My UO I think that while basic healthcare should be public funded and for everyone, I think if you want some speciality things (like massage) you should have to pay out of pocket.
@ruby696 I have 3 female cousins close in age to me. When they each got married things were fairly traditional and by the books. It was definitely upsetting to my mom that I did not want to do things that way, starting with insisting there was no bridal shower or engagement party. I didn't feel the need to celebrate with people I hadn't seen or spoken to in years just because they were blood relatives. I didn't feel the need to spend $$$$. My husband and I were living together for 5 years or more before we got married and we owned a house and have house stuff, no need to shower us with gifts. I know that's a tradition that goes back to when it was more common that getting married happened younger and happened in conjunction with moving out of your parent's house for the first time and having your own place, but when you've been a homeowner for 10 years before getting married you kinda have things like dishes and pots and pans covered. Now that I think about it I don't think I've ever attended a bridal shower.
@mamaj1220 it's hard because while I feel people should have all have access to the health care they need, there are people that take advantage of the system. Also, I believe in an open market and small business and all that and don't feel the government should interfere so much with business. I have a hard time balancing these ideals because the system is sooooo messed up and we can't just start over, we have to start with what we have and somehow modify it.
If we could start over: I'm more of the opinion that we should pay out of pocket for everything. If you have to go to the doctor for something, the price should be such that you just pay for that service. Pay only when you need something, not pay insurance for months and years when you don't need anything. If I am sick I should be able to pay for an office visit and lab work and meds without going to the poor house.
Mine is that I don't like American Football. I still don't know who won the superbowl, and I only knew who was in it because I looked it up on the internet the day before.
@pirateduck I also could care less about football - and same with MH. We never know what's happening and definitely don't care. We do both really like basketball and MH keeps up with soccer.
@ruby696 Totally agree with not liking bridal/baby showers!
I’m going a step further and I don’t like weddings either. I didn’t have a wedding (we just got married the two of us) and although some family members were mad or didn’t understand it, we’ve never regretted it!
I will say most of the time in my family/friends a bridal shower is a pot luck with us and drinks nothing over the top like weekends away or anything but just a chance to all get together and have fun.
@peachnectarine my mom wanted a compromise on a guest list when we said we were having a small non-traditional wedding, in my mind that was the compromise because if it was totally up to us and not about the family we would have gotten married on a mountaintop or something without anyone else around.
@peachnectarine We were engaged for about six months before we said screw it and went to the courthouse. We made an appointment the week before, invited parents only, and got married. It was so fun and I don't regret it for a second.
Oh man, I love weddings! I think the closer you are to the bride and groom, the more fun they are. My brother is getting married in June and it's going to be super fun. I can't wait. Plus it's at a ranch/winery that they picked specifically for the wine and I will be able to drink again by then.
I get hating showers for sure. But not having weddings. That being said, I totally get people who want to do their own thing, or elope or whatnot.
But I'm all about dancing like idiots with my friends and family for hours. I love it.
I'm going to largely stay out of the healthcare discussion. I was told today that because my family can't afford medical treatment without assistance, we deserve to die or be homeless in order to pay our bills. I'm having a really hard time with that today. I'm disabled, can't work, can't afford childcare.
My UO- I hate The Bachelor. So not interested in that drama. I'm also so glad y'all will do a thread on it. I lurk most threads to GTKY all better, but not that one!
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Me: 33 DH: 32 Married 7/18/15 1st born at 35+4 on 6/6/16 Team green turned BLUE! 2nd born at 38+6 on 8/30/18 Team green turned PINK! Due with #3 on 6/6/20 Team Green
@pourmeanothermocktail that brings up another topic my husband and I have discussed. Historically, traditionally, a man would work and his wife would stay home, raise the kiddos, take care of the house or the farm etc. Historically his single income was enough to support a family/homestead. Then there was a push for women to enter the workforce and to be treated equal, etc. but something went wrong with wages when this happened and now it takes the combined wages of both the husband and wife to equal enough to support a family/homestead on average. Supporting a family on one income in the US is extremely difficult in most income brackets. It makes it hard for sure.
Thanks all. I didn't mean to shut down the fun here. I didn't really take it super personally, but it still just hurts my heart to know there are people out there that think this. Regardless of anyone's views on politics-the concept that the poor and disabled don't deserve to live if they can't make enough money is so abhorrent to me.
@pirateduck The even more overreaching issue in my area though is that childcare is so expensive, unless both parents have an established career making $50,000 with 3+ weeks PTO you can't afford to have two incomes either. What I can make (when not broken), would be almost entirely gone in childcare for one kid. I'd be paying to work with 3 kids. Plus once we make more (on paper, lol, but not bringing home more), our state insurance won't cover, and then our monthly insurance goes up too. It's a vicious cycle we want out of, but haven't managed to yet. My husband makes significantly less than median pay for his career in our area, so he's job hunting. But, he has a speech impediment. It doesn't at all affect his work-he works on back end computer stuff, phone calls are rare and only internal. But, companies start with phone screenings and phone interviews now. And he doesn't sound awesome on the phone.
I was offered a job right when I found out I was pregnant, but it was retail, and on my feet. I knew that any daytime shifts weren't going to pay a sitter, but nighttime and weekend I had my husband to handle kids. We would have lost out on over half of our total family time together, I would have lost nearly all of my downtime and a good chunk of sleep (which is sad, I've been averaging 5 ish or less hours of sleep for 4 years straight now, usually broken up sleep), but increased our yearly income some-it wouldn't have been a total wash. But, with pregnancy I know my pelvis falls apart. I know I can't work on my feet. So that idea gets pushed back at least a year, maybe more depending on how rough of a recovery I have and how difficult of a baby.
Unplanned baby-birth control failed here.
We'll get through, but it's just hard to hear when people think that assistance programs are unnecessary. With costs of housing, childcare, and food, a lot of people are only one major illness or injury out of severe financial problems. Healthcare shouldn't bankrupt people, but it does.
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Me: 33 DH: 32 Married 7/18/15 1st born at 35+4 on 6/6/16 Team green turned BLUE! 2nd born at 38+6 on 8/30/18 Team green turned PINK! Due with #3 on 6/6/20 Team Green
Oh for sure, taxes plus child care plus insurance for a family takes an income under $50,000 a year down to near zero take home pay. It’s not just your part of the country. It also puts your gross income above assistance levels. It’s one reason either my husband or I will stay home once baby is born.
Oh for sure, taxes plus child care plus insurance for a family takes an income under $50,000 a year down to near zero take home pay. It’s not just your part of the country. It also puts your gross income above assistance levels. It’s one reason either my husband or I will stay home once baby is born.
We need a minimum of $100,000 here to support 3 kids in daycare and case minimum necessities. Or like $60,000 to be generally OK and able to save some money without childcare. Me staying home and maybe working part time when I'm able (mostly just to pay off the bigger car we needed when we realized that two rear facing convertibles don't work in a Chevy Cruze) is OK, but losing sleep and free time for just a few hundred a month seems ridiculous. Sigh.
But I feel a lot of people in older generations don't understand the concept of not being able to afford to work. (edited because I wrote that wrong)
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Me: 33 DH: 32 Married 7/18/15 1st born at 35+4 on 6/6/16 Team green turned BLUE! 2nd born at 38+6 on 8/30/18 Team green turned PINK! Due with #3 on 6/6/20 Team Green
First off, I seriously love my job and I'm really thankful that my husband and I can make it work to where I get to work. I stayed at home for the first 4 years of children. DD1 turned 4 and DD3 turned 1 the week before I started this job. I loved staying home, but I also really struggled. My job has good benefits and okay pay. Nearly all of my paycheck goes to daycare with just 2 in daycare right now. During the summer, I will be paying like 1.5x my paycheck for all four kids in daycare. We keep reminding ourselves that it's only for this season and that there's a lot of longevity in my job if we can depend on elections..
HOWEVER, living in a deep red state, the older generation literally cannot fathom not being able to AFFORD to work. My MIL was relentless about me working outside the home for years, but there was nothing that would have made it worth daycare costs. It's such a tough position to be in and I hate that anyone ever feels that way.
@TattoosandLace I for sure am nervous about the financial change that having a child will cause in our family. We struggled for years financially and only perhaps the past two years finally feel we are at a point where we are stable/comfortable, and now that is going away. Whether we cut hours at work to care for our own child or keep working to pay for child care, it's going to be a big change to the budget.
@pirateduck I totally understand. It's a tough thing to figure out how to balance specifically for your family. The new house is in a different school district than the town that both my husband and I work at. DD1 goes to school in the district that we reside in. It would be relatively easy for us to transfer to the district we work in, but we want to try to wait until after the 2020-2021 school year solely because of childcare costs. DD2 starts pre-k next year. The current school district has all day pre-k. The district we work in only has pre-k for 2 hours a day, so we'd be paying more in childcare if we try to transfer now. The trade off is we are not able to just pop over to the school if DD1 gets sick or needs something. Thankfully, DH's sister works in the school so if there was an absolute emergency (or I go into labor during a school day), she can get DD1. But we also have to rely on MIL or someone else to get DD1 off the bus right now, where if we transferred districts she could get dropped off by the bus at DH's school in the afternoon. It definitely sucks trying to figure it all out. I can't imagine if we lived in a place that had a higher cost of living.
@pourmeanothermocktail that is disgusting and I am sorry anyone said anything remotely close to that to you or anyone. Also I should clarify, I think that healthcare should be free and accessible to all BUT if you want plastic surgery or other things that are elective and not medically needed, that I feel should be out of pocket.
Also @pirateduck and @TattoosandLace children complicate everything haha. We live in a really expensive area and really the only reason we can make it work is we have a lot. of family support and childcare hasn't been an issue for us.
@pourmeanothermocktail that is disgusting and I am sorry anyone said anything remotely close to that to you or anyone. Also I should clarify, I think that healthcare should be free and accessible to all BUT if you want plastic surgery or other things that are elective and not medically needed, that I feel should be out of pocket.
I'm reasonably sure that that's how it works in the UK with healthcare. It sounds awfully nice.
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Me: 33 DH: 32 Married 7/18/15 1st born at 35+4 on 6/6/16 Team green turned BLUE! 2nd born at 38+6 on 8/30/18 Team green turned PINK! Due with #3 on 6/6/20 Team Green
@pourmeanothermocktail I think Romania would have been the country for you Here the state pays 85% of your income from the last year for staying home until the kid turns 2 (if you worked before being pregnant) plus you get the same benefit for 2 months before delivery. And we also have state day care covered by tax money. The perks of a former communist country, I guess... That said, the public healthcare system is really bad and ancient so we try to stay healthy so we don't end up in a hospital
@pustiulari Pros and cons! But our healthcare system here aims to bankrupt you to death, lol. My first cost more than a half million dollars before he came from from the hospital 3 weeks later. We got saved by state funded aid, but a lot of people in this country are in support of doing away with the aid, and if you can pay, oh well. (I literally got into an argument this week with someone who said that if my husband and I weren't willing to work more and harder, we don't deserve healthcare at all. Because sick and disabled and injured people obviously don't deserve medical care???). So I don't know, but I'm unhappy.
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Me: 33 DH: 32 Married 7/18/15 1st born at 35+4 on 6/6/16 Team green turned BLUE! 2nd born at 38+6 on 8/30/18 Team green turned PINK! Due with #3 on 6/6/20 Team Green
Re: UO 2/13
My UO I think that while basic healthcare should be public funded and for everyone, I think if you want some speciality things (like massage) you should have to pay out of pocket.
If we could start over: I'm more of the opinion that we should pay out of pocket for everything. If you have to go to the doctor for something, the price should be such that you just pay for that service. Pay only when you need something, not pay insurance for months and years when you don't need anything. If I am sick I should be able to pay for an office visit and lab work and meds without going to the poor house.
But I'm all about dancing like idiots with my friends and family for hours. I love it.
I'm going to largely stay out of the healthcare discussion. I was told today that because my family can't afford medical treatment without assistance, we deserve to die or be homeless in order to pay our bills. I'm having a really hard time with that today. I'm disabled, can't work, can't afford childcare.
My UO- I hate The Bachelor. So not interested in that drama. I'm also so glad y'all will do a thread on it. I lurk most threads to GTKY all better, but not that one!
DH: 32
Married 7/18/15
1st born at 35+4 on 6/6/16
Team green turned BLUE!
2nd born at 38+6 on 8/30/18
Team green turned PINK!
Due with #3 on 6/6/20 Team Green
FTM
BFP: 9/5/19 ~ EDD 5/15/20
@pirateduck The even more overreaching issue in my area though is that childcare is so expensive, unless both parents have an established career making $50,000 with 3+ weeks PTO you can't afford to have two incomes either. What I can make (when not broken), would be almost entirely gone in childcare for one kid. I'd be paying to work with 3 kids. Plus once we make more (on paper, lol, but not bringing home more), our state insurance won't cover, and then our monthly insurance goes up too. It's a vicious cycle we want out of, but haven't managed to yet. My husband makes significantly less than median pay for his career in our area, so he's job hunting. But, he has a speech impediment. It doesn't at all affect his work-he works on back end computer stuff, phone calls are rare and only internal. But, companies start with phone screenings and phone interviews now. And he doesn't sound awesome on the phone.
I was offered a job right when I found out I was pregnant, but it was retail, and on my feet. I knew that any daytime shifts weren't going to pay a sitter, but nighttime and weekend I had my husband to handle kids. We would have lost out on over half of our total family time together, I would have lost nearly all of my downtime and a good chunk of sleep (which is sad, I've been averaging 5 ish or less hours of sleep for 4 years straight now, usually broken up sleep), but increased our yearly income some-it wouldn't have been a total wash. But, with pregnancy I know my pelvis falls apart. I know I can't work on my feet. So that idea gets pushed back at least a year, maybe more depending on how rough of a recovery I have and how difficult of a baby.
Unplanned baby-birth control failed here.
We'll get through, but it's just hard to hear when people think that assistance programs are unnecessary. With costs of housing, childcare, and food, a lot of people are only one major illness or injury out of severe financial problems. Healthcare shouldn't bankrupt people, but it does.
DH: 32
Married 7/18/15
1st born at 35+4 on 6/6/16
Team green turned BLUE!
2nd born at 38+6 on 8/30/18
Team green turned PINK!
Due with #3 on 6/6/20 Team Green
But I feel a lot of people in older generations don't understand the concept of not being able to afford to work. (edited because I wrote that wrong)
DH: 32
Married 7/18/15
1st born at 35+4 on 6/6/16
Team green turned BLUE!
2nd born at 38+6 on 8/30/18
Team green turned PINK!
Due with #3 on 6/6/20 Team Green
HOWEVER, living in a deep red state, the older generation literally cannot fathom not being able to AFFORD to work. My MIL was relentless about me working outside the home for years, but there was nothing that would have made it worth daycare costs. It's such a tough position to be in and I hate that anyone ever feels that way.
The new house is in a different school district than the town that both my husband and I work at. DD1 goes to school in the district that we reside in. It would be relatively easy for us to transfer to the district we work in, but we want to try to wait until after the 2020-2021 school year solely because of childcare costs. DD2 starts pre-k next year. The current school district has all day pre-k. The district we work in only has pre-k for 2 hours a day, so we'd be paying more in childcare if we try to transfer now. The trade off is we are not able to just pop over to the school if DD1 gets sick or needs something. Thankfully, DH's sister works in the school so if there was an absolute emergency (or I go into labor during a school day), she can get DD1. But we also have to rely on MIL or someone else to get DD1 off the bus right now, where if we transferred districts she could get dropped off by the bus at DH's school in the afternoon. It definitely sucks trying to figure it all out. I can't imagine if we lived in a place that had a higher cost of living.
Also @pirateduck and @TattoosandLace children complicate everything haha. We live in a really expensive area and really the only reason we can make it work is we have a lot. of family support and childcare hasn't been an issue for us.
DH: 32
Married 7/18/15
1st born at 35+4 on 6/6/16
Team green turned BLUE!
2nd born at 38+6 on 8/30/18
Team green turned PINK!
Due with #3 on 6/6/20 Team Green
I think Romania would have been the country for you
That said, the public healthcare system is really bad and ancient so we try to stay healthy so we don't end up in a hospital
DH: 32
Married 7/18/15
1st born at 35+4 on 6/6/16
Team green turned BLUE!
2nd born at 38+6 on 8/30/18
Team green turned PINK!
Due with #3 on 6/6/20 Team Green