomes is they never upgraded from or renovated their small, very 1970s looking house (avocado green kitchen!!). It’s ok to want an updated house but then recognize that this is why you can’t afford vacations and other luxuries.
Yes!! Yes it is omg how out of touch have we gotten. Is it safe? Is it heated and cooled? It’s totally fine to
Choose
To spend your money on asthetics but plenty of people can’t afford to so we don’t buy houses at all and we don’t update them.
Yes, it’s a luxury to update a house that has nothing wrong with it. It has always been perceived as such.
Yes it is a luxury! Good lord, I live in a neighborhood where plenty of people are day laborers sleeping 6 to a room and sending their money home to relatives in other countries. Comparison is the thief of joy. My husband and I make significantly less than you do and travel internationally, but we only have one kid who is old enough to no longer need childcare, live in a 1100 sq foot apartment in a pretty modest neighborhood, did most of our renovation work ourselves, and didn’t have student loan debt (scholarships for him, wealthier parents for me). Even so, we could not afford to travel much until our son was in late elementary school.
Look, you are correctly perceiving that daycare and housing costs have become exhborbitant and a middle class lifestyle has become less attainable, but at the same time, don’t lose sight of the fact that you are doing well relative to a lot of people, and that you are in a phase of life that is particularly financially difficult for a lot of people.
I lived in an un-remodeled ca. 1954 house the whole time my kid was growing up, so my vote is “yep, it’s a luxury to remodel.”
OP — Yes, a newly renovated 2400 SQ foot house IS a huge luxury! You could have just lived with the ’80s. You could live in a much smaller house. You could have just said fresh paint and lived with everything else you didn’t like
Is part of the cognitive dissonance that the remodel didn’t “feel” worth 200k, or if you had it to do over you’d rather have spent the money on a vacation and lived with the tiny kitchen or whatever the issue was? If so, can you reflect on it and put it in your learnings column about what’s truly important to you? Or can you get back to noticing and appreciating what you really like about what you got in the remodel?
Is part of
Just to echo the others that it is a luxury.
OMG living with 1980s interior design choices is not destitution. $200k saved towards updating that aesthetic isn’t the same as taking out a second mortgage because the foundation is failing and the knob & tube caught fire in the attic.
I know people who literally had two to ten times your annual income who never updated or renovated their homes.
The only things they ever did were to, eg, get new appliances when the old ones died.
Well, you have three kids. If you had two kids, that’s an extra $20k just for daycare you’d be saving, which could fund two or three nice vacations a year.
My point is that having three kids involves tradeoffs. But I’m sure you wouldn’t trade your third kid for a vacation, right?
Also, at some point your home renovations will happen and that chunk of money will free up for vacations and clothes. Also at some point your kids will start going to public school and the daycare budget will free up (not totally, because of activities and camps, but somewhat).
I know the “how” was probably rhetorical but to answer the question about how people who make less than you have more disposable income for vacations, there are two huge factors for us: only having one kid and living in a LCOL area. We even sort of got the best of both worlds because we moved from a higher cost of living area (with higher paying jobs) and our savings from that area went a lot farther here and basically got us a house in cash in our current area.
It sounds like you’re doing really well with three kids in a HCOL area. Things should be less stretched when your kids are out of daycare. I know some on the moms page say that camp/aftercare costs nearly as much, but that has not been our experience – we started saving over $10k/year when our kid went to kindergarten.
Agree that this will get better. Aftercare and camp doesn’t come anywhere close to what we paid for daycare, even in a MCOL area.
The other people probably aren’t spending $60k on daycare, that’s how. That won’t be permanent! Unless you’re sending them to private school, I guess.
You never know what other people’s debt situation and family money situation is. Other people who earn far less than you may have inherited money, had family who paid for schools, or have large amounts of consumer debt. Plus the difference in the cost of child care and not saving for whatever.
I’m a hybrid in terms of my parents paid for school and I inherited family money, so I live in a house that costs more than my income would indicate that I can afford. However, I was raised to be frugal and environmentally aware (washing ziplock bags, wearing clothing until it dies, cooking at home, walking places instead of driving to save gas) and I struggle to spend discretionary income. Therapy has helped me losen my frugality a little bit, like I now treat myself at Starbucks twice a week on my way to the office and DH and I now go to a taco food truck once a week, and I have found that these small things that cost about $30 per week are not financially significant have made my life better.
Could you decide you’re going to spend $20-50 per week on whatever your definition of splurges are and would that help offset how you’re feeling?
Similar boat. We just cracked $220K in the NYC burbs; we have four kids, but I’m home with them right now so no daycare cost. We do very few activities and camps, though, because the cost is astronomical. And it feels ridiculous that I have to hem and haw about this (can my kids do a baseball clinic for $50 each or no?) with an income like that.
We are also reno’ing both our original 1960s bathrooms (leaking issues, so needed to be done, but we are doing full guts to address cosmetic issues, too). Frankly, I’m very impressed you are saving so much each year! We are not and are using a loan to pay for some of the renos. We moved into this house 2.5 years ago and it seems we’ve been spending $20K at least each year dealing with maintenance the previous owner didn’t keep up (new well filtration system, new boiler, replacing every appliance as they break, etc) or new random things (tree dropped a branch through the deck! Bats were nesting in the attic!) I guess that’s life – once you clear one expense, another pops up.
We are very lucky that my parents rent a beach house for a week each summer, in driving distance, as that is our only vacation. I haven’t been on a plane since my oldest was born 10 years ago. And yes, we get takeout like four times a year, donuts another handful of times, and make every other meal at home. My husband, making $220k, brings a bagged lunch every day.
I do try to reframe it for myself and it mostly works…how lucky we are to be able to afford all the things we need, even if it takes every last cent. How wonderful that we take very little for granted. Our kids will grow up thinking budgets are normal.
And then I do acknowledge that we have succumbed to lifestyle creep in certain areas. I think that’s just what happens…you boil a frog slowly and all that.
And yes, with reference to the comment below I know we are “doing it to ourselves” a bit with four kids. We intentionally made that trade-off, I’m not complaining. People are more important than things, and we love having a bigger family and would rather have that than every vacation in the world. I’m just sharing our similar situation so OP knows she’s not alone! There’s a lot of smoke and mirrors involved with how families fund their lives.
No honestly it doesn’t feel ridiculous at all that having 4 kids and not working you have to budget. That seems fair and normal.
Yes, now that I’m in this life I realize it takes close budgeting. I meant more like: “10 years ago if you’d told me we’d have $220K that seems like so much!” And everyone else seems to have their kids in 3-4+ activities every season, plus big ticket camps, and we are like doing one week at the local rec camp…so sometimes I scratch my head similar to OP.
Again, not complaining, just commenting on how the optics of how far money should go vs how far it actually goes is a real life lesson.
This also seems like a huge social circles effect; and maybe broadening yours would help? I think I grew up upper middle class, and I could still tell you the name of the kid in my 4th grade class who went to Hawaii because it was such a huge deal for anyone to do that. No one was in 3-4 camps and activities!
To be fair, travel in particular was much less common in the 90s than it is now. I was the only person in my high school graduating class who’d been to Europe by graduation and yes my parents were comfortable financially, but they weren’t 1%ers the way our travel relative to my classmates’ suggested. I had plenty of classmates whose parents earned more and who had fancier homes, cars, clothes than me. Travel just wasn’t something most people prioritized until recently.
+1
Don’t take this the wrong way as it’s not meant to be snarky, but you have three kids. Three kids is seen as an economic flex in some circles these days. It’s extremely expensive. It’s wonderful I’m sure, but that’s why!
And on a low income too. One of you needs to make more.
Low income? WTF.
Anon at 10:24 is probably a little jealous of the HHI, which is in the top 7% of American households.
lol, no. I cannot imagine having 3 kids on 25% of my income. It’s just not affordable.
That’s not a low income by any stretch of the imagination.
A low income HAHAHA. This board, man.
Omg it’s not a low income!
Yup. Third kid is a huge economic flex, especially in more expensive cities like NYC and SF. In addition to the third childcare bill, it often necessitates a bigger house and/or car, and makes it necessary to get two hotel rooms when traveling so there are a lot of ways the costs really add up vs two kids.
I guess it’s a flex if we’re talking about staying with a certain circle or set?
In my world, people with higher incomes have fewer kids than people with lower incomes, and I thought that was pretty typical.
+1000 There is a basic level of needs that have to be met, but kids don’t have to be prohibitively expensive…share rooms, go to lesser known colleges that award great merit, make your meals at home, vacation at a campsite instead of Europe, etc. I totally get that someone doesn’t WANT to settle for those things, but that is different than “can’t afford another kid.”
Although let’s be honest that 50% of US births are paid for by Medicaid, which factors into the stat that lower income people have more kids. I’m certainly not saying that kids are free, and if you are middle class or above and footing the bill on your own it is a lot. But I still think many upper class people have priorities that make kids “too expensive” (which is their prerogative). Kids aren’t innately too expensive for 95% of the women here.
Yes, I meant it’s a flex among upper middle class working professionals in major cities with expensive housing. Agreed that on the whole lower incomes correlate with bigger families, but those low income people raising tons of kids are mainly in the Midwest and Southeast where land is cheap and the mom stays home so they don’t have daycare bills. So the costs go up with each kid, but not dramatically the way they do for dual working families in, say, the Bay Area.
Yes, when done comfortably, the third child is a flex. One parent is pulling in $$$ and the other parent is stay at home with a nanny. Or both parents pull in $$$ and outsource everything else.
It’s a struggle otherwise.
It’s the childcare costs. I have two kids and we still need a nanny despite them being school age to cover the morning drop off and afternoon pick up (at two different schools) and the random days off. We have a high household income but spend double what I was paid at my first job in sitters, camp fees, and sports (mostly sitters) because the hourly rate is $25/hr by us. It also allows me to work full time and my high paying job so I’m just gritting my teeth and toughing it out for another 5 yrs till they are all driving.
The keep-a-high-paying job thing is critical too — I think it’s pretty common for daycare/childcare to be a huge part of budget (sometimes even covering one parent’s whole salary) but it can still make long term financial sense if the plan is it puts you in a position to make $$$ when your kids are older
Saving $50k a year is not nothing, especially while spending $60k a year on daycare! Maybe pause your renovations for a year and take a vacation. The daycare bill will also eventually go away. It’s a season in life, it’ll pass.
I am AMAZED that you are saving $50k per year outside of retirement. Good work! And also, it’s no wonder you feel frugal. Our HHI is 280k, 2 kids in daycare at 45k a year, and we save closer to 10k per year outside of retirement–most of which is used on home improvements and, in one year, an expensive family vacation. I also shop on Buy Nothing groups and resale shops, and I eat a restaurant meal worth more than $20 maybe once a month? That said, I don’t feel frugal. If my kids need new shoes (why are quality kids’ gym shoes $50??), I don’t hesitate to buy them. I go to occasional exercise classes. DH buys himself new books to read. DH and I each have set aside money each month for ourselves to do/buy/eat what we like, so that we don’t lose our personalities entirely to our family’s needs. I’m not saying that you have, but it does sound like home renovation budgeting has eaten up all your discretionary spending and maybe you need a few very small luxuries in your life (e.g., weekly fancy coffee, in a real cup, without your kids) to remind yourself that you have a nice life. Or maybe to help with resentment, you can see this as a season in life with kids in $$$ daycare that will end, or remind yourselves of the tradeoffs between a vacation and home updates. FWIW, our housing market is nuts, and I very much resent improving an older house compared to what this same house would have cost even a few years ago. But I channel that resentment towards politics and the housing market, which I have very little control over, and so I try my best to ignore the housing market completely.
OP here and thank you for this kind and helpful comment. You and someone else mentioned the idea of maybe budgeting a small amount of fun money, and I think that’s helpful. In the grand scheme of things, our reno budget won’t change by all that much if we spend $30 a week on fancy coffee or whatever, but it would go a long way in reminding myself that I do have a nice life!
The median sale price in my town is $1.7 million, so 200k of renos on a 620k house still gives us a “cheap” house, which is just crazy to me.
as a twin mom people are being rude about the choosing to have 3 kids. i only have twins, but i know a number of people who ended up with surprise twins and if you want a second kid, had trouble getting pregnant and then end up pregnant with twins, it’s much easier to say from the outside just terminate than it is to actually make that choice. also – a lot of people do have family support, maybe no loans from higher education. you also have 3 kids in daycare! i know some people who take a lot of vacations but they are often paid for in part or whole by grandparents. or they use credit card points and only pay for food on vacation. inflation is also real. things have gotten very expensive.
Check out Ramit Sethi if you haven’t already. His brand of personal finance is really focused on deciding what kind of life is most meaningful to you and deliberately planning around that, including with setting aside fun money. I highly recommend. At a minimum, it made me reflect on what’s most important to me and feeling more satisfied with my choices.
Family support (whether in the form of money or childcare or other help). Not saving for retirement.
Yes I think part of the answer is a lot of people have family help or don’t save well for retirement.
Also consider whether you can cut back a bit on retirement savings given how much your house will be worth. I am pretty frugal, but if your house is going to sell for $1.7M+ in today’s dollars you can probably have less of a cash nest egg than most.
Back of the napkin math… If you’re making $280k gross, your taxes, health insurance premiums, and retirement savings are coming out of that, right? And then out of whatever you take home ($175K?), you’re paying $60K toward daycare and $50K toward renovations. So… your budget for your bills and everyday expenses for a family of 5 is around $5400 per month? That’s obviously tight.
You’re playing the long game. You’re staying out of credit card debt, saving for retirement, investing in your home. One day soon, the renovations will be over, and the kids will be in school. You’ll have a great home for your family and lots of money to split between savings, nicer purchases, and travel.
As others have pointed out, you never know what others’ financial situation is. I know people with family help, and I know people with high HHIs who are in a lot of debt and have almost no retirement savings.
Take-home is going to be more like $140K in this scenario.
Exactly. That is a low income for 5 people.
I wasn’t suggesting that $280k is a low income, even for 5 people. OP and her husband are making long-term financial decisions–like saving for retirement and renovating their home–that require them to sacrifice meals out and vacations now. Even the decision to put 3 kids in daycare might be a financial break-even in the short term, but it’s financially better in the long run not to have one parent (usually the mom) leave the workforce.
When the kids are in school and the home renovation is done, they’ll have $110K more per year, or $9166 per month, in additional discretionary income! If my original back-of-the-napkin math is close, that would bring them close to $15K per month, which is more than enough to get some takeout, purchase the kids’ clothes and shoes at Target and Old Navy, and take an annual vacation.
lol it’s like 800% of FPL. You guys are all living in lala land.
Same here. Except that we need a $200K renovation and we can’t pay cash for it because college tuition. And now I’m worried about the job market and our retirement portfolio. We have worked and scrimped and saved for decades and we will never have a normal middle-class life with things like furniture in every room of the house.
Hi, I was you 7 years ago. (Although we did take inexpensive vacations like renting a cabin at a state park.
you can find cheap fun!) My kids are all now in elementary or middle school and even with before and after care and summer camps, it is way cheaper than daycare years. You’ll get there!
This! You’re sooooo close. My youngest started Kindergarten this year and even with aftercare and activities, it doesn’t come close to touching our $50k daycare bill for three kids.
This actually doesn’t seem that bad–you have three kids in day care and are going to pay for a renovation in cash?!? Once you’re done saving for the reno you will have money coming out your ears.
Can one or both of you increase your income? If you’re in a VHCOL, you may get more bang for your buck focusing on top line rather than bottom.
Completely agree.
I am simultaneously sympathizing with your feeling of “I expected to have more financial stability with this income” and losing my mind over someone with your amount of money and privilege complaining about this. $200K home renovation?! I live in a two bedroom apartment with my husband and child and have been saving for a down payment for the past 5 years and while I have a lot more money in the bank home prices are rising faster than I can save. Which goes back to your original point of “I thought I’d be able to afford more at this level of income/career” but we’re on completely different planets about it.
I think the complaint is about how she feels that $280K is a high enough income that she should be able to have the luxury home reno without having to make any sacrifices to pay for it. Which is not realistic given the cost of living, especially with kids in day care, but is also understandable because you would expect that being in the top 7% of HHI or whatever it is would enable you to live a pretty fancy lifestyle.
OP here. Even this comment- the luxury home reno. Despite being 200k all in, it’s not. Here’s the basic breakdown:
8k for lead paint mitigation for peeling paint on our back porch
50k for two bathrooms. Both pretty small, middle of the road finishes and fixtures
130k for kitchen, dining room, and living room. Astronomical cost, right? Yet that gives us middle of the road finishes and appliances, truly nothing fancy. No Wolf ranges or expensive tiles here
12k to paint the upstairs room (again, lead paint mitigation) and install a mini split. That’s the room the twins share and our HVAC system didn’t reach it to heat or cool it
New bathrooms or just new fixtures? New living room, new kitchen or just refinished floors and ceilings? Frankly, I’d just leave it as is if it works, until the kids are done with (or off to) college.
A little loosening of the purse strings can go a long way.
Anything above builder-grade is pretty fancy. There are homes selling for $700K+ in our LCOL area that have builder-grade kitchens and bathrooms.
I don’t think your area is LCOL if a basic house is $700k+…. That’s medium bordering on high cost of living to me.
I’m the poster from above with the 280k and two kids who thinks you’re doing amazing. You certainly don’t need this internet stranger to do so, but I want to validate your choices. Lead paint and heating/cooling are simply non-negotiable with kids. And for everything else, in high-cost areas, contractors are expensive, and materials are getting more expensive! And I’ll validate “doing it all at once” because renovations are THE WORST and it’s better to get it done–and done right–than dragging it out for years while you’re trying to work full time (not be a general contractor!) and raise three kids. I don’t think you’re luxurious to want to update to middle-of-the-road finishes. Good for you for budgeting and cash flowing this renovation and for updating your home for its long term maintenance and your long term comfort. Rather than feel resentful about what other people can seemingly afford, I think you could feel very proud of your hard work to do all this.
Some tips from the other side (being when the kids are out of daycare!):
I put together a household net worth spreadsheet in 2012, when I had a baby in daycare and felt like we were poor despite having a HHI of >$200k. I updated it somewhere between monthly and quarterly over the years because it felt like the money just came and went but by looking at the net worth, I could see our student loans going down, our home equity going up, our retirement portfolios going up, etc even though my checking account balance remained low.
I think another helpful tactic was to bucket out a savings account specific to life’s fun things: vacation, clothes, etc. Even if it’s small, having a little pile of squirreled away money for manicures, a long weekend vacation, etc. was really helpful.
FWIW, my kids are now past daycare age and things are still expensive. But DH and I are 13 years further into our careers and making more money.
The thing that’s done us in is that we aren’t making more money. My husband is making the same amount in real dollars that he made in 2003. My income has increased thanks to a couple of promotions but there isn’t anywhere else for me to go. Our “merit increases” no longer even keep pace with inflation.
Merit increases have basically never kept pace with inflation in my industry. The only way to earn more in real dollars is to get a promotion or move to a new organization.
Wow, ouch. DH has been with the same company since 2010 and gotten 2-3% raise per year, plus one promotion and annual bonuses.
I’ve moved jobs a few times so my salary has definitely increased-I made 90k in 2012, 150k in 2015, and have been sort of part time 2016-present making 75k-130k depending.
The comments about choosing to terminate a twin pregnancy are total d!ck comments and I’m appalled.
BUT, yes house renos that aren’t safety related are always a luxury. There’s nothing wrong with kids sharing a room or a suboptimal kitchen layout or outdated fixtures or drafty single pane windows. Lots and lots of people live that way! Or wait until they can more comfortably afford upgrades.
We DIY redid our very small 70s kitchen a few years ago (brown appliances, yellow and brown tile floor, yellow Formica countertop) after living with it for a decade. Our boys share a room. We have window ACs (in bedrooms only) in the swampy, humid mid Atlantic. Our bathrooms are straight out of the 1950s (pink tile!). Knob and tube wiring still.
OP here and yeah honestly I feel kind of sorry for those people. My twins are an incredible lot and I’d much rather be broke than not have them! They do share a bedroom and always will. Your comment is helpful to bring me back to earth though- I live in a wealthy area where sooo many people have gorgeous new homes. Plenty of people don’t though, but sometimes I forget that.
Unlike others, I support your vent because I was you a few years ago, even down to the 1950s split level! I was deeply frugal for years to make reasonable long-term choices. Now that I am on the other side of my goals, I am thrilled that I made that choice. I’m glad that I’m not paying 7% interest on a house with an elevated purchase price. I like that our cars are fully paid for. I’m glad I paid for childcare, because my husband and I both advance our careers and our household income is even higher than before.
I also embrace that I made my choices. I love having children. Good for me! My childfree friends can travel cheaper and easier than me. Good for them! You chose to renovate your house instead of travel. That’s fine! Other people choose to live in crappier places and travel a lot. Also fine! Others get in a lot of debt to do both. That’s their business!
My suggestions are to know your end date and find frugal ways to make life more luxurious right now. There are frugal ways to enjoy a family vacation and have fun. You can treat the family to a large cheese pizza from Pizza Hut on Fridays.
I don’t mean this nearly as snarky and mean as it’s going to sound, but do you think your children will have fond memories of your home renovation, or would they more likely have fond memories of family vacations?
I was going to say something like this too, although I also didn’t want to sound snarky. There’s a lot of research that shows spending on experiences generally has more value than spending on stuff.
Considering they’re two babies and one 3 year old- yeah, I think they’ll prefer a kitchen that doesn’t have a literal hole in the wall (1950s ventilation!) over a vacation right now.
OP – you are also in the thick of it and i’m guessing your lack of sleep over the past 3 years also doesn’t help with your attitude. you have 3 kids 3 and under – that is hard! diapers and formula are expensive, you likely took maternity leave (or i hope you did) that may or may not have been paid. i think you’re doing a great job playing the long game. your just in a tough and exhausting stage of life and having money to throw at things probably sounds nice. can you find a way to put aside some money for a date night? or a pedicure? or something to give yourself a little bit of a break. Or take PTO while the kids are at daycare – you’re already paying for that! and have a day date or a day of self care or something.
Wow. You complain about lack of vacations and when I suggest giving consideration to maybe prioritizing vacations, you snap back. I’m out. Enjoy your misery.
This is true, but you spend 95% of the year in your house, so if a renovation addresses big pain points (eg, kitchen is a bottleneck and parent ends up yelling at everyone while making dinner each night) or creates better spaces for memories (eg, finishing the basement so it becomes a great family and friend hangout), that makes more sense than 2-3 big vacations to me.
Fair, although $200k buys a lot more than 2-3 vacations (even for me, and I’m spending way more on vacations than average!). I was thinking more along the lines of a $3-5k vacation every year, which isn’t super luxe but allows for something nicer than something like camping in a state park.
True, I’d forgotten the amount we were talking about, lol. Overall I agree with the poster below that this is a situation where OP can’t have it all just now — over the course of your life you can probably cumulatively have all these things you are hoping for, but not all at the same time and not with three babies.
The kids are babies and toddlers! They won’t even remember any vacation they take right now. Plus, vacationing with toddlers isn’t fun for parents–it’s more “parenting in another location” than taking a real vacation. There will be plenty of time and money for vacations when the kid gets older.
Renovations are a luxury, but they’re not just “stuff.” Done well, they make the space you spend the most time in more comfortable, inviting, relaxing, and workable. In 2020, my husband and I spent $20K (not $200K, but our HHI was only $105K at the time) on a kitchen reno. My husband is SO much happier cooking in our kitchen and makes fantastic meals that would not have been possible before. And the changes we made allow us all to be together while DH cooks, I do some chores and/or admin stuff on my laptop, and DS does his homework. Our kid will grow up with happy memories of us just spending time together in the evenings and then sitting down to family meals together. I think that will have more of an impact than a single vacation would have.
I totally get not wanting to travel with babies and toddlers, but then why are you complaining about not being able to afford vacations!? People are answering your question and your responses are weirdly hostile.
I sympathize that it’s frustrating to see such a high salary on paper but feel like you’re not living the lifestyle you picture at this number. But frankly you want it *all*: expensive area, three kids, renovating at least four rooms in your house, regularly dining out as a family, saving a lot each year with no debt, and going on vacations. I make a bit more than you and I don’t expect to afford all of this. Your third kid isn’t going anywhere so if you’re unhappy with your lifestyle the only answers are moving to a lower COL area or finding a different job.
+1
(although it sounds like the renovation savings is almost done; and daycare ends someday – and often what you’re paying for living in such an expensive area is good public schools for “free”, so if something like eg. taking family trips to cool places when they’re teens is important to you, that could still happen in your current neighborhood and job.)
You sound sort of like my husband. He does not believe in taking out loans for auto purchases, college tuition, or home renovations, so we have to save up or cash flow everything. He also has extreme anxiety about elder care costs so we max retirement and he is always wanting to save even more. Then he wonders how everyone else has a boat and nice cars and home renovations. It’s because they are taking out loans to buy those things and/or not maxing retirement.
We have 3 kids via unexpected twins with zero fertility interventions or family history when we were trying for our second. I’m super pro-choice but I didn’t feel right about terminating a wanted pregnancy because it was two babies instead of one. So I guess it was a choice but DH and I both grew up in families of two kids and all our friends had two kids so we were deeply unprepared for the reality of 3 kids.
It’s more than 50% more expensive even though it’s just 50% more kids than two kids. That’s because you can use less hand me downs, the cars that work are less, and vacation booking is a massive pain.
Basically, it doesn’t feel like enough money and it probably won’t. Our house needs updating, our retirement is underfunded and our cars are 5 and 7 years old. We vacationed twice last year and visited family both times. It’s a hard lesson in not being able to have it all even when you work hard and make a lot of money. We try to focus on renos that keep the house functional, experiences with the kids and accepting that life is just a lot different than we expected. It does get easier when they are older and it’s easier for one parent to handle all 3 and they develop their own little personalities. Hang in there.
Not just financially, but all of my friends with 3 kids found 2–>3 to be a major transition (More kids than adults!) and twins must make it even harder. Just as encouragement, pretty much everyone says it gets easier when at least one hits kindergarten – you will get through this!
“I’m couponing at BJs while people who make far less than us are vacationing twice a year and live in nicer homes. How?!“
Honestly you probably dont want to know. I live in a nice suburb. The kind with houses from the fifties in half acre plots. My mil with collect her late husband’s city job pension for the rest of her life at more than two thirds of your income. He was a city college professor who never worked a 40 hour week. My kid’s buddy from school’s dad had a dad with a car dealership. They just don’t have to work. My dad’s buddy sold his appliance store and bought…a private jet. A pretty girl from my school sells cars; she made 350k last year. There is just so much money in this world that a couple of decent professional jobs is just…not that much money.
I hear you. We’re at $350k HHI that’s my income and his small pension (he’s not working). No kids yet.
He’s very frugal. He’s also never been a homeowner before. He’s opposed to making home repairs that are necessary in the longterm but not like, the roof is currently caving in kind of necessary. I refuse to wait until it’s an emergency. I’ve finally gotten him to agree to at least entertain quotes from contractors — he’s the one who’s home so I need his cooperation even though I’ll be the one paying — and I thought he was going to faint when we started getting estimates. Another reason to not put stuff off until it’s an emergency – when your house was built in 1960 it’s going to need repairs and unsexy, expensive updates like a new electrical panel and updating all the outlets. We need to chip away at that stuff diligently over time so we don’t get hit with six figures all at once. Getting him to understand that has been like pulling teeth.
Has anyone had a sibling object to a parent going into assisted living because it seems to reduce their inheritance? Assisted living is $$$. Dad can afford it. But that means that Dad’s sizeable funds from a life time of living frugally and driving used cars and having ONE vacation will be depleted bit by bit and while he needs some daily oversight and cooking, shows no signs of being unhealthy for his age or dying soon. We get along but he doesn’t want to live with me (busy household with teens and a dog who is LOUD) but could be near by in my city. Sibling hates him for outliving mom, not indulging her every whim, and not understanding that she needs constant cash infusions (which were hidden from him). It’s not sibling’s call (he is of sound mind but defers to the kid in finance who doesn’t ask him for $) but family is a fraught dynamic that there is. I escape from.
Yes. Parent did it anyway. Lived and lived well for several more years. Siblings do not talk as much anymore.
What happened after your parent passed? Did the sibling fight for every cent left over and demand any sort of accounting of funds? Kind of pre-dreading dealing with his estate (but it will be easy if there are actually no funds left to inherit).
I guess I’d prepare for that likelihood. This will probably be made easier if you help him move now, dissolve the parents’ household, and be forced to go through all possessions and papers while Dad can still help sort through them. In that process you can get things streamlined for easier accounting later.
I’m sorry.
That is insane. It’s his money and he’s entitled to live on it how he chooses as long as he’s not asking his children for support.
+1 good Lord that’s what the money is there for.
No. My dad never made more than $55K and retired early, but he was frugal and a saver, and all three of my siblings and I agreed that if there was ever a time to spend Dad’s money, it was for assisted living. (I sense you probably agree!). We didn’t care at all about our inheritance, just that Dad was comfortable and well cared for. He died after about 14 months ($175K?). I was glad that we never fought about that aspect, so hugs to you for facing this question with a difficult sib. I will say that pushing in care that is less than full time will be much cheaper than assisted living. (Ours was dementia care, so more along the lines of $11K per month vs $4-5K for “regular” assisted living.) LCOL area, of course. HCOL or VHCOL will be much more.
I feel that coordinating care that right now is just 3 meals a day, shopping, meds, and medical appointments is a ballet that is a lot to orchestrate, especially if you pay on the books. The mental burden and emotional labor is not insignificant IF it all works as planned (and it may not). Throw in weather or concerns re a caregiver (or parent rejecting various caregivers), and you are basically doing it all yourself if you are the local child. As parent ages / declines, the need for a day sitter and a night sitter goes up, as does the wage/hour complexity. IDK how people do it if they hire out those tasks vs rely on family. It’s just a LOT to manage, and I survived having 2 in diapers while working FT. Elders are somehow making me happy to find pleasant assisted living even though I still do the driving to local medical appointments, especially when we have a new provider (the forms, the FORMS, then you have to get an app . . .). Taxes, required minimum distributions, etc.
Your sibling sounds awful. No advice, just sympathy that you have to deal with that.
I have one sibling who is going to be this way when that time comes, and the rest of us have already discussed that we will not give her complaints oxygen. Parents have estate plans in place anyhow; if she wants to live her life bitter that she doesn’t get to call dibs on their savings, that’s her problem.
Is there any way to increase your mental bandwidth? All day long, I am dealing with my own work. Supervising my team at work. Raising kids. Staying involved in their activities and supporting them. At the end of the day, my brain is just fried. Part of this is a personality thing; I’m pretty detail-oriented.
I have a seasonal side hustle that is definitely not an income generator; it’s a hobby that I love doing and get a little bit of reimbursement for. I know I could be doing more to make it profitable and a legitimate business. But I can’t seem to get my butt in gear to actually do it. People in my life are pushing me to do more, that I have a real talent for it. And I do. But damn, I am mentally drained and can’t find it within myself to take on even more responsibility, even if I technically have the time. And then I feel really crappy about myself and wonder when I lost my spark and capacity to tackle anything I care about! I won’t even blame it on mom life. It’s ALL of life! My full-time job’s a bigger drain than my kids, by a long shot.
I don’t know, I’ve been feeling like I need to turn in my high-achiever badge because I don’t feel like I am anymore. I am doing well at work but I’m not killing it by any means. Am I even making sense? Have any of you felt this way?
I hate this idea that all our hobbies need to be monetized. The term “side hustle” needs to die.
Also, when people in my life (family, friends, coworkers, whoever) start to suggest I monetize my hobby, I shut it down hard and fast (but politely, of course). You don’t actually have to take their suggestions.
I probably did it to myself. I technically did “start a business” because I wanted to do more of it. However, I have seen how difficult it is to actually turn a profit, especially without doing it full time, and how many things that come along with it that I don’t necessarily want to do. Or at least not right now.
Your post started with wanting to increase your mental bandwidth so you could make yourself do even more on top of the life that is already maxing out your emotional and mental capacity.
Your post ended with recognizing that you have been wearing “high achiever” as if it’s a merit badge earned in Girl Scouts.
Of the two, I’d definitely suggest rethinking the whole idea about achieving even more being the goal.
Side hustles are for SAHMs who homeschool their kids and need to add $500 to the family budget. Let it go, enjoy what you do as a hobby only and it will increase your mental capacity.
Ha yes this.
or salary employees who want a backup income stream in case of layoffs…
but OP, it sounds like you’re trying to do too much. It’s ok to turn in your high achiever badge, or at least put it in a box to take back out later when you have more bandwidth. I’ve basically decided to lean out at work til my kids start leaving for college…I don’t have enough mental bandwidth for both intense work and intense parenting while still leaving space for me to enjoy my life. I’m optimizing for enjoyment, not achievement in this stage.
Yeah, no. I’ve seen too many fresh grads get this mindset that they need to have a “backup plan” whether that’s a side hustle or certifications that they work on during their off hours. What happens? They get overcommitted, underperform on the main job, and get laid off!
Exactly this. Channel that energy into being good at your actual job and you’ll have a lot less to worry about.
I tutored as a side hustle for a while.
Thing is, not all side hustles are created equal. It should not be a struggle to make them profitable. You should be able to scale to your life. If neither of those things are true, you’re literally better off doing something like medical transcription to earn extra money, or just throwing in the towel and accepting that most hobbies don’t pay you.
If you want to be a high achiever you can’t have kids.
That’s offensive.
I have kids and I don’t think a woman can really maintain a hard-charging career with kids unless she has a ton of paid help. I made a lot of little decisions along the way that were unavoidable because I had family obligations and no paid help, and I can see now how they held me back. That article I could have written, that project I could have taken over…
It’s sadly true. Or you handle it like men used to where your spouse does 100% of the child rearing and homemaking.
This is all or nothing thinking. Sometimes I question why I still read this site. So many people are semi-hysterical. Of course moms can still be high achievers. Yes, you make compromises and need support. You won’t always be on your A game but it’s also called being realistic.
Why do you need to do more on this hobby? IME, turning a hobby into a job (even a little job) kills the joy. So now you have more responsibility AND the rejuvenating effects of that hobby are reduced. No good.
To your last paragraph, I have definitely had the same feeling. I still am high achieving by lots of measures, but I don’t feel like the person I once was in school and the early parts of my career. I am so much happier on balance, though. I try to remind myself that this was the point of working so hard, and remind myself not to look at the high achieving times through rose colored glasses. It’s not sustainable for me to work 60+ hour weeks for the rest of my life. I did it for a while, it was helpful, I had the shiny sense of accomplishment, but I was screaming internally much of the time.
I have a serious hobby that once upon a time was my job. To go back to getting paid I’d have to give up a lot of choice and also give up social connections that I’ve gained through the hobby route, which are valuable to me. Especially after self-employment taxes, I wouldn’t earn enough to make those sacrifices worthwhile.
I’m definitely trying to be mindful of not killing the joy I get from doing the hobby. I’m not there yet, but I might be if I try to do more.
It’s hard for me to keep up with my job and family life. I used to have a lucrative side hustle but I stopped after having my second kid. There is only so much time and energy.
It’s the energy part that’s hard to explain. IDK, I feel like I know so many people who just do everything. Working full time. Parenting. Time-consuming volunteer stuff. And I just feel bad that I don’t have it in me anymore.
I think they all don’t really work all the hours when they are ostensibly working, like they are sending PTA e-mails for half the day, AND they have a ton of hired help like a house cleaner and a driving nanny and a lawn care service.
I personally don’t know these people. Most moms who volunteer or work side jobs are not employed full-time and have a partner support them.
i know people like this and as a former high achiever (i was a straight A student, have 2 ivy league degrees and was always told i should have a “big” job), i sometimes feel bad about myself, but am generally happy that i stepped off the hamster wheel (until I spend time with my dad who means well, but always asks me if i plan on doing anything else with my job). some people just need a lot less sleep and a lot less downtime than i do, but that is not me.
OP here, and yeah, this. My mom has been the Energizer bunny her entire life, so I was raised with that as a model. We were raised to value hard work and sacrifice. My sister also works full time and has a successful hobby job on the side. My peers at work are doing their day jobs (which are even harder than mine, tbh) plus coaching their kids’ travel softball teams and all this other stuff. They admit to not sleeping or relaxing much, and that is simply not an option for me if I want to stay sane. But it is hard to not compare.
OP, if you’re going to compare, I’d encourage you to compare the whole picture and not just part of it. for example, you’re comparing your mom’s activity level to yours, and stopping there, then feeling bad or guilty about yourself. Also compare her energy level to yours, and (especially) her ENJOYMENT level to yours. I’m guessing that if she’s an Energizer Bunny, she really enjoys going and doing. It makes her feel good. She far prefers it to “sitting around” (which she probably hates).
I, not being an energizer bunny, don’t enjoy going and doing at that level. I don’t get satisfaction and energy from it. If given the choice, I’m never, ever going to choose a busy calendar packed with all the things. Because I don’t like living that way. My energizer bunny friends, on the other hand, will. They would hate my life. I would hate theirs.
I’m an only child so I know I’m not your sister, but solidarity from someone else with an Energizer Bunny mom. I’m 39 and she’s 74 and she has more energy than me. I don’t understand how it’s possible.
My best friend and I discuss this a lot. I think some people are high energy people and some people are low energy people. I have an acquaintance who has four kids, a full time job with a ton of work travel, and she does all the volunteering and PTO stuff plus has a very robust social life. High energy person. My 74 year old mom is technically retired but took on a new full time job for fun (my parents don’t need the money at all), does a lot of volunteering and has a seemingly endless appetite for playing with my first grader. High energy person. My bff and I are low energy people. I have one kid, she has two, they’re not that little anymore and we have relatively easy jobs and we are both exhausted and don’t really do anything except work and parent and lie on the couch and talk about how exhausted we are. I don’t think there’s a way for a low energy person to become a high energy person. I wish, though!
I’ve seen it happen but usually only when there was a medical component (and something like a deficiency that was easy to address).
Turn in your high-achiever badge. It’s a useless badge. Let that need to be considered a “high achiever” go — it’s a bridge to nowhere.
Right now, let your hobby be your hobby, no more and no less.
I ordered, but am looking for a summer washable dress that’s not too long and appropriate for a more business formal environment. I’d like to spend under $250. Recommendations? Short sleeve or sleeveless is find.
I’m 5’4” but wear regular, not petite and so many of the dresses this year seem so long. I’m all about tailoring so I don’t mind getting things shortened, but things are just so long or so short this year. Why did knee length go out of style?
To clarify, I meant I ordered the featured sweater.
I’m 5’4” and used to wear regular dresses but now wear petite sizes because the regular dresses are too long on me.
Theory has a nice shirtdress that would fit your specs, but it’s nearly double your budget. I think knee-length is coming back, so it’s available from high-end labels now and will trickle down in a few months. I know that’s not helpful now.
does anyone have any feedback on dresses and clothes from Saint and Sofia? i’m falling hard for the styles on instagram, but wanted to know about quality. thanks!
About like the Gap or Ann Taylor. Cute but not forever stuff.
Good quality. Surprisingly good for the price.
Not impressed by Saint and Sofia. I ordered a belt from them after its ad was following me everywhere online. The “leather” is super thin and reminds me of the leather equivalent of plywood rather than solid wood.
The metal hardware is lightweight and cheap feeling (the back of the buckle concaves inward to save on material)
To top it off, they still send me frequent emails despite me clicking “unsubscribe” every time.
OMG take the money and run. Statements like this make me realize that federal employees live on another planet.
How so? By being dedicated to our jobs and the public we serve?
You guys act like you’re the only people in the country serving the public.
We had a whole thread about this and we don’t think that. But we also know they most people saying quit while you’re ahead are people who don’t work in public service and don’t get it
There are reports of people signing up for the deferred resignation and 1) being required to continue working or 2) not actually getting the money. Also, if you’ve been at the job a while, you might be entitled to more money if you let them RIF you. There’s a website called Government Employees Benefits, something like that, that has a calculator to figure it out.
Of course, you can’t count on this admin to follow the law, but that’s a different issue.
Folks who take “the fork” are also signing away rehire preference they’d get if they were RIF’d.
There was and in some cases still is a ton of uncertainty as to how it would work with things like relocation incentives, fellowships with service obligations and a few other pretty common cases. The only way the “fork” offer is an obvious yes is if the employee was thinking about or planning on retiring in this FY anyway.
All the posts here about separate finances for married couples, separate meals, parents paying for adult kids’ houses, and adult children wanting their parents to preserve their inheritance seem to me to be symptoms of the total breakdown of American society. The defining characteristic of American society used to be that the nuclear family was the primary economic and social unit. Within the nuclear family resources were pooled to advance the good of the unit, and family dinner was a thing. The married couple was expected to save for its own retirement and not to demand support from adult children, but grown children were also not entitled to demand support from their parents. Now it’s an individualistic free-for-all–I am entitled to do whatever I want and everyone else is also obligated to pay for my stuff and bend to my wishes. No wonder we elected the current regime.
Well, in many parts of the world family beyond the nuclear family is important. I can see your point about family dinner, but in most cultures parents and kids do have some financial responsibility for each other beyond the 18 years. That has pros and cons.
+1. You could easily say that the focus on the nuclear family is a breakdown of the commons/the village that matters elsewhere or mattered in previous centuries.
But it would probably be more prudent not to generalize from clickbaity special cases that the whole system is doomed.
Some states have filial support laws, believe it or not. Though I think it has only been recently enforced in Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania has had this law on the books for a long time, but for the most part, it was only rarely enforced. In my small PA practice, we are starting to see nursing homes coming after whichever family member had the misfortune of having to sign in their family members or using the filial support law to come after kids.
Society has absolutely become more selfish in every way.
I think you’re missing the important factor of rising income inequality, how younger generations are no longer better off than the ones that came before them, and how nobody can afford anything anymore. But I agree, this move towards individualism is infuriating and heartbreaking to watch and is going to have massive societal consequences.
I think it’s the individualism that’s caused income inequality.
I think it’s a chicken/egg situation. People become a lot more selfish when they see opportunities dwindling.
I agree with this. We have became a much more consumeristic society in the last couple generations, focused on stuff and enjoyment and how to maximize fun and comfort in our own lives. This leads to increased spending, and then increased production of goods and places to spend money, and then increased costs, etc. Dual-income families led to more disposable income, which fed the capitalist machine, and now that has become the new “standard” around which pricing has settled.
I’d say that in the 1960s and earlier, families focused on saving for the future and for their kids/relatives (it was a point of pride to leave an inheritance, even if it meant scrimping yourself). Now people are in a spending arms race.
I think America has always tended more towards individualism than other cultures. Japan is always brought up as an example on the extreme other end. The myth of the self-made man, etc. etc. This is just a natural extension of that, taken to excess (which is another thing Americans like).
You guys are really obsessed with joint finances, it’s so weird to me.
Lol I totally agree!
Tbh, I do wonder why people get married at all if they plan to continue separate finances. I thought the whole point of marriage was a social and economic union, and you can get the social part without marriage these days.
Same
Same.
I think your reasons for marriage are yours, and other people have others. Neither is better or worse, just different.
As weird as two spouses nickel and dimeing every purchase?
I don’t agree with your view of the past, at least in my own family history. Large extended families lived in the same geographic area, and the extended family helped one another. It was (and in my family still is) normal to house and care for elderly relatives. Normal for healthy elders to help with childcare. Normal for cousins to play with each other. People also lived in the same place for a long time, and had enduring relationships with neighbors. Kids ran free through the neighborhood, but could be reprimanded by parents from other families when they misbehaved.
Yeah what’s weird to me is people being ok with uproootinh their lives away from family and then being annoyed at having to try to manage elder care from a distance
Uh, some of us moved because we couldn’t afford/find jobs in our hometowns or anywhere close to them.
It’s just not realistic for people to live in whatever small town they came from for the rest of their lives.
It really depends on your family culture, where you were raised and how high you aim with your education. Both DH & I are the children of academics, so we were raised in small Midwest college towns. There are no professional job opportunities to speak of in our hometowns and the universities aren’t especially selective, so it was completely expected by all four of our parents that we’d move far away to attend more selective colleges and then settle in a bigger city with more jobs. They had in turn moved away from their parents for education job opportunities. I can see how its different if multiple generations of family live in one place and you’re the first to move away. But that’s not the reality for me or a lot of the people I knew in college and grad school. My high school classmates on the other hand mostly went to either the State U in my hometown or the flagship campus a couple of hours away and settled permanently in the state. But that sort of thing is unusual for people who attend Ivies or similar colleges, IME.
+1. When my mom describes her extended family, she talks about how her grandmother provided childcare while her mom went to work, and how her cousin moved in with her grandmother when her parents were having a hard time. Even my grandfather, who grew up in an orphanage, spent summers on the farm with his aunt.
My dad’s mom grew up in a “nuclear” family, but mainly because all the relatives avoided their house because her dad and older brother were alcoholics. She eloped with my grandfather as soon as she could to escape her home life–at 17, and likely pregnant.
Yes, baby boomers experienced massive success and dragged the ladder up behind them. I can’t afford to live near my family. I can’t afford a house. I’m staring down sandwich generation costs on less money than my parents made.
Huh. Really weird take. Kinda seems like an awkward attempt to blame trump on libruls who hate the Nucular Family ™. I thought you were going to attribute this malaise to the nuclear family and lack of extended family involvement, which is common in many cultures.
Your argument really just doesn’t make sense. I fail to see how a nuclear family prevents grown children from demanding or needing support, or ensured that parents saved for their retirement. I do not see any broader social movement that encourages parents to demand support from their kids, but I certainly do so parents providing more support to kids in the past to keep them on a good footing or give them a leg up. But I fail to see how that connects with the purported demise of the nuclear family.
You’ll be pleased to know that Project 2025 has a plan to correct this. See the recent article in The Atlantic.
Why are people so nasty today?
Somebody brought up Bernie Sanders, which always riles up contempt for the unsuccessful people who value economic security and social safety nets over an equal opportunity version of a sink or swim meritocracy.
100%
I think it’s one angry person who keeps commenting.
It’s rarely just one person. It’s a universal mood and we have the regular percentage here.
Are you new here? There are a couple of nasty people every day.
Can we go at least three days without commenters making some rude personal response to a perfectly reasonable post? Can we remember that the posters commenting here are people too, and some of this stuff is really hurtful?
Already today we have someone calling a poster a whiny martyr for asking about taking a federal buyout, and other people basically saying a poster should have thought about aborting some of their kids before posting about the cost of living. Sure, the internet is a cesspool and that’s part of the contract when you post online but why does it have to be? Can we not have one nice thing?
If you’re one of the people making these kinds of “tough love” comments, can you just take a moment to consider whether your comment is helpful or necessary or if it’s just judgmental?
Well said. People are spicy today. (Or maybe all those nasty posts are from the same troll.)
They aren’t! I’m over the handwringing about taking severance but did not suggest anyone get an abortion to avoid the expense of twins. Hope that helps!
A nasty comment is a nasty comment. Hope that helps!
Some commenters mistake constructive feedback for nasty, so there’s that, too.
Cavalierly telling someone they should end their child’s life so they can afford a vacation is the epitome of today’s throw-away culture mentality
omg, no one said “abort your kids to afford more vacations” or even suggested that having more kids and a tighter budget is a bad choice. People are just saying that it’s unreasonable to expect to afford home renovations and nice vacations and robust retirement savings if you choose to have three kids in a HCOL area. It’s math! You can’t have everything all at once.
It’s the fact that keeping both twins in a pregnancy is framed as a “choice” that is the issue. This is the slippery slope the anti-abortion folk warn about. People are treated as disposable if they don’t serve an end game.
I agree with the rest of it that you can’t have it all.
As probably the only person reading today who has been in that situation and made the choice to terminate, you have NO idea how complex a decision it was and what a bullet I dodged healthwise, as became evident in a later pregnancy. It wasn’t treating twins as “disposable.” I don’t care about changing your mind, but if anyone else is ever in my position, just know that it is your choice and yours alone.
It’s not “treating people as disposable” to say you can choose to terminate a multiples pregnancy. It isn’t the choice I would make personally (at least I don’t think it is, I haven’t been in the situation), and it’s not the choice OP made, which is completely valid. But it is a choice. It’s also a choice when you choose to try for a second kid knowing it could be 2 and 3 at the same time. I know several one-and-done parents for whom this was part of the reason they chose not to try for a second child. The point is that unless you were raped and don’t have abortion access, which is not OP’s situation, there’s choice involved and you have to own your choices and the role they play in your current situation.
Selective abortion in a twin pregnancy very often results in the loss of both twins. It is a harrowing decision if one is healthy and one is not – do you risk losing the wanted healthy baby to kindly end the life of the unhealthy one?
Seeing it discussed so cavalierly here is disturbing.
It’s not just today. I posted a personal situation a while ago and got absolutely roasted, leaving me in tears. I should have known better than to come online for some anonymous support – at least online here.
Yeah, this has happened to be multiple times on this forum. I don’t post under a handle anymore. People have long memories here. Some days idk why I keep coming back but it’s been 16 years so I guess it sort of feels like home?
Yup – used to post under a handle and stopped that real quick when the abusive comments started piling up. SO many familiar names are long gone here.
Same here. I posted asking for a referral for a personal service in my area and got brutally criticized for acknowledging that I needed help with something? And wanted to hire someone good to provide it? Ugh.
I also used to post here under a name and have been anonymous for about two years now, because it almost felt like some commenters had a spreadsheet going where they tracked anything personal any of us said about ourselves…
It’s definitely not just today. Last week someone asked about experiences from “trailing spouses” and this was the first comment: “no offense but if you’re asking this question before you’ve even moved i’d worry about the stability of the marriage anyway”
This is from the same post: “if you’re going to just be bitter and resentful that you were taken from your natural habitat then of course it won’t go well.”
To me, all those commenters are angry, small people for whom being a jerk on the internet makes them feel bigger. Rather than just scrolling, it makes them feel good to be a jerk to someone who is vulnerable and asking for help.
Guess what, nasty commenters – what you put out into the world comes back to you threefold. Good luck with that karma.
Since the question came up about N95s for kids and small faces yesterday, here are my recommendations:
N95 Auras fits most faces, but might be too loose on smaller faces.
I’ve heard good things about Zimi masks for smaller faces, but haven’t looked into sourcing.
For my kid, we have KF94s, the Korean almost-N95-equivalent. We buy from behealthyusa.net. The KF94 masks are thinner and more “paper-y” than Auras, but so far we are still Novids and my kid likes his masks and gets a good fit.
– POSH KIDS KF94 Small Mask. Those come in all kinds of patterns and colors, we love the dinos and dragons.
– BLUNA FACEFIT KF94 Small / White (Kids) × 1
– BOTN KF94 Small / Black × 1
Thank you for these recommendations!
I haven’t kept up with what the kids in my life are wearing. I’ve been using CAN99s on my smaller face. The N95 Auras with the blue rubber straps are too loose around my chin (I also just hate rubber straps since they break sometimes). My husband wears Benehal which just feel suspiciously spacious and comfy to me on my smaller face; maybe they’re a good pick for a long term wear mask for larger faces.
I hate the Auras with a blue rubber strap and will now only buy the version with the white fabric elastic straps which are much sturdier.
I rewear and air out my Auras until they either look grimy, the nose wire is shot or the elastics are too loose. The blue rubber straps were getting caught in my curly/wavy hair too often and snapped after just a few uses.
I wish 3M would make the Auras in other colors (at least navy or black).
Has anyone had joint pain at the base of the thumb that eventually went away on its own or did it get progressively worse? I’ve had intermittent mild pain since late December. The pain isn’t intolerable so I haven’t made an appointment. I’m just not sure what could be causing the issue. Age, weight lifting or something else.
I did, and I could pinpoint it to carrying around a too-heavy insulated mug for long periods of time. My left thumb was bearing the weight. When I stopped, so did the aggravation, but it took a few months.
Is it only when you bend your hand downward in a certain angle? Look up Mommy thumb or de Quervain’s thumb. My sister and I have both had this. My sister’s was not from lifting a baby (no kids, never worked in infant/child care), but was quite bad. The steroid shots weren’t enough for her and she had to have surgery. When I started to notice mine (right after I had my kid), I went immediately to get the steroid shot and didn’t have any issues after because I caught it quick enough. I’d get it checked out ASAP. Also, I went to a ortho that emphasized that he specialized in hands/upper extremities.
Hand specialists are great.
Second this! My de Quervain’s is now chronic due to not taking it seriously enough in the beginning and it’s one of my biggest regrets. Try to make a fist with your thumb tucked in, palm perpendicular to the ground, and bend your fist downward.
For me it is directly related to picking up a somewhat heavy laptop and phone use. I am totally fine on Mondays after two days of not regular phone use and not picking up the computer.
Is there some nonpartisan source doing a roll up of all the feds being cut and from which department?
My mom’s a Trump supporter, but she and I have a respectful, open dialogue. Fox News has sold her the fairy tale that all the DOGE cuts are being done thoughtfully. My point to her is that you can’t possibly cut X0,000 government staffers in 6 weeks thoughtfully. Thanks.
Wired is doing some of the best reporting on the federal cuts. The AP covers them as they happen, but I don’t think they have a master list or keyword to pull all related articles.
i read somewhere – can’t recall where – that they accidentally cut some nuclear scientists that they realized they need, but who dont want to com eback
OP here. Yes, that’s true, and that made it through Mom’s Fox News bubble. She cited that as an example of how careful they were being.
If they were careful then they wouldn’t have fired them. Idk why accidentally firing nuclear scientists demonstrates care?
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