Hi Ellie, I had to drop in and thank you for all the help you gave me last year. You were a big inspiration for me and now I'm glad to be back and getting caught up on your thread.
Just thought I'd pop in to say I just bought the new Bach book, "Start Late, Finish Rich." Of course, buying it in hardcover probably flies in the face of its principles, but I figured NOT buying it in hardcover would be starting even later! So... thanks for the recommendation. I thought I didn't really need "Smart Women," since I'm in a field dominated by women and my own finances don't really hinge on whether I'm a woman or not. I thought with the newer book, I'd get the principles in SW, with the angle that I am getting a late start.
How's life in independent study land? You haven't updated about your kids in a while. Hope all is well with you.
Hey there J - I think all his books are pretty much the same, so you will probably get the same from this book as from the others. And being an avid reader myself, I never think of money spent on books as an indulgence, but as a necessity! When you finish reading it, then read Your Money Or Your Life by Dominguez.
Independent study is going fairly well, D did lie to me about the state of some paperwork at the end of the first month and had to pull a marathon day to get it all done by deadline, but otherwise she has been doing pretty good work and getting good feedback from her teachers (like picking out her work to read to the class etc.) which she thrives on.
S18 is getting excited about going to college, we are just waiting with baited breath this month to find out which other campuses accept him, then we will have some tough decisions to make.
S13 is doing okay - some school difficulties, related to his attention problems, but he is tolerating the restrictions on his social activities better than I expected (friends can come over, but he can't be unsupervised.)
And H and I had a nice little date the other night, went to see Sideways and then out for a bite to eat. We had kind of let our weekly date nights slip during all the recent turmoil, and that just reminded me how important it is that we make time for that.
Ah, a date with your H! How nice. Could you explain how that works for the two of you? In other words, is it a set night each week? Is it one of you who takes the responsibility each week to plan it, or is it whoever brings it up first? If it's the responsibility of both of you to bring it up, is it always one or the other of you who actually does?
Well - we used to have a set night of the week (the night we used to waste on our bad marriage counselor! LOL! We would have been better of from the beginning to have had date nites rather than counseling, I think!) and I think we'll go back to that. In our case, our schedules are so busy with the kids and other things, that if we don't make the commitment, it just gets pushed out of the way by other things. We picked Monday nights because there are fewer conflicts (usually no homework deadlines that early in the week, no other social engagements to conflict) although that also means we aren't free to stay out late.
This is not a fancy date thing - just a chance for the two of us to be alone together and actually have conversation. Sometimes we will see a movie - often we'll just go out to dinner - and usually deciding what or where is a mutual thing.
Our objective is a little different than yours, though - see, we're just trying to find a little time to be alone together and have a conversation that isn't continually interrupted by the kids. We do have social outings on the weekends that involve friends.
In your case, you might want to set up some more exciting, interesting dates. Maybe take turns planning?
Thanks, Ellie, that's exactly what I had in mind - noooo, we don't need MORE time to sit and talk quietly to each other, we need fuel for discussions about exciting things like art, film...
Started the book last night, and I'm getting excited for all those millions I'll be rolling in in a few years...
S18 has been accepted to UC Santa Barbara, Davis, Riverside and Santa Cruz. So far, UCLA is his only rejection. UC Berkeley, UCI and UCSD haven't reported yet.
Then comes the hard part - deciding! Neither my H nor I had to go through this part when we applied to college - I couldn't afford to go anywhere but my local UC, and H only got accepted to one school!
With my S, there are so many things to consider - not just academic excellence, but breadth in his side interests, availability of an appropriate band for him to play in, and most importantly, social issues.
He's a friendly, extroverted type - but pretty far to the eccentric (okay, sometimes weird) nerdy kid with little ability to read social cues. So he really needs to be someplace with an active social structure, lots of smart kids so he can find his equivalently eccentric peers, a place to fit in. I'm sure any of these schools will have kids like my S - the question is just which schools will have a social structure that helps him to find them?
I'm 48 though 
but I figured NOT buying it in hardcover would be starting even later! So... thanks for the recommendation. I thought I didn't really need "Smart Women," since I'm in a field dominated by women and my own finances don't really hinge on whether I'm a woman or not. I thought with the newer book, I'd get the principles in SW, with the angle that I am getting a late start.