My Daily Life

 OK, so yesterday I took some time to work on a pair of jeans of mine and see if I can get the paint out. I guess you can call that my time. But then I had to go to the pharmacy and get a medication for Shylar at least I think that’s what I did. I can’t really remember if it was Friday evening or yesterday. And then I went to Walmart and got some things for dinner which I ended up not making because suddenly I just didn’t have an energy today.  I finally did get to go out and clean out my garden under my bay window and plant some plants. The thing is as I was hoping for an entire weekend to work in my yard and instead, I’ve been at urgent care after church with Alicia and then went and got her something to eat picked up her prescription and now I’m taking something to Shylar to eat.

 The first disbursement of the inheritance came out at the end of September.  After paying quite a bit of my outstanding debt and paying out money to my granddaughters as I had planned, I still have about $6600.  I have to say this has not decreased my anxiety over having enough money at all like I thought it would The next disbursement is expected in mid November at which time I’ll pay another round of debt to decrease my overall expenses and increase my monthly income by about $3,000.  It will still leave a substantial amount of money in my savings account.  I think I’ll wait until after the New Year to decide on whether it makes sense to put some money into CD’s.  Interestingly enough while I’ve been worrying about all of this money vs my debt, I keep seeing and hearing things come up about how material things don’t matter as much as time spent with family and friends.  Building a legacy with them instead of  worrying about what I have and don’...

 I spoke with a financial planner at WSECU ON Thursday who convinced me paying down my debt was the right way to go.  At first it seemed very overwhelming to just use the majority of my inheritance to pay down my large debt. Then, I started processing the information he gave me and after much internal turmoil I think I’ve come up with a plan that, although painful, will be ok. I will have less money than I wanted when the deluge of money goes out, but in the end I’ll have substantially less debt and no  overdraft fees, leaving more money each payday for unexpected expenses. I can’t wait until the money is available to I can’t stop worrying about it.  

 I spent nearly the entire first 7 months of 2023 cleaning my Dad’s house so we can sell it.  It was a lot of work. It took me way longer than I hoped it would, but I was finally able to get Glenda over there to work on the kitchen while I did the rest.  She and Mary helped in Isabella’s room and the kitchen .  Both were a lot of work, especially the kitchen.  I ended up renting a storage unit to store items from the house and what we were able to salvage of Elaine’s belongings. I took a lot of stuff to Goodwill, some to a recycling facility, and much of it I threw away.  I’m not sure why my sister and her daughter and their friends didn’t throw it away themselves.  They had so much junk and garbage.  I spent an entire day in the barn with my brothers cleaning it out and filling a dumpster with stuff that was destroyed by mice and water damage.  It was sad how much stuff we had to throw away.  Then we walked around the outside of the bar...

 My last blog I wrote about how my tax return was going to help me which it did, but there were some bumps along the way. Mainly with American Income Life.  They took somewhere in the neighborhood of $800 from my checking account between the end of January and the beginning of March.  I sent them $286 because it was my understanding that was what I owed them, but they took forever to process that check and in the meantime took the extra $800 I wasn’t expecting them to take.  According to them I owed since September so they just kept drafting until they got it. This was despite our conversations about paying that bill over time to keep my policies active.  I’m not saying they weren’t the owed the money, I’m just saying I don’t like the way they took the money without checking with me first.  At least now I’m all paid up until the first of April, but now I have to find another way to save money so I’m not in the hole until payday.  I already had to give ...

 I’m struggling to make good decisions about my finances.  I really want to make sure that Alyseia, Shylar and I get to go to DC, but I also need to be sure to make my mortgage on time.  In the meantime I have to keep this household going which means groceries, utilities, meeting the needs of my grandkids. So it’s really important that I manage my money super well.  How do I do that?   I got a tax refund of nearly $4900 along with my SS check and retirement check totaling $7795.  These together gave me enough money to pay my bills and still have about $3000 which I still have.  This is after I repaid $800 to the family trust.  I’m forcing myself to be patient and not pay bills early just in case an emergency happens.  I’ve already had to pay for a few unexpected items like my Rx-$85 and $37 to have Les Schwab come out to fill my tire with air and follow me up their store. Thankfully the tire could be repaired rather than replaced which saved ...

It looks like my tax refund will come earlier than I expected so I think I’ll go ahead and let the check to American Income Life go through as is.  Hopefully the next payment will go through on the 28th instead of the 26th as I requested and I can stop stressing over it.

 So I’ve been dealing with a life insurance company I’ve been a part of since the 1980s for the last five months. I think it was in August that they called me to review my policies and the policy for Joseph and the policy for Isabella. some of what they said made sense, so I changed my term life to a whole life policy And I added some extra coverage for Joseph and Isabella. Since then they’ve been messing with my monthly payment, submitting it on dates that don’t even make any sense. These dates don’t match my paydays and so of course the payment doesn’t go through so then they send me a letter or sometimes they don’t  And I find out that my policies are lapsing. So I finally sent them a check to cover the amounts that were needed, and what do they do? They submit a payment again prior to my pay dates without my permission for $405 after I had just mailed them  a check for the amount. So now I have to call the bank and stop payment on my check because I’m not paying for t...

 I was looking out my kitchen window today and thinking about controlling the weeds in my field.  I looked up the best temperature to spray them and the lowest temperature I can start.  Optimum temperature is between 65 & 85 degrees, but once the temperature is consistently above 40 I can do some early spraying.  That usually happens around mid-to-late April, so I’ll need to be patient.  I can see where I sprayed last Fall.  There is some nice grass growing there, but I want to spray it again to prevent weeds from returning.  The girls doesn’t seem big until I start mowing, but it’s actually huge and takes me more than a day or two to completely mow.  If all goes well I’ll have a riding mower this summer.  It was my Dad’s and apparently he promised it to my sister’s grandson, but he has no way to store it and he doesn’t know how to repair it.  My brother’s son-in-law is going to take care of the repairs and I’ll store it in my garage...

 Finally I’m on the positive side of zero in my bank account, but I’m finding it difficult not to pay some bills early.  I have to keep reminding myself that the goal is to reduce the number of overdraft fees.  If I can actually do that, then when I get paid each month I’ll actually have $2000 left in my bank account after the bills are paid, and I’ll be able to catch my mortgage up so I’m not running a month behind all year.  As it stands right now, I may be getting a refund over $5000. If that really happens and my bank account isn’t in the red, I can comfortably pay for our DC trip, and have money to spare.  Could this actually be happening for me?   I want to pay some money back to the family trust so if for some reason Elaine doesn’t move by the end of next month, there is money to cover the utilities until she moves.  Although I’m praying that she finds something within the next 2 weeks and is able to move out by mid February.  This whole th...

 I decided to check the DRS website for my 1099-R today.  Didn’t really think it would be there yet, but to my surprise there it was.  So I opened up TurboTax and entered the information and some of my donations.  It looks pretty good right now.  I’m waiting for a few more forms and should be good to send it to the IRS.

 Bob posted again tonight that we do t have the funds to cover expenses at Dad’s past mid-February.  Elaine says Spokane housing Authority will be assigning her a caseworker, hopefully, by Monday.  I pray that this person will help her find a place by the end of the month.  I’m still worried about what will happen if she is still in our house with no power, water or services.  I understand what Bob is saying, but a roof over one’s head without heat or water is unreasonable.   Please God, I pray that Elaine successfully finds a home and is able to move by the first of next month. As for me, if I can, I’d like to contribute to the power bill to keep the lights on through February. To do that, things have to work out in my budget so I don’t end up short for my own bills. Please God, I pray that Elaine successfully finds a home and is able to move by the first of the month.

 I spent the entire night worrying that my sister is going to end up homeless because she’s had at least 7 months to find a place and she still hasn’t done anything about it.  We are running out of money to pay the bills to keep her in Dad’s house, yet the reality of that hasn’t sunk in yet.  Here’s the enabler in me because if I were in a position to do so, I would buy a 2nd house for her to live in under the condition that she pay 30% of her income toward rent plus the utilities, cable and garbage. Pick-up.  That way she could have her cats while paying me a $300 fee up front and I would wrap that additional charge of $25 per animal into the rent.  I would pay the taxes and insurance as long as she meets her financial obligations with me.  But that’s all a dream because I don’t have the resources to do that while I’m still paying the mortgage I have. I wish I could.  I wish I had planned my finances differently over the past several years, but as my ...

 So, after my rant this morning, I got things done I needed to do, and then I decided to go down to my room and rest for a while. That was about 11 o’clock. At 1 o’clock. I woke up feeling better lol nothings really resolved, but the feeling went away. I finished my peanut butter cookies Opened my new mixer. I got for Christmas from my son washed it up and then I made some roll dough in my bread machine so I can make some dinner rolls the last time I made them I didn’t get to stick with them and they did not come out good at all. In fact, they were hard on the outside and tiny , so I’m hoping since I was able to stick with him today that they’ll turn out better. I’m just experimenting because I can. I’m trying to decide what I want to make in my mixer. I used up all my brown sugar when I was at the store this morning, I remembered to buy oatmeal, but I forgot to buy brown sugar  Can’t really make good chocolate chip oatmeal or peanut butter cookies without brown sugar. I’m deb...

 Sometimes I get these feelings of being overwhelmed and underappreciated. When that happens, I tend to ruminate about things from my relationship with my mother to my relationship with my daughter to my relationship with my granddaughters.  I get in a self critical mode, and I can’t stop it. I just keep spiraling downward and downward and downward to the point that I don’t know when to stop or how to stop, and I just want to stop but I can’t.   I feel like my whole life is centered around other people, and that there’s a little time for my life. Tom passed over 15 years ago, and all I’ve done is take care of other peoples kids. I don’t know if I’d be in a better place financially, if I wasn’t taking care of my great niece and nephew, my sister, my grand children, Ron, Sara, and anyone else who has crossed my path. But I know that I’m always broke. I raised Joseph and Isabella, Shaelen Shylar and I’m raising Alicia without any help from anyone. Yes I got some money from t...

Feb 12, 2022-  I compared the 2 recent bids I got this last week.  They are almost 2K apart.  When I looked at the itemization of both bids, I couldn’t see the difference in the parts or the tasks they are performing.  The lower bid gives an actual price for the labor and the permit.  The higher bid only itemizes the task , but doesn’t give a price for anything.  I can only assume he’s charging a huge amount for labor and/or he’s upping the price on the parts to cover his expenses rather than giving them to me at cost.  So now I have…. Obviously I was interrupted here so I’m not sure where that train of thought was going.

 Got my 2nd bid:$4120 +tax and the cost of a permit. I decided to ask the first electrician for an itemized bid do I can compare apples to apples.  I’m not really sure why there is such a big difference.  I’ve asked Lakeland electric to come do an assessment and give me a bid too, but he can’t come until next week.  So far he hasn’t given me a time yet.   No fiascos so far this week and it’s Thursday.  Got my income tax refund yesterday-$6490. IRS paid 6776, but I had to pay Turbo tax and their processing bank.  Next year I think I’ll figure out if there’s a way to bypass the bank charge.   I really want to be careful how much I spend out of this refund, but I also need to pay a few things.  We’ll see how it goes.  I need to learn how to stretch my money through the month since I only get paid at the end of the month now.  It’s enough, but sometimes I come up short. It will help to pay off some things.

 Long story short, it was well past Thanksgiving when the restoration company finished everything they had to do to the bathrooms and the clean up. My son came and put in my back door for me which I was able to get at a much less cost than originally planned. I had waited long enough to get a door of the same quality at about $700 less than the original price. So new flooring in the bathrooms and a new back door new vanities and the bathrooms completely painted, I was feeling pretty good. I finally finished painting the hallway  and got my pictures up in the living room and the hallway and was ready to move onto the kitchen before Christmas. Moving on was not to be.  New plumbing issues popped cup.  The piping under the tub and in the hallway bathroom wall was leaking.  There were cracks in the tub abs in the wall tiles around it.  The copper piping going to there areas was old and beginning to wear, so now we had more drips.  Not just trips but pourin...

 What a whirlwind this last two weeks have been.  Last week was homecoming week at EVHS, so Shylar was attending a lot of events as a sophomore nominee for Homecoming Queen of her class.  The night of the Homecoming Football game was the night of reckoning.  We all wanted her to win and I was praying her dream would come true.  The competition was stiff so I was afraid to hope for too much, but then the announcer call Shylar’s name as Homecoming Queen for the sophomores.  All of us were so happily surprised that we were jumping, screaming, and crying all at once.  I’m so happy for her.  She was beautiful in her flowing red velvet dress with a train the flowed behind her.  She looked so happy as she waved at the crowd from the back of a red truck driving her and the sophomore king for a victory lap. I cannot be prouder of all that she has accomplished this Fall.   While this was going on I was receiving calls and texts from Isabella about...

 Me time?  What is that? Even when the kids are in school I’m busy.  The older girls think their little sister is annoying and do their very best to schedule time away from her.  I pick up her girlfriend so they can play together and they spend most of their time arguing about what they are going to do. So today, I rode bikes to the park with them where there are other kids thinking it would be relaxing for me while they play.  The sun is making me so tired, I think I need a nap and can’t wait to ride back home.I wanted to dust and  clean today, but the television was messed up so I spent way too much time trying to remedy the problem. I accidentally disconnected something from the back of the cable box, but when I reconnected it, I think I may have fixed the problem. I haven’t had time to check it to make sure everything is working right, but what a waste of time that was.