Added up the bills yesterday. That’s always a thrill a minute! The cost of pulling out the hated devil-pod tree, replacing it with four new plants, blocking off the dug-up muddy area with wire fencing so Charley can’t excavate everything, repairing the damage done to Harvey the Hayward Pool Cleaner by the tree’s last blast of gunky pollen, and while we were at it having Gerardo pull out a couple of ugglified superannuated plants in front and replacing those ran me over $600 into the hole.
🙁
Luckily, there’s some $1700 in the short-term emergency fund, so I’ll still have a thousand bucks to keep the car running or fix the plumbing or deal with whatever damnfool thing happens next.
Ran all these bills up on the AMEX credit card, which gives me a kickback once a year. A single big-ticket item can make that little bonus add up to $400 or $600, which is nice. Usually, though, I just think of it as ultimately cutting the cost of gasoline by a few percentage points. Doesn’t help at the gas pump, but when the money comes in, it goes right straight back into the survival fund, extending the time I can live on post-tax savings as long as possible.
Of course, the kickback come-on would avail you naught if you didn’t pay off your credit card every month. Obviously, having some lender give you two cents back for every five bucks you have to cough up in interest is, shall we say, not in your interest. However, if you’re in the habit of paying your bills every month, it’s an easy way to pick up some free money.
Other kinds of cards might work to your advantage if you always run a tab or are trying to pay down existing debt so you can get in the habit of paying in full—a zero percent card, for example, would be useful in either of those instances. Depending on your needs, it’s crucial to shop around for the best credit card deals. The last time I got peeved at Chase, I checked into a number of options for the S-corporation’s card before finally deciding that Costco’s AMEX card was the best choice for the business as well as for the personal card—interestingly, they’ll issue a corporate card in addition to a personal card, even if your personal card is associated with the so-called “business” membership.
At any rate, the yard should start to look pretty good once it warms up. Amazingly, the big cocoa-red rose that guards my office window survived last summer’s unholy heat (only two others in front made it through). I decided not to prune it back this winter because it suffered so violently–give it a chance to rest. But some fertilizer and water produced this:
To help drive myself into bankruptcy, I hired Gerardo and his sidekick to hack out two overgrown and shabby-looking plants on the front patio, pull up a root from the deceased tree that once again was heaving the brick pavement in back, help me wrestle with pool equipment, and generally clean up the Funny Farm. They came trotting right over at my electronic beck, and the job was godawful, so as usual when he does a lot of extra work for me, I paid him a chunk of extra money. He replaced one of the uglies with a Texas yellowbell, which is already in bloom:
Charley decided an overgrown, invasive wad of bunch grass growing in the front courtyard made a nice mattress. He probably did find the highest and best use of that plant…but if it was tired-looking before, it was fully uglified by the time he rolled in it a few times. Running low on money, I asked Gerardo to try planting a yellow bird of paradise that had volunteered in a pot, where it’s never done well:
It looks pretty peakèd here, but it’s a hot-weather plant. If it survives, it should fill out when summer gets here. May even bloom. They have a spectacular flower, and they have the strange habit of tossing their seed pods into the air with a funny POP sound.
Come evening, Charley sits by the front door or out in the courtyard waiting for M’hijito to get off work and come pick him up. He stares at every passing car, in hopes that the next one will be His Human’s.
And when at last the Human gets here, we have an explosion of doggy joy…
Mare’s tails riding ahead of a storm system made for a gaudy sunset last night. A friend who lives about 35 miles from the Reno wildfire says they’re hoping for enough rain to douse the flames.
And so it goes.
Loved loved loved the music!
Blog and pictures were good too-nice to see a picture of your son.
Your son is so cute!
Yeah-I have an Amex rebate card also (not Costco, as there is no Costco here) and it IS a thrill to get that rebate. If I ever had a balance, I’d stick with a credit union card.
Here’s one thought — and it’s not without its cons, for sure. Have you thought about checking into hiring students to do some of your work? Not current ones, of course, as that’s a thorny ethical situation. But here, we have an office of student employment that matches students with short term/one off jobs doing things like yardwork, etc. I don’t want to put Gerardo out of work, but would it be worth looking into what the university might offer in terms of cheaper labor? Just a thought.
On another train of thought, this reminds me that I’ve been thinking about preparing for Spring here for the first time. I always have a budget blowout when it comes to Spring planting; it’s unanticipated, but it shouldn’t be, as I’m always swayed by a hydrangea or cheap bulbs or any other number of things. I do this every Spring, so I really should start planning for it. One way I’m trying to have my cake and eat it too is by going to seed and plants swaps this year, hoping that will take a bit of the pinch out of my budget.
Charley is getting bigger.
Hope some one is teaching him to sit, stay and behave on a leash.
On the other paw, when ever you think you are getting ahead with your income vs outcome there is always something that puts a stick in your spokes.
The Mrs. just had an abscessed tooth. Root canal and crown $1400.
Then she found a place in Lost Vegas (my name for that city) that would pull all her teeth an give her dentures for $2500.
Now I have had 6 crowns and a couple more root canals in my life and I’m not even going to total up the thousands of dollars in other dental bills over the decades.
I voted to pull them all and get some new teeth you can dunk into a jar at nite to keep them clean.
I’m next. I have my mothers teeth and she lost hers when she was only 50 years old.
On spring planting. Only plant stuff you can eat later and there is a reason for that.
Our government is like Wimpy, “I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today”.
@ Budget Glamorous: Yeah, I have thought of that. Gerardo’s regular monthly bill is probably less than a student would charge — just $75 for him and one or two underlings. And he’ll do things like run over here when I call him up and say “will you move this freezer? will you come dig a hole? will you…will you…will you?” He’s truly a gem.
Spring is about to sproing here, too. I always fall into a gardening frenzy as the plants start to bloom. This year the seeds I planted last fall are starting to grow, and because we’ve had a very mild winter, the bougainvilleas are still alive. I probably won’t do much this spring, because what’s already in the ground should bound to life with a vengeance.
@ frugalscholar: My son feels the same way about getting photographed as I do. We both evade it as much as possible.
@ George: Yes, he’s incredible with sit, down, and a number of other commands. Pretty assertive on a leash, though. My son is taking him to obedience training classes, and lately we discovered that the deceased Ger-shep’s old Halti actually WORKS on this dog. (Anna the Ger-shep would simply take it off…apparently goldens aren’t bright enough to figure that one out.) He hates it, but with enough encouragement and fistfuls of treats, he’ll hell right along without a bit of dragging.