I think for the sake of considering extending someone credit, that the amount of their monthly student loans versus their take home pay would be more useful than to consider it part of the debt ratio. It’s a fixed amount, unlike revolving credit. I’m pretty sure your mortgage balance isn’t factored into your debt…

How is consulting work going for you? Hub isn’t IT but might end up doing that once the house is paid off so he can work part of the year only or just have some flexibility in his schedule.

No job allowed him to work from home. They allowed him to work at home once he come home from work because if all employees could never stop working that’d be great. Luckily either IT or higher ups didn’t sign the paper work needed for him to get the work at home’s settings installed so he can avoid that.... for…

Hub isn’t some hot shot coder or manager and he’s always gotten at least 3 weeks vacation to start at any job he’s had outside of his first couple in the industry. I’m pretty sure he didn’t even need to ask, it was part of the initial offer. It could be different for hourly jobs though. I’ll ask him if that’s true…

Working with a headhunter helps with that. They usually can get you more money than if you negotiated on your own and you don’t have to pay them. In my hub’s industry it really makes the difference between getting a good job and not.

Hub’s last raise in CA was 1.15% and our rent controlled apartment increase was 3.5%. That’s when I was happy that we decided to move, even if he couldn’t find a job willing to look at his resume because he lived in CA (looked at moving back to the east coast where family was) since we changed our lifestyle and saved…

Hub has done that before and was met with a have fun at your new job! Most people in his industry are met with the same response. I think it is definitely industry sensitive whether that works or not. And if we are honest here, all his previous jobs weren’t worth staying at even if they did give him a raise.

Wow. I got a .50 increase at the very least. One time when they restructure my part time college reception job my boss gave me at least a dollar upgrade because she liked my work.

At one of my hub’s jobs they actually had a salary structure based on tiers which coordinated with years of experience. He had to fight to get his tier upgraded but he did get it. After that I’m not sure he tried to ask for a raise at that or other jobs.

I agree. Hub used to do 45 minutes each way, then 45 one way and 1.5 hrs the other way. That job was super toxic so he really pushed to find another one and got one with an 8 minute commute. We moved to another state and bought a house 9 minutes away from his work. It’s amazing. It is 45 minutes away from a real…

Generally I agree. However, there are cases where not getting an increase is still good. Current job moved us out and gave us a lot of benefits for doing so and we moved where it was a cheaper cost of living at the same salary of our previous high cost of living city. To me the math worked out to be at least 15%…

You can negotiate most of those senority perks into your offer as my husband has done multiple times. Most companies of the same industry are about the same culture wise, and, in at least my hub’s case, no one cares about the whole new guy thing. To me there’s no real negative to jumping ship, unless you consider…

Interesting. Hub doesn’t brown the ground turkey anymore but that’s used in a chili that has a lot of spices already in it. We also make a bourbon chicken but it’s cooked so long that it resembles pulled pork and again has a lot of flavoring going into it as well.

Waste time? Are you sitting there watching the slow cooker? The point is that you set it, do stuff, and in 8 hours or so have food that can feed two people for both lunch and dinner for 4-5 days straight. To each his/her own but in either case the time doesn’t matter since you don’t have to be there hanging around…

Good luck! Mine is Costco and cutting down on utilities since buying a new house. (Also just buying stuff for said new house). Sigh.  

I tracked my spending by hand (manually on excel) and it forced me to realize how much we spent in 1 week eating out and buying crap. I cut soda/junk food and cut eating out down to the bare minimum (I say I cut it because I was the main driving force in getting them) . But we also put effort in cooking in bulk…

I’ve never used vue but I’d be tempted to get it if I didn’t already not get things done.

I tried sling and hated it. I got very few channels I liked for 20 a month and there was no option to DVr and the on demand was pathetic. But that was about 2 years ago. You get a lot of options with PlayStation vue, you might want to check it out. You can use a PS3 or4 but other hardware that’s cheap work too.

Hulu is still worth it for me. The only one I’d drop would be Amazon but I don’t even pay for it extra. I use it for 2 day shipping and other perks.

Thankfully we don’t have that problem as we are about as interested in watching sports on tv as we are getting our eyes poked out. I can handle watching in person more, especially hockey.