mumra

No worries. I don't post here much but had a few threads on the old board when life events made it easier to talk to strangers. I always appreciated the unique takes and sense of humor. This topic seemed offbeat enough that it may get some outside the box ideas. I'm not expecting a clean resolution for my family as their goal is repair/replacement. I think the most likely outcome will be a private conversation where a township representative acknowledges the damage but is unable to help with repairs. This is mostly based on one of the board members having known my family for 50+ years and being fairly open in the past. I think the more pressing issue would be to ensure the bench is stable as one of the companies thought the bench was shifted based on before and after photos. My uncle, who is a mason, thought the bench was unstable as well. The bench was disassembled for my grandfather's internment in December 2022 to move in necessary equipment so this would not have been due to any collision.

Thanks all for the replies so far, they have been interesting to read. Random responses below for a couple of posts. Also, will provide the context that older family members are the primary contacts with the township. I recently visited as I live out of state and was asked to help prepare some information such as emailing photos or crafting some speaking points for the township meeting. Kennythetiger- I understand where you are coming from and my advice to family members is that there was a high probability that this would not be resolved to their satisfaction. My experience includes creating budgets for small businesses/projects and I'm guessing they haven't allowed much for grave site repairs in the budget or want to spend the insurance deductible/increased premiums with a claim. However, a few family members don't want to let this go and were upset when they spoke to a board member and asked the general question: How would you feel if your family site was damaged? and apparently the answer was along the lines of "well, that would be different". I wasn't in those discussions so just hearing everything second hand. This is/was a farming community where part of growing up was admitting mistakes and taking responsibility that often ended up with the offender helping out on a neighboring farm as a non-monetary form of payment. I realize the real world does not work in this manner. CHIEF- There is one local monument engraver that has been contacted and they could polish it but would need to remove from the cemetery. I'll pass along the suggestion to maybe check some of the surrounding communities. Texzilla58- I'm not sure if there are any recurring maintenance/ care fees but will ask the next time I speak with my parents. I'm also unsure if the family has documents from my grandmother's internment in the late 90's and I was in high school at the time. My grandfather passed away in late 2022 and interred in the same site so someone, probably my uncle, should have that paperwork. The death dates for my grandfather were added to the headstone in spring/summer 2023. atomheartbevo- I will pass along your suggestion. I'm not sure if the township has a genealogy society but I know the county does. Bevo/CooterBrown- The grave site will probably be visited a bit more than usual as this is the first full holiday season without my grandfather. He passed in early December 2022 and was in hospice by Thanksgiving 2022. There is still quite a bit of family within a 10 minute drive of the cemetery with 2 of my grandmother's sisters, 4 children of my grandparents and many grand and great-grand children. I'll be sure to let them know that they should ignore my grandmother's side of the site and that the undefined clock is ticking on their ability to visit my grandfather's site.

Will try to keep this short, mostly interested in opinions as I would think there are probably others who have dealt with local governments on the board. Background: -Family members paid for a granite bench to be installed at a grave site to match the headstone. This was installed in 2001 and there were no issues until 2022. The cost of the bench, as best our family remembers, was $3-5k in 2001. Issue: -Damage was noticed in fall 2022 that scraped away material on one side of the bench. This was most likely caused by a collision with lawn maintenance equipment. The grave site is in the middle of a section of headstones so it is unlikely this was caused by a visiting vehicle and there was no damage to surrounding grave sites. -Family members have spoken to the township board on several occasions without resolution. The township officials point to an undated document stating they are not responsible for lost or damaged items. When asked when this document was created or if anyone from the family had signed anything acknowledging rules there has been no response. - Outside of a formal meeting, my family has been told by township officials that they can't help repair or replace the bench as they are worried about the precedence that would set for other community members who would want reimbursement for damaged property. They also suggested we look to see if a homeowner's policy could be applied. Other factors: -Two companies gave opinions on a repair process. One suggested it would be as cost-efficient to replace the bench as they would have to have the bench shipped to a separate facility for sanding and polishing. A different company said they might be able to repair in a local facility which would be cheaper than replacement. The second company also noted that the bench seat appears to be shifted and should be repositioned to be sure it is stable. -This is a small local government for a township of around 5,000 people. This isn't in Texas, if that matters. -The issue does not appear to be limited to only my family. A representative from a non-profit that cares for military veteran's grave sites had made similar complaints to the township and had no resolution. Any opinions on what you would do in this situation?

I'm starting this as I don't want to invade Macanudo's job hunting thread and there were a few recent posts on the subject as I was reading through that thread. I would be interested in hearing personal experiences of a mid-career change, answers to my questions or any general advice. While I obviously don't post much here, I hung around on the old site enough to know sometimes there are nuggets of wisdom hidden between the dick jokes. No problem if anyone wants to tag on to the thread with a story or questions, feel free. Brief details of my situation; fairly vague at the moment. -A majority or all of the company I currently work for is likely to be out of a job soon due to funding issues. Some of us were expecting this to happen last week and everyone expects the news to happen soon. I'm in an industry that is currently experiencing widespread layoffs. -My wife (no pics) prefers we stay in our current location and I agree with her based on several factors. Our current house is paid off and my wife's employer appears to be stable. We are in our early 40s. Our special needs child has settled into his school and started making friends after a rough few years. -I'm considering using some of my anticipated time after the layoff to complete an online professional certification program. Hopefully this would make my experience translatable to other fields and open myself up to a wider variety of positions as I assume my current industry will have job candidate saturation for a while. The certificates I'm considering are for responsibilities that I had to learn at my current job but had no formal training or certification. Questions- Mostly due to the fact that I haven't conducted a job search for the better part of a decade 1. What are the main sites used for job searches? My previous search was mostly LinkedIn with some Indeed. 2. Has anyone personally changed careers with a professional certification rather than a new degree? I have a few degrees already and would rather add some letters behind my name with a certificate if needed. 3. What resources are most popular for resume/cv review? I had a service give me some pointers ~5 years ago when I considered a career change. I'm assuming that advice is now out of date. Thanks in advance for the responses.

Thanks all for the replies. I don't expect my amount of vacation to change drastically. In the pandemic era it has mostly been a few long weekends, two weeks during the year, two weeks for Christmas/New Year holidays with a few random days for sick child or other commitments. Prior to the pandemic I would have more days mostly due to staying an extra day or two if work travel sent me somewhere fun. My skepticism is that most of the new hires may see this as a great benefit where I think it is mostly an accounting positive to the company. I can see this being a problem for end of year projects as usually everyone who has available vacation leaves mid-December. The office (and now remote office) is pretty sparse for two weeks and populated with new hires who did not have accrued time yet. I have never been denied vacation at this company. However, there are a few weeks out of the year where most of the employees on certain projects know they better have a good reason for vacation. I know of a few people that left under the old policy and used the vacation payout as a reason to delay starting the new position a week or moving expenses if needed. A few specific replies: troph- Culture is already "work as you need and be available for meetings during business hours". For me this usually means working a few hours at home during the week and leaving a little early on days where there are no late afternoon meetings. My manager doesn't care if I leave early and I don't care if my direct reports leave early. I live in PA so will have to look up the laws when I see the offer. I'll probably end up taking the buyout but would like to know the options. Nice Guy Eddie- There is some language around not being able to schedule recurring vacation (no taking every Monday off, etc) and limiting the amount of consecutive vacation to a few weeks at a time. I'm not interested in pushing the envelope and I don't think we will have that many people trying to game the system; I realize I could be wrong. slorch- I have been in a position previously where we either got a buyout or ~1 year to use the vacation balance. I had the same response as you; there was no way I could use all the time so I took that buyout. Sorry you did not have the option as that doesn't seem fair. Muny_Tex- I live in one of the bigger metro areas in PA so housing is cheaper than Austin. I'm not sure how you want to define medium or high cost of living but we are probably somewhere in the middle portion of the scale. I don't think we had any silver bullets in terms of paying off our house. We moved from Texas to PA and bought a cheap starter house (a little less than 100k) and paid it off quickly. A few years later we decided we wanted to stick around PA a bit longer so we sold our starter house. Being that we had no note on the house we used that money for down payment and to start paying off the new house. Our current house cost 4-4.5x our starter house cost and has probably appreciated from that point. We plan to be in this house until we either move back to Texas or have a job opportunity we can't turn down in a different location. If we move to Texas we have land to build a house if needed but likely would not be near a desired job if one is still required. We had a 15 year note on the current house and paid it off in ~4 years. We paid extra almost every month as long as we contributed to retirement accounts and the emergency fund remained intact. Any work bonus had half go to the note with 50%- house note, 25%- brokerage account, 10%- spouse tax, 5%- child tax, 10%- fun money for me. We likely would have taken longer to pay off the house if the pandemic had not occurred. We did not travel much in 2020 and other than one long trip we stuck to fairly local trips in 2021. I'm looking forward to more travel this year.

My employer is transitioning from accrued vacation days to unlimited vacation. Setting aside any skepticism, I have not been in this situation at previous jobs. The grapevine says that everyone will be offered a buyout for current accumulated vacation days. My current balance is around 20 days. I'm still waiting on the offer but my understanding is the deal will be 50%-70% (depending on the source) of value offered in a lump sum. I'm not sure what options exist if an employee doesn't take the buyout. Anyone been through this before and have advice on whether it is better to take a lump sum or wait and get paid later on? I guess I need to look up the laws on whether employers are required to pay out PTO if I don't take the buyout. High level financial picture: -mid-career (late 30's); annual salary north of $100k, small company for the industry -house is paid off, no debt, two income family, will probably move at some point out of state but not in the immediate future -deductions set up to max out HSA contribution and 401(k). IRA has been contributed to maximum amount for the year. -Always have home projects if we want to spend the money, at some point will need a new car, etc.