adulting lately: the little things

Recently, as I came home to a freshly vacuumed staircase thanks to our house cleaner, I was thinking about how good it is that she takes care of it, because in the year+ that we lived here before I hired her, I think I remembered to vacuum the stair carpet twice (maybe?). Which led me to thinking about all of the little things in life where I have to remind myself - oh yeah, I'm the adult/parent in this situation, so if I don't do it, it will never happen! But then there's also plenty of big things too when it comes to parenting, like creating a will and getting life insurance for yourself as a parent, in order to make sure your kids are cared for if needed - which thankfully can become less complicated if you find the right help or insurance resource website.

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There are so darn many of these adulthood things to take care of that it's hard to keep track of them all, so I thought I'd start a list in case you need a reminder about any of these ones that I've tackled recently - and also so you can let me know what I'm missing (and therefore neglecting!) around here.

Finances

• Call the cable/internet/phone company to make sure you're getting the best rates. When I stopped in to talk to the Verizon people and learned that they have new plan structures available for my needs, my bill was cut almost in half.
• Same with your bank for your interest rates on savings/checking accounts.
• Cash in your credit card rewards $$ for something fun. (Had to add a get to do because you're an adult to this list of have-to-dos.)

House

• Flip/rotate the couch cushions for even wear - because if you're anything like us, you're making a dent in your "assigned" spots where you sit to watch tv every night.
• Change the furnace filter (apparently this needs to happen every 3-6 months? Whoops!).
• Speaking of filters, have you ever cleaned your vacuum filter? That one needs to be done too, turns out. Also the water filter in the fridge!
• Consider meal planning (a frequent oh yeah, I'm the adult here scenario is realizing at 5:30pm that somebody's gotta come up with dinner).

Kids

• Make sure you have life insurance as a parent - nobody wants to think about the worst case scenario, I know, but really the worst case is if something happens to you and your kids aren't provided for!
• Start looking at schools more at least year in advance - for real, since signups for schools tend to happen a good 9-10 months before the school year starts, you've got to figure out what you're aiming for way earlier than you think your kid is ready for it.
• Keep on schedule with making those dentist and doctors appointments, even though they come with my absolute least favorite part of realizing I'm the adult in the situation: having to help hold down a kid for vaccinations. Also making phone calls.
• Come up with/enforce consequences, aka the 2nd least favorite part of being the adult, and probably a good idea to come up with a chore chart too.

I know there all kinds of ways I'm like totally not acting like an adult, but at least I have these ones covered! For now. Maybe I should try this adulting school - the lessons sound way more fun than worrying about filters of various sorts, anyway.

adulting lately: death & taxes

My life is naturally filled with lots of "adulting" - you know, as a mother, employee, spouse, household runner. But there are certain categories of adulthood that while inevitable - death & taxes, people! - I kind of hate and then procrastinate on, and think I deserve a big pat on the back for actually tackling. We've been doing a bunch of them lately, so I thought I'd share some thoughts/tips in case these are things you've been putting off too. Or so that you can give me a gold star for them.

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Estate planning

Out of all of these, this one makes me feel the most adult - setting up a trust and making a will?! How old am I? While it's a topic I don't much want to dwell on (or spend money on - lawyers aren't cheap!), I'm so glad we finally have this in the works for peace of mind when it comes to Hendrik's future, should something happen to us. If you're a parent, you need to do this!

We asked for recommendations from colleagues for a good lawyer to handle this and just met with him to get the ball rolling - he had a whole list of specific items for us to supply (information about assets/life insurance policies, decisions on guardians/beneficiaries/etc.), but if you're just starting to think about it, this post addresses a lot of the topics that we spent some time discussing as a couple, so we could be on the same page about our intentions and wishes, before the lawyer meeting. Kind of morbid to have done this on our anniversary weekend (I at least made the discussion wait, so that we did it at breakfast instead of our fancy dinner), but these really are good discussion topics for a marriage.

Taxes

And then of course it's that time of year for getting the taxes done. We've used an accountant for the past couple of years and appreciate the time savings there, especially with a couple of complicated parts (having to file in 2 states last year, having a few areas of freelance income to deal with). Worth the costs there, but I've also used TurboTax online in the past and found it pretty straightforward (and cheaper).

It's taken several weeks to wrangle all of the necessary documents though, which has me resolving that starting now I'm going to be way organized about where I store these things, like in this helpful post about organizing tax documents. For now though a helpful resource is a tax prep checklist like this one.

Financial cleanup

Along with all of that, we had our first kind of "family dreams meeting" as part of our anniversary weekend date (while we have a general budget, we're not super into this, I must admit, so we don't do the family budget sorts of summits I hear people talk about), which was really fun to think ahead about what we'd like to do/where we'd like to be in 5 years, 10 years, etc. - with the money left after our financial adviser has us invested everywhere we should be, anyway (ha! adulting). Two big things that we'd love to have on the horizon in the nearer term: a kitchen redo, and a trip to Hawaii!

A money cleanse like the one above seems like it might be a good way to complement some goal-oriented saving, to make sure you're being smart and efficient about it. And for the kind of "adulting" things that I really don't feel like doing, a one-day-at-a-time approach like this is super helpful. I have no desire to spend hours on this but can handle 15-20 minutes a day. Once day recently I contacted our internet/cable company to get a better rate, and another day I actually went in to the Verizon store to see about the best plans there - going in and changing up the plan to one of their newer options is saving $30+ each month! Another thing I'd add is reassessing bank accounts to make sure you're in the most sensible (and best rates) checking/savings accounts - on our list of things to do soon. And while we don't use any particular software/apps at the moment, I'm intrigued by something like this free personal finance software. Do you have something you use and like?


While I don't relish being the adult in the situation on any of the above, I'm glad to have gotten a bunch of this out of the way. You?