About Me

Sub­ur­ban Wife

Hello and wel­come to my blog!  I am Sub­ur­ban Wife and I’ll be your blog­ger for the dura­tion of your visit.

Updated 01/26/10:

Sub­ur­ban Wife: I’m a middle-aged, middle-class wife and mother of two.

I home­schooled one or both of our chil­dren for 12 years.  In the fall of ’06, The Daugh­ter decided to enroll in high school as a fresh­man.  In the fall of ’09, The Son fol­lowed suit enrolling in the same high school as a fresh­man.  My role as full-time edu­ca­tor came to an end.

At the same time, The Hus­band dis­solved his cor­po­ra­tion and retired.  When the com­pany was shut down, my 12+year stint as first part-time then later full-time employee came to an end — and with it our (mine and the children’s) health benefits.

The Hus­band: Recently shut down the com­pany he inher­ited from his father.  He didn’t retire because of any desire on his part to stop work­ing or take it easy.  Rather, the retire­ment was in name only — his sis­ter, a 45% stock­holder, wished to retire.  The com­pany needed to be liq­ui­dated so he could cash her out.  The Hus­band, cur­rently 74, still works 7 days a week over­see­ing his var­i­ous busi­ness inter­ests, doing paper­work, etc.  It’s his only hobby, his very def­i­n­i­tion of him­self, and our only source of income.  Good thing he likes it.

The Daugh­ter: Nearly 18 and a high school senior cur­rently eval­u­at­ing which col­lege to attend this com­ing fall.  She’s very bright, very respon­si­ble, very inde­pen­dent, and more than slightly annoy­ing.  The Daugh­ter gets a monthly allowance of $125 from which she buys all of her own cloth­ing, shoes, makeup, enter­tain­ment, meals out, and incidentals.

The Son: A 15yo with a driver’s per­mit and Asperger’s Syn­drome.  He’s very, very bright and yet hope­less in so many ways — no sense of time, space, or money.  A man of very few words and even fewer needs.  Though no longer his teacher, I still work full-time as his Life Coach.

We all live together in sub­ur­ban exile on the edge of a mid-sized metrop­o­lis in a 22,000 sf ranch house (circa 1979) with full walk­out base­ment for which we paid $225,000 about 7 years ago on a fixed 6% 30-year VA loan with noth­ing down and no PMI.  We own two Sub­arus (one out­right; one with one year remain­ing on a two-year loan).  Both of the chil­dren attend a pri­vate high school for which we pay a com­bined ~$15,000 annual tuition.  We (all but The Son at this point) carry and use credit cards for the vast major­ity of all per­sonal and house­hold related expenses yet we carry no credit card debt.  In fact, other than the mort­gage and the car loan we carry no con­sumer debt at all.

This blog is a day-to-day account­ing of the money I spend and why I spend it.

~ ~ o o o O o o o ~ ~

Pre­vi­ous About Me text:

I’m a 44-yo suburban-dwelling mother of two teenagers.  I wear many hats.  I never know how to answer occu­pa­tion ques­tions — I con­sider myself to be a stay-at-home mom but I also have a full-time pay­ing job (I work from home).  In addi­tion, I’m a home­school­ing par­ent.  So I’m a SaHM, WaHM, edu­ca­tor, and full-time chauf­feur.  Take your pick.

I’ve been blog­ging in one form or another for about 7 years.  I started my Daily Dol­lar Diary on a lark — I’m fas­ci­nated by the polit­i­cal and social power wielded by moms like myself who are respon­si­ble for the day-to-day pur­chases of our house­holds.  My blog quickly grew beyond the bounds of sim­ply post­ing my daily expen­di­tures (the how and where) to include thoughts on why I spend my money the way I do.  Not only do my expenses and pur­chases tell a story about us but there’s almost always a story behind each purchase.

My PF blog has a dark side too. I’m cram­ming — learn­ing as much as I can about per­sonal finance in gen­eral and our finances in par­tic­u­lar because I’m look­ing down the bar­rel of wid­ow­hood.  My lov­ing, adorable hus­band of 15 16 years has can­cer.  He’s already twice a can­cer “sur­vivor.”  This time they can’t just cut it out and send him home.  He has prostate can­cer that is not longer con­tained within the prostate.  A year ago his PSA num­bers were sky­rock­et­ing; right now the can­cer is respond­ing to treat­ment and the growth has stopped.  We might have 10 more years.  Then again, we might have 10 months.

As The Hus­band likes to say, we’re hop­ing for the best and plan­ning for the worst.  In the mean­time, he doesn’t buy green bananas.

In so many ways, we are the typ­i­cal Amer­i­can fam­ily: suburban-dwelling middle-class two-car Cau­casian fam­ily of four with a mom, a dad, a son, and a daugh­ter.  But a closer look exposes just how dif­fer­ent we are.  One child attends a pri­vate high school and the other is home­schooled.  I’m a Chris­t­ian but not of the evan­gel­i­cal or born-again stripe; I believe in the neces­sity of always act­ing from a posi­tion of con­scious free-will.  I have left-leaning polit­i­cal views whereas The Hus­band tends to lean to the right; we both con­sider our­selves fis­cally con­ser­v­a­tives.  I’m a granola-eating, organic-when-available, neither-plastic-nor-paper environmentally-aware, conventional-medicine-avoiding, urban-at-heart sub­ur­ban refugee.

I am woman, hear me roar.  I have credit, watch me spend.

For more, check out these posts clas­si­fied as being about me.