They also had an article about how people are asking for, and buying, basic items as Christmas gifts this year because the economy is so bad.

Even after my parents bought a cordless phone, they kept the old one in a cupboard because it didn’t need electricity to operate. So if the power went out, they could switch back to it and still make calls.

I always wanted a master rüksn.

That bear is bigger than the Edmund Fitzgerald!

We make stock out of the carcass and use it (and often some of the dark meat, if we have some left) to make turkey and sausage gumbo. It’s so good!

One of the last slaps in the face before I left San Diego in 2010 was the people in my parenting social group crowing over lower housing prices and openly deriding the people losing their homes, of which my family was one.

The sheer number of people in this thread who think that child care costs for school-age kids start and end with extracurricular activities is mind-boggling. Paying so that your six-year-old doesn't sit home alone for 10 hours a day during the summer is not optional for the vast majority.

I know the joke is that this budget was vibes-based, but the data isn't too far off. This DOL post from 2024 says that part-day care was about $6K-$9K per kid per year in 2022. That might not include summer.

blog.dol.gov/2024/11/19/n...

'You should have thought of this before you had kids.' If you look back to 2019, how much of the next six years do you think you could have predicted with any meaningful level of accuracy? Would you go back and bet a high 5 figures on those predictions?

‘Can’t your parents take care of them?’ I’m sure some can, but it’s a big ask of your retired parents to commit to 2-3 hours of child care every single day with no break or compensation at all. My parents adore being grandparents, but even they would have balked at this. They should be the backup.

It’s easy to say, ‘Well, just use your PTO!’ Except you need your PTO for when your kids get sick and cannot be at school, no matter how you feel about social distancing/testing/masking. Schools will require your children to stay home if they have certain symptoms. Daycares won't accept them either.

When school is out, you’ll need child care (or use PTO). That’s 2-3 weeks during the school year, and 2-3 months for summer. If you can't hire a daycare for full-time care for school kids, you’re probably paying for a series of weekly full-time day camps. Which can be $300/week or more per kid.

‘But don’t you stop paying once you send your kids to public school?’ lol, no. You keep paying. If your work hours don’t mesh with the school’s and you don’t have a relative to take your kids for a couple hours each day, you have to pay hundreds a month for before or after care. Sometimes both.

Plus all the days off that kids have for school that aren’t holidays parents generally get off. You’re either using PTO or paying for childcare. And this is presuming that your kids schedule works with yours such that you don’t have to pay a daycare for the hours before or after school.

Then you have to factor in the cost of child care during summer vacation. I paid $1600/month for two school-age kids in the summer. But I knew people who paid $300/week per kid (or more!) for day camps because they didn’t have access to a daycare. You can’t just leave a seven year-old at home alone.

They’re going to get those jobs numbers up no matter what it takes, apparently.