The downside of major home repair.
Our roof, the final project on our list of big home repair/replacement items from November, is being redone tomorrow, with a new garage door coming on Tuesday (this needed to be done; you could see daylight through some of the non-window panels). We have the money for it, but it'll nearly tap us out. Then, right after that, it's tax time. Normally, I would have already filed, but this year we owe more than we're getting back, so I'm in no hurry. We're going to be tightening our belts in the Barr household for the next 6 weeks or so. Actually, only the next 3 weeks, and then we can loosen them a little bit.
Fortunately, Lent is going hand-in-hand with the belt-tightening. I'm giving up console and computer gaming until Easter, save for Sundays (when we are supposed to indulge in what we're abstaining from), and since it doesn't make sense to pay for roughly two months for 6 afternoons of gametime, I cancelled my WoW account. I'll be renewing it on Easter, but it'll still save me $30 in the interim. I'll probably cancel the auto-renewal on my Xbox Live Gold account as well. I've also stopped going out for my weekly lunches with kbrighton until we turn around (maybe in mid-March, definitely by April). I don't know if we're going to hit the point where I need to sell off possessions - we're only going to hit a momentary dry spell - but that option remains (not that I have much to sell that anyone would want). I've got a couple of emergency fallbacks as well - nothing huge, but enough to get us something if we absolutely need it. I have faith that we'll be okay, though; we've had tough times before, and God's looked out for us and provided in one way or another. Doesn't mean that it won't be tighter than I like, but I know we'll get through it.
And of course, as I was calculating the budget, the knee of one of my good pairs of slacks for work blew out in either the washer or dryer - a straight-line tear right across the right knee. Wonderful. I've got enough other pants to get me by, but it will need replacing. Oh well.
Fortunately, Lent is going hand-in-hand with the belt-tightening. I'm giving up console and computer gaming until Easter, save for Sundays (when we are supposed to indulge in what we're abstaining from), and since it doesn't make sense to pay for roughly two months for 6 afternoons of gametime, I cancelled my WoW account. I'll be renewing it on Easter, but it'll still save me $30 in the interim. I'll probably cancel the auto-renewal on my Xbox Live Gold account as well. I've also stopped going out for my weekly lunches with kbrighton until we turn around (maybe in mid-March, definitely by April). I don't know if we're going to hit the point where I need to sell off possessions - we're only going to hit a momentary dry spell - but that option remains (not that I have much to sell that anyone would want). I've got a couple of emergency fallbacks as well - nothing huge, but enough to get us something if we absolutely need it. I have faith that we'll be okay, though; we've had tough times before, and God's looked out for us and provided in one way or another. Doesn't mean that it won't be tighter than I like, but I know we'll get through it.
And of course, as I was calculating the budget, the knee of one of my good pairs of slacks for work blew out in either the washer or dryer - a straight-line tear right across the right knee. Wonderful. I've got enough other pants to get me by, but it will need replacing. Oh well.