Today the lady who looked at the trailer with her friend who will be living in it called me.  She said they definitely want it, and had talked to the park manager. The lease stipulations said the shed had to be moved, they had to fix the underpinning skirting and they had to clean up the yard.  Not too bad for a free house, so they agreed, and the guy had to fill out an application.  When they find out if he’s approved, she’ll call me back and let me know.  I HOPE he gets approved. Gosh!  Turns out, he’s a divorced dad paying a ton in child support and is staying with this woman who had contacted me. He’s living with her because he can’t afford rent on anything else, so without friends, he’d be homeless.  Sounds like the other guy living in the camper. Remind me if I ever divorce DH not to take him to the cleaners and leave him homeless.  Thanks.  That just sucks!  So, anyway, the swingset will stay I guess, in case his kids visit.  They didn’t mention it anyway.  I’m SO excited about this now!  Once it is out of our hands and we can no longer be beholden to the managers of that other trailer park, the better my sanity will be!!  I’m glad I decided to put it on Freecycle.

Today was a crapper financially though.  DH’s antibiotics plus his Plavix and Lipitor and Lisinopril all came to over $300 – that was the money I was going to pay the past due amount on the electric bill.  We STILL haven’t met his deductible.  I think he’s really close, but DAMN!  we’re living on next to nothing and everything is getting behind just to keep him alive.  I’m going to have to call them electric company or go down there in person and see if I can get them to defer it another month due to these circumstances. When I signed up for the high deductible insurance this year, it was with the intention of using the tax refund to pay all the medical bills and prescriptions that would make up the deductible very quickly, then we’d be fine the rest of the year. However, we decided on the spur of the moment to buy this house.  I AM SO GLAD we did, but OMG, these bills!  We had $2500 in medical bills we didn’t get paid off last year that we still owe, and now we’re up to nearly $2000 more NEW medical bills  ACK!!!!  And to think this time last year we were fresh out of bankruptcy and didn’t owe a dime to anone.  DAMN.  I think I’m gonna cry now.   I seriously need a bailout!!!  Heck at least we still have our jobs.   KNOCK ON WOOD!!!

Today didn’t go as planned – do they ever?

DH was sick yesterday and out of work feeling like crap. He went in today, threw up dropping the kids off to school and then again at work, so he came home. We got the Dr office late since he left me sleep til 1:30. The clinic was packed so we didn’t get out of there til 5 and he was groggy from a shot.  I knew I had to get to work soon, so I sent 16 to meet the people about the trailer at 6pm.  I was kinda leery about it, but she’s good with people and friendly and honest.  She called me after they left and said the woman loved it and the guy was a big strong type who was excited to rip up the carpets and fix the floors.  Turns out she used to live in the trailer park too back when the previous owners had it and the trailer were run down and awful.  She said he paid over $300 a month rent for a trailer in worse shape than the one we showed her, so she was thrilled.  She saw the patch jobs we’d sone with the planks over holes and said she’d done the same thing and knew what it was like.  I KNEW someone out there would appreciate the home as I did.  She’s thrilled with the yard too and loves the snowball bush I planted years ago that’s HUGE.  I will miss it.  There’s the old fountain DH’s great grandfather built too.  For some reason DH’s grandparents decided to haul the very heavy thing to our house one year.  We never could get it sealed to work as a fountain, so I planted the small sedum in it and  it trails down over the edge and looks really pretty in the spring and early summer.   Anyway!   They said they didn’t mind the cleaning and work, and fixing the outside stuff to make the park people happy.  She said she already knows the maintenance people who run the office when the manager is gone, and is pretty sure she can get them to let her have it.  Sounds like she’s the type who can get it done too.  I hope SO!!

So now!  I HAVE to get the flowers dug up and transplanted and we HAVE to get the shed cleaned out and the stuff out of the inside of it.  Of course DH has to be sick now.  I didn’t want to go back over there anytime soon, but I need to for the flowers.   I can’t rely on Friend to come over and get them, but I’d still like him to have them.  So, I’ll go dig some up asap, then drive them to his place.  Maybe if I dig them up one day and keep them damp, I can take them over the next day and meet him for lunch and give them to him there.   Going to his house would be kind of weird.  I have yet to meet his wife.  Not sure why, we just never cross paths.  I run into his sisters though.

I am just so thrilled to finally have found someone who wants the place. I guess since they don’t appear to have kids, they won’t need the swing set, so we’ll have to take it apart and take it over here and put it together for the girls and the neighborhood kids.  I’m sure the mean boys will break it.  Creepy boys.

I’ll post when we know more on the park manager stuff.

WARNING This is long and boring.

I have never been especially good at budgets.  Oh I can make one like a pro accountant, but I can’t stick to them. That has been our downfall over the past years and why we are still here. It sucks having that guilt on my shoulders, but the first step to recovery is admitting the problem right?

Well, I am facing this issue head on. I have tweaked and re-tweaked the family budget for the next 4-5 months and it’s going to work out just fine as long as we stick to it.   We switched to the high deductible medical insurance because it’s $200 cheaper per month, but it means prescriptions will be full price as will Dr visits until we get DH’s deductible met. It’ll mean the kids and my prescriptions will also be full price when they have any, but I was hoping that wouldn’t come up too often. (Now it looks like one will be on zoloft and one has a high dollar psohriasis prescription -sigh). So, I have to save money from the tax refund to have available to pay for his prescriptions and dr bills as soon as he needs them or get the bill. Thankfully presciptions count toward the deductible, so after about 3-4 months, they’ll have his deductible met and we can spend the rest of the year not worrying about anything but the low co-pays and the small % we would owe to Drs. That’s the plan anyway…  however…

There are other things we need/want out of this tax refund and our so-called disposable income.  So here’s a couple of options for the tax refund which we should get by the middle of Feb, depending on when we get the W2’s from one employer we both worked for early in 2007.

Tax refund est amount:  $4600

Option 1:
$400 16’s oral surgery
$500 Save for DH deductible
$200 my new desk chair
$2000 Medical bills
$500 Dollywood Season Passes (save $20 if ordered before Feb 25th)
$800 Remodeling the trailer
$200 DH iPhone

Option 2:
$400 16’s Surgery
$500 Save for DH Deductible
$2000 Medical Bills
$500 Dolly Wood season passes
$600 Remodeling the trailer and new desk chair
$200 iPhone for DH
$400 for down pmt on new car for 16 so she can get a job.

16 needs her back 4 molars pulled according to the dentist and after insurance pays their part, they say we’ll still owe $400 which has to be paid up front.  It’s only $200 if she doesn’t get anesthesia, but she wants it, saying she can’t stand the thought of being awake for it.  She’s a chicken and I’d prefer to stay awake, I hate anesthesia.  But I guess I need to be the good mother and get this done right. Good thing she doesn’t need braces. I’m not shelling out for those.
I *need* a new desk chair. I currently have an antique kitchen chair with two pillows on it and my ass still hurts after sitting here for an 8+ hour shift plus the time I surf the web and blog. In fact this week I had hemorrhoids.  NOT FUN! So, the chair is not optional, I must have one, and it must have arms, my arms are constantly poised on my kb or desk and I have to lean up and by the end of the shift I can barely move.    I also feel the Dollywood season passes are not negotiable. We used to go every year when 16 was little. It was always great cause opening weekend was on her birthday usually.  But we have not been back since 6 was born and she’ll be 7 this year.  Well, I take it back, we did all go ONCE when Brit and his g/f were visiting back in 2007. It had changed so much. It holds so many great memories for me and I can’t stand that our kids have not been able to enjoy those.  So, this year we’re going to go as often as we can and really enjoy ourselves.  Now, the remodeling the trailer is something that must be done.  This is for my own sanity. I may even take a week’s vacation to do it. We must get the front door replaced with a good door with a screen storm door attached. Non-negotiable.  Then the living room floor MUST be ripped up and all weak/rotten spots fixed – we can do this with a circular saw and a jig saw.  I might rent a nailgun – not sure yet.  They look dangerous.  Then we are laying down a good quality padding and then laminate wood floor.  Friend said he’d come help me install it since he’s done it before in two houses.  Ideally, I want to do the kitchen floor as well, but we’ll see how much the door costs first.  If I’m very very lucky, I can get all those things done and still have the money to buy a good used portable dishwasher.  There is one at the used appliance store in town where I bought my dryer. I’m hoping I can get a good deal on it, especially if I take in our old dryer (that’s pretty new actually and probably has nothing big wrong with it).  Then I’m ripping out one of the lower cabinets, and sitting the dishwasher in that space. It should fit just right. If all goes well, I’ll run the laminate flooring in there and it will go into the corner as well, so it looks finished and nice.    Now the last thing on the list of Option 1 seems odd and wasteful, but to be honest, DH never gets anything. He’s been silently doing without new things, even new underwear and socks when he needs them so that the kids get things they need, or I go splurge on something for the house etc. He has his check deposited into the checking account and often never sees any of it.  So I promised him that was going to change. His current phone is not holding a charge well and he hates that he can’t go to links he gets in texts he gets from Twitter. So when we went to look at new phones, he saw the iPhone and fell in love, and the thought of being able to put media on it straight from iTunes made it even better.  So dammit he’s getting an iPhone!  More than likely we won’t pass the credit check and will have to pay a deposit. I’m not thrilled about that, but I told him, we’d find the money for it somewhere – there is a budget for miscellaneous in the monthly budgets, so we may have to say up for it.  I’m sure we have to pay a month’s service ahead of time as well or something – that’s $99/month.

Now option 2 takes some money away from other things and puts $400 toward a car for 16.  I think this is actually the one we’ll go with, though it will mean waiting on a lot of my home improvements and budgeting more of DH’s deductible money and medical bills from our paychecks themselves.  I did some fancy moving around of numbers there let me tell you.  There is a lot of money coming in with our current jobs now, I’ve just never handled it well, so it doesn’t show.  So, I was able to budget money for more home improvements, the full $1500 of the medical deductible, the rest of the $2500 in medical bills and even have room for an iPhone bill and another car pmt (small one). – all by the end of April.  In fact, in May, I have a chunk of money that’s no longer going toward those things and is just sitting there looking at me…  So I figured whynot a vacation?

Dh and I have been thinking of going to FL to visit his grandparents so they can see the kids again.  I think it’s been 3 years since they saw them.  But he doesn’t want to go really.  He says he doesn’t want to see them as old and dying…  I think that’s incredibly selfish and I told him so.  But, we may just use the money and get a motel room in Pigeon Forge for a few days and spend all day in Dollywood or the motel pool and playing minigolf or something.  It’s not a lot of money, just about $500, but I think it’ll do for that.    Still undecided on that.

But anyway, none of that will happen if we don’t stick to the budget. I am so horribly bad at sticking to them, but this past week, I did really well.  I didn’t spend anything without checking the budget first, and even noticed, it was DH who kept asking to get this or that even after his allowance was gone.  He *really* needs to deal with taking his lunch and eating that.  He used to rave about what I’d fix him, but sometimes I don’t have the budget to always have fresh veggies for sandwiches and salads or anything but bologna.  And he hates his lunchbag,  he says it’s too big. I think he’s worse that a woman.  But anyway, point is, I didn’t go over budget, though some unexpected things have.  apparently I had signed up for a yearly  credit service thing last Jan and the yearly thing went through.  That sucked.  Even if I call and cancel now, it won’t remove the charge.  Of course last jan was right after we filed for bankruptcy, so I was worried about our credit – which is still in the hole thanks to not being able to pay off credit cards and keep them low.  But that’s another story.

Did I have a point?  Did I make it?  I dunno.  Stick to budget.. that’s gotta be my mantra.  Ok done rambling.  Until next time…

So I had been wondering if I ought to give up trying to remodel this place and just put $2500 of the tax refund down on the 3 bedroom trailer in the other trailer park in town. Not as good a neighborhood and not as big a yard, but newer bigger house, but monthly house payment…

Well, I finally added all of DH’s and mine and the kids’ medical bills we have let go since I could never get around to paying them when I should have, and it all comes to $2545. So, after those are paid, the tax refund will only have about $1800 left, and with paying off cash advances it comes down to $1300 and I promised myself I’d put $1500 in the bank for DH’s medical bills for this year since he has a high deductible now.

This basically means there is no money to move, and there is no money to remodel this place and there is no money to get me a new work laptop, or to get 16 a good used car for school and a job.  I’m less than excited. I am happy we CAN pay these bills and be able to save for this year’s.  I just wish at age 38 we weren’t having to deal with the medical issues of a 60+ yr old.

Hopefully we can get our spending under control and when it warms up, the electric bill will stop being so high, and we can hopefully, maybe start using our “disposable income” to do some of the remodels.  I think I am going to do the front door and living room floors anyway, whether we have it to really spare or not.  I *know* I can’t keep living like this. I really wanted to be able to get those leather club chairs at Target though.  I’m gonna keep my eye out for good stuff at Biglots and see if it goes on sale. If I could just get rid of our trashy furniture and get the new laminate floors down, I think it’ll make a HUGE impact.

So, that’s it for now. Lots more to talk about but don’t feel like it now.  I hope everyone’s doing ok out there.