We went at it from the opposite direction. "This is what we want to pay on a monthly basis with PITI." (A little bit higher than the rent we were currently paying.) The mortgage lender then had to calculate what we could afford based on the interest rate at the time—and recalculate if there was a shift. It gave us a…

Alternately, get the longer-term mortgage but make sure there's no pre-payment penalty (IOW, you don't get penalized for paying MORE than your payment) and pay what extra you can. If you make one extra payment a year, that can take quite a bit off the term of your loan. This gives you some flexibility if you suffer a…

The one guy I knew who was sexually harassed at work is the sort of person who uses that experience as an aid to empathy, rather than a one-upmanship maneuver. Because, y'know, that's what decent people do.

Well, when you live on the opposite coast, you can drive for hours without even leaving your home state. I guess for most of us, Delaware would be a "blink and you'll miss it" feeling.

If you're *behind* a pileup, put on your hazards too. I was about 200 feet behind a car that hit the barrier and flipped, and immediately put my hazards on as I approached, and I wasn't the only one. When the cars behind me stopped, that's when I got out my cell phone to call emergency services (as there were already…

The thing is, you don't have to do anything extreme to get healthier. And I don't mean climbing stairs, either. When I was in grade school, I went to a magnet school and had to take the bus. We had some outdoor trips and I was always at the tail end of the hikes because they were hard for me (I'm a book addict, so I…

Actually, the best place I've found in terms of cost is church rummage sales. They'll often have a cost PER BAG, so for $5 you can get a ton of secondhand kids' clothes. If I find something nice that's two sizes too big, I just buy it and stick it with the other stuff I have in that size, so when they outgrow their…

We both got engagement rings (his was something like $95 because it was marked down for not being flashy—a very dark sapphire.)(And mine is not a diamond but an opal.) Then when we actually got married, we were pretty broke, so our engagement rings doubled as our wedding rings. Then both of us went up half a size, so…

"those with more disposable income have more money for 'regular maintenance' "

It's amazing the difference an early diagnosis can make. My son is ASD, a very mild case—but the change since he's had since his diagnosis has moved it from "strangers won't notice" to "most people won't notice, and then only if I tell them." My husband is basically the same diagnosis (not formally diagnosed, but…

I have known a couple of people who were diagnosed ADHD as adults (who were not diagnosed as children.) "Life-changing" is the usual description.

There's another story I saw that quoted the mother superior as saying that the pregnant nun had obviously "succumbed to temptation"—there weren't further details, but one can surmise that the mother superior thinks it probably wasn't rape.

The movie lost me about the time the whitest white folk were pronouncing the city as "Bwen-ohs AIR-ace" and only compounded the issue with the military that just wouldn't work as presented. (I grew up in a military family, and it's like being exposed to anything on a regular basis—you get a good feel for what is and…

We have white and blue and purple, all LED, so it looks icy (in an area without snow, FWIW.) Our next-door neighbor has multicolored. The combination of the two houses , side-by-side at the end of the cul-de-sac, is really striking. I don't think it would work as well if we both had the same colors.

I'm lucky in that my family understands "house rules" and that my parents decreed that there's no need to do ridiculous travel for Christmas, everyone should have it at their own house. Admittedly, there is a family get-together a day or two before, and the kids get a little crazy then, but I've managed to beg off my…

I much prefer the non-electronic gifts. My MiL got my kid an iPad for his 4th birthday, and I didn't say anything because she was getting it so she could Facetime him from another state, and it has really helped with his manual dexterity. But in general, I'm all for the books and Lego. My kids' Christmas has been…

Badly phrased, I'll admit. I have a tendency to get distracted in the middle of typing by some crises with small children that can't be fixed by the grandma. What I meant is that statistics work well over a generalized large group of people, but you can't tell an individual's health profile from a larger average,…

And yet I have, amongst my friends, someone who got his bone density measured and mathematically proved that if he were literally nothing but skin and bones—no organs, no muscles, nothing but skin and bones—he would still be classified as "overweight" by BMI. I understand that the plural of anecdote is not data, but…

BMI was a "measurement" created by a Belgian who surveyed his friends to create a height/weight average that he plotted to a curve. It gained traction when insurance companies discovered that they could charge certain people more without getting medical information from them (often privileged and protected under…

The thing I get from dreams are locations—the most vivid one was at John Muir's house, of all places. I got a weird feeling before stepping onto a small bridge, looked to the right, and saw a bricked creek diversion that had been in a dream I'd had some time before. Sometimes I just know things, though.