watch out for that ditch
So now that I have this wonderful, wonderful bed of softness and happiness…
I keep thinking about getting a bedroom suite. Damn it. I want a headboard, two matching nightstands, and a tall six-drawer bureau. And you know as well as I do that I have no business spending money on furniture right now. Sure the bills are paid – that’s not the point. The only way I can afford furniture is to use the emergency fund or a credit card, and that ain’t happening.
My emergency fund still has to be paid back from when I borrowed $1,000 earlier this month when I was still waiting for my unemployment benefits to start. Mister Ant is going to give me some money when he gets paid, and I can’t pay the e-fund back until then. Shopping seriously for furniture would be nothing less than standing at the very edge of a ditch. In central Virginia, where I’m originally from, sometimes you have to be careful when driving if the road is really narrow, because in the absence of a grated curb system for drainage, there are deep drainage ditches on the sides of the roads instead of sidewalks. If a street is narrow, and you drive too near the edge of the paved road, your car will fall into the ditch and you won’t be able to get it out without calling a truck, and probably a group of Good Samaritans.
I’m not trying to get stuck in a financial ditch ’cause I’m too busy worrying about furniture, when I ought to be working on getting an income that will make buying furniture a financial non-event.
sleepin’ easy
One of the gifts that I received from a friend was a bed. She was replacing her bed and offered me the old one to replace the futon I’ve been sleeping on (which I hate). Mister Ant and I took the “foundation,” which I’m used to calling a boxspring mattress, because we knew it would save us some money and decided to get a new mattress. No one told either of us how expensive mattresses are! Sheesh. We did a lot of comparison shopping and awkwardly laid down on many mattresses. We chose a mattress from a major retailer’s clearance center that seemed like it would give Mister Ant the firm support he needed, but that has enough memory foam to keep me from feeling like I’m sleeping on the floor. We could have bought a less expensive mattress, but we’d just be looking for a more expensive one in two years, like my friend wound up doing. We could have bought a more expensive mattress, but with me bringing in less money, and knowing we have some house maintenance to do this spring, it just didn’t make sense to do so. We did the best we could with what we had. I think we did the right thing. Let’s hope we chose well, ’cause if I’m uncomfortable six months from now I’m going to be one really, really angry ant.
Of course, our futon was full size. Our new bed is a queen. You know what that means – I had to buy a queen size mattress pad and queen sized sheets, all of which are more expensive than their full sized counterparts. I bought those with a 20% off coupon from the inexpensive linens store. Only 250 count, too. Not that yummy 400 count stuff – not yet, anyway. But hey, that’s the size boxspring my friend gave us. And I want a bed big enough for our future toddlers to climb into when the thunderstorms scare them. So queen size it is. It’s a pretty handsome mattress, and we’ll be picking it up from the store that’s around the corner from our house (to save on delivery charges) this week. I cut corners as much as I could, but I just didn’t want the back problems that either of us would get for sleeping on something bad, so a little financial damage was done. Hey, it could have been worse.
same game
When I was employed, the name of the game was maximizing the amount of money I had left over after bills so that I could do something smart with whatever was left over, like save or pay down debt.
I’m on unemployment now, and here I am doing the same thing. I made enough money last year to have a decent sized unemployment benefit paid to me every two weeks. There is actually money left over after the bills are paid. Now, all I want to do is get the extra money into my savings account until I hit my new goal. What a blessing to be able to save now!
changing perspective
I had a goal to have $10,000 in my emergency fund. I created a progress bar that started at $5,000, which was the amount I had at the beginning of 2009 when I bought the house, and ended at the $10,000 goal. Technically, I’ve already surpassed that amount if you count the $7,500 that I received as a Homeowner’s Tax Credit for buying a home last year. What I’ve been most concerned with lately is getting my e-fund back to the $5,000 that it had at the time I bought the house. That amount, combined with the $7,500 would give me a total savings of $12,500. I can live with that for now. It’s over six months of expenses for me. So I am changing my progress bar to amend the goal from $10,000 to $12,500, and I’ll include the $7,500 in my progress amount. As I pay my e-fund back, I’ll get closer to $12,500, and when that happens, I will have met my immediate goal.
However, that will by no means be the end of my saving. The $7,500 is called a tax credit, but it still has to be paid back to the IRS, starting two years from now. I feel okay with that because as long as I don’t blow the money, this is a secured debt, meaning that I have the money itself as collateral – kinda like how a car loan is secured debt because the value of the car secures the loan. If worse comes to worst, if a car loan can’t be paid when it’s due, the car can be taken to clear the debt. Same thing with the $7,500 sitting in my savings account. Provided that I leave the money in an account to gain interest per my plan, when the IRS wants their money, I can use the money they gave me to pay them back. (Theoretically. The IRS wants their money in payroll deductions over the next fifteen years. I have no intention of having a debt hang over my head for fifteen years, but this is off-topic and for another post.) My point is that if something were to happen, and I had to run through my $12,500 savings, cutting into what the IRS lent me, all or part of my debt to them would no longer be secured. Spending that money would change the situation so that I would have to come up with the money the IRS is owed.
It’s just like putting something on a credit card that you don’t have the money for and hoping you’ll have the money to pay it back later. Most people who’ve ever had to pay a minimum balance know how dangerous that can be.
This is why I won’t stop saving when I reach my $12,500 goal. I want to have as much money in my savings as possible. However, my primary focus will switch to debt reduction when I reach that goal. I just can’t stand to have that student loan and car loan debt hanging around – it must go! So that’s why my progress bar for the e-fund looks different.
so far
So far things are looking well. I got some more free furniture over the weekend. One piece was from a friend who got some new furniture and thought of me before disposing of the old. The other piece is a family piece that belonged to my grandmother. It will probably have to be stripped and stained – it’s wooden, and the paint is peeling a bit. Plus, the current finish is quite dated. But it has really emotional and nostalgic significance for me, and I’m really glad to have it in my home. I had to rent a van to move the furniture, but getting the furniture was worth the rental cost. The only other spending I’ve done was to buy a little stuffed animal for Sistah Butterfly’s first baby, who was born last week. So far, my money’s not looking funny, my change ain’t acting strange, and I’m on my way to paying back my emergency fund.
now it feels like spring
Can you believe I had to blink, twice, to confirm that my unemployment benefits were actually sitting in my bank account yesterday? Whew. I paid all my remaining bills for the month and the beginning of April, except the mortgage, which I’ll take care of when I get my next check.
And I’m not sure what it was that happened, the recent bit of warm weather, or maybe the realization that I really haven’t had company yet, but I finally got my second whirlwind when it comes to the house. I still have about five or six unpacked boxes (I’ve been saving pictures and knick knacks for last) and quite a few more other things to get to. I’ve changed my mind on my bedroom color so many times I’ve lost count, so I still haven’t painted it. I’ve got some sorting to do in my office. And without even getting to my furniture wish list, there are some inexpensive finishing touches I want to pick up – a couple kitchen mats, small lamps, throw pillows, a table runner, some candles… Mister Ant and I have discussed going forward and we will do what’s within our financial reach. Now I have something to distract me when each day’s job hunting is done.
am i nuts?
I already have plans for my new income as soon as I start getting it. I have to replenish and grow my e-fund, I have my pre-existing debt replacement rePAYment (what was I thinking?!?) goals – these things are no brainers. But other than that, there are decorating things I’ve finally figured out about the house. I’m starting to figure out how I want to execute this wedding thing, so I can make a more definitive goal for my wedding savings. And I have to get out of Philly, too – another location, another place to sleep. I love this house, but I didn’t anticipate spending so much time here, LOL! It’s like I’m shopping with money I don’t have. Am I nuts? At least it is motivating me not to give up on the job search…
consistency
Can’t find the job if you don’t look for it constantly and consistently. If I do nothing else every day, it will be to look for my job.
Also, I paid off that Visa balance that had the plumbing job on it. There were some other things there, too: a dentist’s fee, a bus token fee… I’m glad it’s paid. I hate having credit card debt. I didn’t pay it by the end of last month, but I did pay it before the bill was due – before any interest was charged. One thing that I am adamant about is not giving any credit card companies any more interest payments. It would take a really, really bad situation for me to do that. Carrying credit card debt is just another one of those slippery slopes that ultimately threatens your ability to save, which in my book is financial commandment numero uno. Thou Shalt Save.
i o me
I owe myself money. I borrowed it from the e-fund. I hate doing that – it can be a slippery slope, where you just keep borrowing from your savings, intending to replace it… and then it doesn’t get replaced. Or you stop contributing to your savings, intending to do a big catch-up deposit later… and then the catch-up deposit doesn’t happen. But an Ant’s gotta do what an Ant’s gotta do. I still have not received any unemployment benefits, and in the meantime, a sistah’s got bills. So I paid bills so that they would be paid on time. By my calculations, I should be able to pay my savings back about 75% of the money I took by the end of the month. If no emergency happens. If unemployment finally starts kicking in.
This is why I hate payday loan places. People use them, hoping to get past a rough money spot, figuring that they’ll be able to pay the money back when their ship comes in – someone owes them money, or they plan to have another paycheck – something like that. But they can’t guarantee that ship will come in, any more than I can guarantee my unemployment benefits will show up. Difference between me and someone who has gone to the payday loan place is that I am borrowing from myself. The only interest I have to be worried about is losing interest that would be paid to me on my deposits. The poor payday loan borrower owes more and more interest with every tick of the clock – so much interest that by the time that person who owes them money pays, the money they get from them isn’t enough to pay the payday loan in full so the borrower is still in the hole.
I am so so so so SO glad I have a savings! People save your money! I don’t want you to have to need it – I just want you to have it in case you ever do.
it’s the thought
For Mister Ant’s birthday, I did get him a gadget he wanted. I couldn’t afford it, but he’d received a monetary gift from someone else, so we used it to make up the difference between what I could afford and how much it cost. But since he got his gift early, I also fixed some of his favorite foods for dinner, which he really appreciated.
