by The Happy WAHM
Are you the WAHM who maintains a to-do list daily?
Do you ever get the feeling that you are so tired with doing a lot, only to see your task list with so many unchecked items at the end of the day?
Well, I am that WAHM. Not so much for work-related items, but more on my home chores. Although I have all my office chores in Google Task, I still have this handwritten list on my desk with my Mommy tasks. I love doodling and scribbling, so having this handwritten list is a good excuse to scribble. Plus, I find that I retain them in my brain more efficiently when I write them.
But retaining and executing are two different things. So let me give you an example of how my home chores get accomplished. Or not!
Because I have homeschool hours in the morning, I try to complete my home chores before school starts. So breakfast and home chores, then homeschool, then lunch, and finally, I get to dig into my office work.
So my home chores would be limited to one hour to two hours, max. That means I don’t make it a goal to finish everything at one go. I allot the time, and whatever I finish within that time is good.
The other day, I set out to clean my office window, sort the kids’ clothes drawers and pack old items for giving away, and make a list of items that we need to replace so I can work on the budget. Realizable for the two hours allotted, right? First item: My office window. It’s that little window downstairs beside the garage.
Not much of a task, right? But it took me about two hours to complete. And here’s why…
I took out a wet rag, and started cleaning the glass. My system in cleaning glass windows is to use a wet rag first (not so wet, though) and then follow with paper. You can use old newspapers or pages from old magazines, but I use our waste paper from homeschool.
So, done with the wet rag. I went inside to get paper. Found the trash box to be full, so I decided to take it out for disposal. We have four sacks outside: one for dry cartons and paper, one for plastic bottles, one for cans, and one for non-biodegradable assorted trash. The one for assorted trash is picked up by the municipal garbage collection truck, three times a week. The other three, we just get them ready for the garbage man who buys them from us. Found the sack with plastic bottles to be almost full, too, so I went back in and checked the bathrooms for shampoo bottles that may be ready for disposal, so I can have them sorted along with the paper and cans. Garbage sorting done, finally was able to get back to cleaning the glass.
Then I went on to clean the grills. As I was cleaning, my eyes caught sight of the grass starting to grow below the window. I started weeding, with the goal of just finishing that small part below the window. Before I knew it, I’ve weeded the grass off half the front yard. Uh, not much of a yard, but I don’t know what else to call it.
After I’ve swept off the grass, I went back to cleaning the grills. And then it’s time to rinse the rag, before I give the grills another wipe.
Then I thought, wait, might as well wash the other rags, too, so I can maximize the use of laundry soap and water. So I collected the other rags inside the house, and went on to handwash eight of them.
I had a bubbly basin full of water with soap, and felt so bad about just throwing it down the drain, and I thought, well, the garage is so dusty, so I decided to use it to clean the garage floor. I did that will all the water that I used to rinse all the rags. So I have a bunch of clean rags, and a clean garage floor, too!
And finally, I was able to complete cleaning my office window. One item ticked off from my home chores list, and my time was up. One out of three is not so bad, yeah? Especially since there are items now that won’t even make it to the list.
But the other items in the present list will need to be transferred to a fresh sheet so I can schedule it for another time. And there’s another excuse to make use of my mechanical pencil. I’m happy!
How do YOU get your chores done? I do hope you will share!
by The Happy WAHM
While I may be bravely going on with life as if nothing has significantly changed, I am also hard at work doing what I’m expected to do – making the best out of a bad situation. I have faced our new reality right from Day 1, and I have since taken these small, but necessary steps, to get us better prepared to survive, and with God’s grace, even thrive.
Assessing Our Current Situation
It’s true, what we need is a great workable plan. But we really cannot make a realistic plan of what we need to do and which direction we need to go if we do not know where we presently are. So just as I did nine years ago, I sat down with my pen and notebook and created a list. I tell you, I’m really getting good at this. 🙂
So my first list is all about what we have. Bank accounts [bank name, account number, balance-to-date], investments, assets inside the home like the computers and gadgets, appliances, the cars, and the value of the house itself. It’s like, okay, if my kids are about to go hungry, what can I sell?
And then another list is of what we owe, like ongoing amortizations on retirement funds, credit card balance [which thankfully is not much], and the projected big ticket expenses like tuition fees. This gives me an idea of how much more we need outside of the day-to-day cost of living. And yeah, the emergency fund, which we need to continually add to.
On another sheet, which I have since transferred to Excel, are two columns – income and expense. Under income is my salary from my retainer gig. Well, that’s all it’s going to be, for now. And under expense are the usual suspects. 🙂 Food, toiletries, gas, internet, phones, electricity, car maintenance, etc. I added these to the monthly totals of the payables above, and what I ended up with is the amount that we actually need monthly. Since we do not have any clear prospects yet for the replacement income, we need to make short-term decisions, and those are basically steps that we need to do to lower our expenses and be within my income range.
What Are Our Absolute Necessities?
Another way of posing that question is: where can we drastically cut expenses? Good thing that school is out, so transportation expense is down to almost zero. We just need to plan our grocery trips more efficiently and cut back on lunches or dinners out. We have also talked to our 14-year old who has a cellphone budget of Php200 a month [that’s Sun’s Unlimited Text with 4 hours of calls monthly] and asked if it’s okay if Daddy will just pass a load to her as needed, until further notice. Thankfully, it was accepted without any fuss.
We have also agreed that we will let go of the older car, as it needs higher maintenance and consumes more gas. And it will not make sense to have two cars when both of us will be working from home, anyway. [That part about both of us working from home is still a work in progress.] The proceeds will be saved for the maintenance and upkeep of the remaining car.
For the utilities, we have already implemented power-saving rules around the house [which I may write about in another post]. All we need to do is to make sure that those are strictly implemented. Since it’s summer, my contribution will be the no-spinner policy in the laundry department. I’ll just take advantage of the scorching summer sun to dry the clothes. And a more efficient scheduling of wash days. Since a full and a medium load consumes just about the same amount of electricity, it will have to be full load all the time.
Keeping a Watchful Eye
You may think that it’s OA to be listing down every cent that goes out, but yes, that’s what we intend to do. This will help us determine how we are doing in managing what we have. This may also aid us in determining where to take our food from – the market or the grocery. We’ve also agreed that we will use purely cash from this day forward, to avoid unconscious overspending. Because I’ve always paid my credit card in full and on time, we’ve never paid for interests [nor annual fees] on our card purchases. But it is always best to err on the side of caution, so yeah, no more credit card purchases for us. What my brother told me resonates: If you can’t pay for something in cash, you can’t afford it. That has been my mantra, too, but I kinda have gotten used to the convenience of paying with plastic. But in times like this, we cannot afford to slip.
And so keeping in mind what Benjamin Franklin said, we do have to keep a watchful eye, even on the little expenses. 🙂
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by The Happy WAHM
From a dual-income to one-income household, these are the questions that we had to deal with in the past three weeks:
- What are our essential costs?
- How much can we realistically afford in terms of expenses?
- How will we cover health insurance?
- Is our life insurance adequate?
- How will we cut back on costs?
- How long can we survive with just one income?
- How will we fund the kids’ education?
- How will we fund our retirement?
- What are our options?
- Can we find/create a replacement income?
This is not the first time that our family plummeted from two incomes to one. Back in 2005, when I prematurely gave birth to our third child, husband and I had to make the hard decision of letting go of my salary to give childcare a priority. Although we knew we were not ready, we had to take the leap of faith and together resolved to make things work. It’s been more than seven years, and we have not regretted that move. I have since created a new career, and we were back to a dual income situation in no time.
Middle of last month, we were again put in that same situation, where we had to simply accept the cards that we were dealt with. This time, it’s the husband who’s losing the income. The same, but different. The blow is harder this time.
Losing the Benefits
Working as an employee has its perks. You get group life insurance and health insurance, you need not lift a finger in getting your income tax return filed, your SSS contribution is merely deducted from your salary, and if you’re lucky, you get transportation allowances.
When I gave up my job, we were still okay with it. He simply claimed the tax deductions while I went ahead to file my own, I just had to take over paying my SSS contributions, and changed my status to dependent for the health insurance. This time around, the changes brought greater impact. No more health insurance. Several trips to SSS and the BIR will have to be made, and we have to give up his car. Soon. But what breaks my heart is the way this change has affected him. Me, I’m like rubber. I bounce back easily. Him, he’s like glass. To say that he is heartbroken is an understatement. I know he’s trying to put up a brave front, but I can see that he is struggling with acceptance.
Facing the Challenge
One advantage of having to face the same predicament twice is that we were not totally blindsided the second time. What we have experienced before taught us not to be complacent with our finances. We’ve created safety nets that we are now bound to make use of. I know it’s going to be a bumpy ride, but we are here to take on the challenge. We survived the storm the first time, when we were neck-deep in debt, when the kids were still in their high-maintenance phase, when raising kids without a helper made our difficult situation even more strenuous, and when working from home was not as popular as it is now. This time around, we are in a better position than the last. Not ideal, but still better.
Do you have questions, comments or feedback about this post?
Please leave me a message, or post them, at my Facebook Page.
by The Happy WAHM
Hit the ground running this year!
I’m really very excited about 2014, as a lot of things are in the works. I call them new beginnings, as I am finally putting into action the plans that I used to simply dream about.
Plus, a special occasion will be happening in March, and my brother, whom I haven’t seen for a long time, will be coming home for a vacation with his family, also in March. I’m most excited about seeing my nephews, and seeing my kids connect with them. My kids have been practicing their conversational English, while my older nephew has been learning Tagalog.
My dream of having an extension of the house that I can use as a home office will come to fruition this year, hopefully to be completely finished before the end of the first quarter, but if not, I will still have nine months to work on it. I mean work, like earn, so I can fund the works. Ha ha!
I also want to see to fruition the planned revamp of my sites, which has been long overdue. I built my sites on free templates, and have been dreaming of having them designed professionally. This has been put on the backburner for the longest time. I have not had the opportunity to sit down and internalize on what I really want in terms of design, color palettes and such. I just know what I want the content to be. I guess I really have not felt the need to further promote my services because I have been pretty much fully booked, so to speak, and I can no longer afford any more clients. But then again, I just need to have my brand out there, and share best practices that worked for me and somehow be of help to those who are just starting out. So yeah, this year will be about new beginnings, starting with re-organizing my home office, both physically and virtually.
Another big thing is that my podcast interview from last year has just been released. Really thrilled to be to be asked for an interview in a podcast, as this is the first of its kind [that I know of] in the Philippines. The interview happened late at night, after a long workday, so I may be talking nonsense at times. Ha ha! Please be kind when you hear me say “meat on the table” when I really meant to say “food”. I can’t recall much, but I have dwelt on that error right from the moment I said it, until now that I’m writing this post. I have not fully listened to the podcast yet, but my understanding is that it was recorded as live, so no hopes for editing out the faux pas and others like it.
Just click on the play button below, or click this link to see the shownotes. And while you’re at the page, please give me some love and click on the Facebook Like button. Thank you! 🙂
But the one thing that I’m really preparing for this January is the WordPress Re-Run. I really can’t be emphatic enough in saying that having WordPress knowledge is a big plus in going out there and presenting yourself as a virtual worker. Let’s face it. We now live in a world where everyone goes to a website for something. So people are building businesses online, and one out of six websites actually run on WordPress. So virtual workers and online entrepreneur wannabes really need to learn the power of WordPress. You need an online portfolio? Build it on WordPress. You want an online store? Build it on WordPress. You want to have a retainer job online? Your would-be employer will want you to be adept in WordPress. And that’s why we created this workshop, so we can help you with what you need.
And what’s good about attending this workshop is that the learning will not end there. We take all our attendees to a closed Facebook group where they can continue to ask us questions and we’ll continue to assist them with their respective sites. If you feel that you, or someone you know, will benefit from this workshop, please help us spread the word. Just click here to go to the registration page.
And one last thing that I want to share in this post: I have started a journal. Since my mantra for this year is journal, plan and share, I have started writing down my daily activities. And when I say write, I really mean write, with the old fashioned pen. And thankfully, someone took pity on me and gave me a really cool planner, but I’m not in liberty to divulge who the generous donor is. Suffice it to say that the donor is an awesome person, and the planner, equally so. But in case you don’t have a generous donor like I do, this one is cool, too. I have this on my laptop and it’s called the Red Notebook.
I really hope I will have more time to post here this year, but if not, you can still catch my updates via Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. I guess it’s always easier to just write short updates. 🙂
by The Happy WAHM
I first heard of Balik Bukid last year. But only after people were already talking about it on Facebook. From the photos and the blogs, the fair seemed like fun. So I made a promise to myself and the kids that we’ll be at the next one.
And we were.
We’ve just arrived home from this year’s Balik Bukid at Hacienda Sta. Elena. And boy, it was indeed fun! Come to think of it, fun is an understatement. It was exhilarating. More so for the kids. Each of them had a personal high.
Xia riding a horse. And a big one at that!
Bea conquering her fear of heights. I was truly worried that she’d feel the fear halfway up and panic, but she was able to hold on and finish the climb on her own, and go back down again. Truth be told, I was only able to take a total of three shots of her on those ropes. I was shaking. Very frightened that she’d have an episode. I know that feeling so well. The paralyzing fear of heights. But she was a real trouper. Even asked if she could do another climb. But my heart could no longer take it. So, no.
Jude catching a fish.
And I had a personal high, too.
I did something that I have not done even in my teen years. And not even when I was moonlighting as a production assistant for live concerts.
Today, I finally had the courage to ask a celebrity for a photo op. Look at this!
Well, I actually approached her with: “Ah, excuse me, but can my kids have a photo with you?” And my kids were like: “What? Why? Sino s’ya, Mommy?” So I explained: “Sorry, my kids don’t watch TV and they are not familiar with Philippine show business.” And she replied: “Oh, that’s okay! I don’t watch TV myself, and I wouldn’t know me either if I’m not me.” Ha ha!
So here she is with my girls.
The little boy was at that time having fun boating with his dad, which was a good thing, coz I wouldn’t have had the courage to approach Maricel had the dad been around. He frowns on these things. Being a fan and taking pictures of celebrities. It’s simply not in his zone. So it was a good thing that he was not around. 🙂
We met a couple of fellow WAHMs. Hmmm… now that I think about it, these WAHMs are both artistically gifted. Ginnie of The Green Mailbox and Nica of Carlos and Veronica. Awesome talents, these ladies!
And Xia had a bag personalized with her name by Ima, who also does calligraphy. And what do you know, the other lady in the photo below is also named Isabelle. She’s actually one of the angels of Manila Workshops.
Thrilled also to have re-introduced myself and the kids to a cousin-in-law, whose online store will be launched next year. But for now, you can find her here, and below, with my treasures. Jude really was in his element this whole day, making faces for the camera.
And lest I be accused of turning my site into a photo blog, I’d better stop posting photos here.
To the organizers of the country fair, thank you for putting up such an organized event. The attendants were all so accommodating and helpful. The facilities were well-maintained. Like the toilets were cleaned after every use. Alcohol bottles and paper towels in every turn. Attendants maintaining cleanliness of the grounds. Security personnel so snappy. All the kuya‘s who assisted my kids through the horseback riding, the carabao ride, the rope climb, the feeding, the boating, the fishing… kudos to you! You were their heroes! Until the next Balik Bukid!
