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Fucker

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Rod-138 said:
Hey sorry kind of wrong thread kind of right thread, but any of you experience a wife / mom going from full time to stay at home to run the house?

we have 2 kids and I’m starting to make some cheese, but it would definitely put a little more stress on me to deliver. Financially now, we’re in a good place, but if she quits we’re only in an ok place.

She would be able to focus on the 2 boys, 6/7, but I’ve heard and seen some mixed results from this. You get to come home to a house that is less chaotic potentially, but it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. Anyone have 2 cents ?
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They are at the age where they are in school and typically when women return to work. Seems a little late, IMO.
 
Gavinmad

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lurkingdirk said:
Okay, here's a weird one. About my parents in law rather than being a parent.

I believe I've mentioned before that I'm the executor on my parents' in laws will. I've been working for a year to get all the information about their finances. We've all been very worried that they can't afford the care they now need. Both have Alzheimer's, and are now moving to a stage where they have to be in advanced care. They're both nearing 85. They have, for their entire lives (their children have said this many times), said that they had absolutely no money. They were broke. Since they were in basic care for the last year they were about breaking even with their pensions/retirement/etc. Now, with the care they are going to be getting they are going to be short by about $8K a month. Very worrisome.

The final number I got today as we combined all their accounts, the sale of their house, and everything they have is 1.8 million dollars. They're set for the rest of their lives.

This brings up a range of emotions. First, relief. They are self sufficient for more than 20 years. Great. Second, mild rage. Okay, not so mild. They refused to help their children with college tuition, with getting a vehicle, with basic needs, telling their children they had to get jobs to get clothes for school. While I agree these are valuable lessons, and my kids have all had jobs, and they are doing all they can to pay their own way, they also know my wife and I are here as a security blanket and will support them 100%. My inlaws told their kids they were 100% on their own because they had nothing with which to support them. They always had money to decorate the house, to support their own hobbies, but my wife and her siblings had to buy their own jeans.

Now that I have this information I don't quite know what to do with it. My wife is I think partially in shock. I'm pretty sure anger will surface soon. The issue is that her parents are mentally to a point where you just can't ask them to be accountable. They should be accountable, but any discussion we have today will be forgotten tomorrow, and they won't even remember things from the past for which they should be accountable.

I feel like an absolute asshole for being glad that the will is split equally between the kids, and they're not going to live long. But that's where I'm at. I don't know if that makes me an asshole or not, but seeing first hand how they treated finances for the last 25 years, and knowing the stories about it from my wife and her siblings just pisses me off something fierce. What would you guys do or feel in this situation?

Sorry for the long rant. I needed to put it into words. This ends my Ted Talk.
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The initial outrage is understandable but after that who is there to be angry at? Unless they ignored one of their children's need in a time of real crisis, I'd say alzheimers wipes the 'selfish jerk' slate clean. I certainly wouldn't want to waste lucid time clawing open old wounds.
 
chthonic-anemos

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If they were truly selfish they would have blown it all instead of having something to leave their kids.
 
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Rod-138

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We ended up switching to having the woman work part time, 9 to 2:30. Happy middle ground where she can make a few bucks and we won’t feel like we’re balls to the wall all the time.
 
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Tuco

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lurkingdirk said:
The final number I got today as we combined all their accounts, the sale of their house, and everything they have is 1.8 million dollars. They're set for the rest of their lives.

This brings up a range of emotions. First, relief. They are self sufficient for more than 20 years. Great. Second, mild rage. Okay, not so mild. They refused to help their children with college tuition, with getting a vehicle, with basic needs, telling their children they had to get jobs to get clothes for school. While I agree these are valuable lessons, and my kids have all had jobs, and they are doing all they can to pay their own way, they also know my wife and I are here as a security blanket and will support them 100%. My inlaws told their kids they were 100% on their own because they had nothing with which to support them. They always had money to decorate the house, to support their own hobbies, but my wife and her siblings had to buy their own jeans.
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Like Gavin said, unless they truly ignored a kid in a time of real crisis, it's hard to be that judgemental.

Going further and making a bunch of assumptions that might be bullshit, if they are 85 years old they are a depression era generation. They optimized their life because they thought another depression was likely and chose to push their kids into total financial independence because if the time came to break into the apocalypse fund, they'd be ready.

Being a parent is hard because you only get once chance to make a choice in every situation, and the result is not intuitive. It could be that if your inlaws helped pay for college tuition, their kids would value it less and do poorly. It could be that if they helped pay for college tuition, one of your wife's siblings would've had a dramatically better career.
 
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sleevedraw

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Bandwagon said:
What are some good PC games for a 5 year old that hasn't had much game time?
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Old 90s edutainment games like Math Blaster (either Jr. or Episode I depending on how far along they are with math) and the Super Solvers/Super Seekers series (Gizmos and Gadgets, Treasure Cove, Treasure MathStorm, Treasure Galaxy). The Solvers games are generally for 7+, Seekers for 5+.

A lot of them are streamable here.
 
Tuco

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Tuco said:
Been looking for a kid's smartwatch for a while for my 8 year old, I mostly want it for:
  • Him to text his neighborhood buddies to arrange hangouts
  • To reach out to us when he needs to or vice versa
  • Us to big brother track him
The new smartwatches are too expensive to give to an eight year old, and I imagine they have a lot of ways to let them watch youtube all day or something that I don't want to have to fight with.

We live in the kind of safe, family-rich neighborhood where you can pretty much kick your 7+ year old out of the house and tell them to come home when the streetlights come on, but it's still a bit goofy when your kid is asking you to be the middle-person with their friends or they're god knows where and you don't want to start calling around trying to find them.

We've looked a few times over the last year and haven't found anything decent, but just saw this:

Amazon product ASIN B0BWRBS9DF
Code: 
https://www.amazon.com/Laredas-Waterproof-Pedometer-Birthday-80-Black/dp/B0BWRBS9DF

It looks like a bunch of fake reviews, but who knows. It's not obvious from the product descriptions how hard it'd be for them to whitelist their buddy's cell #

What do y'all think?
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We ended up getting the TickTalk4 TickTalk 4

It's OK. As a device it's great and has worked very well so far. It has a huge limitation though since it doesn't have true SMS compatibility. Anyone who texts with my son has to have their dumbass app, which severely limits the utility of the device for him to independently communicate with people. The watch's major competitor, the Gizmo 3, has the same limitation.

I was hoping he could get this thing and we could coerce his friend's parents to get something similar so he could reach out to his people and go hang out independently, but it looks like nothing on the market supports that. Some people really like the apple smartwatch, but I've literally never bought an apple device and haven't looked into buying that yet. I don't know how much Apple koolaid I need to drink just so my kid can text "can u play rn" to his buddy.
 
moonarchia

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Tuco said:
We ended up getting the TickTalk4 TickTalk 4

It's OK. As a device it's great and has worked very well so far. It has a huge limitation though since it doesn't have true SMS compatibility. Anyone who texts with my son has to have their dumbass app, which severely limits the utility of the device for him to independently communicate with people. The watch's major competitor, the Gizmo 3, has the same limitation.

I was hoping he could get this thing and we could coerce his friend's parents to get something similar so he could reach out to his people and go hang out independently, but it looks like nothing on the market supports that. Some people really like the apple smartwatch, but I've literally never bought an apple device and haven't looked into buying that yet. I don't know how much Apple koolaid I need to drink just so my kid can text "can u play rn" to his buddy.
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The watch requires an iphone, so be wary there. The up side is that it syncs with pretty much everything, including messages/sms.
 
Tuco

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moonarchia said:
The watch requires an iphone, so be wary there. The up side is that it syncs with pretty much everything, including messages/sms.
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How feasible is it to split the ownership such that my kid can use the watch and I don't risk him being able to access any sensitive info (Ex: my emails, my dick pics, random websites he googles, etc) , and my phone doesn't get blown up when he's spamming his buddies?
 
C

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lurkingdirk said:
Okay, here's a weird one. About my parents in law rather than being a parent.

I believe I've mentioned before that I'm the executor on my parents' in laws will. I've been working for a year to get all the information about their finances. We've all been very worried that they can't afford the care they now need. Both have Alzheimer's, and are now moving to a stage where they have to be in advanced care. They're both nearing 85. They have, for their entire lives (their children have said this many times), said that they had absolutely no money. They were broke. Since they were in basic care for the last year they were about breaking even with their pensions/retirement/etc. Now, with the care they are going to be getting they are going to be short by about $8K a month. Very worrisome.

The final number I got today as we combined all their accounts, the sale of their house, and everything they have is 1.8 million dollars. They're set for the rest of their lives.

This brings up a range of emotions. First, relief. They are self sufficient for more than 20 years. Great. Second, mild rage. Okay, not so mild. They refused to help their children with college tuition, with getting a vehicle, with basic needs, telling their children they had to get jobs to get clothes for school. While I agree these are valuable lessons, and my kids have all had jobs, and they are doing all they can to pay their own way, they also know my wife and I are here as a security blanket and will support them 100%. My inlaws told their kids they were 100% on their own because they had nothing with which to support them. They always had money to decorate the house, to support their own hobbies, but my wife and her siblings had to buy their own jeans.

Now that I have this information I don't quite know what to do with it. My wife is I think partially in shock. I'm pretty sure anger will surface soon. The issue is that her parents are mentally to a point where you just can't ask them to be accountable. They should be accountable, but any discussion we have today will be forgotten tomorrow, and they won't even remember things from the past for which they should be accountable.

I feel like an absolute asshole for being glad that the will is split equally between the kids, and they're not going to live long. But that's where I'm at. I don't know if that makes me an asshole or not, but seeing first hand how they treated finances for the last 25 years, and knowing the stories about it from my wife and her siblings just pisses me off something fierce. What would you guys do or feel in this situation?

Sorry for the long rant. I needed to put it into words. This ends my Ted Talk.
Click to expand...

In addition to what everyone else said, it's worth keeping in mind the nature of investements. House prices have tripled in the last five years, the markets have basically doubled in the last 10 and quintupled in the last 20. They could very easily not have had what feels like a significant amount of money until fairly recently.

Either way, Alzheimer's destroys minds and whoever they are now is not the people they were. There's no point in resentment.
 
Gavinmad

Gavinmad

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chthonic-anemos said:
If they were truly selfish they would have blown it all instead of having something to leave their kids.
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They still have time to blow it all, do you know how much assisted living residency costs a year for an alzheimers patient? I would guess there's probably various ways to save money due to them being a couple (i.e. a two person room is technically private for them), but when Dirk said they're set for life it was probably on the assumption that they won't make to 90.
 
Hateyou

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Tuco said:
How feasible is it to split the ownership such that my kid can use the watch and I don't risk him being able to access any sensitive info (Ex: my emails, my dick pics, random websites he googles, etc) , and my phone doesn't get blown up when he's spamming his buddies?
Click to expand...

Set up Apple Watch for a family member - Apple Support

Family Setup lets family members who don't have their own iPhone enjoy the features and benefits of an Apple Watch.
support.apple.com support.apple.com
 
Falstaff

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Do any of you guys give your kids a credit/debit card? My daughter turned 10 in July this summer and her and all her friends started riding bikes all over town and often end up at the local ice cream/boba place. Every time she asks me for money I never have cash on me, so instead was thinking about something like this I can get for her and transfer money when she does chores would be a win/win.
 
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OU Ariakas

OU Ariakas

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Falstaff said:
Does any of you guys give your kids a credit/debit card? My daughter turned 10 in July this summer and her and all her friends started riding bikes all over town and often end up at the local ice cream/boba place. Every time she asks me for money I never have cash on me, so instead was thinking about something like this I can get for her and transfer money when she does chores would be a win/win.
Click to expand...

You can search for "reloadable debit card for kids" if you want that, but think about maybe getting actual cash for her to use. It is so much easier to teach them the value of a dollar when they have to count it out and give it to you themselves.
 
Arative

Arative

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Falstaff said:
Do any of you guys give your kids a credit/debit card? My daughter turned 10 in July this summer and her and all her friends started riding bikes all over town and often end up at the local ice cream/boba place. Every time she asks me for money I never have cash on me, so instead was thinking about something like this I can get for her and transfer money when she does chores would be a win/win.
Click to expand...
We got our kids greenlight, so we can set up chores for them and they can earn money. It comes with a debit card. It has a monthly fee though for the parents.
 
Prodigal

Prodigal

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Gavinmad said:
…when Dirk said they're set for life it was probably on the assumption that they won't make to 90.
Click to expand...

Dirk:

0615A35C-7EF8-4D4E-8B04-A80E823877D0.gif
 
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