Bob B.'s Financial Soundingboard

I paid off my truck with my October 1 payment. The final payment was due Jan. 1, so I'm three months early - a 36 mo. loan paid back in 33 mos.

I'm happy to have my truck paid off. I really am. But, I've discovered, or maybe re-discovered something about myself.

When the payment went through, I thought to myself about how it will be another almost 2 1/2 years before my wife's mini van is paid off. And that my truck will need to last AT LEAST that long before we can replace it. And what if it doesn't. What if it breaks down tomorrow. We're screwed.

OK, maybe all of those thoughts didn't come into my head that rapidly. But still, that's the basic flavor of what was running through my head. Instead of being completely happy about having my truck paid off, I was worrying about having this van paid off in time that we wouldn't have two $300+ payments at the same time.

I need to be worrying about something at all times. My grandma P.'s contribution to my psyche, I guess.

Truly, I am happy about having the truck paid off, and no, I'm not really all that worried about my truck taking a crap.

But, that thought was still there, and that says something about my approach to life.

We have a tremendous apple yield again. Last year, not so much, but this is probably the same as we had two years ago when our tree yielded so well.

Last time we had so many apples, an Amish neighbor pressed them into cider for us. DW stopped by yesterday, and he said he wouldn't be ready to press them for another week.

DW has already canned several quarts of sauce. But, we don't go through a ton of sauce. We do go through a ton of fruit juice, though. The boys drink a lot of juice.

My mom has a friend that has quite a few apple trees. He gave us permission to pick apples at his place. All the trees in the area are just loaded.

I think we had 11 gallons made two years ago, and I can't remember how long they lasted us. Most of the year, anyway. We usually water juice down by half when we give it to the boys.

Any way, the cider from our apples will help us save on purchased juices for a lot of the next year.

I hauled some scrap metal this morning before work. I haven't hauled in a long time, because the farmstead is getting pretty well cleaned up. Cleaning out the barn, getting ready for the renovation, had produced enough to justify a small haul.

What I cleaned out of the barn was the old chain paddle system that sat down in the gutters of the barn to remove manure. We had already cleaned out about 3/4 of the paddles previously, but this set was a little harder to access. I added that to the small pile of other scrap that was accumulating, and decided to haul.

I only delivered 140 lbs. of scrap iron. I've always figured that as long as I haul enough scrap to pay for the gas and the wear on my vehicle, I'll make the trip. Fortunately, the scrap yard is only four miles away.

I was paid $4.20 for the 140 pounds. I covered the trip, barely. I figured it out, and that's $60 per ton. The previous low that I remember calculating for scrap that I delivered was $75 per ton. I think it was selling for $275-$300 per ton during the summer of 2008, when the majority of scrap was hauled from our place.

I've heard that part of the reason scrap was so high that summer was because China used so much iron to build that stadium for the Olympics. I'm not sure if that's much of the reason or not. That's also the summer that corn prices and gasoline prices were sky high. The world was going on one last binge before the global economy collapsed.

I blogged a couple months ago about renovating our barn. It's the barn that houses the kid's 4-H animals. For better or for worse, we've decided to use some of our home equity to finance the repairs.

One side of the barn will be used for storage - straw, haw, animal show equipment. The other side will be used to house animals. So, we are only renovating the side that houses the animals. We've reduced the number of animals in the barn while we work on the renovation. Right now all we have is one laying chicken, one duck, and one goat.

I've removed and burned all the lumber that made to old pens. I'm working on cleaning out all of the manure. I have pretty much all of it out, and am probably ready to power wash.

We'll also side the barn, and put on a new roof.

We're in the middle of getting bids. Some of the work we will do ourselves, some of it we will hire out.

Here's my (current)budget:

Siding and roof materials - $6,800
Inside labor - $2,500
Outside labor - $2,000
Water hookup - $1,600
Lumber and adhesive - $1,050
Gates - $1,130
Feeders - $185
Hardware cloth (for chicken coop) - $136
Lighting and electric materials - $100
Pins and hinges for stalls - $75
Misc. hardware - $48
Gate closers - $26
Total - $15,650

The only number that I pulled completely out of the air is water hookup. The plumber hasn't been out to give a bid. I've guessed $1,600. Hopefully that's on the high side. We'll either run a pipe underground from the house (about 75 feet), or punch in a point well at the barn. Whatever we do, it'll need to be frost-free.

The outside labor (putting on roof and siding) is also a guess. We've not gotten a bid. But, when the materials supplier was adding up his bid, he guessed $2,000. So, I'm using that as a semi solid number.

The lighting and electric materials and misc. hardware are also my guesses.

When we started out, I was hoping for a 12K budget. The first quote we got was $6,800 for the siding and roofing materials. So, I knew then that the total project budget would have to be increased. Hopefully the plumber comes out this week to give a bid. Then, I'll be satisfied that we'll have a decent working budget.

This is a lot of money for an asset that doesn't provide us with shelter, or substantial income. But, if you've been following my blog for any time, you know just how important these livestock project are to our family.

Why didn't I do this years ago? My bank account, credit card, and retirement balances all housed on one app.

I have to get my budget entered. And, unless I can link it to a future Mint account on DW's iPhone, the budget will be useless anyway. I'm assuming that can be done. Otherwise, this Mint app is really only fully usable by single people.

But, still, just having the account balances available in one app is worth having it.

My brother-in-law's brother-in-law is a practicing attorney. And I think he's a corporate attorney who makes a substantial amount of money. He and his wife (BIL's sister) own a house at a ski resort. So, my BIL and SIL (DW's sister) are spending this week at the resort. We were invited to the resort to spend some time with them. We had a couple of things going on Saturday morning, so we spent Saturday evening through Monday afternoon with them.

It is a very nice setting, a very nice resort, and a very nice house. The resort is primarily a ski resort, so the heaviest, most desirable use is in the winter. I got the sense that a lot of the owners rent their houses out for a week at a time to cover some of their costs.

The clientele were mostly clearly upper middle class. I've not been surrounded by a group like that in a very long time. In fact, it kind of made me feel the same way I felt when I was in college at Michigan State, where a lot of the folks around me had and spent more money than I did.

I don't want to take anything away from our enjoyable time. We spent at least half of the time away from the resort, at a couple beaches, and a national park.

Saturday evening, we took the chair lifts to the top of one of the ski mountains. There was a solo guitarist playing songs and singing. It was very enjoyable. There was also a bar. It's not like anyone was flaunting anything at all, but most of the people were dressed in much finer clothes than we were, and most of the people were spending quite a lot of money on drinks. At the same time, it looked like there were a few people more from our social strata.

Before I joined the SA community, I would have figured all of those people were "rich". And probably most of them are living within their means. But after having been here in SA, I couldn't help but wonder how man of them are in debt up to their eyeballs.

Yesterday I blogged about starting DD1 in 8th grade at the local public school, rather than home school. I was typing a response to the comments in the post, and my response was getting long enough that I decided to make it its own blog entry...

Now that I think about it a bit, we do have experience with the nebulous costs of sending kids to public school.

We had been sending our boys to the special needs school. We tossed the requests for fund raisers, deluxe photo packages, and such in the trash. It seemed to help, because I think staff at the school got the message that we don't participate in such things, because we quit getting them. There is a difference, as the boys' understanding is such that they had no clue what it was that we weren't participating in.

The class that DS1 was in last year took occasional trips to places like McDonald's, and the movie theater. We valued those opportunities, because it's good to get an autistic child out in the real world, so he knows how to interact with people in those situations. The teacher appeared to have a fund to defray part of the cost, because the amount requested would never completely cover what they were doing. Her fund probably came from fund raising efforts! If the requested amount for the trip was $3, we'd throw in $5, or $7, throw in $10, and ask that she keep the change for another student or trip.

I just read Laura's entry about senior pics. Ugh.

DW has homeschooled our two girls for their entire learning career. DD1 has opted to enroll in 8th grade at our local public school. It was her wish, and I supported it, and DW supported it.

Reading Laura's post has made me wonder about the financial ramifications of the switch.

We've purchased curricula each year for the girls' school. I couldn't tell you how much, but DW could. But I think it ends up being somewhere less than $500 per year total for both girls. For the most part, DD2 uses DD1's used materials. And DW buys used, and swaps with other homeschool moms. So, that $500 price is probably out dated, as DW has gotten better at doing school on the cheap.

They've been attending a local home school co-op to take classes that may be better offered in a group. But, there's not the pressure for super fancy clothes, or neat note books, etc. like there is in a public school setting.

I can't help but think that the public school option will, on balance, end up being the more expensive option.

Of course, that can also be part of the learning - No, you don't need all these new, shiny things like the other kids. And, I really don't think it will be a huge issue with DD1 anyway.

But there are those things like senior pics, prom, etc. that seem to have escalated in price beyond any reasonable level over the last 25 years since DW and I were in school.

I blogged a week or so ago how my daughter and another Jr. High FFA member raised some chickens to distribute at a local food pantry. The distribution was this last Saturday.

It was one of those life lesson events, not just for the kids, but also for the adults.

The food pantry runs from 10 - 11, the third Saturday of the month. We arrived at about 9:15 to get our station set up. Not surprisingly there was already a line. Some were faces I recognized, other I did not. Two were girls with whom I went to high school. I recognized one guy from the sex offenders list.

To paraphrase a quote that I've seen here on SA, and have heard elsewhere - rich people plan for tomorrow, poor people plan for today. Or, when your belly is full you have many problems, when your belly is empty you have only one.

Some of the customers appeared to feel entitled, the majority were grateful, or just kind of blank.

Just prior to the beginning of the distribution one of the lead volunteers asked my wife if she would like a box prepared for us. She declined, and was a little confused. The lead volunteer explained that volunteers have the first shot at food boxes. I eventually figured out that about 1/3 of the volunteers at the distribution would otherwise have been waiting in line. I suppose their personal pride demands that they "pay" for their food by volunteering. But, I suppose the also don't want to get shorted out of anything if the pantry runs out of an item. So, they get first shot at the boxes.

It was really hot and humid here on Saturday. The number of customers was down. It was probably too hot for some of the older customers to get out. At the end of the distribution one of the volunteers did deliver two boxes.

Next month the kids will distribute pork. I can't attend because I will be taking DS2 to a medical specialist appointment.

We're still not sure how we will get the pork processed. The head volunteer suggested that we get it all ground into bulk sausage in one-pound packages. Her thinking is that one pound packages are easier to distribute, and customers won't fight over different cuts. DW thinks its a shame to grind quality cuts into sausage. I think a good compromise would be to cut the loins into chops, package the chops into packages of two, and have everything else ground into sausage. We'll see.

The distribution was very worthwhile. I was reminded, as I should be once in a while, that I really do have a good life. After all, one of my worries is - how are we going to process some pork, and not - how am I going to find food to eat tonight.

Most of you know that we adopted two boys, both of whom fall into the autism spectrum. They've been getting ABA treatment most of the time for the past 1.5 years. ABA is "Applied Behavioral Analysis", which is the gold standard in autism treatment. We started out with our local community mental health, which is 25 miles away. About 10 months ago, a local ABA treatment facility (6 miles away) opened up. We were able to get DS1 started in January, and DS2 about a month ago.

The CMH option was free - both boys are Medicaid eligible since they were adopted from foster care. The "costs" were the time and expense of driving them 25 miles, and the quality of treatment was inferior to the local clinic. Plus, DS1 aged out of Medicaid ABA when he turned 6 last year. Although the policy has changed since then, and he would be covered through age 18 now.

The local clinic is covered by my insurance. But, there is a $20 co-pay - each visit. We did not do our due diligence, and we were not aware of the $20 co-pay until recently. We did get a bill about a month ago. We called the billing service, and asked that they submit the bill to DS1's Medicaid coverage. We've not heard back about that, but we have since found out that on our own that Medicaid will not cover the co-pay. So, now with both boys enrolled, we owe the local clinic about $3,000.

Last week DW and I had a meeting with the tow directors of the ABA center. They asked us if we would consider pulling DS2 out of his special ed. preschool program, and start him 35 hours a week at with the ABA program. He's 5, so not yet at mandatory school age. During the conversation, DW and I brought up the possibility of doing the same thing with DS1 - pull him out of his special ed. program, declare that he would be home schooled, and enroll him 35 hours a week in ABA treatment.

The benefits of ABA are clear, and undeniable. The benefits of the special ed. program, not so much. ABA offers one-on-one interaction with a specialist trained in working with autistic kids. The special ed. program might include kids with Downs Syndrome, and other conditions. DS1 is (usually) quiet, and will melt into the back ground. DW and I have both observed the special ed. class room, and we both noticed the teacher and her assistants would sort of let DS1 alone, and attend to the other children. The squeaky wheel gets the grease! The ABA techs force interaction from the child. ABA is clearly doing more good for both boys, and the local clinic is clearly superior to the community mental health option.

And, I suppose it follows that it would be the more expensive option.

We verified that it is our responsibility to pay the $20 co-pay (whether they are getting 20 hours of service over 5 days or 35 hours of service over 5 days, $20 per boy per visit) while we were researching the reality of pulling them out of school.

So, we owe $3,000 for prior treatment, and we will owe for any future treatment.

It comes out to about $12,000 per year.

The boys need this treatment. It improves their lives. It improves our lives. It improves our daughters lives.

But, it's going to be expensive.

There is a possibility. There is another supplemental medical coverage that both received when they were adopted. We've not had to use it yet, because all of their medical expenses have been covered through my private insurance or Medicaid or a combination of both. This supplemental coverage covers anything that is not covered by insurance or Medicaid, as long as the condition was present prior to adoption. Their autism was present prior to the adoptions.

DS2 is probably all set. DS1 is not. We dropped that supplemental coverage for him a couple months ago.

Why would we do that???

The state of Michigan offers a monthly $220 autism supplement. He was not eligible for the autism supplement if he was enrolled in the other supplemental medical coverage. Our thinking was "We've had this supplemental coverage for three years. We've not used it once. Monthly payments of $220 will almost certainly come out ahead, right?"

I guess not.

DW is now figuring out how to get DS2's supplemental coverage to cover the $20 co-pay, and is figuring out how to stop the $220 monthly autism supplement, and how to get DS1 back on to the supplemental coverage.

I'm fairly confident that at some point in the not so distant future that both boys will be covered, and we won't have to pay the $12,000 per year.

I also know that we do owe the $3,000 for previous treatment. And, prior experience tells us it will be three, four, or five months before both boys are covered by the supplemental medical coverage. So, we'll owe for treatment for at least one boy during that time.

But, we are pulling them out of their special ed. programs, and starting 35 hours weekly of ABA for each boy. That was the best decision.

As many of you know, my oldest daughter is in FFA. She and her friends (and parents) met with their chapter advisor last fall, and filled out an FFA "Food for All" grant application. The grant was funded for $2,500.

The idea behind the grant is that FFA kids use the money to buy inputs to raise food - either vegetable or meat. Our local chapter used the funds to produce meat, and named the project "Meating the Need".

DD1 and one of her friends just finished raising 80 broiler chickens. They were processed yesterday, and delivered to our local food pantry. That's about 400 pounds of meat.

The community is getting involved as well. A local feed mill supplied about 75% of the feed for the chickens. The local Rotary and Gavel clubs have donated some money, one of the Gavel club members donated two of his own hogs for the project.

My brother-in-law donated a cow. That meat was all ground into hamburger, and donated to the food bank.

When we bought fair pigs in April, we bought one extra pig that will be processed with the other two donated pigs.

Our state Pork Producers association donated 100 meat thermometers that will be handed out during food distribution. The grant and donations will pay for aluminum roasting pans that will be distributed at the food pantry.

The kids are also producing a video that will be shown during distribution that will help the clients better understand safe food storage and preparation techniques, and the kids will all be there during distribution.

This project is particularly timely, as our local grocery store closed last September. Indeed, our community meets the definition of a Food Desert. The clients that use the food pantry can least afford to travel to the closest grocery stores.

I blogged yesterday about how my fuel oil budget plan bill was cut from $220 per month to $95 per month. First of all - snafu - we use #2 fuel oil, which is diesel fuel without the red dye that (at least in Michigan) means that its taxed. That is, our fuel oil is not dyed, and not taxed. Road diesel is dyed, and taxed, but otherwise it's the same stuff. Yes, #2 heating oil is expensive, but that was the furnace that was in our house when we moved into it. The cap price used to calculate my budget payment was $299/gal.

Anyway, that reduction in payment adds another $125 to my monthly cash flow. I'm going to use that money to pay off my truck early. To make a long story short, when we bought our van last December, rather than make a big down payment on the van, we made a substantial payment on my truck. The way my credit union does it, when you make a big payment, they extend the due date. So, when we bought the van, I owed something like $4,000 on the truck. We paid about $3,000 toward the truck (and some down on the van, too). So, the next month rather than having a payment due in January, the CU extended my due date to I think this next November.

I've been paying about $50 each month on the truck since then. My current balance on the truck is right around $250. Using the extra cash flow from the reduction in heating bill, I will pay the truck off in September, four months early. After that, I'll make bigger payments on the van, at least until the end of this heating fuel cycle.

Now, back to the barn. I've been talking about renovating the old hog barn. There is another barn on the property. That barn is where the cows were kept. The cow barn is in a great deal of disrepair, and has basically been abandoned. doingitallwrong left a link to a buyer of old barn wood in a comment on my blog a couple days ago. I checked the site out. The buyer is about 90 miles from my place. He requests an estimate of board feet, and sizes of boards, etc. plus my bid on price.

So, what I'm thinking is cannibalize the abandoned barn, and use those funds to improve the smaller barn.

One problem is that we don't own either barn. My dad does. When we took ownership of the property, we got the house plus one acre. Neither barn sits on that acre. I'm sure that my dad would be OK with us selling the barn wood, and using the funds to improve the other one, especially if I do all the leg work to sell the lumber. But, it is a decision that we will have to talk to him about.

I looked back into my archived blog posts, and I see that I blogged about this same topic one year ago yesterday. Except this year, it's the exact opposite issue.

Two years ago we went on to our heating fuel oil company's budget plan. A year ago ended our first cycle. June is the settle up month, and the specifics of the new year's plan are set up in July.

Our initial year (July 2103 - May 2014) plan was $220 per month. We ended that year with a $400 credit, but they wanted to increase our monthly payment to $250. I called, and complained, and they set our payment back to $220.

We got our new plan letter in the mail yesterday. This past year we finished with a $857 credit, and our new calculated payment is $95 per month. Doing the math, it should work out to be about even, it just seems like a big drop. It also seems to be very different than last year's calculation.

I understand that there is an El Niño developing, and this winter may be warmer than usual. Which is OK by me for a bunch of reasons. So, we could end up with another credit, even with the lower payment.

But, I'll pay attention to our monthly statements, and if we need to adjust our payments up near the end of the cycle, I'll do that. Because the last thing I want is a big settle up next June.

This may read like I'm complaining, or pointing fingers. I'm not really trying to do either of those. It's more like curiosity about life choices...

To start things off on completely positive note, we had a great holiday. One of DW's friends has a nearby beach house, and we spent a lot of Friday there. My small town has its annual village festival over the Fourth. Our girls were in the parade representing the Historical Society. And, we spent a lot of the rest of the weekend at DW's parent's place. So it was a fairly low-spend holiday weekend, in addition to being fun!

It's our time at my in-law's that brings me back to the beginning of my post.

My in-laws own a 160 cow dairy. Many, many years ago they bought a neighboring farm, and kept the small house as a rental. The current tenant began living there either shortly before or shortly after we got married, so about 20 years. I don't think he's paid rent in 15 years. He's a mason. He lays concrete when he's working. Sometime about 15 years ago, he was laid off for most of a summer. That's around the same time my father-in-law was starting to slow down physically. My father-in-law turns 84 this week. So the tenant started mowing the lawn, and doing other yard work. He does a very good job. No one ever has to ask him to do a thing. He starts mowing in April, and through October, not a blade of grass is out of place.

And, we're not just talking about a postage stamp yard. The mowed area includes all the lawn around the house, plus the barn yard, plus my brother-in-law's yard across the road, plus his own rental house, plus a camp next door to the farm that my other brother-in-law bought several years ago plus the tenant's rental. The tenant mows probably 30 acres of lawn, in exchange for rent.

The tenant has had a Fourth of July party at his house each year for a few years now. About four years ago, Michigan lifted the ban on citizens buying large-scale fire works. The tenant has gotten into the habit of putting on a fire works display that would rival many of the near by small-village shows.

My in-laws have, again, been vey happy with how he has maintained the grass. As far as that goes, he has, other than not paying rent, been a model tenant. He does all his own repairs, and has asked for nothing from them as far as improvements, etc.

But, it just boggles my mind how he can spend heaven only knows how much money each July on these fire works.

In the end, I think everyone is happy, although my mother-in-law does shake her head a little and mutter under her breath about the fire works. The rental house sits right next to the milking cow barn, and the fire works can startle the cows.

They could be collecting somewhere around $10,000 in rent each year. And nobody really asked him to mow all the lawns quite as frequently as he does. So, I think he comes out ahead with the mowing.

But, everyone seems to be happy. Except for a couple days in July.

My net worth took a small hit this month. I'm guessing that's the same for most people who track it on a monthly basis? I haven't been paying attention to the DJIA, or markets in general.

We have a cleaning person come to our house every other Monday. It's been two years, and we are on our second person. She started last July. Our first cleaning person moved away almost exactly one year after she started.

When our first person started, she charges us $15 per hour, and she provided the cleaning supplies. We had her clean for 3 hours each visit. On her one-year anniversary, we gave her a raise. That visit she left a note that she would be moving away. So, we found another person.

This new person grew up down the road from me. She graduated a year ahead of me. She quoted us $13 per hour, and we provide the cleaning supplies. It didn't take long for us to realize that it cost us much less to provide supplies than to pay $15 per hour.

Now that she's been with us a year, it's time to give her a raise. The cheapskate in me says that the raise should be $1 per hour, which is more than 7%, which is more than the raise (on a percentage basis) that I got this year.

The compassionate person in me says that after a year, she should be paid at least where we started our previous cleaning person out two years ago.

The newer person does a fine job cleaning. She's always been flexible if a Monday doesn't work for us. She'll find time to re-schedule us. She's lived in the area her whole life, and I know there's not a lot of extra cash in her household. A also assume that she'd be very happy with the $1 per hour raise, but even happier with a $2 per hour raise.

The previous person also did a fine job. She worked cleaning houses in a larger town, and she had a couple tricks to make the hose look a little "sparkly" when she was done. There was a scent that she sprayed before she left, that made you know as soon as you walked in the door that she had been there. She did things like shine up the dining room furniture. Those things were nice, but they didn't get the house cleaner. Our newer person does a good, basic deep clean.

So, what we could do is give the $1 per hour raise, and a nice Christmas gift. That's probably what we'll do.

First I'll respond to a couple comments from previous entries ...

When I mentioned I was growing a beard in my Cemetery Walk post, Secretary Saving wondered how long it would have took for the Duck Dynasty guys to grow their beards out. Well, I've been cutting my own hair for about the past four or five years. I've come to determine that the hair on my head grows at about 1/8 inch per week. I've also been trimming my beard for the past month. I'm not sure how fast it grows, but definitely slower than the hair on my head. But, not at half the rate of the hair on my head. So, maybe 0.10 inches per week? And, let's say that to have a "Duck Dynasty worthy beard" one would need 10 inches of beard? So, I'd estimate about two years to have a duck dynasty worthy beard. I thought you should know.

I appreciate yesterday's responses about my Barn post. We will definitely look in to selling lumber from the barn. My guess is that there will be a supply/demand problem. We have a huge supply of old barn lumber in my rural neck of the woods, and relatively little demand, because there are so few people in the area. But, we will look in to it.

As far as the girls kicking in some money. I think they would have about $3,000 saved between them. Clearly that get's us very close to where we need to be. The problem is that for both me and DW, we had an agreement with our parents: we would buy the animals, feed and water them, our parent would house them, we would sell them at the fair, and keep the difference in a bank account, saved for only one thing: college.

Maybe we could work out a deal where we share in the cost. Maybe even DW and I could take out a low interest "loan" from our daughters. But the biggest problem I have with draining most of their accounts to refurbish our barn is that in the end, the money for college will have to come from somewhere.

I have no illusions that funds from 4-H animal sales will ever pay for all of college. Nor do I have the illusion that we will have to cover 100% of their college costs. Part time work and/or loans will certainly be part of the package. But, I would like to see where a good chunk of the first year or two of college costs are covered by 4-H animal savings. That's the way it was for me. That's the way it was for DW.

Speaking of 4-H animals - we're about to run out of straw for the animals. I'm guessing that not all of you know what straw is. I know many non-farm types call the bales of yellow plant matter "hay". Hay is green, and is fed to animals. Straw is yellow, it's what's left over when a wheat or oat crop is harvested, and it's used to provide bedding for barnyard animals.

When we moved into our house six years ago, I saw that there was a lot of straw left upstairs in our barn. I found out that it was put there by our Amish neighbor, Ray. My grandpa had let him store some straw in the barn. So, I visited Ray, and asked him about the straw. Ray had apparently forgotten about it, and told me it was mine to keep. It was, for us, apparently a six year supply, and we are about to run out.

It normally wouldn't be a problem to go out and buy straw. There's usually an abundance of straw on the market around here about the second week of July, when wheat is harvested. The problem is, last fall was vey wet. Locally, winter wheat is planted in the fall, and harvested in July. But, because of all the rain in the fall, relatively little wheat was planted. Most all of the local straw is already spoken for by the nearby dairy farms. It seems that no matter what small timers like me might be willing to pay, there will be little straw available.

My neighbor across the road has some large round bales of straw left over from last year. I could get them from him, no problem. But, we are set up to use small square bales best. I'm thinking that we'll need to figure out pretty quickly how to fit big round bales into our system.

Boy, it seems like there was something else I wanted to include in this entry, but it's not coming to me. I'll have to remember it, and include it later.

I am at a loss as to what we should do.

As anyone who has followed my blog for any amount of time knows, raising animals to show at the local 4-H fair is a big part of my family's life. I raised and showed hogs and beef steers. DW raised and showed dairy heifers, sheep, and goats. Our kids raise and show dairy heifers, hogs, goats, and chickens.

Caring for and showing animals is a learning experience, the kids can make some money for college, and it keeps them busy. All good stuff.

Some of you may also remember that we raise these animals on my family's original farmstead that was settled in 1882. The animals are raised in a hog barn that was built in the 1950s. I'm not sure which year in the 1950s, but '52 or '54 seems right. Either way, it is an old building that has outlived its useful life by about 30 years, and it is falling apart.

If we want our kids to continue to raise and show animals, which we do, we need to do something with the building.

We could do anything from spending 80-100K to tear down, and completely rebuild a barn, to spending 40-50K for completely gutting, tearing down to the studs and rafters, and rebuilding, to spending 2.5-10K to put on a new roof, and gut the inside, and build new pens.

Clearly, we will choose something in the 2.5-10K range, but to do anything that will get us to where we need to be, we will probably need to be closer to the 10K end than the 2.5K end.

The pen doors are too narrow for the dairy animals. And even hogs are bigger than they used to be. A fair hog finishes out (is ready for slaughter) at 240-270 pounds now, and was more like 230-250 pounds when I showed in the 1980s.

The roof is original, with one layer of shingles. It must have been made with a quality shingle. It hasn't leaked yet, but it has outlived its useful life. To do anything to improve the guts of the building would be folly without putting on a new roof.

The pen walls and doors are falling apart. Fewer than half of the pens are useful at all. My dad and I have done some patchwork fixing along the way, but our patchwork is falling apart, because the wall and door foundations are not strong. We need to remove all of the old lumber that makes the pens and doors, and replace them with probably tube steel gates.

The original barn had a gutter system for manure removal. The gutter system has not worked for a very long time, and now only serves as a channel between the pens and central alley that is a danger for a broken leg on a $2,000 dairy heifer borrowed from my brother-in-law. The gutters should be filled in with concrete.

The hydrant has failed. Mid April through mid October, we hook up three hoses from the house to deliver water to the animals. The hoses are subject to leaking. In the winter time, we haul buckets from the house out to the barn. We need a frost-free hydrant in the barn.

The girls do have some money saved up from raising and selling animals in the past. It just seems wrong to say to them "Congratulations on all your hard work. Now buy yourself a new barn."

I've also thought that maybe we need to abandon this barn, and build something smaller from scratch in a different spot.

I'm not particularly handy with building things, and we have the boys with special needs that doesn't lend itself well to spending a lot of time outside near a construction zone.

So, there you go SA community. This is my conundrum. What say you?

I'm struggling to figure out how to tie this in any way to personal finance. I'm not coming up with any thing. This is something interesting in my life, and I guess they don't all have to be financial...

For the past two years my local library has sponsored a cemetery walk. Local townspeople dress up like locally important/historic figures from my home town, and stand by their grave stone, and tell their story dressed as that person. For example, an MLB executive, and baseball hall of fame inductee was born, and is now buried in my home town. I didn't know that before two years ago. A retired astronaut is from my home town. I did know that. He's living, but his mother is buried in our cemetery, so her life story was told. Others include early physicians, the first news paper publisher, the founder of the bank, etc.

My wife and girls are pretty well known at the library. For the past two years, our girls were asked to dress in historic clothing, and collect tickets during the event. Both have been enjoyable autumn Sunday afternoons for our family.

This year, one of the local pioneering farmers will be featured on the walk. He is my g-g-g grandfather on my paternal grandmother's side. I've been asked to play him. I'm told that this will be the first time that a descendant has played a person featured in the walk.

I'm fairly familiar with the genealogy on my paternal grand father's side, but not as much on my grandmother's side. Maybe it's because we live on the farm settled by my g-g-g grandfather on my Grandpa's side, and I share his last name, or maybe it's genealogic sexism. But, I'm becoming much more familiar with my Grandma's side now.

This man (and his wife) emigrated to the US from Germany in 1851. They settled in Michigan in 1866, sixteen years before my grandfather's family did. He was a farmer and a cooper - a maker of barrels, kegs, butter churns, and buckets. The house that he and his wife built still stands prominently one mile north of town, and is owned and used as a summer home by one of his descendants.

This is the really cool part - My dad learned that the tools that he brought with him from Germany to make barrels are on display at the house. We have a maple sap bucket that he made on display at our maple woods. I'll use them as props during the cemetery walk.

I'm growing a beard for the first time in my life. I have a 1200 word script that I need to memorize. I've not yet figured out my wardrobe. And I need to figure out just how far I want to go with a faux German accent.

The event is the last Sunday in September, and I'm really looking forward to it.

I blogged a couple months ago - it might have even been February - about DD1 and braces.

I looked a little more closely at her teeth, and so did DW. We both agreed that braces would help.

I'm not sure what all I included in my previous post, so I'll start at the beginning.

We've known for a while that our younger daughter, DD2, would need braces. She has an overbite, and a gap between her upper front teeth. A couple years ago we scheduled an appointment with an orthodontist to get an early professional opinion. He agreed that she would need braces, he agreed that we should wait. He asked us to schedule another appointment in one year. While we were there, we figured we might as well have the ortho look at DD1 as well. His opinion at that time was that he could do some cosmetic work if we were concerned, but there was no pressing need for braces.

We never did schedule a one year follow up DD2 still has too many baby teeth. But, early this year DD1 saw our regular dentist. He recommended an ortho consult, and that get's us at least to my previous post.

So, DD1 got her braces on the last Friday in April. And, we have a $160 per month payment for 18 months.

We put $800 down, and my dental insurance covered a bit more than $700. I've spent down my current year Flexible Spending Account, so we're caught up on payments until October.

I'll max out my FSA election next year, so from a cash flow stand point this shouldn't hurt too much.

Hopefully we can stagger it so that DD2 doesn't start with her braces until DD1 is out of them!

My busy spring season is over at work, so I can get back to my infrequent blog updates.

Our 19th wedding anniversary was Monday. I gave DW a flowering cherry tree for our yard. It's the same type of flowering cherry that so famously grows in Washington D.C. She gave me a Garmin Vivofit that counts my steps, and calories burned. I've set my daily goal at 10,000 steps, and have hit my goal each of the past two days. I'm 40% toward my goal today.

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I was listening to the radio while driving the other day. There was an ad for one of those Payday Loan/Quick Cash places. The ad highlighted a promo they are running that includes - A $200 LOAN THAT COSTS YOU NOTHING! THAT'S ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! except the $0.45 processing fee that the state requires us to charge. The ad piqued my curiosity, so I ran a calculation. I figured that a $0.45 charge on a $200 loan was about equivalent to a 2.7% APR. That's not a bad interest rate. That's slightly less than what we're paying on our van loan. But, it seems a far cry from A LOAN THAT COSTS YOU ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!

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I ran a calculation on our own vehicle loans. We have two loans spread across two vehicles, and the amount of the loans divided by the KBB values of the vehicles is 0.40, or we own 60% of our vehicles. Not bad, not great either. My truck will be fully paid off in December, then we'll start throwing some extra toward the Van.

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I applied for a job with the USDA Farm Service agency. I'm not particularly looking, but it seemed like an opportunity that I couldn't pass by. The Federal government works on a vastly different time scale than nearly any other entity I can think of. I first heard about the possibility of the job being posted in early February. It's hard to remember, but I think it was posted in early March, and applications were due around the third week of March. I applied, and waited. And waited. It seems like it was a full month later that I received word that my application earned me an interview. It had been so long since I had applied that when I received the email, I was sure that it was a "Thanks, but no thanks" message. As it turned out, applications are ranked into one of three categories, and my application was ranked in the highest category. About a week after I learned that I would get an interview, I received an email from the state office that my interview would be 11:00 AM Thursday, May 22. Another three or four week wait. But, that gave me some time to prep. I also got busy with work, so that took my mind off things for a while, too. Fortunately, The day before the interview was a rain day, so that gave me one day for some serious preparation. The interview was in East Lansing, which I've driven to many, many times, so I was really comfortable with how much time I would need. I printed out directions, and a Google Earth satellite view, because I wasn't very familiar with the part of town where the state office is. I'm glad I left myself 20 extra minutes, because I spent 10 of them looking for the office, even with the printed direction, and satellite view.

The interview went really well. I felt very good during and afterward. I was interviewed by four people - the state FSA director, the director of the program that I'd be working for, the local supervisor, and an HR person. I learned that I was one of five candidates. I asked how long I could expect to wait to learn if I was the successful candidate, and the state director told me 10 days. Today is day 14, or business day 9. If I don't hear anything tomorrow, I won't be concerned or disappointed. Yet. It is the Federal government, and they do work on a vastly different time scale than nearly any other entity I can think of.

The job posting did include a range in salary. The highest salary is about $3,000 per year more than I make right now. So, if I'm offered the job, and if I take the job, I wouldn't be taking it for a big pay bump. A federal job, if nothing else, is a secure job. But, it would be more about a change in scenery, and different challenge from where I am. I'd just really like to hear something soon.

I have an uncle who works for the FAA, and he wasn't the least bit surprised when I outlined the timeframe for him.

If you've gotten this far, thanks for reading.

DD1 has attended our local three-day 4-H camp for the past four years. She's always enjoyed herself at camp, and the camp includes activities and learning opportunities. But, the camp doesn't really stretch or challenge the kids. It's more fun and games than learning.

She learned of an opportunity to attend a natural resources 4-H camp this summer. It appears as if the emphasis is much more on learning, with plenty of fun thrown in. She was excited about this opportunity, and we told her that she would have to decide which one of the two camps she would prefer to attend. She decided to attend the natural resources camp.

She was required to fill out an application for the nat. resources camp. I have no idea how competitive it might have been, but she was required to have had previous experience in natural resources, and she used her experience in maple syrup production.

She found out last week that she was accepted to attend the nat. resources camp. This camp is about twice as expensive as the local 4-H camp - $400 vs. (I think) $180 or so. DD1 applied for a couple scholarships to attend. The first scholarship was through the camp itself. She found out when she was accepted for the camp that she was also awarded the $50 scholarship. She also applied for a scholarship through our local 4-H council. We found out today that she was awarded a $150 scholarship from the council.

With the two scholarships, the cost to attend the natural resources camp is very similar to attending the local camp, with a much more enriching experience.

The natural resources camp is almost 200 miles away, as opposed to 30 miles for the local camp. But, we all think the experience is worth the extra time and expense. And, I believe there is a bus that she can ride with other camp attendees from the east side of the state, and we'll have to drive her about 45 miles to catch that.

Much of my summer in 2008 was spent cleaning up the old farmstead where we now like. I've mentioned many times about just how much iron we've dug up, and sold at the local junk yard.

We were using my in-law's front-end loading tractor, and a borrowed flat bed wagon to load a lot of the stuff. I set the chains around an old plow that had been sitting in the barnyard, rusting and sinking into the ground for probably 35 years. I was about to set it onto the flat bed when my dad stopped me. He told me that the plow was still good, and shouldn't be scrapped. So, I set the plow down behind the barn, out of sight, so it could continue to rust, and sink into the ground in a different spot. I also set an old harrow, which is used to smooth the ground after it is plowed, and a snow plow blade behind the barn as well. That was 2008, and they are still sitting there.

About a week ago, I was talking with a friend of mine. He mentioned that he was going to an auction sale the next day. This particular auction sale is a fund raiser for one of the local township volunteer fire fighting crews. It's a huge annual event, where old farm machinery, and other assorted junk is donated and sold. He mentioned that he was looking for a two-bottom plow. I told him about the two-bottom plow behind our barn. He seemed interested, but I could tell that he also wanted to attend the auction, just to see it and take part in it. His wife, on the other hand was not at all excited about the idea of him buying our plow.

The next day I snapped a picture of the plow and sent it to my friend, and later he replied that he was interested, and asked about price.

I asked may dad about it, and he said that I could sell it for whatever I wanted to sell it for. I did a bit of research on the internet to get an idea of the plow's value. I'm probably under valuing it, but I decided $90 for the plow, and $60 for the harrow. If he's interested in the snow blade, I'll throw that in for $50, to make then entire transaction $200.

Of course, mom and dad will get all the money, I'll lose some junk for which I have no use, and my friend will pick up some equipment he wants (but his wife doesn't) for a low price.

I guess that makes that a win-win-win-(lose).

As most of you know, we have two special needs sons. They can be very difficult to care for.

Outside of family (my mom, dad and sister), we have three regular baby sitters.

Long story short, we need a baby sitter for tomorrow night. DD1 is in a play, performed with her home school group. Two of our regular sitters are busy, and the other is in the play.

I'd really like for my mom and dad to be able to watch the play. We've torn them away from enough of our girl's activities to watch our boys in the past. My sister has taken a job where she works in the evenings, and even if she wasn't working, I'd like for her to be able to choose to watch the play.

We pay our sitters $7 per hour. It's tough work.

The three teenage girls might be burnt out from watching them. I'm sure they have legitimate commitments for tomorrow night, but I get the sense from them that regardless of what we pay, they are getting burnt out.

There is another neighborhood girl that might work out. She's pretty heavily involved with high school sports, and is often not available. I didn't think about her until I started writing this post.

We'll probably find someone for tomorrow, but a lot of times we need to scramble until the last minute to find a sitter. Or, we get my parents to do it. Or DW or I stay home.

This is strange territory for us. We always brought our girls with us to things. When we didn't live in the area (close to family), there was a neighbor family with small children about the same age as our girls. When DW and I wanted to go out alone (which was rare), we left the girls with our neighbor family, and they would do the same. It was infrequent, and money never changed hands. We just took turns, and it seemed to work out.

DS1 is getting much more manageable in public. But, his younger brother is still very difficult to take out into public.

I would imagine that in the next year or two, he will mature out of his present behaviors. Until then we will scramble, and pay accordingly.

I went through our family budget, and assigned percentages to each expense item.

Some comments:

Gasoline is very high. A lot of that has to do with all the running around we do with our boys. I have made a category called "special needs", and that is all the other expenses related to caring for children with special needs. So, really some of that gasoline line item should go into the special needs line item.

Retirement Savings is too small. It was more than that a year ago, but I decreased savings a bit for cash flow reasons.

Housing and vehicle loans, added together, are probably smaller than most.

You'll notice that I have a line for Credit Card. And, yes we have put on more credit card debt. Current balance is about $550. I hope to have it all paid off by September, at that rate of payment.

The Eat Out line is way too high, but it is what it is. Again, some of that could be tucked into the Special Needs line.

Those of you who are new to the blogs may not know that my wife and I adopted our two youngest sons from foster care. One of the benefits of foster adopting is that we've been participating in the WIC program, even though we don't meet the income requirements.

DS2 turned five last month, and he has aged out of WIC.

WIC is a very good program. Of course, for the first year, the benefit is exclusively baby formula. Since DW couldn't breastfeed DS2 like she did our girls, that was a tremendous benefit for us. DS1 was two years old before he came to our family, so we didn't use the formula benefit for him.

After they are a year, the benefit includes milk, whole wheat bread or tortillas, dry beans or peanut butter, cereal, fresh fruits or vegetables, and eggs.

We figured the monthly benefit at between $60 and $70 per month, for each child. DS1 aged out about a year and a half ago.

WIC is not simply a hand out. We were required to visit the WIC office each quarter. The child receiving the benefit was required to be there three times a year so the WIC nurse could weigh him, and record his height. We were required to review some nutritional information, and complete a quiz about the information each quarter as well.

In fact, if it wasn't for the fact that my office is located very near the county health department where WIC is housed, I'm not sure we would have kept up with it.

So, WIC has been a great help to us, but we're done with it now. And I know that when someone in line in front of me uses a government benefit card to buy some of their groceries, I don't judge quite like I used to.

April net worth is $235,542.

The sickness that was working its way around my family finally hit me Wednesday PM. DS2 is the only one who has escaped. It didn't hit me as hard as it did the others, but I was pretty worn out yesterday. Feeling much better today, but not 100% yet.

I had planned on taking yesterday off anyway, because we had our maple syrup woods opened up to local homeschooling families, as we do each year. I wasn't very useful in helping to set up, but I did my part in talking to the morning session about sap collection. I went home to sleep during the afternoon session. Oddly enough, only one family attended to afternoon session, because heavy rain was in the forecast.

We're on pace for a record maple syrup year. In fact, I think we're a gallon or two over our record of 202 gallons right now, and the weather forecast shows another solid week of production. That should make our planned replacement of tubing that I blogged about last week more feasible.

DD1 and DD2 might buy their fair pigs tomorrow. We're going to check out a new hog farm tomorrow. He's a local guy, and his pigs are about $30 apiece cheaper than where we have been buying them, but we're not sure about quality.

I've blogged before about the junk yard that's about four miles from my house. Over the past six years, we've probably delivered nearly seven tons of scrap there.

Today it was my turn to buy some scrap from the junk yard. I bought a chest freezer for $20, and it will be repurposed for feed storage.

My dad picked up an abandoned chest freezer for feed storage for us a few years ago. It provides all the storage we need August - March. But, when we start getting 4-H fair animals this time of year, and especially late June through July when they get big and start eating a lot, we run out of storage.

We've been on the lookout for a chest freezer for most of the winter. DW found one on craigslist. But as anyone with any experience on craigslist knows, those transactions can be flaky, or downright dangerous. So, that never came through.

DW was driving past the junkyard earlier this week, and spotted it. They work great to store bags of feed, and keep them out of reach of raccoons and opossums. They are about the right height to stand a 50# bag of feed upright for easy scooping.

There were two freezers at the junk yard. The one I didn't get was bigger (longer), but it had a big dent in the side, and wouldn't seal shut, so I bought the smaller one. A buyer more savvy than I would probably have offered $15, but $20 sounded good to me, and we'll get more than that in use out of it.

This was a low spend weekend for us. Mostly because almost everyone was sick at some point of it. Actually the way it went was DD2 was sick mid to late last week, DW, late Friday through about noon yesterday, DD1 late Saturday through this morning, and DS1 just this morning. So far I've escaped it, as has DS2.

Thankfully we didn't have much planned, and the weather was too cold for the sap in the maple trees to run.

DW did get paid for her freelance work. I still can't remember for sure how much the check is, but it's more than $6,000, and less than $7,000. We may have come up with a solid plan of how to best use it, but the sickness took precedence.

Something kind of funny happened Saturday. As I mentioned, thinks were shut down in the woods, because of the cold weather. But, a gentleman did stop by our house to buy a half gallon of syrup. In-season, out inventory is kept in the woods. So, I met him down there, and in the course of our transaction, I asked if he was from the area. He said no, I'm from "between to towns that are six, and fifteen miles from here, respectively".

It made me chuckle, because about eight years ago, before DW and I moved back here, we were at my Grandma's for a garage sale. DW asked one of the visitors if they were from around here, and DW got a very similar answer, "No I'm from a town about 20 miles away".

Any of you who have followed my blog for any period of time know that I'm from a rural area. And, I moved away to college in 1991, and moved back here in 2008. So, I removed myself from the local culture for a while. But, I don't know what it is about the area that makes people think that a town 20 miles away is "out of their area". Is that true for a lot of other parts of the country? Would I think the same thing if I had never moved away? It's just one of those things that makes me scratch my head.

I've mentioned several times during the past that my family operates a maple syrup "business". I use the quotes because it sometimes seems morel like a family hobby than a business. But, it is a business in every technical sense of the word. My mom and dad file schedule F farm income with their 1040. The business is registered as an LLC, and we purchase and sell goods in an attempt to make a profit.

Mind you, the most we've ever grossed is about $14,0000. And production is limited to about March 1 through April 10 or 11 usually at the latest. That's why it seems more like a hobby. Maple syrup production doesn't consume every waking moment of my life.

The business is profitable. I've not looked at a profit/loss statement in about five years, but my mom and dad have handed DW and me a check for anywhere between $1,000 and $2,000 each year since we returned to the business eight years ago. That money doesn't come close to paying for the time we invest. it's well below minimum wage. But it always comes in handy from a personal finance stand point. I'll always look at our maple syrup pursuit as a business/hobby.

As a business, there's very little depreciation. The arch - the structure that holds the fire and the boiling pans, center of where the sap is boiled down to syrup, was installed 50 or 60 years ago. There are two pans that sit on top of the arch. One of them was replaced 5 or 6 years ago, and the other, the "back pan" is at least 25 years old.

We have five old stainless steel dairy bulk tanks that hold our sap prior to boiling. They are the size that would have been used on a commercial dairy farm in the '70s or '80s. The cooling units don't work anymore, but the physical structures are in fine shape, and they do a great job for us. My dad says he's never given more than a gallon of syrup ($52 current value) for any of the tanks.

There have been some major, and expensive upgrades made in the past 10 years. We've had tubing installed. What that means is that all of the trees are now connected by hollow plastic tubes that are connected to a vacuum pump. Now we don't have to drive a tractor all around the 9 acres of woods, and walk from tree to tree to collect the sap. We flip a switch, and the sap is collected for us. Of course the tubes and vacuum require their own maintenance.

We bought a filter press. The filter press does a great job of filtering and polishing the final product before it's canned. And the most recent addition is the reverse osmosis unit. The RO removes 40% of the water prior to boiling. The concentrated sap boils down much more quickly, and requires a lot less fire wood.

These three upgrades have allowed for labor efficiency. The current labor force is strictly family - my mom and dad, DW and me. And, increasingly my 12 year old is helping out.

This brings me to my point of my post. The tubing was installed 10 years ago. The expected life of tubing is 10-15 years. It's starting to need to be replaced.

There are four tubing mains, or branches in our woods. A main is its own stand-alone tubing unit. My question is, do we replace them all at the same time, or do we replace them one at a time over the course of four years? The mains aren't equally sized. One of them services more trees, or really more tap holes than the other three. One of them services relatively few tap holes, and two are somewhere in the middle.

My thought is that we replace the biggest main this year, and replace one each year largest to smallest. That seems to me the most efficient and effective way to allocate our sparse resources. There's also a lot of credence to getting the job done in one year, and being done with it.

Either way, I thing that this year it's time for DW and me to forego our $1,000 - $2,000 annual draw, and start putting some of our own skin in the game.

We filed our income tax return several weeks ago. In fact we've already received both our state and federal refunds.

But, I was looking through our Turbo Tax documents again yesterday and I noticed that this year we fell into the 15% tax bracket for the first time in many years.

I got a small raise last year, I think it was 2.1%, and DW was paid for half her freelance project, I think around $5,900. That was enough to push us into the 15% tax bracket. We still didn't pay any federal income tax - with 4 child tax credits, and carry-over adoption credit, our effective tax rate was still -7.19%.

In fact, this might be the first time we've ever been in the 15% tax bracket as a married couple. Back in the dual income, no kids days we were in the 28% tax bracket, and DD1 was born (DW quite full-time out-of-the-house work) at around the same time as the Bush II tax cuts, and the introduction of the 10% tax bracket.

DW will be getting the other half of her freelance project income in the next few weeks. That probably means that we'll slip into the 15% tax bracket again this year. It sure doesn't seem to have made a difference in monthly cash flow.