Moral Dilemma

If you knew someone was abusing the system, would you feel obligated to report it? If someone you were friends with was knowingly misrepresenting their financial situation or household composition to obtain benefits, would you report them to the appropriate agencies?

Assume you already spoke with the person directly and let them know that what they were doing was fraudulent and illegal, but they brushed it off because “everybody does it”. This person is unmarried and has a child, who they could support financially but without certain luxuries they’re enjoying now (cable TV, vacations, eating out 4-5 times a week, etc.)

On the one hand, they’re not directly hurting you, but on the other hand they’re a part of a larger problem and are raising taxes and auto insurance rates for you and your neighbors through their actions.

Do you report it? Do you cut ties with the individual and move on? Do you try to compartmentalize the situation to keep their blatant fraud that they tell you about and have no shame in committing separate from who they are as a friend? I’m curious what others would do in this situation.

Banned from Sales-aholic FB Group

Well, it happened. I was banned from a group. The 700k+ member Sales-aholic group on Facebook to be exact. Why? The admin never said specifically, but I’m assuming it’s because I commented on one of the “haul” posts that the recent increase in posts of people showing off their hauls of freebies was making them all start to look a bit fake.

That’s all I said.

And I got banned.

So I think we can assume that I was right and that those “haul” posts are all fake.

Which made me curious… have you ever been banned from a group on Facebook? What happened to get you banned? #FacebookDelinquents

Post-Inspection Negotiations

Selling your house, especially your first house, is incredibly emotional.

When we first had this crazy idea of selling without a realtor, it sounded like a great idea. The process would be faster, the buyers would save some money and we could hand-pick the people that would be living in our house. A win-win for everyone.

Let me tell you, once money gets involved, people get crazy.

The inspection results came back. The buyers didn’t want us to make any repairs, but they asked for a large amount of money off the agreed purchase price! The funny part is that they didn’t ask for any repairs because NOTHING on their list actually required repair! It was all stuff that would likely need to be addressed in the future or was more or less for the buyer’s own information. Nevertheless, they asked or an outrageous amount of money off to make upgrades and future repairs. I think in a normal situation where we were both represented by realtors, this would be where their realtor would pipe in and tell them they were being a little crazy. I don’t think we would have ever seen their list or the request.

Needless to say we declined their request and let them decide whether or not they wanted to proceed with the sale. It was a risk, but we’re in a seller’s market and we aren’t putting any more money in our pocket by not using a realtor — they’re saving money though.

We fully expected them to back out of the sale at that point, but to our surprise, they didn’t.

Up next, a bank appraisal and signing the P&S.

Negotiations & Inspections

I’m writing all of these posts in hindsight. Selling your first home – without a realtor – and with young children is very anxiety-inducing.

The buyers did eventually come to us with an offer. It was low. It took over a week of negotiating back and forth to come to an agreement. Once we did, an inspection was arranged just a couple of days later. We had other things going on with our family at the time too. It was chaotic!

Now we are playing the waiting game once again. I don’t think anything too horrible was revealed during the inspection (the house is in decent shape), but you never really know what a buyer will ask you to do. So now we wait. On one hand I know that nearly every buyer asks the seller to do SOMETHING after the inspection (or to knock money off). On the other hand, we’re on a tight time schedule and we’re not using realtors, so we don’t have time to fix anything and they’re already getting the house for tens of thousands below what they would otherwise pay.

As a seller, what types of things have you had to fix for buyers?

The First Showing: One Down

I’m writing this post a few days after our first showing. I needed some time to decompress after that. I didn’t think that showing my own house would be nerve wracking, but it was. I spent the morning cleaning and no matter how much I did, I didn’t think it was enough. There was always something else that needed to be cleaned. Something else that I needed to add onto my list for later. Just getting the house “ready” for a stranger to look at it and judge it made me very on edge. I didn’t sleep at all the night before.

Fast-forward to the actual showing. The couple arrived and they were not what I expected! Both had come straight from work. The husband looked like he would rather be anywhere else but at our house. Like maybe his wife had made him come. We walked them through room by room. He asked questions I wasn’t prepared to answer (does anyone know off the top of their head how old the heater is or any technical details about it??) My husband and I were not feeling like they were “the ones” for our house after they left!

To our surprise, they got in touch with us again and asked to see it a second time. We were hesitant, but we agreed anyway. I’m glad we did – they arrived for the second showing more relaxed. We chatted about their family, their pets and their plans for the future. I could see them living here. When all was said and done, they said they’d be getting in touch with the bank and hopefully coming back to us with an offer. In the meantime, we’ll keep getting the house ready to go to market just in case it doesn’t work out.

If nothing else, we learned that FSBO is harder (and more stressful) than it looks. It’s great because you basically get to hand-select who you sell your house to and you save money on realtor fees, BUT fielding questions and watching people judge where you live is very hard.

Challenge Accepted: Our First Showing

If you read my previous post, you know that we’ve recently made the decision to attempt a long-distance move. We’ve managed to make some pretty poor financial decisions over the past decade and thanks to that multi-year housing crash that happened right after we bought our house, we owe a lot on our mortgage. Like to the point that I’m not entirely sure we can sell with a realtor and make enough to pay off the mortgage. Home prices have leveled off around here and an addition is out of the question.

That being said, the market is also extremely aggressive where we live. I’m not sure why prices aren’t increasing with the market still being so hot, but they’re not. I’m blaming the banks? Anyway, we’re hoping to use the competitive market to our advantage to arrange a private sale. If that doesn’t work out, we’ll list with a realtor – though not paying the 6% commission may make the difference between being able to get out from under a bad financial situation and being stuck in a house that’s really too small.

Our first showing is later this week. I’m really excited about the couple that’s coming to see the house after talking to them a little bit. It’s in a good location for them and they have a lot of the same interests as us, so all of our hard work will be appreciated. I think they’d love living here — as long as they like the house and we can agree on a price. That being said, we’re so not ready to start doing showings. I went from having a conversation with the wife to showing her the house later this week. Yikes! Talk about putting the cart before the horse! They were ready to move like six months ago, so they don’t want to waste another minute seeing if this is the right house for them.

Fingers crossed that our first showing goes well! Christmas near family and knowing that another couple is loving our house and all of the improvements we made would be amazing!

Have you ever done a private home sale? Leave me some tips in the comments!

Where Have I Been?

Good morning / afternoon / evening depending on when you’re reading this and where you’re reading it from. It’s currently 5:49pm on a Wednesday evening where I’m at and I’m enjoying what has become a very rare break.

Why?

Since dropping off the face of the planet, a lot has happened. My “side-gig” became an almost full-time job. I started selling Thirty-One as my new “side-gig”. Oh yeah, and I had two more kids. Yes, two. At the same time. Twins. Yikes!

In addition to all of that crazy, we’ve outgrown our house. I mean, we outgrew it quite a while ago when #3 was born, but now that there’s a #4 and a #5, things are getting pretty cramped. Toss in a decade of junk and a husband with a slight hoarding issue and well, you can see how fun it has been. We also discovered that despite making six figures combined (before taxes and health insurance, don’t get excited), we’re exceptionally poor for the area that we live in and larger houses around here are beyond our reach financially.

So what’s the answer? We’re going to attempt a long-distance move. With five young children. On a budget. A tight budget.

We’re planning on moving to a cheaper area where we can afford a larger house. As a bonus, my entire family happens to have already relocated there, so we’ll be joining them and gaining access to babysitters.

So stay tuned, I’m hoping to chronicle the entire process…

Don’t be an Enabler: Living with a Narcissist

If you follow my blog, you know that my sister-in-law pretty much fits the criteria for narcissistic personality disorder. You also know that we no longer have contact with her, her husband or her children because of this.

What I maybe focus on a little less is that my mother-in-law is probably 90% of the reason she continues down the path she’s on.

What? I’m blaming my mother-in-law for someone else’s behavior?

Yes.

From everything I’ve read about NPD, it can’t exist without the individual being enabled. The treatment basically revolves around forcing the “sufferer” to see their own flaws. To break the delusion. In my family’s situation, my mother-in-law is the one doing the enabling. She’s the one encouraging everyone to just “keep the peace” by going along with whatever crazy-train says or does. She’s the one inviting them to holidays and outcasting anyone that she really doesn’t get along with (that would be us) as to not upset her. She’s the one telling her it’s OK that she acts the way she does because that’s just who she is. My mother-in-law is a constant source of excuses and she takes everything crazy-train says at face-value for the sake of “peace”. And because there’s always the underlying threat of withholding access to the grandchildren should she say or do something that crazy-train doesn’t like. It has happened before and that threat has been verbalized in the past, though not in those exact words.

From what I’ve read (and disclaimer: I’m not a doctor, nor do I play one on television), NPD can’t exist without an enabler. Without my mother-in-law it would probably be crazy-train’s husband (my brother-in-law), but without my mother-in-law, a HUGE chunk of her support would be gone. My mother-in-law is the one that originally encouraged my brother-in-law to just go along with whatever crazy-train does or says so she couldn’t take the kid(s) away. She has been conditioning and counseling him for years to just go with it and to suck it up for the sake of the kids. All the while his wife has been getting worse and worse.

The cherry on top is that my mother-in-law left her husband because she thought HE was a narcissist. He’s not anywhere near the same level of crazy as my sister-in-law and yet she condemned her own son to a lifetime of the same abuse she claimed to suffer herself by encouraging him to stay when crazy-train got pregnant (without a paternity test) and by encouraging him to just feed into the delusions, thereby continuing the cycle.

It’s all so insane that it hurts my brain to even think that people like this exist. But they do. And somehow I found them and married into that family — what does that say about me? To be fair, crazy-train wasn’t in the picture when I said, “I do”. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: If I’d have known she’d be a part of the picture before I married into the family, I wouldn’t have done it. I love my husband, but had I known then what I know now about his family, I would have walked away.

So if you have someone in the family that’s maybe labeled as bi-polar, but maybe doesn’t control it well with medication and has more symptoms of NPD than bi-polar disorder, consider your interactions with them and how it’s impacting other people in your family. This is particularly important if you’re the matriarch because sometimes “keeping the peace” isn’t doing that at all — it’s just growing the resentment.

Dear Deductible: Should I See a Doctor?

Dear Deductible,

I slipped on the ice the other day and landed on my arm. I’ve been experiencing off-and-on pain when using the arm since then, but I also spend quite a bit of time typing, so it could also just be related to that. Basically, I’ve either got a broke arm or general pain from spending too much time trying to make enough money to pay my insurance premiums.

Should I go get an x-ray?

Sincerely,
Pain in the Arm

————————————————

Dear Pain in the Arm,

I’d advise you against seeing the doctor. From what you’ve said, it sounds like you could have fractured one of the bones in your arm, but x-rays are expensive and although you pay nearly $1,000 a month for health insurance, you haven’t met your deductible for diagnostics yet and your bank account is looking mighty low. I’d recommend a couple of Advil and an Ace Bandage if the pain persists. Don’t stop typing either — your next insurance bill is less than a month away!!

Sincerely,
Your Deductible

P.S. – I took the liberty of informing my friend Home Owner’s Insurance about your fall and your rates will be going up at renewal due to the increased ice risk.

Product Review: Glass Meal Prep Containers

Unless you’re living under a rock or have been blissfully unaware of the existence of Pinterest for the past few years, odds are that you’ve heard about the meal prep craze. According to what I’ve learned from Pinterest, you spend a little bit of time on the weekend (or whatever day you get off) prepping food in neat little single-serve containers for the upcoming week. Then when life gets busy, you just grab-and-go. Seems simple, right?

Well, apparently 99% of meal prepping involves finding the right container. Otherwise your quinoa touches the avocado slices and then the juice from your organic lemon and herb grilled chicken breast get involved and it’s all downhill from there. I wanted to be like those skinny people that prep, but I knew in my heart of hearts that my tried-and-true tupperware just wasn’t going to cut it. I mean, who wants mushy 3-day old quinoa that tastes suspiciously like avocado? Not this girl.

When all hope seemed lost, I got the opportunity to test Asani Glass Meal Prep Containers at a discounted price (Get yours here) in order to try them out and review them for my readers. Perfect. Glass Meal Prep Containers are made of glass (shocker, I know), so I don’t have to worry about BPA or a suspicious plastic flavor leeching into my food as it sits in the fridge waiting for me to be too busy to cook. It also won’t stain or absorb odors, so they’re safe to use to store spaghetti and boldly seasoned foods.

I took the Glass Meal Prep Containers out of their Amazon box about 3 seconds after they arrived and gave them a quick scrub in the sink. The first thing I noticed was that they were clear. I love glass for food storage because it’s so easy to see what’s inside. You really don’t get the same degree of clarity with plastic, no matter how clear it claims to be.

The next thing I noticed was the seal. There’s this thin, but super-effective gasket around the top of the containers to make sure they don’t leak. Just for fun I went ahead and filled one up in the sink and put the lid on — yep, no leaks!

But what makes these containers different than any other meal prep container on the market you ask? They’re made of glass. We’re not talking about thin, super fragile glass. We’re talking about oven-safe, microwave-safe, dishwasher-safe, lunchbox-safe glass. They’re advertised online as being able to safely go in the oven and after holding them in my hands, there’s no doubt in my mind that they’d do fine. The glass is thick and it is heavy like a glass baking dish.

They’re also divided into three sections. I didn’t fill and measure, but it would appear that there’s one slightly larger compartment that’s meant for the entree and two smaller compartments for the sides. While the body of the container is made of glass, the lid is made of plastic. In the center there’s a small built-in compartment that houses a set of reusable plastic utensils. They seem like a random addition at first, but as any brown-bagger knows, it’s only a matter of time until you forget your utensils. Use them as your primary cutlery or as a backup source, but either way you’ll be glad they’re there when you need them.

Size-wise I’d say these are perfect for lunch. You can fit quite a bit into a small space because the compartments are pretty deep. I was able to easily fit a boiled egg with its shell still on in one of the sides compartments, but I could have fit two if I had them (I’m already failing at meal prepping). One thing I need to mention is that the dividers do not reach the lid of the container, so if you don’t carry the containers flat, there’s an opportunity for smaller or runny foods to mix a little. It’s not an issue for me since I carry flat, but it may be a consideration for other people.

Overall, I’m really impressed with the quality of the containers more than anything. The glass is so much thicker than expected and the lid has a really good seal that doesn’t leak. The lid secures in place using four side snaps and it’s super easy to do — even easier than my standard plastic food storage containers. Also, because these are made from high-quality glass, I feel safe putting them in the microwave and keeping food in them for more than a day or two. I think this is going to be a great switch for me, and who knows — maybe I’ll even get the hang of this food prepping thing! Five stars for sure!

Ready to make the switch to glass? Get your Asani Glass Meal Prep Containers on Amazon.

If you’re a prepper, what are some of your favorite pre-made meals? Post in the comments and I’ll give them a try!