u/EzraWolvenheart

EDIT: thank you all! Understood :)

Hi all!

Last week the ER team saved my baby’s life, and I’d love to send them a thank-you note and something for the team.

What’s the best way to make sure the note reaches the people who cared for us? And for those who work in the ER, what’s something you’d genuinely appreciate receiving that would be useful or enjoyable during a shift?

Thank you!

Hi everyone,

I’ve been using YNAB for about a month now, but I’m having some trouble understanding how it’s supposed to work.

Overall, my first month went pretty well. I did run into a small issue with overassigning, but I managed to figure it out and resolve it.

Now I’m trying to start budgeting for August, and for some reason, every time I assign money to any category, YNAB immediately tells me that I’ve overassigned that exact amount — even though the Assigned column is completely zero before I make any changes.

For example, if I assign $150 to any category, I immediately get a warning saying I’ve overassigned by $150. That doesn’t make much sense to me since nothing was assigned beforehand.

On top of that, in the Available column, most categories show $0, which is what I’d expect because I haven’t assigned any money or recorded any August spending yet. However, a few seemingly random categories still have amounts available that appear to have carried over from last month, although I’m not sure why. I have tried resetting my accounts/credit cards but nothing changed.

So I’m pretty confused about how to get everything set up correctly for August and how to stop these overassigned warnings from appearing. I’m definitely not assigning more money than I actually have available, but for some reason YNAB seems to think I am, or maybe I’m misunderstanding a core concept of how the platform works.

If anyone has any idea what might be causing this or how to fix it, I’d really appreciate your help.

Thanks!

Hi everyone! I was hoping to get some advice on a couple of things regarding my 5 month old.

He can currently stay awake for about two hours at a time and usually gets around 3–4 hours of daytime sleep. In general, we try to follow his sleep cues. He typically goes to bed around 8 to 9pm, and wakes up to start the day at 7:30am.

The first issue is that he always wakes up once sometime between 2 and 4 a.m. We usually give him a bottle and rock him back to sleep, and the whole process is usually somewhat quick - 40 minutes overall. After the bottle, he’s back asleep within about 10 minutes. I’m not sure he’s necessarily waking because he’s hungry, since when he was 2-3 months old he was able to sleep for 10 hours straight. God I miss those days lol

For example, yesterday he slept less than usual during the day and then slept straight from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m., but I don’t know whether that was because he was more tired. Is there anything we can do to help prevent that nighttime wake-up? Btw he stopped sleeping through the night when we had to take a flight with him at about 3.5 months, and has stayed like this since then.

The second thing is that we’d like him to learn how to fall asleep independently. Right now, we always rock him to sleep. He has generally always been a very chill baby and when he’s alone in his crib, he usually makes noises and “talks” to himself, kicks around, or plays with his pacifier. We’ve tried leaving him alone for 10-15 minutes without intervening, but he shows absolutely no signs of falling asleep lol

What method would you recommend? We know we don’t want to do CIO (even though he doesn’t really cry lol) or anything similar. If we try something, we’d prefer it to be a gentle method.

Thanks for any advice!

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to understand how a 401(k) works and whether I should contribute. My current employer offers a 50% match capped at 6% of my annual salary.

One important piece of context is that I'm not a U.S. citizen, and I only expect to live and work in the U.S. for about 2-3 years. After that, I'll most likely leave the country.

Given that situation, what options would I have if I contribute to a 401(k)? Is there a way to access or make use of that money after I leave the U.S.? If there are early withdrawal penalties or taxes, how can I minimize them?

Thanks!

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for a new office chair, up until recently, I was using a Steelcase Jersey that I bought second-hand, but I had to sell it when I moved. It seems to be a discontinued model.

I’ll be using the new chair for around 8 hours a day on some days (WFH) and about 2–3 hours a day on others (gaming and general use). For reference, my previous chair never gave me any issues.

I don’t have any lower back pain or other ergonomic concerns worth mentioning. I do like to sit cross-legged most of the time though, if that helps lol

I’ve recently tried both the Steelcase Think and Gesture, and neither really stood out to me. I’m planning to buy used, and my budget is around $600.

Thanks!

Hi all,

My wife and I have decided it's time to become a bit more disciplined with our finances now, and we'd like to have a more structured budget and also get a better understanding of our current spending trends.

It's important for us that the app minimizes manual work as much as possible, I'm fine with categorizing or recategorizing transactions and doing some occasional cleanup, but I want something that can essentially pull in and consolidate transactions automatically from my bank accounts and credit cards.

After doing some research, I've found a few apps that seem like they could work for us:

• YNAB
• Monarch
• Era App

From the 3, Era is the one I'm most curious about but I don't know much about it. From what I understand, you connect it to your bank accounts and cards, then connect it to Claude or ChatGPT, and you can do tracking, analysis, and even transactions through those LLMs. However, I honestly haven't been able to find much information online about real-world experiences with it.

Which one would you recommend? What has your experience been with each of them? Pros and cons?

Thanks!

Edit: just in case, I swear this is no advertising for any app lol

I have a 3.5-month-old baby, and for about the last month to month and a half, it has become almost impossible to put him down in his crib for naps during the day. No matter how careful we are with the transfer, he either wakes up immediately or within a few minutes. If he’s being held he can take long naps without any problem, often an hour or more.

Does anyone have any advice? Is there anything we can do, or is this just a phase that we need to wait out? It’s very limiting for both my wife and me during the day, as we don’t want him to be overtired and end up holding him all the time.

Fortunately, he sleeps very well in his crib at night and does long stretches of sleep, but during the day it seems nearly impossible.

Hi all!

My boy is 3 months (today!) has always been quite regular with his feeds, usually around 4oz every 3 hours except overnight (about 28 oz total per 24h).

But for some reason, about a week ago he woke up at 7am (around his second feedbof the day after the overnight one) and wouldn’t take more than 2 oz. Since then, his intake per feed has been really variable: sometimes 2 oz, other times 3 oz, sometimes 4 or 4.5 oz… Today he woke up after sleeping about 8 hours straight (record!) and suddenly drank 6 oz in one go (also a record lol).

His total intake over 24h has stayed more or less the same because if he eats very little, we offer more at 2hrs or so, but now he seems to be deciding more on his own when and how much he wants to eat.

Has anyone had a similar experience? Thanks!

EDIT:
Okay guys you have been very convincing lol Thank you all for your comments and advice!

Hi dads,

My wife and I have a 3-month-old, and we’re thinking about replacing some of our furniture.

One thing we keep going back and forth on is whether getting a light-colored couch or rug is a bad idea with little kids.

I remember reading some comments here a while ago saying it’s basically impossible to keep them clean once you have children lol Is it really that bad? What do you guys recommend?

We like lighter-colored furniture in general, but we also don’t want everything looking destroyed after one or two years.

Any thoughts or experiences? Thanks!

Hi all!

My baby was diagnosed with a tongue tie at 10 weeks old (I really wish it had been caught earlier), and we decided to move forward with the frenectomy. Things initially improved a lot, but the last few days feel like we’ve taken a step backward, and I’d love to hear if anyone has had a similar experience.

Quick timeline:

• Before procedure: poor latch, lots of clicking, inefficient feeds.
• Days 1–4: irritable/sore but feeding relatively normally. Tylenol helped. Fewer clicks overall.
• Days 5–6: lower appetite and seemed to tire more easily.
• Days 7–10: amazing improvement - much fewer clicks and very fast feeds (10-15 min), even a bit too much. My wife and I were over the moon lol
• Days 11–14 (except day 12): much harder again. He often rejects the bottle after ~40-50% of his usual intake. He tries to suck, then suddenly pulls back aggressively as if uncomfortable. Sometimes he eventually finishes, but only with long breaks and feeds can stretch to an hour. Oddly, day 12 was excellent, one of the best ones.

We are mostly bottle feeding with a Pigeon M flow nipple. We’re continuing stretches and the healing itself seems to be going well.

One major positive change has been tummy time, though. Before the procedure he would cry almost immediately, but now he tolerates it much better and, for the first time, can do tummy time without crying and more than double the time. It's been amazing.

Has anyone experienced this kind of up-and-down recovery after a frenectomy? Any thoughts?

Thank you!

Hi all,

I had my biometrics done on March 13 and I’ve been waiting for approval since then. A few friends got their approvals around 42 days post-biometrics (no PP), but it’s been one week more for me and still no answer.

I wanted to check if anyone did their biometrics around those dates and already received approval. My case still shows as “Case is still being processed by USCIS”

Thanks!