Entries Tagged 'Life' ↓

Today I am done with my 28th week of pregnancy, and I am definitely a lot bigger than before.  The belly is really getting in the way and I am having a difficult time putting on my socks because it is hard to lift my legs up all the way.  These few weeks I have been getting a bunch of blood tests done and there will be more doctor’s appointments ahead.  The hubby has been able to feel the baby kick almost everyday and he talks to the baby often.  The baby is quite hyper and according to my hubby when the baby kicks me at night I would spasm a little and snore with each kick.  He thinks it’s funny, and I don’t remember it at all.

In terms of preparations, I am trying to document a lot of things at work about what I do  before I take leave in a bit over two months.  There are some things I do that are not really written down anywhere and it would be good for my coworkers to know where to find things necessary for releasing our software.  It has been busy, but I am making good progress.  The hubby and I also signed up for some prenatal classes offered by Kaiser that we will take in the first half of September.  There are four sessions that include breastfeeding and preparation for the birth.  There are also newborn care classes offered at the Kaiser health education center that we will sign up for.   Hopefully we will feel a bit more prepared after these classes even though realistically I know we cannot be completely prepared to be parents.  I am really just hoping that the hubby will be calm during the labor and delivery because he has repeatedly said that he will probably freak out.

In the meantime, I am also still working on my baby registry, and hopefully I will have time to go to some rummage/garage sales in the near future to scout out stuff for the baby.

As to my blogging, I am still taking the approach of writing whatever I want whenever I want to and that probably will not change when the baby comes.  I guess this is why this blog feels so random.  If you do not follow my other blogs, I have written some articles recently on Wise Bread that you can read.  Here are some of my favorites from the past few weeks:
5 Good Reasons to Keep Your “Clunker”
Top 5 Economy Based Board Games that Make You Think
How to Conserve Water by Harvesting Rain or Snow
Tips for Avoiding a Foreclosure Prevention or Loan Modification Scam

Finally, I think I have not completely digested the fact that I am going to be a mom soon.  Also I have found that researching about parenting is so much more difficult than researching  about how to save and manage money because there are just too many different opinions. For example, most people agree that it is good to start  a Roth IRA account while you are young, but I have found that some people actually think I am too young to have a child.  It is true that many people in my social circle do not have kids yet either due to graduate school or personal choice, but  I am 26 now and I think I am at a good stage in my life  to have a kid.  I actually wrote   a post here about the financial advantages of having children at a younger age and I still believe in what I wrote.  I have also found that  culture and customs also influence parenting decisions so it is difficult to say who is “right” in their child rearing methods.  Many people also get awfully defensive when you do not agree with their child care tactics and some folks can also get in your face when they do not agree with what you think is best for your child. (Rabidly defensive or well meaning women are both scary.)   So I guess it is best to just figure out what works well  for us on our own and  this child will just have to be an experiment since he is our first.

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I started writing this blog a little over  two years ago with this short post.   Since then I have written hundreds of posts here and also on Wise Bread.  This is not the first time I have kept a journalor blog, but this blog is definitely the one that lasted the longest.  So after two years of writing, I think it is a good time to reflect on what this blog has become.

First of all, this is  a great place for me to give my friends and family updates on my life.  After college my friends naturally dispersed all over the world and it is hard to contact everyone to just talk about what is going on because I am busy with work full time.  Since starting this blog I got married, bought a house, and  now I am carrying the little nugget below:

I have gotten many messages from my friends and family in the form of “Hey I read on your blog that…”.  Sometimes my friends also start discussions about the random topics I write about, and that’s always fun.

Next, writing down my thoughts from time to time is really therapeutic for me and my husband.  When I am blogging my husband gets a bit of “man time” and he  appreciates that I don’t talk his ears off about what I think all the time.  It’s not that we don’t talk to each other, but I know he is not that interested in a lot of the money and finance topics I write here.  Also, he is pretty much the first to know things that happen in my life so there is no point in telling him again.    This has been a great place for my rants and raves, and it will probably continue to function as such.

Additionally, blogging has turned into a good source of side income.  We are still donating most of the money my blogs generate so technically my writing is benefiting  people in my community and the far reaches of the world in a tangible way.  I don’t really do a lot of promotion of my blogs, but now there is a steady stream of advertising revenue.  This aspect of the blog wasn’t totally planned in the beginning, but I am glad that it is happening.

Through this blog I have also met some great folks at Wise Bread, and also collaborated with them on a book about frugal living.   This also wasn’t really planned, but it is a great result of letting random people read my thoughts.  Over two years my posts have received hundreds of thousands of page views, and I hope I made people think, laugh, and cringe just  a little.

In the last two years I definitely experienced and learned quite a lot of things and blogging has been a good way for me to chronicle my life and thoughts.  Sometimes I read my old posts as a reminder of what happened, and perhaps in the future my kid will be able to read this and learn something, too.

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Yesterday the hubby messaged me a link to a very good food deal at Baja Fresh.  Basically Baja Fresh put out a coupon on their Facebook fan page that allowed customers to get a free burrito with the purchase of a beverage.  The drinks are less than $2 and the burritos are usually $6 to $7.  So after work the hubby and I took advantage of the deal.

When we got to Baja Fresh there was actually a line and the servers at the registers had a giant pile of coupons that people have redeemed.  The hubby was kind of excited that the deal was being accepted at the location.  We each used a coupon and spent $1.74 each for a fountain drink and a burrito.  It would have been cheaper if our sales taxes didn’t go up.   We sat down and ate our burritoes with a bit of glee.

Afterward, we were walking towards the car, and the hubby cheerfully said, “I found the deal!”

I congratulated him and said, “good job!”

Then he  said, “I beat you in finding the deal!”  I am usually the one sending him coupons so he seems very proud in finding this particular coupon.   Apparently he put Slickdeals on his RSS reader after he married me, and yesterday he read it before I did so he did beat me to it.  I thought it was awfully cute how proud he was of his accomplishment.

Even today he was cheerfully saying how he found a deal, so I think he really had fun in being frugal.  I think for folks who like to save money finding these opportunities is not a chore, but a game of sorts.  It does take a little bit of  effort to always look for a coupon or discount before you shop, but it really does not  hurt to look.  The hubby rarely used coupons before we got together, so I am glad to see that he is starting to enjoy it.

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I love reading stories about real people, and today I read this story about a man named Daniel Suelo who “quit [money] like a bad drug habit” nine years ago.    He  does live in a cave, and his lifestyle does seem somewhat crazy by the norms of society, but some of the things he believes about money are things I have noticed or thought about before.

On Suelo’s website he makes a point that money is imaginary, and that the power of money only becomes real if both the creditor and the debtor both believe in it.  The example he uses is that if you give a bushman in the jungle some German marks then it is nothing but colored paper to the bushman.  That money has no meaning to the bushman.  This is definitely true when you think about it.  Why is the United States able to literally summon trillions of dollars out of thin air?  It is because the United States’ creditors have faith in the word of the U.S. government.  Why did California have to cut spending?  It is because creditors no longer believed in California.   Money is only real because people believe in the system and participate in it.  If you bestow an account with a trillion dollars to an extraterrestrial who places no value in it then it is meaningless to that alien.

Another point on Suelo’s site is that in reality goods and services can be exchanged without money.  One example he had was of a German woman named Heidemarie Schwermer who has lived without money for about 12 years.  She does this by bartering within exchange circles and she is the subject of an upcoming documentary appropriately titled  Living Without Money.  This is not a new idea since people have been exchanging goods and services for thousands of years.  Money just became a global system of accounting that made these exchanges less personal.  It is certainly more efficient to swipe a credit card to buy a sack of rice rather than trading a bag of almonds or something else.  However, for those without money it may make more sense to barter.

Finally, another thing that made Suelo swear off money is the recurring theme of “mo’ money, mo’ problems”.  The example he gave was that when he worked with Ecuadorean tribespeople he saw how money made them buy useless things.  The tribespeople also became less healthy as they spent more because they started to buy things like soda, MSG, and refined sugar.   Suelo said that he charted their development and “it looked like money was impoverishing them”.  I have certainly seen how money could impoverish people.  Some people forget the real things in their lives such as family and friends and pursue money relentlessly because they never feel like they have enough.  The fact is that if they never feel like they have enough then it does not matter how much money they earn, because they will never be satisfied.

Anyway, I think that these people demonstrate that it is definitely possible to live without money, but the hard part is to unplug yourself from what is considered normal.  I am definitely not cut out to live in a cave, but I have to admit that I am a little envious of those living abundantly without money.  For now I am very thankful for the lot I have been given, and I will just have to do my best in this world that is controlled by this “imaginary” system.   I have to admit that this whole financial meltdown made me less fearful of losing money, because life can and will go on without it.

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Last week I celebrated my 26th birthday with my family.  First the hubby’s family had a party full of meat and games at his aunt’s house.  Then my parents made a trip to San Mateo and we went to a Chinese restaurant nearby.  Finally on my actual birthday the hubby took me out to The Village Pub, which is a Michelin starred restaurant that is practically down the street from where we live.  Needless to say I enjoyed spending time with my family and eating everything very much.

The hubby and I have not been to a fine dining  restaurant for this entire year  so it was really a fun treat  to go out.  The hubby actually convinced me to go because I was a bit hesitant about spending on my birthday this year with the recession and the coming of the baby.  In reality we are still saving around 50% of our income and neither of us got a reduction in income.  So we could afford to celebrate without worrying.  The hubby was a little apprehensive about the dress code since our experience with Picasso in Las Vegas, but we read some reviews of the Village Pub and found that they allow jeans and shirts.  After all, we are back in Northern California.

On the way to the restaurant the hubby said that if they try to turn us away due to dress then he would say something like, “can you really afford to turn customers away?  In this economic climate?”  When we got there we found that the whole place was packed, and most people were dressed quite well, but there were a few people in jeans and Hawaiian shirts.  The servers were quite prompt with us and there was not a problem even though we showed up in jeans.   The hubby sat down, looked around,  and said, “well, I guess they can afford to turn us away.”  We opened the menu and found that it was not overly expensive.  Each appetizer was a bit under $20, and entrees were between $20 and $40.  So it was possible to eat pretty well for under $75 per person.  So the hubby concluded, “I guess maybe  this is recession dining for the rich.”

We both agreed that we always find the appetizers and desserts the most memorable at these “fancy” places, and The Pub was no different. The hubby had a mushroom and sweetbread salad topped with a poached egg for his appetizer.  I had a shaved foie gras salad with plums.  Both were seasoned just right and the ingredients tasted very fresh.  I had a rack of pork for the entree and the hubby had a spring lamb in three preparations.  I think the hubby’s lamb was better than my pork.  The pork was well cooked and seasoned, but it was a bit boring.  Finally for dessert I had a plate of strawberries prepared in several different ways.  One preparation was in a beignet, one was a frozen bar of strawberry with cream, and then there were a bunch of fresh strawberries on french toast.  It was really a very large dessert.  The hubby had a peach dessert that was prepared like a cobbler and also a frozen manner.  Overall we enjoyed our meal very much and it was a very good birthday for me.

Looking back on the past few months I think we do have a lot of reasons to celebrate.  We both still have our  jobs and a wonderful family and we are also expecting to add a little boy soon enough.  I think that the horrid state of economy and the coming of the baby did add a bit of anxiety to our lives, but when I write it all down it seems that we are worrying for nothing much.   As my old roomie Cathy used to say, “all you need are faith, family, and friends”, and we have all three.

Anyway, I guess what I am trying to say is that I  think everyone who has a reason to celebrate this year should go ahead and do it as long as it is affordable.  There is no point in worrying about things you cannot control, and life really passes by faster than you can enjoy it.

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