Ah, Bigato, I see. Succinctly put.
And yes, I did take it rather personally when Spartan busted on my skill sets, as applied to both skill sets then and skill sets now.
I do like your flow chart, and for the most part I agree with it.
I will hold, however, that there is a limit to the cargo capacity of any amount of money vs. the skill set that is used to leverage it. You can leverage a small amount of money to return greater returns, but only to a point.
From where I sit, and I mean geographically, in my local economy, with my experience in my local economy, the numbers that are forwarded here won't make it. I am not referring to my perspective as that of a rampant consumer who needs to be shown the error of her ways, or who needs to be shown the light. I am speaking from the perspective of how far one might stretch a $200/month, or a $1000/year "kid budget."
I am thinking of the cargo carrying capacity of any given amount of cash vs. the leverage one can apply via skill sets with the visual of a literal fulcrum. One can think of cash vs. skill sets in this way, and move the fulcrum across the length of the load bearing member to roughly correspond to skill sets. Greater skill sets equals more leverage- to a point. Past a certain point, the fulcrum stops working. Rough analogy but it works, sort of.
There is a threshold below which a person of even high intelligence and boundless energy cannot leverage his way out of needing the money- otherwise many of us would live in a cashless world.
This threshold amount can vary widely with regional economies, etc. Economies are local and economies are relative.
I find myself rather resistant to attempts to find the very lowest denominator at which the system will continue to function as applied to infants and children. Apply it to yourself as a fully enfranchised adult with means and a vote. Exact your savings there. If the margins become too tight, you have no one but yourself to convince, and you've deprived (for lack of a better word, sorry, it's more emotionally loaded than I intend it) no one but yourself in the process of finding the threshold. Spare a bit more margin in your budget for the kid. Don't assume that because the kid is half your size, he requires half of the resources you consume. That is an inviting ratio but in my opinion, it's flawed. Correlating size or even age to need and consumption is tempting but erroneous.
Don't assume that a child doesn't need "it," whatever "it" is, if he isn't asking for it or actively demanding it. You are your child's advocate. If all of your energies and focus and loyalty are tied up in your monthly budget, it's going to be difficult to abandon that loyalty and advocate for your child. Your child needs your advocacy, however, in addition to and often in spite of your loyalty to a budget. And your child will often not advocate for himself in this area, even if it is something he very much needs.
I've not known very many 11 year olds who advocate for their own math tutoring.
And it is a very good point: the amount of cargo carrying capacity for any budget amount is related to how much infrastructure is in place prior to the budget amount being allocated. Certainly $200/month per child, $1000/year per child goes much further if it does not have to accommodate housing, etc.
We've already taken dental, medical, vision care off of the table.
My concern is that people with less infrastructure in place will honestly think that $200/month per child is a figure that will cover all needs- and in many localities, and in many situations, it won't. Maybe I'm being far too literal here- but it seems to me that someone was batting around the $200/month number literally and asking if it would be enough.
I suppose it's a little late to add the caveat of "It depends."
Now I'm curious about why some wooden structures stand for centuries and some do not. In parts of my world there are many abandoned, collapsing barns and houses. Countless. They are part of the rustic beauty (but I do often find myself wondering why no one ever clears them out, and how much it would cost to haul them away, and what liabilities may be associated with leaving them stand in decay.) I have always assumed that at least part of the rot and collapse has to do with wood boring insects.
Termites are so endemic here that we build either with treated wood and/or we treat the entire structure prophylactically. Unless you are going to treat your swing set for termites you'd probably best use treated lumber.
I suspect that many of the "historical" buildings we see are reconstructed in significant ways, and/or they have been treated for termites.
I must investigate this because otherwise I will never have it settled in my mind!
) but we're more than comfortable.
