Only so much to go around

Tonight, I've been confronting the realities of how a nice tax refund really can disappear without even trying.

When we did our taxes this year, we got a very hefty sum back in a refund - I won't say how much because my Midwestern sensibilities won't permit it - but let's just say that it was several thousand dollars. This is due almost entirely to the fact that I over-withhold from my paycheck like nobody's business. This stems from the first year that both Heidi and I were working and we both claimed each other on our W2s and we ended up owing several thousand dollars. Since I don't desire a repeat of that scenario, I have gone against the advice of many friends who said that I shouldn't let the government use my money for free for a year when I could be investing it and making money off of it. That's all fine and dandy but it would require me to actually invest it or save it versus blowing it on iTunes or something equally frivolous. I don't trust myself enough to do that and, honestly, I kind of like that big check coming to me in spring when we're trying to recover from Christmas.

We went into this tax season knowing full well that we were getting all the gutters replaced on the house in the spring. As Heidi is fond of saying - if we weren't already getting new gutters, after this winter, we would be. There were icicles BEHIND the gutters. We're actually doing a pretty significant upgrade by getting LeafGuard, which will come in handy especially because in our heavily treed neighborhood, I get up on a ladder and clean the gutters out at least 3 times a year. They come next Thursday to install it. I, of course, am right on schedule and have completely freaked myself out by reading some of the complaints on the web. I'm comforting myself with the fact that my neighbor has LeafGuard and likes them and at any rate, it's too late to worry about it now.

Anyway, we never planned on paying for all of it outright. Instead, we decided to pay the lion's share of it out of the tax refund and then finance the last little bit. Well, I was filling out the financing forms tonight and something makes me nervous about it, even though the financing is through WellsFargo and they already own our soul. A part of me wants to just pay for the whole shooting match, using the money I had set aside for my iMac just so I don't have to worry about payments, no matter how manageable they might be. Doing that puts off my iMac for quite some time, but it would probably be worth it for the peace of mind it would bring.

There was also the matter of the completely unexpected surgery that our cat Mia had to have to remove a malignant sarcoma from her back. Those of you without pets would scoff at the amount we spent on an animal (it was less than a thousand), but that's what you do when you're a pet owner. She is home now and hopefully cancer-free, although there's no guarantee the tumor won't grow back. We kind of debated the point of surgery in a 16 year old cat, but the consensus was that removing the tumor was worth doing once. If it buys her even another year, it was worth it because without it, she had a life expectancy of months and at the rate I saw that tumor grow, I would be willing to bet it would have been weeks. So there went some more of it.

We also gave into Apple's PR machine and pre-ordered the iPad which comes out on April 3rd. Heidi actually could use this professionally, and it's really the eReader that she wants plus it's something we can all use and enjoy, so there you go. Even when you're dirt poor, you still have to have your luxuries. And the iPad definitely falls into the "luxury" category. That's where I think the Dave Ramsey plan falls apart. Nothing would set us up for failure financially more than a "You can eat nothing but rice and beans for the next 8 years. You can take no vacations. You can never splurge on yourself." approach. Eventually, we'd just rebel against it and that would be that.

So who knows what we'll do. I just know that it sure is easy to spend money. But the good thing is that we are not charging any of this, which is really a shift for us. For so many years, I just figured that the money would be there. And while we're far from destitute, we're also in significant debt. Some of it is through no fault of our own and some of it, yeah, we made some bad decisions. In years past, I would have just bought my iMac knowing that the money from the tax refund would be there to cover it. But when I decided to do this, I decided to do it differently and not purchase it until I had the cash in hand. What ultimately pushed me to that decision is that I don't want the experience of a new computer to be marred by anxiety about whether or not I had the money to buy it. I would prefer most major purchases to be done like this from now on, but I'm also not so naive as to think I'll never charge anything ever again. Sadly, you really do still need a credit card.

I don't know what the point of this post is. I'm home alone tonight and I'm feeling kind of restless. Perhaps this was my attempt to turn that restlessness into something with purpose rather than letting it turn into anxiety that goes nowhere. It pretty much worked.

When it rains, it snows

Apparently, after a month of daily posting, I'm reaching for the stars and going for a post every 5 days. But in my defense, I did work a run of 5 overnights and no sooner was that over than we got walloped by the first winter storm of the season which left 13 inches of the white stuff on the ground in less than 24 hours. This is big even for us - folks in the Dakotas and Colorado and Michigan would scoff at this, but it pretty much paralyzed the state. Anna STILL doesn't have school today, probably due more to the fact that the roads are not completely cleared.

It was made even more stressful by the fact that I went out last week to make sure the snowblower worked and it decidedly did not. Motherfuck, it was the last thing I needed. I figured that it was probably a clogged gas line or something, but I tried putting some fresh gas in it anyway and again, nothing. So I left it and decided to mess with it later. When later arrived, I noticed that there was a large puddle that looked suspiciously like gasoline underneath the snowblower. Since we had surpassed my abilities in dealing with it, it looked like I was going to have to take it in and have it serviced. Of course, with the "storm of the century" (as the local news was calling it despite the fact that there are still 90 years left in this century) bearing down on us, every place was swamped with repair requests.

When I was out there dropping it off, the guy showed me how the blade was damaged from years of use and how it was probably reaching the end of its life. I told him to try to get it running anyway, thinking that I'd limp by another season on this on and then save next year for a new one, because if there was any one thing I couldn't do, it was plunk down the cash for a new snowblower.

Well, the universe usually conspires to teach you a lesson, even (and especially) when you close your ears to it and the next day we woke up to snow coming down and rapidly deteriorating roads. I called out to the repair place and they said they'd probably have it done by 3pm, which was fine, but Heidi and I decided to stop out there after dropping Anna off at school. We talked to the guy and he proceeded to explain to us how we were looking at a couple hundred bucks worth of repairs AT LEAST. At that point, it was becoming clear to us that fixing it would ultimately result in throwing good money after bad so we made the decision right then and there to buy a new one.

It killed me to spend the money, but what are you going to do when they're talking about 10-14" of snow and you have a 100 foot long drive to clear?

In the end, we bought a mid-range Toro and even that cost a small fortune. However, it cleared the snow quite admirably over the last couple of days. It also started right up each time I tried it (electric start - I was not compromising on that) and here's hoping that it lasts until Anna's graduated from college.

If I had known that I was going to be buying a snowblower, I never would have replaced our TV the day after Thanksgiving. But you win some and you lose some. In the ultimate example of the law of averages, working all those overnights will end up just about paying for the snowblower (I worked a crapload of overtime covering those shifts). Easy come, easy go. I was hoping to buy something a little more sexy with all that extra cash, but I'll settle for functional.

Struts, pout, cut it out

Last night when I went to put the car in the garage, I noticed that it was making kind of a funny noise. I filed it away and said to myself that if I heard it again today I would take the car in. Well, we drove down to Des Moines today and I still heard it and since it was only 3:00 by the time we got back to Ames, Heidi took the car to Car-X while I went to pick Anna up from school in the truck. Then Anna and I went to pick Heidi up. They said that they would call us today with the diagnosis.

I am not a big car head and don't know exactly what all is wrong but basically, the bottom line is that the noise I heard is unrelated to an incidental finding that IS a big deal. Before we went on our trip this summer, the guys at Car-X told us that our struts were in need of eventual repair. It wasn't a dire situation - and it certainly didn't have to be done prior to the trip. They gave us an estimate that was around $700 parts and labor and figured I'd have it done early next year since, as I indicated, they didn't think it was something that needed to be done right away.

Well, apparently it needs to be done right fucking now. If we don't do it, it'll ruin our back tires.

So in addition to fixing the mystery noise in the front of the car, which runs around $170 parts/labor, tack on another $700 for the struts and you're looking at nearly a grand. But really, I shouldn't have expected anything less of this year. We have easily put $4,000 in general upkeep, repairs, etc. into this car this year, but believe me, it's still cheaper than a car payment and it's the first year that we've really had this kind of expense.

In an attempt to dull the sting of what is money sprouting wings and flying away, I've been trying to put the silver lining on all of this. At least we didn't drive the car to Chicago for Kylie, only to be finding ourselves doing this at a Car-X in Chicago. At least we investigated it today before we drove all over kingdom come this weekend. At least I am off work for a few days so that the logistics of car drop off and pick up didn't all fall to her. At least it wasn't 2000 dollars.

But it still sucks, especially moving into Christmas. But I'm also over it. Next please.

Redoubling

I just got off the phone with the student loan people. It was an odd mix of frustration and resignation.

Now before anyone jumps to any (inaccurate) conclusions, no, I'm not in danger of defaulting on them. I was just trying to explore my options, because the payment is exceptionally onerous and I was trying to figure out if I could get the interest rate lowered even though it's already pretty low and fixed to boot. I was also exploring payment options that included paying twice a month (like I do on my house) vs. the once a month payment plan that I currently have.

Well, they weren't having any of it. They weren't mean about it or anything, but they just really didn't have any options for me other than to take a different repayment plan which, while lowering my monthly payment, costs me more money in the long run. The loan interest rate is as low as it can go and any attempts to change to an every-other-week payment plan would cause me to sacrifice the interest rate I have because the payment is on autodebit. As it stands, when I calculate the yearly amount I actually cough up every month and figured the amount that's actually put on the principal, the percentage ends up being a measly 17.5%. Pathetic. And that's at a really good interest rate, not the 20+% charged by your average credit card these days.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not whining. I made my bed years ago, made choices and now have to pay for them. The trouble is that finances consume my thoughts - and not in the "oh, look how great I'm doing!" way. It contributes significantly to anxiety that I am fighting more often than not these days and creeps up on me at night while I'm trying to sleep which leads to being tired which decreases my ability to think rationally about it. It's easy to point fingers and place blame on this, that or the other thing but it really doesn't address what really needs to be addressed - how do we get rid of it? My natural inclination is to go from seeing that things are not ideal and then immediately jumping to panic and doomsday scenarios which doesn't help much either.

Some would say we need to Dave Ramsey our life but I think that is, oddly enough, too simple of an answer. I know of some people who have adopted his plans to tremendous success, but like many blanket statements, I am not sure that a wholesale application of his techniques would work for us. I just not sure that living as spartan as those kinds of plans require you to live for the length of time we'd have to do it is worth it. Yes, it's important to focus on debt reduction. Yes, it's important to not buy things if you can't pay for them (which was one of the stipulations I had for our California trip - paid for all but a couple hundred bucks of it.) But it's also important to freaking live while you're living and not wind up dead before you get a chance to live. Take away any chance to live and it's a surefire prescription for failure.

Like so many things in life, it's about balance. Looking back, I have not been so good about balance when it comes to things like that. But it's not as if I have stayed stagnant and am still making the same bad choices I did years ago. Even as recently as earlier this year, I had a plan to pay down a set amount on our credit card. And I did quite well until life happened. It's easy to feel frustrated by it, but the truth is that life will continue to happen and try to stymie me at every point. You can get mad about it or you can redouble your efforts.

No, it's not comfortable, but I do take a little bit of solace in the simple fact that I'm supporting three people on one income which is no small feat. But as of today, I'm redoubling my efforts rather than contine down the path of anxiety, even though the stupid student loan people couldn't give me a lower interest rate and I will probably be paying them till I have expired!

Axle boots

So remember the clickety-clack sound the car was making on the way back from Heidi's dad's this weekend? We took the car in today and the verdict is that two of the four axle boots (aka CV boots) are bad. One is completely shot and leaking grease all over the place. The second is cracked badly and in danger of going out. This is what a CV boot looks like - I had never seen one before today. The one in the picture is even cracked, in honor of the ones on our car. (via)


Obviously, we're going to replace this - as one place I was reading online said "That front wheel coming off at 60 MPH in traffic could ruin your whole week." But, as with most things that occur, there is a healthy dose of physics involved, even in the places you would think would be unaffected by physics.

Physics? Why yes. I'm speaking specifically about Newton's Third Law of Motion. For every force or action, there is always an equal or opposite force or reaction. Such is the case with the demise of two of my CV boots (and possibly the CV joint itself on one of them - that much I am not entirely sure of. Although from the sounds of what I've read online, yes we're getting a new CV joint.)

We have what can only be characterized as a sizeable amount of credit card debt. Some of it kind of happened to us (you do double mortgage payments for 18 months and then sell the other house at a $12,000 loss, there's going to be some financial hell to pay later) and some of it we did to ourselves. I'm not looking for sympathy or consolation - it is what it is. I have made my bed, but you know what? It's kind of lumpy and annoying so I'm doing something about it. My goal this year was to pay $5,000 on the credit card - a good sized chunk of the balance. That boiled down to around $420 a month (we have a rocking interest rate because Wells Fargo owns our souls.) I managed to do that payment in January, so YAY me! Then the CV boots went out and the bill for that?

$424.

Yep, as my father says (and his father before him), don't get money ahead or the kid gets sick. Or in this case, the car.

Heidi and I were discussing that as cars go, this one has been one of the better ones we've had. It has really not given us one little bit of trouble in the nearly 4 years we have owned it (except for air conditioning/heating stuff which wasn't that expensive to fix.) It's the first real repair we've had to do.

But yes, $420 off the credit card, $424 on. Although maybe not all of it has to go there. We'll see. But mostly I'm just glad the axle didn't completely crack apart on the way back on Saturday. Someone (still not sure who or what) was watching out for us.

(Doesn't all this talk of CV joints and axles and cars make me sound like I am all car smart? It's all smoke and mirrors, folks.)