Anonymous Mess

It doesn't come up often in conversation, but when it does, people are amazed to hear that we pay for repairs to our apartment. "??!!?!!!?!!" they say. (So eloquent, our acquaintances.) That's supposed to be the (possibly single) joy of renting: it's the landlord's to fix, not yours. Are we insane? On drugs? How can we afford drugs if we're paying for apartment repairs anyway? The salient fact is our rent is well below market rate, even for our reputedly borderline neighborhood, even for our admittedly dingy apartment.  As a much younger Anonymous Mess, working multiple underpaid and crappy jobs to scrape by, our low rent enabled me to survive during the periods when I was down to one regular job and a single side gig, instead of two or three. Yes, I could have paid a bit more and lived somewhere nicer with a roommate, but if you've ever had a roommate skip out on the rent and/or the lease, you know that's not a sure thing.  My landl...

Or that's what I'm calling it, anyway.  Because EVs do indeed zoom. Yes, we financed a new car, a thing I thought I would never do. But the cost of interest over the next five years -- the life of the loan -- is less than a third of what we've spent on gas in the last five years.  Even after we factor in the cost of charging the vehicle, estimated electricity cost + interest is less than half of gas spending in the last five years. Maintenance/repairs would go down anyway with a new car -- but without a gas engine, we shouldn't have to maintain anything but the brakes and tires over the first five years. (And with regenerative braking, even the brakes get less use, and thus less-frequent replacements, than with a gas engine.) Our battery is covered for life -- so long as we own the car, they'll replace the battery if there are issues, including just age. Overall, with the tax incentives, I believe we're paying about what we'd pay for a certified pre-ow...

It's time. Our champion workhorse of a vehicle needs to be replaced. In the last sixteen months, we've averaged over $300 a month on repairs. The latest system to go wobbly is the transmission, notoriously expensive to repair/replace, and the odometer passed 200,000 miles last month. So it's time. And expected. But circumstances have changed. My original plan, dating back over a decade, was to replace this vehicle with another certified pre-owned, low-mileage (under 20k), high-reliability car.  Heck, my original original plan was to be able to purchase said replacement outright, and we had saved about $4,000 toward that goal when we fell into The Trough of Loss and Despair and Immense Financial Obligation, five years ago, which swallowed that $4,000 whole (and kept going). Back then, Spouse and I sat in offices all day, Spouse commuted by train, and my round-trip for work was under 30 miles. In an average week, our mileage was under 200. Now, Spouse drives to clie...

I could've sworn I left it right here .... It was a bit of a blur, between interviews and getting a new contract (yay! paycheck for a year!), trying to gather tax information (why did I schedule tax appointment for February 1?), and several new bills and obligations (boo...hiss... sigh). The contract is with a large employer in our city, and is located close to home -- I could take the bus if necessary.  The work is... a stretch. I'm having to use long-abandoned skills, and learn new ones, and while the client seems satisfied at two weeks in, I have moments and sometimes days of abject terror, wondering if I'll ever navigate my way through and get up to speed. This is only my second contract, and a major client of my agency, so I really feel pressure to not just do good, timely work, but to impress, maybe to wow.  Spouse maintains I'm my own worst enemy, none of it is beyond me, etc., etc. I have noted, however, that Spouse does not suffer from measured, bal...