Anonymous Mess

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...

The post from two weeks ago was actually written late October/early November. Blur the footage to simulate time zooming ahead three months and here we are in  mid-February. And where is "here", exactly? Well, here are the end-of-January numbers: Creditor Interest Rate Owed Amazon Store 26.49% 0.00 JetBlue 22.24% 0.00 Chase Visa 22.24% 0.00 Chase Amazon Prime 18.99% 0.00 Barnes and Noble 16.24% 0.00 Chase Slate 13.74% 0.00 Chase Freedom 12.74% -209.89 CU Signature Visa 2 11.24% 0.00 Bank A Signature Visa 11.15% 0.00 CU Signature Visa 1 8.40% -4,176.45 HELOC 8.40% -87,619.58 Bank A Balance Transfer 0.00% -7,597.33 BankAmericard Platinum 0.00% -0.00 BestBuy 0.00% -204.20 Citi Diamond Preferred 0.00% -0.00 CreditFirst (Firestone) 0.00% -425.38 Lowe's 0.00% -27.48 Total CC Debt -12,640.73 All Debt -100,260.31 Yay, down $4,500, right?  It's not much, but it's progress. Despite more veterinary bills, and a new battery for the car, and expens...

So, these are the things that have happened since my last post -- Elderly Uncle passed away. For the best really, his pain is no more, I got to say my good-byes, all the comforting cliches; but also, so sad, so much worry for Elderly Aunt, so little clarity about where she's left financially, such a flurry of things that must be attended to at a time when attending to anything feels pointless, endless, and overwhelming: all the negative cliches. Funeral, travel, and lodging costs of $3,160, plus several unpaid days away from work. Poor Caterwaul, the feline malign, was diagnosed with cancer, after a series of examinations, blood tests, biopsies, and long waits in veterinary anterooms. (She is not yet feeling the effects, and we will do our best to keep her comfortable as long as possible, but we do not expect her to recover.) Costs to date of $670. Recommended testing not covered by our insurance policy was, well, recommended. Out of pocket cost = $570. For Brother-in-Law...

Our numbers are worse. It seems like I simply don't understand the point of this enterprise, doesn't it? The debt is supposed to go down, not up. I've attempted to post figures several times over the last six weeks, but the hits just keep coming. In addition to the Great Mold Adventure of May, we've incurred the following -- We had two, possibly three, computers pass away in the last two months; I'm using my laptop in place of my desktop PC, and Spouse will be giving our media server intensive care before calling for last rites, but my elderly aunt needed a durable tablet, tout de suite , to replace her defunct device. (Elderly Aunt is on the most fixed of fixed incomes, dealing with a journal's worth of medical issues for herself and dementia-diagnosis Uncle, and has no one else with resources: our assistance to her is non-negotiable.) This expense is on an interest-free* credit card, but is nonetheless an additional expense.  Spouse's phone d...

I just spent $640 on a new monitor. Not this one precisely, but you get the idea Cue PF Frugality alarms: Alert! Alert! Unplanned purchase! Funds diverted from debts still outstanding! Activate guilt shields! Criticism incoming! Yeah, I'm cowering. I know, I know. Why spend $640 that you (broadly speaking) don't have when you do have a functional, if aging, monitor and you're trying to get out of debt? Because unfortunately, "functional" isn't quite good enough. I work from home roughly once a week, and Spouse uses my monitor when on call at the new job. At work, we both have dual, (reasonably) high-res monitors, because our employers understand our workflow has us moving between applications throughout the day.  To illustrate, in my usual work at the current client, I am checking/have open at a minimum: Specification documentation, usually Excel or Word An integrated development environment app, mostly for the display aspects of my work ...

Yes, you, you peach-skinned cherub   So, the last five years have been... fraught, perhaps? Intermittently dreadful, oh yes. With periodic showers of crap. Generally, double-plus ungood.  Not that the long chain of years before these last five were a sunny smiling "before" picture.  I am the very model of a middle-class neurotic: chronically, clinically depressed and anxious. (I don't want to overstate this. None of it has been extreme enough to require hospitalization, for example. But it has been absolutely bad enough to make me feel like every cell in my body is bruised and knocked askew, like I'm dragging myself through a swamp with my legs encased in concrete. Just bad enough to make me feel hopeless and joyless and sleep 15 hours a day. So yes, many, many people are far worse off than I, but this is more than bad enough for me.) But recently I had a sense -- a hope  -- well, maybe it was a fantasy -- that I was reaching a new equili...

Sigh. Yay, we don't need to replace the roof? Still: Miscellaneous repairs and refurbishments - $2,355 Exterminator - $70 Commission for finding new tenants - $2,038 Mold inspection - $350 Mold remediation + installation of mold-repelling superpowers -    $2,553 Tree removal - $550 Grand total -    $7,916 Amount available on-hand - ~ $4,500 Result: another $3,275 from the line of credit . Sigh. [Edited to add tree removal. Did I mention Sigh? ]