My goals this weekend and an economic report
To do this weekend:
Post End of the World
Post Love Means Nothing
Post Terminal Velocity
Fix the broken links on my masterlist
Read the two Marvel stories
Read Crucible
Read that seven chapter Heroes story
Rewatch Heroes
Syko
MBU
Edit/sync up MBU 45-47
Transfer phones
Attend cookout
Deal with the last of the laundry
Do house cleaning
D&D or BDSM
No bills, yay!
Take my loose change jar into the bank and cash it out
This has been a rough week for me. My ex and his attorney told me they were going to torpedo the refinance (in many more words than that, including an hour-long mediated face-to-face with my ex where he was the asshole he’s always been). I’ve been scrambling for damage control. It still looks like I’m going to come out on top, but it’s been a battle. My remedy to the situation introduces risk in that it involves paying my ex off in a lump sum, instead of over ten years. Putting that much money in his hands increases his ability to pursue spurious prosecution. To scare up that much money, I have to drain just about every financial resource I have, all the way down to raiding the change jar. But the best news is I'm not having to borrow money from my parents to do it.
The refinance is important not because of some esoteric point about interest rates being at a record low. As things are now, each month I have a mortgage payment, a credit card bill (from my ex), a payment to my ex, and a student loan payment. I can pay all my bills, just barely. There is very little luxury money and no extra for emergencies. I looked at the numbers in August, after the divorce was settled, and decided this just wasn't going to work. With my original calculations, if I refinanced, I could keep paying the same amount on the mortgage and simply eliminate the credit card and student loan bill. Voila! Two bills gone! And I'd be paying one year less on the mortgage. How would you like to just erase $600 or so of bills each month?
After the crappola with my ex, I revisited my numbers, scavenged up cash, and I'll be paying him off instead of the student loan. His amount is more than double the student loan, hence the struggle to find the money. But it's worth it.
In the meantime, my efforts to keep up with even 100 words a day on Syko have failed. Which I feel bad about, but compared to the various other bits of emotional tumult this week, it’s not that big a deal. In good news, I’ve completed three different possible entries to heroes_contest’s Favorite Couple and picked out the one I’ll use as my entry. I thought it was due this week! LOL
In other news … Let’s talk about the economy a little. I don’t have a crystal ball, but I’m a buyer at a large corporation and the communications chair for the local branch of the national association of purchasing managers. This puts me in touch with a lot of people who know what’s really going on in industry. We’re not basing our economic views on what polls and the media tell us - we’re basing it orders placed by customers and what our suppliers tell us about the orders other companies are placing with them. I talk to people managing corporate travel services, refining petroleum, making apple pies for all US McDonald locations, making aircraft or drilling equipment, making frames for solar panels, and buying components for industrial power tools. Plus in my own work, I buy steel and iron castings and forgings. It’s a good cross section of the economy.
Things are dipping again, and fast. It’s part of why I’m working so hard to consolidate my debts. The expectation from those better informed than I is that the economy will continue to nose down, maybe even dive sharply, for the rest of the year. However, the expectation is also that 2013 is going to be a great year and there will be a steady climb after that. The larger global financial situation is nearing a turning point for the better, but that turning point is still months away. Now it’s possible we could get someone in the White House who manages to bungle this. I’m not excluding Obama from that, as he might change his policies. A lot of second term presidents do that. And the Chinese leadership will be changing next month, which will bring about extra turbulence to their ongoing financial meltdown.