Educating the Wheelers

It looks like it’s been about a year since I posted, which means pretty much no one should be reading this post. Heh.

After the birth of our second child, I was able to post for a little while when pretty much all he did was sleep all day, but once he moved out of that stage, blogging was one of the first things to fall by the wayside. Then our more labor-intensive frugal ways. Then the housework. Et cetera. But now our littlest guy is quite a bit more independent, and lo and behold, I’m starting to get our lives back on track again. The house is getting cleaner, the meals are getting better, the spending is tightening up. And now here I am writing a blog post again!

Life has changed quite a bit for us. We are living up in Minnesota now, about 8 blocks from my parents. That has been a life-saver for my sanity, and the kids LOVE seeing them nearly every day. Of any decision we’ve ever made for our kids, putting us in a situation where their grandparents are part of their everyday lives is one of the very best. Many of my very favorite memories of childhood memories are with my own grandparents, especially spending summers up on their farm.

On the other hand, it is 8 gazillion degrees below zero right now. And snowing!

(On the third hand, I love snow. But I digress.)

One major downside is the cost of living difference. In order to buy a comparable home, we spent 100k more. This really says more about how insanely cheap the Austin housing market is, but the Twin Cities aren’t exactly a bargain, either. And then we got a 15 year mortgage instead of a 30. This works out to about a thousand dollars more a month than we were spending in Texas. So the more “free-wheeling” year that we just had took a little bit of a toll. We don’t have any debt (save the new mortgage), but our reserves have gone down more than I am comfortable with.

Time to get back on the wagon and be more disciplined.

So, here I am.

In addition to talking finances again, I’ll also be covering more day to day life and the beginning of our homeschooling. Just this weekend, Audrey declared that she’s a big girl now, and old enough to do school every day. So, okay! Now we do a little school every day. I’ll have to post more on that later, because this one is starting to get dangerously long. A year’s worth of pent up things to say!