marineguy, bhshaman, It sounds like you guys have it pretty well figured out. My wife and I are expecting our first! Maybe things will change once the baby arrives but the way it's looking now it's going to be a footrace though to see who gets to spend more time at home with our child. She's a busy vet and of course I'm a doc, both professions with type A personalities galore but I guess we both feel like some things are more important than money or professional prestige. I wouldn't care if someone were to call me a "househusband". People on their death bed never say "I wish I spent more time at work." Don't get me wrong, we're not exactly slackers but the organization I work for asked me to head up a new clinic. I really had to think twice before taking it on. As I said in a previous post, our newest vehicle is Jenn's '01 Camry. We can bicycle to work so we don't put on many miles. We live in an established neighborhood near the university in our town. Many of my colleagues have opted for swanky new houses. As far as I can see all it's done for them is smaller lots and more restrictive covenants. We're lucky 'cause we have 3 non-taxable retirement vehicles. One that is paid for entirely by my organization, one that is matching and one that isn't matched but is also pretax. I also have some money in a Canadian governmental hospital workers retirement fund that not only grows with interest (guaranteed a minimum of 10%) but is also indexed to inflation. (If you live in Canada it is very advantageous to be firmly attached to the gov't teat. My sister for instance who is an ICU nurse and clinical instructor has received 1 year of 70% pay for each of her maternity leaves.) Two of our vehicles were bought new, one used but we plan on driving them 'til the wheels fall off. I agree with marineguy that it's often not worth it to pay cash for a vehicle. All our vehicles are paid for but if I was in need I would just wait for one of the no interst for 5 yr specials and leave my money in some interest bearing investment.

Hi Eva 55, Sorry you're missing our dad. My Dad left this dimension of life 27 years ago, but I seldom saw him for years prior to his passing, so missed him much less than my farmer brother, who usually saw him weekly. There was 28 years between our ages - so now I'm one year short of his age at death. Having lived in 22 locations during my 84 years, I've never owned a home. During the first part of my career, usually I'd lived in employer-owned housing. But ... realizing that when I retired, I'd have to provide my own housing, I made some investments from time to time. As they were on a fairly long-term time horizon, I made a substantial portion of them in various quality stocks, a number of which have enjoyed fairly steady growth, in both price of the stock and the annual dividend. One, which had grown from $4.17 per share, had grown to about $90.00, and I was about to contribute it to a charity, which would mean that I would have paid no income tax on half of the almost $86.00 of capital gain ... but it was in certificate form, so it would have taken some time to verify its legitimacy., so it didn't get used. Transferred some shares that were held electronically at the stockbroker's office to the agency that serves the charity, instead. I'll have them send most of it to a couple of dozen agencies which I support. One local hospital has some donors willing to match gifts received for the next month or so. Some other agencies have matching supporters, as well so one's support is magnified. Some of the gift is money diverted from income tax - I figure that most of the charities make good use of the money. ole joyful

BONUS- going all the way up, with a molding to match (mine are modern, flat panel maple) means I son't have the dust factor collecting on top. Extra cost was minimal, compared to what it would cost me to a) hire a housekeeper to get up there to dust (high ladders are a place I can't go anymore) b) the cost of other furniture to store the seasonal stuff. Oh, yes. I like the look of to-the-ceiling cabinets, but the dust is another very real reason to go this direction. In my classroom at school I have about 3' above my cabinets ... and I hate it. I clean up there about twice a year; it's difficult and nasty, and I have to remove the gunk that kids throw up there: chip bags, actual food, the occasional cafeteria fork.

"Capitalism needs government to work." Only to provide a legal framework. "Government needs to oversee products & services which are sold to the public." Really? Everything? I just bought a couple of lights from Amazon. Did/should the government oversee them? No. "For example, defective equipment liabilities..." That's why we have a legal framework that allows person who are harmed to take action against those who harm them. "The government should keep the relationship between consumers & businesses fair to keep consumers". Ah, the old "fair" argument. Is it fair to keep Uber from competing against the taxi monopoly? How about preventing foreign airlines from competing against domestic ones? Granting Comcast a monopoly? Governments are preventing housing production thereby driving up housing costs; "fair"? Warren wants to drive the health insurance industry out of business; is that "fair"? "tax break incentives for businesses who manufacture quality appliances which last longer." Whose going to define "quality"? "Last longer" than what? Bernie Sanders is going to sit in his office and define "quality" and "last longer" for thousands of appliances models? What's the difference between this and Soviet-style central planning? "tax break to consumers who bought the appliances that last longer" So you also want the government to give tax breaks to people who buy products the government approves? You want to Elizabeth Warren to decide what YOU buy? When it's tax time, do you want to have to drag out all your receipts to see if you get a tax break? Isn't the mortgage tax deduction and all the other crap in the tax code enough?