About sixteen years ago, I met him for the first time. My trainwreck sibling brought home this adorable puppy he had no business adopting because he had not one thing in his life that wasn’t a mess. I was furious at my sibling – he didn’t even take care of himself, how could he drag
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October 7, 2008
I was away all weekend, all exhausting weekend, and came back late Sunday night. It was fun, ish, but physically draining and I was looking forward to clearing up my mail, unpacking, and getting right to bed. Oh yes, and dinner, having something, anything, to eat.
Somewhere in there, my mom decided it would be a good idea to corner me with her idea of what “our problem really is.” Hm?
“The house. This house has brought us nothing but bad luck. We should, as soon as I get a little money together, move to another house that is luckier.”
*frazzle*
1. When you get money together? You can’t work! No one in the family can begin to cover the current household expenses without me, what makes you think you can come up with the money to move without a better plan than just moving? Dad still hasn’t gotten his act together, and only through constant, consistent, reinforcement from me does my brother continue to walk the line.
2. Do you remember how much it costs to move?
3. Are you kidding me?
4. The house is not possessed. It can’t bring us bad luck, and it didn’t have anything to do with the choices we’ve made!
I didn’t say any of that, except for number 4; I normally don’t outwardly react to her ramblings as she’s been very ill, and more than a little mentally unbalanced. I definitely don’t lash out when she’s trying my patience with her latest rants of negativity and blaming everything and everyone for the current situation. She’s ill, in many ways, and needs understanding and care.
But … in just as many ways, she’s caused and created so much home-based stress, stubbornly squandering her energies, time and money on what she thinks is right to reinforce her independence. I know she’s trying to do it because she imagines her decisions will bear fruit, the harvest of which will relieve me of the burden of supporting them. But, for example, insisting on driving herself to work when her physical and mental capacities were in doubt was not helpful, it was downright scary! It took six flat tires, one severely damaged wheel and a minor accident – all in my car – before she would consent to considering restricting her activities outside the house. What if she got into a major accident? What if she was hurt, or killed? What if she hurt or killed someone else?
Anyhow. Many of the choices she made were made with good intent, and there’s nothing we can do to change them now. The thing that does get to me, though, is her insistence on trying to “make things better” while refusing to consider her health. I don’t understand how she still doesn’t understand that no amount of money in the world can buy her health back, as she continues to fight us and our trying to take care of her. So many problems stem from her refusal to take care of herself, back when she was mentally capable, despite my begging her to stop making her health worse by stressing, worrying and fretting, and so many continue because of that stubbornness. I would give it all up if she could be healthy again, but she continually sabotages any progress.
So, on top of the many challenges I’m navigating, she wants me to plan to find a new house, based on the “unluckiness” of this one. Is there a luck-o-meter out there? Seriously, without that, we may be house hopping for the rest of my natural life. Our household is in these difficulties because of the decisions we’ve made, decisions that we’ve all made, and the house we live in has so very little to do with it.
I won’t make another rash mistake by acceding to her wishes because I think it’ll make her happy; someone has to keep the big picture in mind. It’s just that some days, I feel like their admonishment from my childhood: “Just wait until you have kids of your own” has come true. What a nightmare.
Takeaway: Please take care of your health.
October 6, 2008
How very odd. I fetched lunch for the office today, and sent the coworkers an email requesting that they write me a check to pay me back because I knew they didn’t have the cash on hand, and I couldn’t spend the checks. (I have self control, but cash is a special problem.)
Both of them had their checkbooks with them! Who still carries their checkbook? That was a big surprise. And now I have two checks sitting in my wallet to be deposited, and I won’t spend it. Yay!
| Retirement Savings |
Rollover IRA: $1,452
Roth IRA: $3,770
401(a): $4,588.70
403(b): $14,994
Total: $23,352 (26,086)
|
| Emergency Savings |
Catastrophe: $ 19,413 (18,547)
Problem Cushion: $0
|
| Short Term Goals |
Car Maintenance: $788
Car Insurance: $604
Travel/Con: $286
Taxes: $3,491
Moving: $15
Total: $ 5,184 (5,452)
|
| Long Term Goals |
House Down Payment: $100
|
| Investment Loans |
Prosper-ish: $12,630
Personal Loan: $5,000
Savings Bond: $357 (current accrued value)
Total: $17,997
|
| Total Assets |
Non-Liquid: $23,352
Semi-Liquid: $17,997
Liquid: $19,413
Expense Acct: $6,716
Goals Savings: $5,284
Total: $ 72,762 (69,775)
|
| Debt and Liabilities |
Truck: $3,521
AX: 142
Citi: $321
Chase: $572
Rent: $1,360
Total: $5,916
|
| Net Worth |
$66,846 (63,680)
|
Notes:
~ This is nearly a week late, but the numbers should be accurate through October 4th.
~ I expected my retirement funds to have hemorrhaged. It’ll be ok.
~ The supplementary income was like a shot in the arm, or a bowl of chicken soup. I’ll be good for another three months, and then some. I’ll still need a job, though. 🙂
~ The area that I’m truly happy about is the money I’m saving, aka money I’m keeping. It’s not scheduled to be spent, it’s just there.
~ I’m spending a lot of time mulling over how to handle the upcoming supplementary income. I want to make sure that I’m still saving a good percentage of my income, and not getting used to an artificially high cash flow.
~ That truck loan doesn’t have much farther to go. I’m resigned to paying it off and keeping it for a while. It’ll have some crazy-low mileage by the time I do anything with it, that’s for sure. Since the selling of the truck never really went anywhere, I’ve taken it off the list of things to stress about.
~ It’s high time to officially create a Charity/Donations fund. I’ve always given informally and out of my expenses fund, supporting my family, my extended family and a select few charities, but I would like to earmark some money solely for that purpose in 2009. I think this means I’ll be able to give more and more regularly.
October 3, 2008
Surprise! Heehee. Happy Friday!
The long-awaited quarterly check has arrived and I am positively stoked.
I am so close to having six months of living expenses in the Emergency Fund!! As soon as I have at least $1000 in the mini E-fund, my plan is to [finally] close the real E-fund to all non-critical withdrawals.
All the bills for September have been paid and I still have $1300 in the Expenses fund. With the deposit from the quarterly, I have enough for October’s expenses on October 2nd. All paychecks earned in October will continue to add an allotted amount to the Exp. Fund, but I won’t be waiting on them to pay the bills. Holy cow, I could pay the entire month’s bills on October 1st. I won’t, of course, that’s not the point of the cushion. The point is that I could if I needed to. Whew!
So I discovered a few things wrong with my math. The quarterly is for the past three months of work [July 1st-Sept 30th], so plotting the total expenses against income through the end of December means I come up short, ie: depleting most of the expense fund by year’s end.
What I need to do is fund the supplemental portion ahead of the next three months. In other words, instead of taking July-Sept money, and only setting aside three months’ worth of income to make up shortfalls from July-Sept, I should set aside enough for July through December. Then, I’ll be covered and still have the cushion in place through the end of December. Then the last quarterly check of the year [Sept through Dec] funds the various accounts that I’d previously planned for this check: Savings, Insurance, Car Maintenance, Travel, Moving, etc. That means I’ll be funding it for 2009, at the end of 2008! This makes much more sense.
All OT can now go towards other sub-expense funds instead of just savings and expenses. I expect an insurance bill in November and I don’t quite have enough for that yet, so OT will fund savings and insurance for the next month and a half.
Also, I’d goofed on the October paychecks, so I have to rewrite the plans for 4 paychecks in the next two months, not three. And actually, now that I’ve fixed the above problem, that third paycheck can come at any time, it’s no big deal.
It’s very strange budgeting on a hybrid [half regular-half supplementary] income. The supplemental is scheduled and the amount is set, so it shouldn’t be difficult, but I haven’t done it so very well since this started. Might I now be starting to get the hang of it?
Perhaps I’ll even get my September snapshot in order now that I’ve reconfigured the economic landscape …
October 1, 2008
I’ve never been too fond of the cable company, and could quite easily do without, but for some time I was paying for cable so my mom could watch her movies when she was home, not feeling well.
As the prices went up, and it became clear that we (she) could really do without, I tried to cut the strings, but I couldn’t shake them loose.
Having agreed to a free six months of service, I noticed that instead of the zero balance CSR #1 had promised me, there was an additional, random $5 charge each month. Mmhm. I also noticed that from month to month, or week to week, their billing was inconsistent and didn’t make much sense. After a couple statements, and a couple calls telling them to take care of their business as promised I decided: to heck with this!
CSR #4 wanted to know why I wanted them to cancel my free subscription. Well, I said, because the outstanding balance on my account doesn’t look so “free,” does it? Instead of noting all the conversations I’ve had with them, and the fact that the last time I gave them money was July and therefore I couldn’t possibly be a very profitable customer, she apologizes for the inconveniences, gives me another six months free, credits the outstanding balance, and adjusts the scheduled credits to encompass the extra fee that had been erroneously tacked on. *sigh* Okaaaayy. Do these retention folks get extra credit for each customer they hold on to, despite the cost to the company? Because I’m not paying them another penny. As I’ve said before, I don’t need cable, I don’t care about cable, and I’m perfectly willing to cut them loose.
It’s like I’m in a weird dependent relationship with Dish and they keep rejecting my break-up, a la Natalie and Jeremy of Sports Night.
Anyway. There you have it, ‘nother free six months of cable.
(‘though, how often are revelations expected?)
While flipping through my planner for the thousandth time this morning, something caught my eye. I had today marked as the first of three paydays. Which is great! After all, it’s an integral part of The Plan, and when is a three paycheck month ever bad? Exactly!
Except I was just paid last week. And since that clearly did happen, and we don’t get paid weekly, my planner must be wrong.
That means I’ve thwarted myself by incorrectly planning on three paydays in October instead of December. Drats.
This isn’t a disaster, it’s just a little disappointing that there won’t be a whole check I can throw at savings/expenses. I’ll work out the math a little later.
