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On Doo-Do-Doo-Do-Doo-Do-Doo-Do-Doo-Doo-Do 1 Thing
Amazingly, I didn't have any one-things today because I spent the whole week knocking one-things off my list. Oh wait! I did do one of them today - I sent off my traffic school completion certificate. :( I take not speeding really seriously but missed a sign going into a known speed trap area one night. Figures.
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On Ending Wedding Gifts
@aeroaeroaero I'm getting married, and we're pretty well stocked (but don't have everything), and we're trying to figure out how to walk the lines among a few negative outcomes: 1) Saying "no gifts" and having a lot of people give us shit about it - no seriously, when I said we were doing that I had to deal with a stunning amount of pushback, and people saying that then they were just going to buy us something we'd hate, then. 2) Not saying anything or registering, and getting a bunch of stuff we don't want or need from some people, and nothing from others (it's the first part of that I don't like; getting nothing is totally cool with me). 3) Registering (or asking for only cash gifts) and thus making people think we require a gift. We went with registering, allowing a link on our small wedding website, and stressing that we don't expect gifts, but if you do decide you want to give us one, this will give an idea of what we might actually want or use. But I really really REALLY don't want any friends who would find it burdensome or anything other than really truly fun to give us anything. Like... I put a stop to birthday gifts from friends years ago so we didn't have to go broke buying stuff for each other, and to my mind the same principle applies here. But I also felt a lot of pressure to register. Ultimately, we picked a few household things we'd been meaning to pick up and some things relevant to our hobbies (a cheap handheld GPS, hiking/camping gear, board games). I think that's okay? I am uncomfortable with the whole thing, but I'm more uncomfortable with getting nagged for a registry or getting truly wasteful stuff we don't need. So basically, @shannowhamo, how did you manage to convey to people that giving a gift was fine, but not in the least expected?
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On Ending Wedding Gifts
@EM My submission to this list has been, for years: the 10,000 days old party. (For reference, that's about 27 years, 4 months.) Like a sweet 16 for adults, but also a little like a wedding in that you're given the blanket opportunity to ask all of your friends and family to get into one big room and celebrate with you - a rare thing, indeed.
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On Real Estate Language Values
The word that raises my hackles most quickly is "investment." It does not mean "Buying this property is in itself an investment." It means "You will need to invest quite a bit more time and effort in this property after buying it, and THEN there is a chance it might pay off - or maybe there's a REASON it became a nasty dump in the first place." ...I have a real estate problem and read a lot of listings. My mom is starting her second career now, as a real estate agent (she's transitioning out of a very successful 25-year career as a software engineer), and I'm trying to convince her to move to near me and go into business with me, somehow. Or at least let me live through her vicariously.
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On 2 Ways to Interpret: "Well, My Parents Pay My Phone Bill, So"
I'm still* on my mother's plan, but I pay them back for a (probably underestimated) portion corresponding to my share. It's actually cheaper for all of us that way, though I'm thinking about going contract-free soon and leaving the family phone fold. I didn't start paying my share until after I graduated from college, but I offered a few times before that (my parents graciously told me not to worry about it, probably because they were still giving me an allowance and paying for my car insurance, etc. until I graduated - because they are the nicest people ever). To be fair, my parents have said repeatedly that the reason they have been happy to pay for things in the past is that I will always offer to pay them back and make a good faith effort to do so. They love me and I love them back, and these are some of the ways we demonstrate it through money. My fiance was on his mother's plan until recently, too (until she got a smartphone and started realizing that maybe she had a bigger bill than she wanted to pay with both kids still on it), and I was stunned to learn that he had never offered to pay his share. He thought she'd reject the idea (she did, though she did so while encouraging him to get his own plan? Confusing, but I guess she just didn't like the idea of taking cash from him). *Well. Technically I'm BACK on my mother's plan. During my first marriage we were, for a time, on HIS mother's plan. Supposedly he was paying her each month for our share, but thinking back, I suspect he may have just been saying that to justify not taking on other bills. Hindsight is 20/35ish (legal for driving many places, but probably not a good idea).
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On When Things Fall Apart: The Cost of Divorce
@Stina I did not use a lawyer in my divorce beyond a short, free consultation. The consultation convinced me that my ex could not come after anything that mattered to me, legally (for instance, the lawyer explained how alimony worked in my state and that I could legally get divorced at any time for any reason without proving abandonment/infidelity/etc. - stuff I could have looked up online). After that we did spend a really horrible 8 months hashing out an agreement to submit with our simplified divorce (since we had no kids, though we did own a house and two cars together), and at times I thought it wouldn't work, but once we finally agreed it was easy and cheap. My total costs, besides things like "staying in a hotel" and "moving," were $450 for court costs (for the literally 3 minutes a judge spent signing our papers).
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On When Things Fall Apart: The Cost of Divorce
@@fo "Still, it's not unusual for people to lose all touch with reality in a divorce." So true. My ex specifically tried to get me to give him $20,000 in "alimony" (we made within 25% of the same amount per year, had been married less than two years, and my total income per year was $20,000 while I had about negative $30,000 in debt in just my name racked up on marital property, all of which point to... no alimony) by saying "I haven't even tried to go after your [not yet inherited and of course not guaranteed anyway!] inheritance from your family that I would have eventually gotten to benefit from, so I'm being totally reasonable."
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On When Things Fall Apart: The Cost of Divorce
@joyballz I am in the process of writing one, yeah. I'm going to write some of it up and run it past my dude before agreeing to actually post anything about it. I'm comfortable with it, but he of course gets veto rights. We're still in the "identifying respective lawyers" part. I might use my family's financial lawyer. @alpacasloth Your mileage may vary, so definitely good luck with the loan officer, but I'm in a similar situation to you and had some general thoughts. I solely own the house my fiance and I live in (I actually bought my ex-husband out of it in a divorce), and I plan to continue to own it for simplicity's sake. I was clear when my dude moved in that he was paying rent, not part of the mortgage, and he agreed to that. If we want to co-own a house, it will either be: (1) this house with an official sale of half of it from me to him (which would probably mean basically refinancing the mortgage), or (2) a different house we buy together. It gets really confusing, legally, when you try to start claiming partial ownership based on helping make payments or making improvements to the house. For instance, when I make a mortgage payment, the actual principal I pay down is about 0.2% of the value of the house. So making half the mortgage payment means paying, each month, 0.1% of the value of the house. Sure, after a year you have paid for 1.2% of the house, but that's a really small proportion for a year's worth of payments. After 5-10 years, of course, it gets bigger, but it's still not half ownership, just based entirely on the numbers, especially if he put down the whole down payment (that percentage is just the percentage of the amount financed under the mortgage; in my case it's nearly all of the worth of the house because I bought it in 2007, heh). If you just get put on the deed (by default as a 50% owner) without being put on the mortgage, that's sort of unfair (and possibly problematic if creditors look at the house as an asset for you without a corresponding liability, but I'm not totally sure if that's the case). If you can be put on the mortgage (or refinance into both of your names), at least you're both on the hook for the rest of the payments and it makes sense legally for you to be on the title. I know you've mentioned most of this above, but I thought I'd throw out the logic I used with my fiance when we agreed that his portion was just rent, and that I should pay solely for any major home repairs/improvements unless we decided to move or totally refinance.
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On When Things Fall Apart: The Cost of Divorce
@Beaks Excellent recommendation - thanks! Having been through a messy divorce with someone who refused to consider a prenup, under the argument that "There's no chance I would ever be uncivil to you and I'm hurt that you think so just because I have been immensely uncivil in my previous breakups," this is a very good articulation. At the beginning you cannot see how it could ever be possible for you to be unfair to each other, and that's the perfect time to write down your intentions. (I also think, sometimes, grimly, about what would happen if I were, say, in a permanent coma and my husband eventually wanted to divorce me and remarry - I'd support that but I'd need a lawyer on my end who could see what my intent was when I couldn't advocate for myself.)
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On Doo-Do-Doo-Do-Doo-Do-Doo-Do-Doo-Doo-Do 1 Thing
@ThatJenn Oh. I also sent my father's day cards... late.