Category Archives: Parenting

Fidelity changes their 529 plan expense ratios

Right after I mail the paperwork to transfer Daughter Person’s 529 from Fidelity to Virginia’s plan, I get a letter from Fidelity letting me know that their expense ratios on the index funds were dropping to 0.09% – doh!

Now I have to seriously do the math on which plan is better for us.  Virginia allows up to $4000/year tax deduction for contributions – and they carry over from year to year (ie. if we contribute $5000 this year, we can take the $4000 deduction this year and $1000 next year – until it’s all used up).  We have a state marginal tax rate of 5.75% and $4000 isn’t likely to drop us into a lower bracket.  Right now, we contribute $600/year, reducing our taxes by ~$35/year, if we contributed up to the full $4000 (which is possible in the future), we’d reduce our taxes by $230/year.

The difference in expense ratios is 0.37% for our selected plan vs. 0.09% for Fidelity – so a difference of 0.28% – It’s current balance is about $5000, so that’s a difference of $14 in fees just this year, and that will increase as we go along – but the fee decrease doesn’t come close to the reduction in taxes we get.  Since I’m pretty sure we’re going to be contributing more than $4000/year on average over her school life, we’ll be able to bank quite a bit, even with the higher fees on the Virginia plan.  We can also reduce our expense ratio with the VA plan to as low as 0.24% by selecting another investment plan.

What do you think – am I doing the math right for figuring out our reduction in taxes?

Mileage Run successful!

Dad and I returned on Sunday from my mileage run, and United already has me as a Gold member 🙂 I had to immediately turn around and drive to Grandma’s hometown for work – so I picked up Daughter Person on that trip. We just got back this afternoon. We missed Daughter Person, and she most definitely missed us, she wouldn’t let go of me while I was at Grandma’s. She wasn’t quite as excited to see Dad though.

She and I managed the 4 hours drive with very few problems. I bought her a magna-doodle which is designated as “car-only”, and she played with that for a while before falling asleep right before my planned stop. I didn’t need to stop, so I wasn’t going to wake her. She woke up about 10 miles before the next convenient stop. She gave me a bit of hassle about getting back in her carseat, but she eventually did and then she played with the magna-doodle for the next hour and a half until we got home. I had to run an errand before a certain time though – and I couldn’t bribe her into the car. Luckily, Dad was working from home and was able to watch her for the 15 minutes it took me to get to the post office and back.

Child-free “vacation”

Daughter Person went to Grandma’s this morning, and Dad and I have the house to ourselves.  It’s very quiet without her here, but I’m sick and enjoying being able to sleep a lot to recover before work starts on Monday.

Dad and I were sitting on the couch with “what to do?” on both our minds.  I ended up going upstairs to my office and scanning in all of Daughter Person’s artwork from daycare.  They seem to make new artwork every day.  I kept a few pieces and recycled the rest once they were scanned in.  I think I might make Grandma a book to keep of the artwork.

Daughter Person is at Grandma’s until at least next Monday when we get back from my mileage run.  We’ll be calling, and Grandma knows how to take pictures on her mobile and MMS them to me, so we’ll be seeing all kinds of pictures I’m sure.

Second word!

Daughter Person now consistently verbalizes two words: ‘uh-oh’ and ‘mo’ (more) – she has a lot more signs though. It only took her 19 months to get to this point. She had hyperbilirubinia when she was born (really bad jaundice), and one of the potential side effects of that was hearing loss, leading to speech issues, so we’ve been watching her like a hawk. The other potential side effect was lack of gross motor control – and while she was a little on the late side, she hasn’t had any problems with it.

Her hearing was tested when she was a newborn, and it was fine, but unlike other toddlers her age, she just doesn’t talk. She’s kinda quiet anyway, and she babbles constantly in her own language, but barely any recognizable words. She understands a *lot* though – I probably can’t count how many words we know she understands (‘recycling’ is one of them because she’ll recycle things for us when we ask), but she can follow directions consistently (when she wants of course). But we still don’t even have mama and dada as words that she’ll say to us. When she’s upset, she’ll cry mamamamamamama, but that’s about it. She just reaches for me or Dad when she wants one of us. She can point at Mama or Dada, but she won’t say them.

About 14-ish months, she started saying ‘uh-oh’, and we haven’t heard anything consistently until ‘mo’ this morning. We’re pretty sure we’ve heard other words, but she won’t repeat them, so we’re not 100% sure: ‘ball’, ‘blue’, and ‘at’ (cat).

Hersheypark

We took Daughter Person to Hersheypark this weekend.  We met two friends who we ride roller coasters with all the time.  They’re Daughter Person’s “godparents” as well, so they like hanging out with her.  It took forever to get there on Friday evening, and Daughter Person didn’t go to sleep until 10pm.  Then she decided to wake up at 5am on Saturday morning (ugh!).  We took her out to play around the hotel as our friends woke up and got ready, and then we headed to World of Chocolate as soon as it opened.  She really enjoyed the singing cows on the “ride”.

As soon as the park opened, I went with one of our friends to ride Skyrush, the new ride – quite nice, but a little painful, while Dad went with our other friend and Daughter Person to the kiddie rides.
Daughter Person’s favorite ride?  The tilt-a-whirl – not a kiddie ride.  She didn’t really want to ride the kiddie rides after that and gave us a look of “really, is this it?” when we put her on them.  She’ll be fun as soon as she is tall enough to ride on the bigger rides.  She’s already pretty short though, so it’ll be a long time 🙁

She managed to snooze in the stroller, and we stayed at the park until 8pm – which we were pleased with.  We took advantage of their parent swap program to ride some of the bigger rides.  It was way too crowded for Dad and I, but she enjoyed it, and we’re looking forward to taking her back again next year.

Expensive Children’s Clothing

Seriously?  WTOP has an article on designer clothes for toddlers.  I can’t believe that any sane person would pay that much for clothes that will be too small in a year or less!  I try to pay the least amount possible for Daughter Person’s clothes – usually leaving the clothes purchasing to grandma who has a Kohl’s card, a senior discount, and time to search through the clearance rack.  I think the most I’ve ever spent on an outfit for Daughter Person was $20 – and even then, I drooled over it for a month before I finally bought it (when I had a Kohl’s 30% coupon!).  I try to never spend more than $7 or $8 for an outfit.  I mean, she’s going to grow out of it in a year-ish, and it’s going to get food all over it, pee on the bottoms, and general toddler messiness.

Sure, I’ll buy a few nice outfits from the consignment store, but even then, I might only spend $5.  (I can’t even sell her stuff at consignment because it’s too “cheap” to start with.  I’ll still take your 50 cents please.)

Bad week in the parenting department

This week has been a horrible week for me in the parenting department.  I mentioned previously that I suffer(ed) from post-partum depression, and a year after I started meds, it’s acting up again.  This week I’ve regretted ever becoming a parent.  I know that it’s my screwed up brain chemistry talking, but it’s still upsetting to feel like this – especially a year after I started the meds.

Daughter Person isn’t really helping either – she’s a miserable person to be around after daycare because she didn’t get two naps, and she’s been clingy to me specifically.  I’m trying really hard to not take out my frustration on her, but Dad ends up getting it instead.

Dad’s picking her up from daycare tonight, and I’m going to do who knows what in the 2.5 hours between leaving work and Daughter Person coming home.  Maybe I’ll take that opportunity to exercise and nap.

 

Potty Training – I’m not ready!

Daughter Person’s pediatrician mentioned potty training to me at her 18mth appointment two weeks ago, and thought she was showing signs of being ready, then yesterday, her daycare teacher told me the same thing.  I had noticed some of the signs myself, but since I tend to push her (sometimes too much according to Dad), I didn’t want to act on my observations.  But I’m not ready for this yet!

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Cloth diapers

I’m a little bit of an environmentalist. If I can do something to help the environment, and it doesn’t cause a lot of inconvenience, I’m very likely to do it. We use reusable towels and napkins at home, recycle everything we can, and cloth diaper.

When Daughter Person was born, I was pretty sure I wanted to use them, Dad wasn’t so sure. I sprung for the bumgenius diapers – once assembled, they are almost exactly like disposables. Dad’s big concern was solids – what happened to those? Turns out they’re water soluble if exclusively breastfed and dump rather easily into the toilet if not.

When Daughter Person finally arrived, everyone recommended disposables until the meconium is gone, so we had a small package for a week. Turns out we didn’t need it since she was in the NICU for a week and they provide diapers. Except she got horrible diaper rash and it wouldn’t go away (like bleeding bad). As soon as we started on the cloth full-time, she had no problems – we even got a doctor’s note to allow her to continue in cloth at daycare.

In addition to saving the environment, cloth diapers are cheaper in the long run, especially if you plan on having more than one child. I spent about $400 upfront for a stash of 30 diapers and $250 for 24 newborn sized cloth diapers (Daughter Person was too small for the smallest adjustment on the ‘normal’ ones). I later sold the (used) newborn diapers on eBay for $192, and I plan on selling the normal sized ones when we’re done with them.  I changed her about 12 times per day the first few weeks, and now we’re down to about 6-7 changes per day, at ~$0.25/diaper, we’ve already saved money over disposables, and we won’t be paying any more for diapers – and we can sell them once she’s done with them to recoup some of the initial cost.

We do use the Flip diapers with a disposable gDiaper insert when cloth diapers just won’t work (like if we’ll be more than 3 days without a washer, or we’re spending all day at an amusement park).  Neither Dad nor I particularly like them, but they work for what we need them to – and much better than the standard disposables; and in 18 mths, we’ve gone through 1 package of the Flip inserts, and one and a half of the gDiaper inserts.

They are a little bit of extra work – when we first started, she went through so many diapers that we were washing every night.  Now, we wash every 3rd night.  It’s a cold rinse, a hot wash (with Original Tide) with extra cold rinse, then toss in the dryer on low.  Then about 15-20 minutes of “stuffing” – ie. putting them back together so they’re ready to be used.  We just talk or watch TV while we’re stuffing them.  They don’t *need* to be dried in the machine, but nothing line dries in the summer in our area, and it’s a lot more convenient.