Tilden Regional Park

May 12, 2013 3:14 pm

IMGP0009asLast week we learned about Tilden Regional Park.  I don’t remember how, but I had stumbled across something that mentioned the “Steam Trains” which sounded interesting.  As it turns out, they have a great little narrow-gauge, scale-model (I think it’s 1:5) train system.  For $3 per person you get to ride the train around for about 15 minutes.  They have tunnels and bridges and roundhouses and water towers. It’s great fun.

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Heather thought it was pretty fun, but she was a little unsure about the whistle.  It would startle her every time it blew.

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Also in the park is a “Little Farm” with some animals.  Heather loved watching the ducks and chickens run around.  She made sure to keep an eye on the rooster which kept crowing.  The cows weren’t interested in us much because we didn’t bring any food for them, but we were able to get some face time anyway.

From there it was on to the carousel.  Yes, this park also has a carousel (and no parking/entrance fees!).  The carousel is $2 a ticket or 7 tickets for $10.  Given that Heather’s favorite part about Disneyland was the carousels we figured this was a good bet.  And she got very excited when she saw it and realized what it was.

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Heather mostly had her ride face on, but she was loving it.

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And here’s photographic proof that I was there too.

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Getting up to the park takes us through Walnut Creek, so, of course, lunch on the way home was at the new Chick-Fil-A.

Word of warning:
We decided that anytime anyone comes to visit us from now on we’ll need to go ride the train and carousel.  They run all year round, weather permitting.

Christmas 2012

January 25, 2013 6:53 pm

Heather rather enjoys getting various things on her head and walking around with them there.  Here is her majesty with a cloak and staff:

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Jess’ parents came to visit for Christmas.  Christmas Eve was a relaxing evening of snacks and enjoying the fire.   There was wassail and cocktail weenies as required by Dickerson tradition.

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During the night, Santa came to visit and filled the stockings and such.

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The obligatory Christmas morning photos:
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Heather received a wagon in which her favorite stuffed animals waited for her to get up.  Despite the tag with her name on it, she was still a little unsure of the situation.  But she warmed up to the idea fairly quickly.

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While Jess’ parents were visiting we decided to finally go see Alcatraz.  Heather got to wear her fancy Google beanie, but she didn’t leave it on her head for very long.
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Heather loved the library.  We had to finally carry her away in order to finish the tour.

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And here are just some nice pictures:

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Family Finance

September 21, 2012 3:28 pm

In my reading and podcast listening I’ve come across lots of information about family finance.  Sadly, one of the most common factors cited in divorce cases is arguments about money.  APM’s Marketplace radio show often discusses how couples / families handle their finances and there are lots of ways to do it.  Presumably, or hopefully, the end goal of any arrangement is to minimize arguments about money.

A lot of discussions revolve around merging finances when both partners earn an income.  I think some of these methods are bad arrangements that fail at the main goal of minimize disagreements.  For example: each person keeps their own money, but contributes into a joint account for joint expenses.  This just seems like a obvious way to set up a power struggle within the relationship when one person makes a meaningful amount more than the other.  That person has more disposable income than the other.  And in some respects that’s “fair,” but it makes the marriage seem more like a roommate agreement.

We only have a single income.  Some arrangements for single incomes are equally terrible to the above dual-income arrangement.  I’ve seen some suggestions where the income earner pays the bills and then gives the non-earner an allowance.  This seems terribly patronizing and unequal.  Both this and the above method cling to the idea that the money belongs to the earner which, in turn, sets up the scenario where the money is more important than the relationship.

We really like the solution we came up with when we got married, which would work just as well for dual-income families:

Mindset

First is the mindset.  I go to work and the paycheck has my name on it; but it’s not my money.  It’s our money.  It belongs to the family and will be used for the family’s needs and wants first.  (I think this is a major stumbling block for a lot of people.)  By letting go of the ownership of the money you let go of the potential of feeling personally attacked when the money is spent on something about which you don’t care.

Second is the actual handling of the money.  The paycheck itself is handled via direct deposit as follows:

Retirement Savings

My job offers 401K matching (up to a certain amount) so the first thing is to put enough money into retirement savings to fully utilize the free money being offered in the match.

Savings

Next we slice off as much as we want to put into general savings.  This is where we’re accumulating a down-payment for a house.  And this acts as an emergency fund for unexpected large expenses.  Doing this first has a nice advantage which I’ll discuss below in “Everything Else.”

Personal Luxury

We each have personal checking accounts and we each get a little money each paycheck which is ours and ours alone.  This is the best part of our arrangement.  “Luxury” within the context of our personal versus joint expenses is kind of a fluid concept and open to interpretation.  But it’s working well.

For example, when I came home the other day Jess was telling me about the candles she ordered from Yankee Candle.  Since she was buying them with her luxury money I didn’t end up thinking “You spent how much money on candles?!”  Likewise, when I wanted to buy an external flash for our camera, I just bought it with my luxury funds.  No need to have a discussion with Jess about whether this was a good use of our money or whether we should do something else with it instead.

If our monthly expenses are running a little high, but one of us really wants to eat take-out then we can do that using luxury money.  If there’s a luxury we both want, we can split the cost out of luxury funds.

I really like that when one of us gets excited about buying something, the other can be excited too instead of doing an internal calculation about what it’s going to cost.

Being able to spend a little money without worry or guilt is really freeing.  It takes away much of the stress that builds in the tension between general frugality and occasionally just wanting a treat.  We can be frugal with our general spending, but still buy things we want every so often.

The amount of money we give ourselves in this form changes over time.  But it’s nice to have the discussion about what amount should be luxury spending only occasionally instead of rehashing it over every purchase.

Everything Else

At this point, everything left over goes into our general fund.  This is the account we use for regular spending: groceries, rent, utilities, gas, car maintenance, student loans, etc.  I like this part too.  Since savings has already been taken care of, whatever is in this account can be spent.  If we want to save more money, we take it off the top and adjust our monthly spending to match the change to this account.

All together this means there is no “budget.”  I hate the idea of a budget.  It’s tiring, stressful, and time-consuming.  Instead, we just watch the status of the general fund and try to keep a consistent “burn rate.”

This approach works best once you’ve accumulated a cushion that allows you to absorb fluctuations (things were a bit more structured when we first got married and had absolutely no money and more bills).  Fluctuations in spending are natural and one of the reasons I hate the idea of a budget.  If, this week, we need to buy flour and sugar and there’s a sale on cereal (so we stock up) and we also need more chicken then it’s going to be a much higher bill than surrounding weeks.  The burn-rate approach with a cushion handles this great–breaking a budget can cause stress and frustration even when you know it will balance out in the long run.

I think it does a really good job of truly minimizing potential arguments about money.  There will still need to be discussions about how money is spent at a macro level (how much do we put in each bucket) and when making large purchases out of the savings account (house, car, appliances, etc.); but on a day-to-day level there really is no reason to disagree.

One year older…

June 10, 2012 9:34 am

Saturday birthdays are the best.  We got up in the morning and I played with Heather while Jess decorated the apartment.  We thought Heather would enjoy playing with a bit of streamer.  Little did we know that streamer dye runs very easily.  So Heather ended up with blue all over her tongue, hands, and mouth.  It was rather entertaining and it mostly washed off.

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Once the apartment was decorated and after we had breakfast we decided it was time to open presents.  Other Dickerson children might consider this blasphemy, but Jess convinced me it was a good idea.  Since it was Saturday we could hang out in pajamas and open presents and then you have the whole day to play with things; it’s like Christmas, but then there’s cake.  It’s really hard to argue against this logic.

Heather helped with presents for a little while, but then became much more interested in what Jess was doing.

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Hey look!  I got my very own Galileo thermometer!

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After opening and playing with presents for a while, it was time for Heather’s nap.  So she slept while we prepared for the day.  And after her nap we went to California Pizza Kitchen for birthday-lunch.  Birthday-dinner is more traditional, but it’s kind of hard to go anywhere for dinner when Heather goes to bed by 6 each night.

When we got home from lunch it was just about time for some friends to come over so we could have cake and hang out.

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Jess was kind enough to do our usual Saturday grocery shopping on Friday so we were able to just relax and enjoy the day.  It was a good day.