Entries Tagged 'Life' ↓

Last year my husband and I bought my in-laws’ home down in Southern California, and so we have been homeowners for 7.5 months now officially.   We have a really nice family living there now and for the most part things have been going smoothly, but there have been a few headaches that we’ve never encountered before.

First, the neighbors next door has completely neglected their backyard.  This isn’t exactly something we could fix because we can’t just jump over their fence, pluck out all the weeds, and clean their green pool.   I have contacted the public health department regarding their pool because you could see the green and brown slosh from SPACE via satellite photos and it can be a breeding ground for mosquitoes.  I’m not sure if it got cleaned up yet but they did get a ticket from the county.  They also have a couple psycho little dogs that barks day and night because they are probably not being fed.

Next, this weekend our home caretakers called us and told us that the water heater broke and it would cost over $1000 to replace it.   The water heater is over 20 years old so I guess it was its time.  It sprung a leak and damaged the garage’s wall a little bit, too.  We had the money to replace it in our emergency fund, but it was still an unpleasant surprise.  So I started researching a bit into our insurance policy and I read on the internet that this sort of thing is usually covered by home warranty policies.

I do vaguely remember that in escrow last year my inlaws purchased a one year warranty for us, so it is definitely still valid now, but I was at work so I couldn’t dig through my mountain of home-related paperwork to see what company held the policy.  So I called the realtor that took care of the transaction and she told me right away what the warranty company was and the plan number.

I called the warranty company and our insurance company to see what we could do about it, and the warranty company said they would cover the water heater replacement and the insurance company said they would cover water damage on the drywall.  The warranty company sent a plumber within 4 hours of my call and replaced the water heater, and they also checked out the drywall and said it is drying enough that it doesn’t need to be replaced.  Both my hubby and I were very relieved because we didn’t want the family living there to be without hot water for a very long time.  They have been showering in cold water for a couple days now.

It seems that my husband and I are the type of people who are unlucky (or lucky) enough to get the most out of insurances and warranties, so we are considering extending the home warranty when it expires considering that this time it did save us a bunch of money.  So I guess the lesson here is to be aware what your home warranty and insurance covers and does not cover.  If I hadn’t remembered that we had a warranty then we would have paid for the repair out of pocket.  Also, another obvious point is that owning a home is a lot more trouble than just renting.

I definitely do not regret buying the home with the hubby, but I guess things like these make me realize how big of a responsibility it is.    I think we are pretty both realistic about the fact that we will not make money from the house and we simply bought it to keep it in the family.  I do see the house as a backup plan for possible high inflation because we are locked into a 4.875% fixed rate, and there is a possibility that we would move down there.  So as stupid as it sounds, there is definitely a little bit of joy in knowing that after fifteen or so years we will own a piece of real estate free and clear.

Anyway, we are happy the current problem is fixed, and now we are more aware of what to do the next time something like this happens.  I think when we were young our parents took care of a lot of things like these with their homes, and we did not even know or care that much.  Live and learn I guess.

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So before I forget I should write about the trip to see the baby on Wednesday.  My husband made me wake up more than a hour early and we headed  to the hospital after we took showers.  We walked through the little farmer’s market in the parking lot and got to the ultrasound department in the basement and sat down to wait.  The hubby gave me a bottle of water to drink because the doctor recommended that I should have a full bladder.

There was a bit of commotion as some paramedics wheeled in an old man, and then the radiologist called me into an examination room.   The hubby got a chair behind the doctor and I had to lie down on a bed, and unfortunately my head was behind the monitor so I missed most of the action.     All I could do was to watch the hubby’s face and he had this cute look that was a mix of amazement and amusement.  Apparently our baby was moving all over the place and it was hard for the radiologist to do her work.  My OBGyn ordered a regular anatomy assessment so the radiologist had to take pictures of almost every part of the baby’s body at specific angles.  Since the baby moved so much it was hard for her to capture the specific photos.

While the radiologist clicked and moved the ultrasound probe she kept on mumbling random comments like, “this baby is an absolute meatball”.  She also said, “this is the jumpiest kid I have ever seen, what did you eat this morning????”  I only had a bottle of water.

She also said to my hubby, “I don’t want your wife to get jealous now, you are having all the fun watching this kid here.”  The hubby later told me that he felt quite a bit of glee at that.  He thinks it is unfair that I get to feel the baby move all the time now and he still has not felt it.

So after 45 minutes of this she said, “mom’s bladder is getting a bit too full” and she allowed me to go to the bathroom.  She took quite a few more pictures after that and then turned the monitor over to let me see the baby.  It was actually quite interesting since I could see every little bone in the baby’s hands and spine.  It was also pushing against the walls quite a bit.  The heart was also very clear with all of its chambers and jumped very quickly.  I only got to look at it for about a minute.

Finally when all the pictures were taken the hubby asked, “do you know what the gender is?”

The radiologist said, ” oh yeah!”  Then she put the probe to show  an image that was right between the baby’s legs.

I saw it immediately and said, “well, it looks like a boy”, and she said, “yup you are right!”  The hubby was a bit disappointed, but I was happy that my guess was right.

Then I said to him, “well, it is your Y chromosome that made this boy!”

He said, “yeah I know, I messed up.  This means we will have another one!”

We took home a few pictures the radiologist printed out for us.  Several of them were profile pictures and one was of the baby’s face.  I thought that he really looked like the hubby.  He has the hubby’s nose and the bottom lip is shaped like the hubby’s, too.  Some people have said that I am nuts and it is too early to tell, though.   Later on,  we showed the picture to our moms and they could not find where the face was and the hubby had to mark notes on Flickr.   The hubby also said that he counted the little fingers on the baby’s hand and it looked good.  The radiologist told us that everything looked fine, and it seems that the ultrasound machine gave fairly good estimates on the baby’s size in relation to his stage of development.

Yesterday we told my hubby’s grandpa that the radiologist called the baby a “meatball”, and he laughed and said that should be the baby’s name.  I asked him what “meatball” is in Tagalog, and he said, “bolabola”.  I think that is a cute nickname actually.  Every Filipino kid has a nickname and now  the hubby’s family seems to be stuck on the “meatball” idea.   The hubby says that would encourage our kid to be overweight, though.

Anyway, we might go to a baby picture place in a couple months and take some 3D ultrasound photos of the baby.   By then the face would be better formed and we will see more clearly who he looks like.

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The hubby and I will be finding out the gender of our baby on Wednesday morning.  According to this Chinese gender prediction chart, I will be having a boy, but the hubby really wants a girl.  He made a bet with me that if it is a girl I will buy him a boardgame, and if it is a boy he will buy me some salted caramels that I have been craving.  Anyway, we have actually had this discussion before about how much it would cost to raise a son versus  how much it would cost to raise a daughter.  Here are some of our observations and other people’s research.

First of all, lets start with my family.  If you have been following this blog you’d know that I am an only child due to the only child policy in China so my parents had no one to spend money on besides me.  However, I do have a male cousin that was born just three days earlier than me.  He is really the closest relation I have to a brother and we played together almost every weekend when we were kids.  I came to the United States when I was nine and my cousin is still currently in China.  In China it is pretty much given that middle class parents would spend a lot more money on a boy due to education and wedding expenses.  Even though single female children are also prized in the cities they do not come with the wedding costs.  Middle and upper class Chinese parents of a son are expected to provide the wedding banquet, gifts, and in most cases a home for their son when they get married.  A girl just has to find a nice family to marry into, but urban families do spend quite a bit of money on the education of female children these days that rival their educational expenditure on a male child.  My family has met quite a few singleton Chinese females who are studying in the United States with almost of all of their parents’ money.  But overall,  in my family I would say that a male child is more expensive due to the Chinese tradition of providing a lot more for a son.  However, I did get married in America and the custom here is that the bride’s family pays for a wedding, and my parents were very generous, but the percentage of money they spent on me compared to their income probably pales to what my aunt and uncle have spent on my cousin.  In China parents really sacrifice everything for their only children, and the burden on parents who have a son is definitely greater than those who have a daughter.

Now the hubby’s family has one boy and one girl and both were raised in America.  From my point of view his parents spent a similar amount of money on both of them.  Both of them went to private schools for their entire sixteen years of education and the hubby’s parents provided money or equity towards real estate purchases for both of them.  I’m not too sure about the smaller expenditures during their childhood, but it seems that both kids were quite expensive regardless of gender. So in the hubby’s family it seems that gender did not matter.  I am sure that one of them cost more than the other if you added up every single cost line by line, but for the most part I think the big expenses were similar and the hubby’s parents sacrificed a lot for both of them.

According to an article from Britain last year, boys actually cost more than girls.  This was based on a survey conducted by a company called GE Money on 2000 British parents. Supposedly this is due to the fact that boys want more expensive toys like electronics and girls want cheaper toys.  We do see this a bit in the hubby’s younger cousins.  A girl cousin is happy with small things like lotions and nail polish but her brother usually loves getting video games and gaming consoles, which are a lot more expensive.  Boy’s clothing is also more expensive because there is less competition.  This is true of men’s and women’s clothes, too.  If you haven’t noticed, the women’s or girl’s departments are usually bigger at stores, and with more brands competing the prices are cheaper.  I think another factor in why boys would cost more than girls is that boys are more assertive in what they want.  When you ask a boy what they want for their birthday or Christmas they can usually tell you, but a girl can be less direct or less decisive.  So as a result, parents are more likely to buy things for boys because boys  made their wishes known.

Anyway, if we have a boy we might not have to spend extra money on  electronic gadgets because his daddy would have all the latest toys already.  We have already talked about a plan to rent out my hubby’s video game consoles to our kid.  For example, we can exchange gaming time for chores done.  That would be a while in the future, but the hubby is excited at the prospect of playing board and video games with our kid already.  We are definitely prepared for the kid financially regardless of the gender, but it is interesting to think that raising a child of one gender could cost less than raising one of  the other gender.

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Today the overseers of Social Security and Medicare reported that these programs are now closer to insolvency due to the recession and falling tax revenues.  Medicare is already pulling in less tax revenues than it pays out in benefits and will no longer be able to pay 100% of benefits in less than 8 years.  It seems that these programs would need to either increase tax rates or cut back benefits to be sustainable.  At the same time, many Americans are calling for single-payer healthcare, which means that the government alone would set up a health insurance system that pays all medical claims and negotiate rates with care providers.  Essentially, people are clamoring for universal healthcare, but how much would it cost?  Here are some of my thoughts on the issue.

First of all, I agree that healthcare expenses are  quite ridiculous in America.  If you ever get an itemized bill from a hospital where you were treated you would see that some small items such as bandaids are charged at exorbitant rates.  If you have adequate insurance from your workplace then the out of pocket expenses are not so bad.  For example, I will be paying $100 total for my upcoming delivery and hospital stay.  However, if you do not have good insurance having a baby could cost tens of thousands of dollars.  One of my friends said that a doctor was in her room for about half an hour while she was delivering her baby, and in the itemized bill she got the charge for that service was over $3000.  It is really no surprise to me that unexpected medical expenses are the number one cause of personal bankruptcy.

The biggest problem I see with the current system is that there is not much transparency in how much each hospital and care provider charges for various services.  Every care provider sets their own price for the uninsured and then another set of prices for each insurer they deal with.  There is pretty much no way for a consumer to get a decent discount without going through an insurer.  Basically, there is this extra layer of medical insurance consumers have to wade through.  Consumers are forced to shop between medical insurers, and not medical servicers and the priorities of medical insurers and medical servicers are vastly different.  Medical insurers do not want to pay for claims if they don’t have to, and so they have an incentive to reject applicants who need care the most.  As a result,medical insurance is prohibitively expensive for those with existing conditions or need constant care.

So what happens if the government takes over the healthcare system completely?  If that happens consumers will not have the choice of choosing between insurers and the government will have to negotiate prices with the care providers.  It would cut down a lot of overhead, but  it may not cost less than the current system for the individual consumer and here is why. Currently most people in America have some form of employment sponsored private insurance that costs very little out of pocket. Even without an employer, there are high deductible plans available with low premiums for most healthy people that individuals can choose from.   Some young healthy individuals even skip health insurance to save money because they have the choice to do so.    However, if we switch to a completely government based system it would be paid out of taxes, and there would be no choice but to pay it.   Currently Medicare is 2.9% of payroll, and it is not enough to insure just  the elderly and disabled.  It is estimated that Medicare taxes needs to be nearly 7% of payroll to be sustainable.  Just imagine if the program has to cover everyone in the United States and you will see that the tax may be well over 10% of someone’s pay.  Do you currently pay 10% of your yearly income on medical insurance?  I certainly don’t, and I think most people don’t.

I think a better way to healthcare reform is to let consumers have more transparency into the costs of services and allow a bit of comparison shopping.  I know how much it costs to fix my car, so why can’t I know how much it costs to remove a mole? It is possible that some people do not need insurance if they just want some basic preventive services that can be provided by care providers directly at reasonable rates provided that they stay healthy.   Insurers also shouldn’t be able to reject or price gouge patients based on existing conditions because everyone should get the care they need.  Perhaps universal healthcare could work here, but  many more relatively healthy people will have to pitch in much more money than before, and they won’t have a choice in the matter.  Once such a system is in place it would also be very difficult to remove, and it would only get more expensive as people live longer lives.

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Yesterday my friend had a lovely little baby girl. She is about a whole month early but she is okay! She looks a lot like her mom. Hopefully we will get to see her this weekend. Additionally, I received an advanced copy of the new Wise Bread book: 10,001 Ways to Live Large on a Small Budget . I really love how it is laid out. I only have a few articles in there because I don’t write many tips lists, but it is still pretty cool to see my name in it! If you are a financial blogger or press and would like to review the book you can probably request one here.

Besides these exciting developments, I am gaining a little weight due to my own pregnancy. My hubby keeps on telling me to prepare some maternity clothes, but I’m not quite big enough to need maternity clothes, yet. Today we went to Target and left the store with nothing, because most of the maternity section had capri pants that were way too big for me and the shirts were just like my normal shirts. Now my hubby says he’ll whine to my mom to buy clothes for me since I am horrible at shopping for clothes.

Since I’m in my 15th week now I have asked HR what forms I need to fill out for my maternity leave. I am planning to take leave two weeks before my due date mostly because all the moms I know that had their first babies in the last year had their babies 2 to 5 weeks before their due dates. I really don’t want to be at the office while I go into labor. The good news is that I found out that my employer has private short term disability insurance that I can use in conjunction with the state short term disability so I can get 100% of my pay during the pregnancy disability leave, which would be anywhere from 6 to 8 weeks depending on whether or not I have a C section.

As to child birth, I am hoping that I would not need a C-section, but sometimes it is unavoidable. In the case of my friend the doctors determined that her baby cannot tolerate a normal delivery due to various issues. I was in the room when they told her that she probably needs a C-section and one of the doctors was really quite scary. She said that if my friend attempted a normal delivery it is possible that the baby might go into distress and then they would need to perform an emergency C-section and “slash and cut and burn”. While the doctor said those words she was making motions of brandishing a scalpel. I was just speechless, and after she left the room my friend’s husband said, “What was that?? She was making some scary motions.” I really feel that sometimes doctors tells people the worst thing that could happen, but I guess it is better to be safe than sorry.

Anyway, this year is going by quite quickly. It still feels a bit surreal that we will be having a baby, and I don’t think it has hit us yet because everything is going along just as before. I am not getting sick at all and work is not overly stressful right now since we just finished a big release. The hubby and I are still spending a lot of time watching TV and playing games. I think I am playing more games now since I feel like once I am a mom I will have much less leisure time.  In terms of preparing for the baby so far I requested a free sample of diapers and a free sample of infant formula.  I think that is good enough.

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