I’ve Paid For This Twice Already…

Archive for the ‘musings’ Category

Late last night, continuing into this morning, we have had an ice storm here.  School was cancelled, so my son is missing his holiday party at school.  Boo hoo.  But back to the storm.

We have several big trees on our property.  Our homeowners association actually has written into their bylaws that each house must have two trees over ten feet in height.  Judging by our neighbors, I don’t think the bylaws are actually really enforced anymore (another bylaw is no fence over 4 feet high and there are three neighbors in sight with fences much taller than that) but our house does indeed have the required tall trees.   One of said trees is pretty close to our house, and about 30 feet taller than our house (which is a two story).

That tree lost a limb this morning from the weight of all the ice, and scraped our house on the way down.  There seems to be no damage to our house, thankfully, but where this limb broke off of a larger limb still on the tree is bowed over, and looks as if it might be coming down too.  And if it does, it may smack our house just a little harder than its smaller counterpart.

It is an odd feeling – I look out the window and ponder what might be about to happen to the house.  Once my spouse gets home tonight, we will have to figure out if we want to try and pull the limb down in a more controlled manner than it finally breaking off would be.  If we think we can.  We plan to leave early tomorrow morning and be gone for a week to visit family, and I know I don’t want to leave with a half-broken limb hanging down next to the house.   I don’t think when you ask neighbors to keep an eye on your house when you’re gone, it includes fixing broken parts of house caused by big tree limbs.

I remember being up at night waiting for the other financial shoe to drop.  Now I’m waiting for a tree instead.  Ah, the joys of owning a home.

We’ll be traveling over the next week and depending on my internet connection availability, posting will be somewhat sporadic.  Have a wonderful holiday and I’ll try to provide some food for thought as we head into the new year.  Keep the credit cards away from the stores!  And have a lovely holiday.

Last April, our 20+ year old furnace called it quits.  The cost of the repairs to get it running again were estimated at about 1/2 to 3/4ths the cost of an entirely new furnace, so we decided to replace the furnace instead of making very costly repairs and hoping nothing else went wrong in a furnace already past its estimated life span.  A nice side benefit to replacing the furnace is that the models now are significantly more energy efficient than they were twenty years ago.  Something also true of our refrigerator, which is approaching its 24th birthday.  But I digress…

So weirdly enough, this month I was actually looking forward to getting my natural gas bill.  This past month was the first month that it has been cold enough outside to run the furnace a significant portion of the time, so it would be the first time I could compare last year’s usage to this year’s in any meaningful way.  I can’t directly compare dollar amounts, for the price of natural gas here has gone up 25% since last year.  Ugh.  And, it has been colder this past November than it was in November 2007, by an average of about 6 degrees.  But still, I could make some comparisons.

And when we got the bill, not only was it $50 higher than last year at this time, our usage of natural gas was about 10% more than last year.

I was livid.  I was angry.  I was so irritated with myself and with the new furnace and with life in general.  And then I noticed that for the first time since we moved into this house, the code by the reading of the meter for the beginning of December said “E” instead of “A”.   E = estimated.  A = actual.  So noone actually came and read our meter, they made an estimation based on past usage.  And checking the meter myself, their estimation was at least 25% off of what it would have been if they read the meter.  I’m not sure exactly how far off since I read the meter the day I got the bill, not the day they made their estimation.  But still – not our actual usage.

I could call and correct it, but since this is the first estimated reading they have done in two years, I am reasonably sure they will do an actual reading next month and the over-estimation will balance out with a lower bill in January.   I’m just glad I noticed before I got even more irritated.

I live in the midwest.  Not in Detroit, but close enough that the auto industry is a large proportion of jobs in my area.  Neither my spouse or I have direct employment through the auto industry, but our local economy is definitely affected by it.

My dad is an inventory manager for several auto dealerships (part of a chain) on the east coast.  The biggest dealership he manages is a Chevrolet one.

So my life, or the lives of my family and friends, is going to be directly affected by if the auto industry gets a bailout from the government or not.  Therefore, I am not at all an unbiased bystander.  I do believe in the idea of a free market, and that if a company cannot compete, then it deserves to face the consequences of not competing.  However, that doesn’t mean I’m not scared all the same.  Last night, the Senate failed to reach an agreement on the automaker’s bailout. I have very mixed and conflicting feelings.  As I said, intellectually I believe that the auto makers should face the consequences of not being able to compete.  (I felt that way about the financial industry too, but they got a bailout just the same).  But at the same time, I’m feeling very scared.  What is going to happen to our local economy?  What is going to happen to my dad?  What’s going to happen to my spouse’s employment (again, his is not auto-related but it is local, here, in the midwest)?

Only time will tell.  It seems the news changes every day.  All we can do, I think, right now, is try to prepare ourselves as best we can for an uncertain future by spending less, saving more, and trying to earn more.

Or you can be my spouse, who took his fun money for the year and deposited it into our Sharebuilder account.  He is buying GM stock.   He has faith they won’t completely disappear.  And, if they do, he doesn’t have much fun money anyway.

As this year comes to a close and 2009 looms, it has made me a bit introspective.  Thinking about where I’ve been, looking to where I’m going, and analyzing where I am right now.

I realized that because I spend a lot of time online thinking about and talking about debt, I forget that I’m not in the same position I was in to begin with.  When I started this blog, we had over $36,000 in non-mortgage debt, but more significantly (for my frame of mind) we had a pile (to me) of credit card debt.  I think by the time I actually started this blog, it was down from its high of $12000 to somewhere between $7000 and $8000.  For some, not a huge total but for us at the time, it felt almost insurmountable.

Credit card debt was, for me, a really oppressive force in my life.  It almost felt like a living, breathing thing that hung over me and had an effect on every decision I made.

And now, being free of credit card debt for about 10 months, it is a joyous yet really odd feeling.  On the one hand, it feels like it has been such a long time since we tackled that debt.  So many things have happened since then, and so many other debts have been tackled.  Our total debt is less than a third of what it was back then.   But at the same time, I still really identify with having credit card debt, being in credit card debt, and having that yoke around my neck.  When I read stories about consumers struggling with their credit card debt, I almost forget that that isn’t us any more, that that is a struggle we’ve passed and moved on from.  When I read about people feeling trapped by their credit card debt, it still resonates with me.  When people with credit card debt are demonized, still I feel that sting too.

Right now, even though we are not in credit card debt, we’re not financially prepared to handle any crisis without looking at options of credit.  We have only a small line of direct defense, the $1000 emergency fund, to protect us.  So even though we’ve escaped, we have only won the battle, not the war.  Yet.  Soon, maybe.  But not quite yet.

As time goes by, and we build a safety net that does not, in any way, include credit cards, I think I will start to let that feeling of being in credit card debt go a little more.  But I don’t know that I will ever completely lose that feeling, that identification, that little reminder.  And I don’t think that is really a bad thing.  Sometimes we do learn from our past.  Hopefully, with a lot of hard work and a little bit of luck thrown in, that means we aren’t doomed to repeat it.

On Saturday, my morning was a comedy of  small errors that eventually led to my first visit to Starbucks in about a year (and the last one before that was totally free with a gift card).  I stupidly overslept (just a little) and spent the rest of the morning rushing around trying to catch those lost 15 minutes from my day.  I had demo team practice at the taekwondo school farthest from my house, and the weather outside looked snowy so I needed extra time.  And then I completely forgot that my spouse doesn’t make coffee on the weekends so when I went downstairs to fill my travel mug on the way out the door, the pristine and empty coffee maker mocked me.

So I told my small but present caffeine addiction to be quiet and left the house so I wouldn’t be late.  You do not show up late to taekwondo activities.  You just don’t.

But although the roads were very snowy in my neighborhood, the rest of the way (on main roads) was completely cleared.  So I ended up getting to the town the taekwondo studio is in 15 minutes earlier than I anticipated.  And about two blocks down the street is a Starbucks.  My coffee craving perked up a bit, and I decided to get a latte for me and for the demo team captain.  Call me a suck up.  I’m good at excuses for coffee.

The last time I’d been to Starbucks (drive through) it was terribly crowded and I had to wait forever.  I was never a frequent Starbucks customer, but until about two years ago would stop for a latte once a month or maybe every few months.  And it was always crowded.  I always had to wait.  But not this morning.  I pulled right up to the drive through, ordered, and had to wait about 20 seconds behind the car in front of me picking up their order before I pulled up to the window and got my lattes.

I know Starbucks is closing stores (although none, so far, of the closed stores are in my area) and my experience this weekend makes me wonder if indeed, the “latte factor” really is an indicator of consumer financial health.  When people feel they have a lot of money, do they spend more at Starbucks?  Is spending on fancy coffee the first thing to go when consumers feel the pinch?

I did enjoy my latte (which, by the way, was Gingersnap) but Starbucks will remain a very occasional coffee stop for me.  And next demo team practice, I shall have to hit snooze less, and brew my own coffee.  Or get my spouse to get up on Saturdays too.  I’m still in debt destruction mode.  And I enjoy watching my student loan balance shrink more than I enjoy a weekend latte.