Accessory Tuesday: Fragments Leather Zip Card Case

Professional / mom victory: I got funding to run a residential research retreat for academic moms who have felt like their research has taken a hit during the pandemic. Obviously, it can’t mitigate even a fraction of the impact the pandemic has had on women’s academic careers and research output, but it is a small contribution.

Inheritance- WWYD.

DH’s grandmother recently died (at 94; she lived a wonderful last few years and died peacefully). She was a poor rural farmer in the sticks of the Midwest. She was so focused on saving money that she died with several hundred thousand dollars in the bank, at 94.* per the will it is skipping a generation and all going to DH. Our family is solidly upper middle/upper class income wise but it’s still a big amount of money- this is about 5 years worth of bonus money for us, or 1.5 years of salary after taxes. We already fund our retirement accounts and have been saving for college for our 3 young kids.

His grandmother valued education and family above anything else.

Would you:
1) stick the vast majority in 529s [or an earmarked savings account to allow more flexibility] for the (3) kids. Dumping it into a 529 now, combined with what is already in there, would mean our kids will have college and possibly more paid for without any additional savings on our part.

1b) It could also be used if one or more of our kids would be good candidates for private high school, which is not currently needed or the plan but there are some excellent private schools in our area that are even better than our great public system. Kids are all still in elem.

2) use it to fund a family vacation home. The money wouldn’t cover the whole thing or maintenance but it would accelerate our ability to do this. We’d use it for winter and summer vacations.

3) add it to the general savings pot and take more/nicer vacations as a family

We are already planning to earmark a portion to donate to two causes she would support anonymously (she would be mortified if anyone knew she had this much money), including caring for the gravesite in rural nowhere in which she and her family are buried (she used to tend it and there is no longer anyone to do this).

*my own grandmothers, with significantly more means, did not die broke but they were absolutely spending down the last 100k of savings into their 90s when they died. It is absolutely shocking that she had this much at her age. To everyone but DH’s mom, who has been managing it.

any additional recs for kids k95? every place i’ve checked is sold out.

Childcare question — we are thinking about an au pair for this fall and I want to know if the costs listed on the websites are actually true. They lost a program fee and a stipend and education costs. Anything else that is more of a hidden cost that we should think about?

Has anyone had their young kids (under 5) antibody tested for Covid? My husband had an asymptomatic breakthrough case recently. We isolated him as soon as he got tested positive but had spent the entire day prior and that morning together as a family. The kids never showed symptoms, but I was only able to get them professionally tested once during their 10 day quarantine (on day 5). Their test was negative but I still wonder if they had it and we somehow missed it? I tested myself daily with at-home rapids for 10 days and was consistently negative, but I’m also vaccinated and boosted.

I’d love to know if they have antibodies for peace of mind, especially with hopefully sending my oldest back to preschool soon. Is it worth asking our ped about, or a waste of time?

Day 7 of our Covid quarantine, and our toddler decides to sing songs in his room for an hour instead of napping. We both had 1:30 calls so we just let him hang out for a while. Seems fine for now since he’s not upset, but it’s gonna be a messy evening if he doesn’t nap at all.