MorningStar

I don't mind it so much when people go off on tangents, but this lady is all about pot stirring. It seems like she doesn't even come to class unless the topic is something she can turn into "gender equality".

What a great article!

I would never bring up the subject in RS like she did. She opened that can of worms knowing it was going to irritate the majority of the women in the room. We come to church to be uplifted - not listen to that.

We have a member in our ward who makes Gospel Doctrine and Relief Society "interesting". What I mean is that she makes everyone uncomfortable with her comments that are basically just pushing her agenda and derailing the lesson. For example: The other day in RS she blurts out that she thinks it was a mistake for the church to excommunicate Kate Kelly. I spent the whole time biting my tongue, but wanted to say, "And a lot of us think she's a wolf in sheep's clothing and that it was necessary to protect others she might lead astray!" I didn't want to be contentious though, so I just kept my mouth shut . I felt bad for the teacher though. It's hard to know what to say. What do you do when a person repeatedly takes the lesson in this sort of direction? If I were teaching, I don't know if I could have masked my irritation.

There are people who would join the church if: They could drink Smoke Fornicate Not be expected to pay tithing Etc. We're not the church of popular opinion.

Me too! It is absolutely disgusting!

I have a friend who always leases because she doesn't want to worry about a car being in the shop.

I think they do it because they think if they make the church look like crap, it will put pressure on our leaders to give them what they want, which is really messed up.

We looked at one of those many years ago, paying to go to a homebuyer class at a community college. There was down payment assistance, but we had to come up with a certain amount on our own first. I haven't seen that option around in a while. There are also state programs, but lately their interest rate hasn't been as good as the regular market rate. Weird! We have been to 4 or 5 homebuyer classes throughout the years "just in case" we're able to buy a house. The state certificates last for 2 years. I didn't like the last one we went to because the lender who teaches the class was promoting a tax credit and said, "It's free money. I'm going to be mad if you guys don't take advantage of it." Well, you have to pay for it and it's only an advantage if you're in a certain tax bracket. Anyway, it rubbed me the wrong way.

I'm surprised it took this long. It's one thing when a person believes women will have the priesthood someday but another when they try to use the media to put pressure on the church to make a decision that is the Lord's decision. I think the Church was quite kind to Kelly and she was warned. There are a lot of people fragile in their faith and don't appreciate those who make it even worse with their influence.

A rescue mission would have been a much better option. If a kidnapper has a hostage, police don't offer to let his 5 sleaziest friends out of jail who are likely to rape and murder again if he'll let the hostage go. It seems like that's what the administration has basically done. These aren't POW's to me. They're terrorists who will kill innocent people again.

P.S. I wouldn't say I'm doing this blindly. We've been in this apartment for 12 years and repeatedly made the decision not to buy. Then the housing crisis happened, so we were glad we didn't.

That's the hardest thing. I have prayed and prayed about our living situation and I have never gotten an answer except years ago when told to stay here. That answer was hard because I was so terrified of getting kicked out. We would get a new apartment manager and I would have to have the awkward conversation again and tell them we were over our limit. We have lucked out having managers who were OK with it, but they would never let someone new move in who had three or more kids. Every time there is any kind of letter on our door, I always fear they are telling us to leave. Now we don't have that option of staying because they will be remodeling. We have to move. I don't know where. I get answers about all sorts of other things, but not this. Whenever I think about moving away from this town, especially from my students, I just can't stop crying. This little girl told me, "There's this house that's almost finished around the corner from us that looks really nice." Yes, I'm sure it's at least $700,000. Even a tiny 3 bedroom 1 bath in this town is $400,000 or more. Bizarrely, when we were looking for a two bedroom apartment years ago, this was the cheapest deal around. We were paying $835 when we first moved in. Now that they have added w/s/g, raised the rent, and added a month to month fee (we felt we couldn't sign a 12 month lease), we're paying a little over $1500. We still manage to put $500 in savings a lot of months (and then there are car issues where we have to take some money out), which is why I think we could manage a $1650 payment. If I had to watch a child during the day too, I could. Or maybe start a little music preschool. That's the kind of stuff I can't do in my apartment.

Thank you for the advice. We are approved for a VA loan so we wouldn't have to pay PMI or a down payment, but it's a good point about how much you should have in savings anyway. Ugh. It has taken us many years to save what we have now. We would need $60,000 to have 20% around here and by the time we would get anywhere near that number, the 20% would be even more. This house we looked at has gone up $50,000 in two years. If we could stick it out with payments for that long or maybe three, that could give us the money to do a big move, but it would be a gamble. I'm not sure how things have changed with the healthcare laws now, but if my husband changed jobs, he typically has to wait 3-6 months before he has insurance. We really can't go without insurance right now. He also doesn't have the sort of job where people fly you out for interviews. He is in maintenance and even with the job he has, it was a month wait after filling out the application, two weeks until his first interview, and another two weeks until his next interview. 153 people applied for the job. Our kids qualify for Medicaid, but we don't. There's also affordable housing to buy once in a while through a program, but nothing comes up that has enough rooms due to the rules again about how many people per bedroom. I just need to become rich and famous real quick. Jenna, years ago I looked into low income housing and there was a two year waiting list. They also have rules about how large your place has to be and it still ended up being more expensive than where we are now because we would have to have a 4 bedroom and because we are not severely low income. We have three boys and a girl, so they would require our daughter to have her own room, two boys could share a room, one boy would have his own room, and then we would have our room. And we would still need a space to store my husband's construction stuff. We just can't have big table saws and stuff in an apartment. We've been told many times by friends and relatives to just bite the bullet and buy. "Take a leap of faith."

A friend of mine was just told by her landlord that they aren't renewing her lease now that they know they have three kids in their two bedroom. I understand - they think the place will get trashed, but it's so hard to keep things affordable!

The way things are here, people won't rent to you if you have more than two people per bedroom. Our manager has been very kind to let us continue to stay here. We were due with our second when we moved in. Meanwhile a family with two kids got kicked out because their toddler made too much noise. We're trying to figure out how to increase income since decreasing costs seems impossible at the moment.

That's true. But the house payment we would be looking at is about $1650 and 3 bedroom apartment over $1900, leaving us still needing a storage unit for my husband's construction stuff. He is extremely handy, so that helps. If we end up renting for that much, we will not be saving money anymore, making it even harder to ever buy a place in the future. We have saved over $10,000 so we would be able to supplement my lost income.

Thank you. The way things are now, a larger apartment would cost more than a house payment. Either way, we can't really afford it. We will probably move 45 minutes away from here where it is cheaper, but inventory has been so low, it's not cheap enough. We can't save fast enough to keep up with inflation, so we feel like the longer we wait, the less likely we will be able to buy a place next year.

We definitely have to move this summer. We have been in a two bedroom apartment for 12 years and we have four kids. We have stayed where we are so we could save money, get out of debt, stay out of debt, etc. and we've been trying to save enough to supplement my income when we move away from my piano students. We have been shopping for houses and it's torture. The stuff that is in our price range has something wrong with it to the point that we would have to put a lot of money in it and it would no longer be affordable. The houses that are what are family needs will make payments very painful and it's absolutely terrifying to me. I don't know how long it will take to get established and have the amount of students I need. Even if I get back to where I was, the payments will still be a stretch, but with the way things are, they will only be more expensive next year. Right now rent has gotten insanely expensive here too. Even a three bedroom apartment in our town is over $1900. Of course, to rent a house is even more. We want to live within our means, but it seems like we have to make a move that will be extremely difficult for us and cause a lot of anxiety as to whether we can make the payments. Our apartment manager said they are going to be remodeling our place, so either way we will have to be out the end of the summer or possibly early fall. It's becoming harder and harder to live within our means. We'll have a higher payment, higher utilities, and then we're sure our health premium will go up again like it does every year. Any good advice?

I don't look at government to solve my problems. They make problems.

One of the terrorists that was released - there is a picture going around where he is posing with five heads that he cut off himself. Just awful. These weren't just any prisoners. They are the worst! It seems pretty evident that Bergdahl did desert his post based on the fact that he mailed his things home a week before and the email conversation where he expressed his disgust with America and his dad told him to follow his conscience. I think he is possibly mental ill or extremely naive, thinking he could approach the Taliban as their buddy. It's amazing they didn't behead him a long time ago based on what has happened to so many other people, but then he turned out to be very useful to them. Still, that's not the big issue to me. The big issue is that we negotiated with terrorists, which shouldn't happen.

To me it sounds like the problem is on her end and rather than face it, she's giving a bunch of excuses that involve blaming you. You could drive yourself crazy trying to do everything to appease her, but she'll most likely come up with another reason. So sorry you're dealing with this. When a man complains his wife is overweight, people jump down his throat.

This situation has felt like a slap in the face to me. Maybe it's because my brother was serving in Afghanistan less than a year ago? I think about what was sacrificed to put these Taliban commanders away in the first place. How many were injured? How many died? I worried for a year and was so blessed that my brother was able to come home. I'm sure there were families whose worst fears were realized. Not only are these men extremely likely to return to their terrorist activities against us, this administration has taught them that abducting U.S. soldiers is a great idea. If we're willing to trade 5 of theirs for one deserter, how many would we trade for a loyal soldier? How many innocent Americans will suffer when they succesfully plan another attack? I'm not heartless. I wouldn't want Bergdahl to continue to suffer even though it was his own fault for leaving his post, but negotiating with terrorists is the wrong way. http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/bowe-bergdahl-released/obama-bergdahl-somebodys-child-no-apologies-swap-n123501

Now that my relatives are getting older, I am so grateful my grandma had 8 children. Three of them passed away and two of them don't live close to her at all. Recently we moved her into an assisted living home and had to do a ton of work to downsize, plus deal with her crankiness. It was great that her three kids in the area could take turns dealing with her because she was being a huge pain! Then there is my aunt and uncle who never had any kids. They are struggling with health issues and there's no one who can take care of them on a regular basis. They aren't to the point where they need to be in homes, but things are definitely getting harder for them.

Are groups gone now?