The Money Mustache Community
Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Mini Money Mustaches => Topic started by: caracarn on August 17, 2017, 06:24:49 AM
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Okits was nice enough to share an older thread about families with 3+ kids that started in 2014. It has been inactive for well over a year so when I tried to reply to it, the forum genie suggested I start a new thread instead, given that the other one has not had a post in over 120 days (it was closer to 400 I think)). I'm usually pretty good at following directions, so here I am!
Just as that poster noted, I have been here for nearly two years and noticed there is not much discussion about families about the standard 2 kids. With my wife and I we have 6, ages 19 to 13, and therefore some of the advice on the forums, like buying a Prius instead of a minivan are hard to follow. When I joined MMM we all went to the Toyota dealer along with a clown friend of ours, and even using his tricks of fitting a lot of people in a car, we could not get all 8 of us into a Prius comfortably. Though the salesman enjoyed watching us try. OK, this was actually a dream I had one night after spending three months reading sequentially through every post MMM had ever written but it still serves to illustrate some of the "nightmares" those of us with bigger families have.
So I'm hoping to have this become a common area for those of us with over 3 kids to share some of the unique issues of our choices to have big families and how we are doing. The other thread was more focused on "how you do it". I'm not looking to place any such restriction on this thread. I just would like to have somewhere to go to talk with other biggies. Maybe you just need to vent and find an understanding shoulder. Maybe you need some vexatious problem mulled over. Whatever you want, please post. Hopefully we can keep this thread at least marginally alive consistently
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Well....oops! My browser seemed to be stuck and was giving errors, yet somehow it seems to have posted three thread now, so hopefully the mods will get that cleared up.
Our biggest challenge right now is that we now have two at home who have jobs, but one "kid car" that they all share. We may next year have three, and so on. The logistics of this are getting a bit crazy. Basically we have been using a family calendar on a white board calendar for everything for years. We use a different color marker for each person. These markers hang on magnetic chains from the bottom of the board so that anyone can add anything to the board. School activities (luckily only one in sports this year in cross country in the middle school, rest are non-sport but still nuts on the schedule), and work times. Each night or morning we basically need to have a planning session to determine where the kid car will be deployed at any given minute. It literally has begun to feel like we're planning a military operation each day. Most days it's fine, but some days it is just exhausting. We want to avoid getting any more cars (three is enough) and my wife an I both work. At times we call in reinforcements (staying with the military theme here), in the form of our regular babysitter, a retired lady who at times we just pay to provide another set of wheels to get someone somewhere (doctor, event, work, etc.). She's reasonable at $10/hour and it tends to be cheaper than another car, but we will spend about $100-$150/month on needing here around for something (sometimes it is just to be home for a repairman, or our diabetic son who is still not quite responsible enough that we trust him for long periods of time, so when he is home sick for example). My wife and I both work, though she is a teacher at a school so summer is a little easier as she is home. We are back into school mode as of this morning with the kids off and with the added logistics of our 18 year old getting her first job at Chipotle, while our 17 year old continues to work at McDonald's.
So that's our story of the month, or week, or day. We'll see if something new pops up tomorrow (always seems to with multiple kids). Hope to hear from ya....
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Well....oops! My browser seemed to be stuck and was giving errors, yet somehow it seems to have posted three thread now, so hopefully the mods will get that cleared up.
Our biggest challenge right now is that we now have two at home who have jobs, but one "kid car" that they all share. We may next year have three, and so on. The logistics of this are getting a bit crazy. Basically we have been using a family calendar on a white board calendar for everything for years. We use a different color marker for each person. These markers hang on magnetic chains from the bottom of the board so that anyone can add anything to the board. School activities (luckily only one in sports this year in cross country in the middle school, rest are non-sport but still nuts on the schedule), and work times. Each night or morning we basically need to have a planning session to determine where the kid car will be deployed at any given minute. It literally has begun to feel like we're planning a military operation each day. Most days it's fine, but some days it is just exhausting. We want to avoid getting any more cars (three is enough) and my wife an I both work. At times we call in reinforcements (staying with the military theme here), in the form of our regular babysitter, a retired lady who at times we just pay to provide another set of wheels to get someone somewhere (doctor, event, work, etc.). She's reasonable at $10/hour and it tends to be cheaper than another car, but we will spend about $100-$150/month on needing here around for something (sometimes it is just to be home for a repairman, or our diabetic son who is still not quite responsible enough that we trust him for long periods of time, so when he is home sick for example). My wife and I both work, though she is a teacher at a school so summer is a little easier as she is home. We are back into school mode as of this morning with the kids off and with the added logistics of our 18 year old getting her first job at Chipotle, while our 17 year old continues to work at McDonald's.
So that's our story of the month, or week, or day. We'll see if something new pops up tomorrow (always seems to with multiple kids). Hope to hear from ya....
Could any of them get to work safely if you bought an electric assist bicycle? It's cheaper than a car and no insurance.
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Well....oops! My browser seemed to be stuck and was giving errors, yet somehow it seems to have posted three thread now, so hopefully the mods will get that cleared up.
Our biggest challenge right now is that we now have two at home who have jobs, but one "kid car" that they all share. We may next year have three, and so on. The logistics of this are getting a bit crazy. Basically we have been using a family calendar on a white board calendar for everything for years. We use a different color marker for each person. These markers hang on magnetic chains from the bottom of the board so that anyone can add anything to the board. School activities (luckily only one in sports this year in cross country in the middle school, rest are non-sport but still nuts on the schedule), and work times. Each night or morning we basically need to have a planning session to determine where the kid car will be deployed at any given minute. It literally has begun to feel like we're planning a military operation each day. Most days it's fine, but some days it is just exhausting. We want to avoid getting any more cars (three is enough) and my wife an I both work. At times we call in reinforcements (staying with the military theme here), in the form of our regular babysitter, a retired lady who at times we just pay to provide another set of wheels to get someone somewhere (doctor, event, work, etc.). She's reasonable at $10/hour and it tends to be cheaper than another car, but we will spend about $100-$150/month on needing here around for something (sometimes it is just to be home for a repairman, or our diabetic son who is still not quite responsible enough that we trust him for long periods of time, so when he is home sick for example). My wife and I both work, though she is a teacher at a school so summer is a little easier as she is home. We are back into school mode as of this morning with the kids off and with the added logistics of our 18 year old getting her first job at Chipotle, while our 17 year old continues to work at McDonald's.
So that's our story of the month, or week, or day. We'll see if something new pops up tomorrow (always seems to with multiple kids). Hope to hear from ya....
Could any of them get to work safely if you bought an electric assist bicycle? It's cheaper than a car and no insurance.
Could they? Yes. Would then want to? No. It's about 10 miles to their workplaces and most of it is on high speed roads (40+ MPH) with just two lanes, no sidewalks. Also pretty sure my wife would not go along with that either for safety reasons. They are working quite late so not sure I want my 17-18 year old girls on a bike at 11 PM up to 1 AM driving through town.
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Duplicate topic.
Please check here: https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/mini-money-mustaches/big-family-thread-77680/msg1663351/#msg1663351