My Daily Life

 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...