Coffee heat rising

Budgeting

Budget Redux

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{sigh} I’m supposed to be working (still!) but can’t stand another minute of it and so instead have decided to abandon my livelihood in favor of blogging. For the moment.

PF Topic of the Day: revisiting the budgeting scheme I abandoned in 20-and-aught-14. Holy mackerel, what a Year from Hell! In more ways than one: financial fiasco and healthcare fiasco proceeded hand-in-hand.

Well before a hyper-sensitive mammogram’s little discovery of an alleged one-centimeter lesion — the one that sucked me into an inescapable vortex leading to a double mastectomy for “not a cancer” — the large unplanned expenses began. Yea verily: they started in January, with surprise pool bills, plumbing bills, car repair bills, and on and on and on… Once the health-care fiasco began, I just flat gave up.

What, after all, was the point of even trying to track one crazy expense after another, let alone trying to keep them under control, when even the Mayo Clinic with all its considerable corporate power could not begin to tell me what I really owed them? They still do not know. Neither do I.

It’ll be months before enough dust settles to figure out what, after Medicare and Medigap payments, I actually have to pay toward the $60,000 or $70,000 worth of medical misadventures.

Meanwhile, I’ve gotta get back on track. So, I’ve revived the system to track monthly discretionary and nondiscretionary expenditures, in an effort to keep the discretionary spending under $1200 a month. The current iteration is slightly less onerous than previous versions: in Excel, I’m not noting the vendors that absorb my livelihood, that intelligence, after all, being redundant with the data recorded in QuickBooks. All the new tracking system shows is each expenditure and the running total.

Budget 1 2015

Last month I did pretty well: only $955 in discretionary expenditures — well under budget! — and $74 in extra water charged up by draining and refilling the pool. Not bad. This happened because I was flat on my back in bed most of the month.

As for February? Welll…..we seem to be making up for lost time.

Budget 2 2015

Extraordinary expenses are freaking through the roof: $65 to the yard dude for service above and beyond the call of duty at my son’s house; $136 to get my teeth cleaned; $307 to clean the pool filter and repair a part the disgraced Pool Dude probably broke.  Holy shit: we started out $507 into a budget of $1200 (which we’d like to keep down to $1100 if at all possible)! It’s gone downhill from there.

With $507 of extraordinary expenses and $734 of normal discretionary expenses, I’m already more than $40 in the hole: and 16 days remain to go in the discretionary budget cycle. By the end of February, mercifully a short month, I am going to be deep, deep in the red.

As yet no paycheck from Heavenly Gardens Community College, even though we’re into the third week of the semester. The joys of adjunct teaching.

Yesterday I bought gasoline, probably enough to last until the new AMEX cycle kicks in (not shown in these figures…). But clearly I can’t do without at least one or two grocery store runs between now and the end of the month. And we’re running low on dog food: that means I’ll have to go into Costco to pick up more large packages of chicken or pork to make new food, which I believe to be healthier for the dogs and cheaper than the closest commercial approximation of Real Food for dogs.

I’d planned to make one, count it (1) Costco run per month, limiting the $200 trips to that Emporium of Impulse Buys, but if that is to happen, I’ll have to buy twice as much dog-food meat per trip as I’ve been accustomed to purchasing at any given time. Even this, though, may prove cost-effective: every time I go into Costco, I come out with my bank account several times lighter than expected. In any given month, the fewer C0stco visits, the closer I come to ending on budget. So, even if I buy more of X product category in a given trip, stocking up on enough to head off a second trip that month will save money.

This month’s utility bills have yet to come in, of course, it being only the seventh. But in a February, power and water bills should both be fairly low, well under the $660 nondiscretionary budget. So with any luck the total discretionary + nondiscretionary should not exceed the total planned $1860 by very much. I hope.

But…the only way to keep within this limit, as the weather grows hotter and utility bills bloat accordingly, will be to keep a grip on grocery bills and the various nasty little surprises.

$1,860, by the way, is about $660 more than Social Security pays. Social Security is my only consistently reliable income source, adjunct teaching being the joke that it is.

Not good, is it?

How to Save Money: Get Sick!

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Heeee! The AMEX bill, which regularly exceeds $1200 (that’s in a good month…), came in at a piddling $955.02.

Hot diggety! I don’t remember when I’ve seen a bill for discretionary expenses under a thousand bucks. And how did this magical event occur?

Simple: being flat on my back half the month kept me out of my car! Not riding around in a car every day or two meant not going into stores. And what can you NOT do when you stay out of stores? Yup…NOT spend money.

Most to the point, I think, it kept  me out of Costco, where I can drop two hundred bucks without blinking an eye. Interestingly, that $955 included stocking up on expensive commercial dog food — I’m sure I spent at least a hundred bucks, trying to stash enough to last until I would feel like making real food for the pooches again, which I figured would be about a month after the surgical fact. It also included stocking up on food for myself: the chicken and the lamb shanks I prepared and froze, for example. And, come to think of it, a major wine run: at Total Wine I bought enough cheap, low-alcohol wine to last for the rest of my life.

Speaking of the which, I finally found not one but two reds that are more than respectable as table wines despite a fairly low alcohol content:

Château Bois Redon Bordeau Supérieur. 2012. Alcohol content: 13%, right on the upper border of acceptable. Flavor and bouquet are excellent. It’s a blend of 75% Merlot and 25% Cabernet Sauvignon. This stuff, while not expensive, does not normally fall into the “dirt cheap” range we covet. Total Wine has it on sale just now — I got it for around ten bucks, definitely worth the price.

Bellini Toscana Sangiovese. 2013. Alcohol content 12.5%, a little high but still better than any California reds you’ll see on the market. I also found this wine made a very nice accompaniment to steak, and later to some cheese and fruit. Got it for under ten dollah.

Red wines do not  benefit from lower wine content — in terms of palatibility, that is. However, these two specimens show it’s possible to make a decent red with less than 14% alcohol content.

Right now I have another sangiovese open: Pietro Sangiovese di Toscana. 2013. Its alcohol content is also 12.5%. I’d rate it as good enough for government work: not the greatest wine that ever came out of the cask, but an adequate table wine. It was very cheap: well under ten bucks.

For all around light swiggling, I continue to favor the Gazela vinho verde, a Portuguese white wine with an alcohol content of just 9%.  Sometimes this stuff can be slightly effervescent. It’s always light and crisp  — perfect for a warm day. Can’t wait till the weather gets hot: this will be the drink of choice for an Arizona summer afternoon.

So okay. Back to the subject at hand: the automobile and its influence on the average American’s finances. To wit: mine.

I decided to junk the scheme to buy a new vehicle and instead try to keep the Dog Chariot running for another 20,000 miles. So, the clunk is down at Chuck’s as we scribble, getting a new set of brake drums. Reasons for that decision:

1. I have NO clue how much the Adventures in Medical Science will end up costing me, and neither, it develops, does anyone at the Mayo. They just do not know, so complicated is our ludicrous pushmi-pullyu healthcare system. The only way to find out will be to wait until the last of the Medicare and Medigap payments come in and then pay whatever remains on the Mayo’s books. Though I’m told I may be able to negotiate that amount down, I figure it’s likely to come to four or five grand. That will bite into the car-buying budget… And not knowing to what effect, I think that’s one cliff I’d just as soon not jump off right this minute.

2. The five hundred bucks it’s going to cost to fix the brakes and the current oil leak? That’s a far cry from 26 or 30 grand for a new car! Why should I spend that kind of money while I still have a functional vehicle? One excuse I like to trot out, by way of justifying the scheme to buy a new car, is that I don’t trust the Chariot to drive around on day trips. But…hey…for 30 grand I could rent an awful lot of nice cars to bucket around the state!

3. I’m hardly driving the car anymore. Commuting to campus was the main mileage-burner for that crate. And now that all my courses are online, that cuts out three or four 20-mile trips a week. And while I was convalescing from the surgery, I think I made all of one (count it, 1) trip — down to the church — in more than two weeks.

That happened because I had stocked in food and household necessaries carefully, in preparation for what I expected would be a prolonged incapacitation. Once all that stuff was in the house and in the freezer, I didn’t really have to go anywhere. So I’m thinking I need to make that a regular habit: each month figure out what will be needed for the next 30 days, and avoid jumping in the car at short notice to run down to Costco or Safeway, both of them sinks of impulse buys. I think a lot of the overspending happens because I drive out whenever I think I want something rather than planning what I’ll need and restricting purchases, as much as possible, to trips dedicated to laying in what’s really needed.

4. In 2016 —  just another year or 18 months — the lightrail route that will come right past the ’hood will finally open. If the car runs another 20,000 miles, it should operate handily for two years…perfect.

I dislike riding public transportation, particularly when it passes through an area lined with dangerous slum apartments that house not only thugs and hoodlums but people who are crazy as loons and make pests of themselves. However…

• Now that I’m old, I can get a monthly cut-rate pass. It surely does cost a lot more than gasoline…but the longer it staves off having to lay down 30 grand for a new car, the more money it saves me.

• That lightrail line will go past a Sprouts (which I will shop in), an Albertson’s (don’t shop there; but Albertson’s has changed hands and so that store might be improved), a Fry’s (also probably a little too dangerous to shop there), a Target, a Costco, and (lo!!) the beloved AJ’s at Central and Camelback. With a motorized cart (which they’re required to let you take on the train!), I could in theory get a great deal of shopping done without ever burning an ounce of my own gasoline.

• And, also in theory, I could ride the train down to Maryland and walk a mile and a half to the church. That would give me three miles of walking each Sunday — wouldn’t dream of doing it at night, because that would be insensately unsafe). But at this time of year it would be easy and pleasant.

5. In 2016, I will be required to take a required minimum distribution from my big IRA. That could easily be as much as the proposed car would cost. Thus the car could double my taxable drawdown in 2015. And that does, decidedly, not sound like a very cheerful prospect. If I rent a car for day trips or longer junkets around the Southwest and use public transit for routine shopping, the Dog Chariot’s projected driving lifetime of 20,000 miles could last even more than two years. Possibly a lot more than two years. If, say, the vehicle didn’t have to be replaced for another four years, then I myself would have (at that point) a projected driving lifetime of about six or eight years. And then it would actually make sense to buy a used car that would tide me over to the end of my driving days, for a lot less than going out today and buying a new car that would run dependably until I’m 80 or so.

NEWS FLASH! Chuck just called to say the brake drums will only cost about $260, a far cry from his estimate of $500 a couple of months ago. He must be feeling sorry for me. 😉

He does have to figure out where the oil leak is and fix that. But I’ll betcha the whole job comes in at less than five hundred bucks.

 

Finances: 2014 Debacle; 2015 Budget

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I just reviewed the shambles that is my 2014 finances, by way of designing a new budget for 2015.

My God. Things were going to Hell on a skateboard, that much was obvious. Last year I gave up tracking every teensy little expenditure in Excel. That hair-tearing task was making me crazy. Result: I knew a lot of extraordinary expenses were happening, but I had no idea how HUGE those expenses were.

Nor did I realize how overbudgeted I was (luckily) for 2014. Last January I drew down $13,000 from savings and then broke even on December 31. But absent the brain-banging number and size of unplanned expenses, I really would have needed only about $3300 from savings.

Between the recurring urinary tract infections and the outrageous amount I was charged to spay her, Ruby’s first year casa mia cost me $2,726.51.

I got ripped off several times by household repair providers: by a plumbing company, an air-conditioning company, and a pool company. If you live in the Phoenix area, I suggest you avoid Lawson Family Plumbing, Premier Air Conditioning, and Love Pools. The total gouge there came to about $500.

Uncharacteristically, this year I decided to make some charitable contributions. That figure, which would normally be close to nil,  came to $764.48. This would have been fine if it hadn’t been for all the OTHER outrageous costs, which included $680 for tree trimming (which needs to be done again, in a big way), $600 for eyewear, another $385 to the Mayo, and about $2500 for a table I figured I could afford.

In fact, I could afford the table handily…under normal conditions. But 2014 was far from normal! I was getting hammered from all directions. All told, total extraordinary expenses came to $9723.26!

This year I have to get a grip on expenses, so it’s back to the month-by-month expense tracking drudgery. I can hold the ordinary discretionary expenses down, but I can’t imagine what I’m supposed to do about things over which I have no control. Obviously, I didn’t need to buy the table, nor did I need to buy a puppy. And I certainly don’t need to contribute money to the church, considering that I have no credible source of income other than raiding savings.

On the other hand, I had no way of predicting that Ruby would get sick….again and again and again. I can’t do without functioning glasses — I couldn’t see to drive through the pair I had. The cancer scare was not something that came to me by choice. It was a good thing I had the trees thinned before last summer’s windstorm roared through here and ripped down trees all over the ’hood. Keeping the car running wasn’t cheap, but repairs and maintenance were a damn sight cheaper than 30 grand for a new Sienna.

In 2015 we are not drawing down from investments until December, when I’ll be forced by federal law to take money out of the big IRA. With any luck, though, most of that will simply be rolled into the taxable Fidelity account and reinvested. I had a cushion of $11,000 in the bank, and, since I broke even on last January’s drawdown, that amount remains intact. We’re hoping I can make it through to the end of 2014 on that plus teaching income plus Social Security. And if somehow I manage to dodge the hammer this year, that may happen.

Based on 2014 figures, average monthly nondiscretionary costs come to about $657. That’s counting the housekeeper and the lawn guy as fixed monthly expenses.

NondiscretionaryI allow about $1200 for monthly discretionary spending, which includes everything from groceries and dog food to those nasty surprise expenses. Sometimes I can keep it to under $1100, but not often.

Total net funds available to cover living expenses in 2015 come to $30,269, after taxes & insurance are paid. The resulting budget looks like this:

2015BudgetI think that’s highly optimistic, because you can be sure at least some unplanned expenses will come along to clean out those apparently left-over funds. For one thing, I’d be very surprised if a thousand dollars will suffice to keep the dog chariot running this year.

I’ve decided, by the way, to keep the Dog Chariot for another 20,000 miles, if it can be made to operate that long. In 2015 I’ll need to keep careful tabs on business vs personal mileage. There’s an outside chance that, what with the SBA meetings and the junkets to meet clients and subcontractors, I might be putting half or more of my mileage on business trips.

AND there’s a far outside chance that I can sell the boob book to a real publisher. If that happens, I’ll get an advance of something between $15,000 and $30,000, which will go into the S-corp. And if that happens (note the extravagant number of ifs we’re working with here!), then I could justify having the S-corp buy the new car and running its operating costs through the business.

In the far more likely scenario — none of those ifs comes to pass — then at least I will have put off disbursing 30 grand for another year or so.

Seventy-nine hundred dollah seems to me like a wildly extravagant budget for extraordinary expenses. I’ve never spent this kind of money on side disasters before. Horrible, horrible experience!

If things settle back down to normal, that $7950 (or whatever’s left of it) will go a long way toward supporting me in 2016.

Hope springs eternal, hm?

Time for Some Self-Di$¢ipline

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Welp, I’m officially out of money, at least til the end of the year. The amount transferred from savings to supplement Social Security and teaching income enough to keep me afloat through 2014 is gone…and we have almost two months to go.

{sigh}

This is all incident to the endless health-care flap, which arose last June and has not quit and probably literally will have no end. When I realized I was going to be undergoing surgery — even before I  understood that meant “surgery after surgery after surgery after…” — I also realized that with half my chest ripped up I would not be brushing down pool walls, mopping floors, scouring sinks, scrubbing toilets, oiling furniture, deconstructing and cleaning the gas stove, dusting light fixtures & blinds, and polishing mirrors & windows. So I hired a pool guy and a cleaning lady. That added $240 to the monthly tab.

Then there was having the plumber come and fix up the shower in the front bathroom, where the tub has an easy-to-clean 1970s plastic tub & shower surround. The house’s master-bedroom shower was beautifully renovated by the idiot previous owner, whose parting shot (literally!) was, “Oh, and this travertine has to be stripped and resealed every six months.” Huh-uhhhh…. Between that and the fact that the damn clear glass showers have to be polished dry and the damn travertine has to be wiped dry from ceiling to floor every time you shower, I never use that thing — I’d been using the tub in the front bathroom and taking actual baths, except in the summer when I could shampoo outdoors in the hose after swimming. Since I’m not allowed to get the incision underwater for three weeks after each surgery, that means I couldn’t bathe…all summer long and into the fall. I still can’t get the boob seriously wet. So…I’m glad I had the plumber install a functional showerhead in the outmoded but radically convenient front tub, but still…it did cost something.

So it has gone since last June: one unplanned expense after another.

The car also racked up several hundred bucks worth of bills. It now needs its brake drums replaced: $500.

So, financially I’m back where I was when the university laid me and my underlings off. Except that the stock market hasn’t tanked. Yet.

I probably should buy a new car now, before the Republicans do a repeat performance of their excellent financial leadership under Bush. Presumably within another eight to twelve years my shirt will be tattered again, and so it might be good to have a decent vehicle in the garage. One that the dogs & I can live in… 😉

And speaking of tattered, the diet is getting that way, too. The accursed surgery, which you would think would debilitate one and cause weight loss, had exactly the opposite effect: it’s made me gain weight!

Shee-ut!

I think that happened because I was forbidden to swim, and swimming formed a major part of the exercise program. Now it’s too cold to get in the pool — not that I’m allowed to do so anyway, but within a week or two in theory I will be. Assuming we decide not to lob off the guilty boob, in which case it will be yet another month or two before I can take a real bath or indulge in any vigorous exercise.

After dieting and walking four miles a day this week, the result has been another pound gained!

I’m now about five pounds above the desired weight. Figured that two pounds off a week would restore the coveted sylph-like figure in a month or less.  But that just doesn’t seem to be happening. And I don’t know why. None of the strategies I used to drop those 30 pounds a year or two ago are working anymore!

So, what to do?

Well, first I’m going to have to re-institute the stringent budget. This means cranking out those accursed Excel spreadsheets and tracking every. single. expenditure as it occurs. And staying out of Costco. And staying out of AJ’s and Whole Foods.

Haven’t bought any clothes since the current fiasco started, since I have no idea what will fit on top and no way of knowing until I could see the final result of whatever they end up doing to me.  Now even if we decide to keep what remains of the boob intact, I still won’t be able to buy any much-needed shirts — the old ones are wearing out. And if the boob comes off, I’ll just have to figure out how to cope with the old cleavage-displaying shirts and crocheted tops.

The dogs will have to not get sick or hurt. If they do, they’ll just have to suffer through it.

No more eating out. No more concerts. No more anything that costs any sort of extra money.

No Christmas present for my son. Nor will I be able to entertain over the holidays. Which probably doesn’t matter, because I’ve got to stop eating, anyway.

Assuming no more extraordinary expenses arise, I’ll need about $2,000 to make it to the end of the year — not counting the $500 for the car. Enough to repair the car does reside in a short-term emergency savings fund, so it won’t have to be drawn down, taxably, from retirement savings. But two grand to cover living expenses? Not good.

Between now and mid-December, I should extract about $1500 from the community college district, with both classes in full swing.

That’s going to leave me $500 short. In two months, if I pinch every penny in a vise, lay off the pool guy, lay off the yard guy, and cut back the cleaning lady, I might manage to make that up.

Merry Christmas!

Dollars Got Wings…

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Lordie, what a money hemorrhage! Dollar bills (or maybe we should say bills in denominations of $50 and $100) have sprouted little butterfly wings and are flying out the windows and doors. An AMEX bill of less than two grand feels like an accomplishment these days.

Getting ready for surgery and an unknown recuperation period has really racked up the bills.

• Cleaning lady
• Pool guy
• Showerhead on a hose
• Shower curtain & hooks to trick out center bathroom to be used for shower
• Dog gate with a swinging gate in it so I can fence three dogs out of the bedroom without risking breaking a hip climbing over a kiddie gate
• Weeks (I hope!!) worth of dog food (which may morph into days’ worth), cooked and stashed in the freezer
• Food cooked and stashed in the freezer for myself
• Endless, endless, endless bills from the Mayo, some of which are covered by Medicare B and Medigap, but only in dribs and drabs
• Dog spay, done early so Pup won’t come into heat while I’m flat on my back

Then the usual crap…

• Routine dental cleaning: $150
• Car registration
• Irrigation system repair
• Entertain friends for dinner: $28 bottle of gin + package of Costco steaks
• Car carrier pad to carry surged dog home
• Huge power bills
• Huge water bills

And the charitable project, making rosaries to sell to benefit the choir…

• Fire Mountain, Fire Mountain, Fire Mountain…
• Heard Museum (wow!!)
• Bead World, Bead Word, Bead World…

Actually, except for the rosary schemes, there aren’t that many extraordinary costs. It’s just that costs are so damn high right now, it being the dead of summer, the electric banging away 24/7, and a nearly constant flow of water barely keeping the xeric plantings alive through 120-degree heat. And of course, no teaching income.

The piddling adjunct pay actually was supplementing Social Security well enough that until my last class ended, I was about breaking even and not having to even think about budgeting and pinching pennies. But the last $1900 AMEX bill (hey! It’s an improvement over $3000! 🙄 ) makes it clear that I’m going to have to return to the tedious routine of marking down every single expenditure, by way of getting a grip.

And indeed…a grip is what needs to be had. We have 22 days to go in the current budget cycle, and I’ve got all of $512 left for discretionary spending — which includes all the groceries and household goods.

2014 budget julyaugOf course, the cleaning lady, the pool dude, and the yard dude are paid with checks and so do not appear on this. They’re carried as nondiscretionary, even though, with the exception of Gerardo the Scintillating Yard Dude, they’re as discretionary as you can get.

I figure that whenever I recover from this surgery and whatever else gets inflicted on me, the pool guy and the cleaning lady are going away. But I wanted to get them in place before I’m knocked out of commission.

And it must be said, the pool guy has managed to get the infestation of mustard algae  under control, which I was not doing. In November, the pool will have to be drained, the tilework patched, and a few other minor repairs done. I figure if we hit it hard with the fiercest algaecide he can get his hands on and let it sit for a day or two before draining the water out, that probably will dislodge its little tendrils from the porous plaster walls. And after this I’ll just have to apply PhosFree once a week, pain in the tuchus though it is.

BUT…under normal conditions, I can take care of the pool myself. And I consider it an enormous waste of money to pay someone $80 a month to come in once a week to do a job that really is a daily task.

The cleaning lady. Oh god. How can I do without cleaning ladies? Let me count the ways! This one is pretty darned good, but still she’s broken a vacuum cleaner, she derailed the heavy glass shower doors,  she INSISTS on using an old junk mop that falls apart and drops yarn on the floor for the pup to swallow even though there’s a very excellent janitorial quality  mop out there, and just go ahead and TRY to stop her from spraying crap chemicals on your Stickley and Thos. Moser furniture! I hate that.

On the other hand…even though she only comes once every two weeks, when my friends came over last week all I had to do was wipe down the middle bathroom, push a dustmop around the floors, and wipe up the doggy pawprints near the door with a wet rag. Otherwise, the house was clean enough for guests, something I was very grateful for because I’d put off the grocery shopping until that day and wasn’t looking forward to having to scrub floors, beat back dust, and scour the bathrooms and kitchen on top of charging around town in 110-degree heat.

So. Even though I can’t afford these two workers, I may keep at least one of them. Which one remains to be seen.

Speaking of the cleaning lady, it’s 9:30 and she hasn’t shown up  yet. I’ve got to traipse to the post office to return broken &  unwanted beads to Fire Mountain; traipse to the credit union to deposit more drib-and-drab checks from Medicare and Medigap (what a system!!!), traipse to Costco to grab some more breakfast fruit and various household items best purchased there; refill the propane tanks at Costco; traipse to Lowe’s or Home Depot on the way home to pick up some more birdseed by way of calling in the little ant predators again; traipse to a Target or supermarket to pick up cleaning goods for which I do not desire a lifetime supply… Ugh! That’s a good three hours of running around. I wish she’d get her tail over here so I can leave!

Dollars got wings, and I’ve got to go launch a few more of them into the sky.

Bigfoot: The Year of the Unplanned Expense

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Unknown terrifying critter? Or unknown terrifying expense?

Ever think of the unplanned expense as kind of like the sasquatch? There’s no such thing as a bigfoot, eh? Surely if you spotted one, it would be a fluke. It would be a long spell, indeed, before you ever happened upon another one.

So one would think. The year 2014, though, has been the Year of the Bigfoot Expense around the Funny Farm. I swear: every month one unholy monster or another has jumped out of the brush. This month’s AMEX bill came in: $3420. Three times the budget!

Now, part 0f that was over $1700 for the car and homeowner’s insurance. But the rest of it? Mostly veterinary bills. Vet bill after vet bill after vet bill. And then the MasterCard bill came in: another $150 for the new vet, who won’t take American Express!

Every single month this year, starting in January, has brought bills like that: $2,000, $2,500, $3,000, now almost $3,500. Costs are out of control, and I don’t seem to be able to do much about it.

Some of these expenses were predictable: the insurance bills, of course. The Medigap bill that’s rising by another hundred bucks. The cost of pruning the accursed palm trees that flower and fruit and drop tons of equipment-busting beans, sharp little dried blossoms, icky worms, and filth into the pool. Gerardo reported that he talked the tree guy down to a mere $180 from his initial offer of $240.

Last week I had to buy a new pool cleaner. Granted, Harvey was ten years old, a very superannuated Hayward Pool Cleaner. But forgodsake: the bill was FOUR HUNDRED AND FIFTY BUCKS! The alleged $100 “rebate” is one of those mail-in rip-offs, and you don’t get cash back with which to pay your American Express bill. No. They give you one of those fake Visa cards, so you have to go out and spend the money needed to pay the bill on some other junk!

The puppy is costing a lot more than I planned on. It’s one thing to pay the breeder’s fee and then to get the usual shots and spaying and the like (she’ll have to be spayed in just two more months! That’ll be another two or three hundred bucks, presumably). But this little dog has been one constant drain on the checkbook. From what I can tell, too, once a dog gets a UTI, it’s likely to be a chronic condition that ultimately leads to bladder and kidney stones, which have to be treated with expensive and painful surgery.

Now I’m about to have a low fence put in to block her from the pool, since she will not stay away from the water and there’s no way I can train her to get herself out of there.

In the first place, “trainable” is not her middle name. UTI or no UTI, she’s still not house-trained and shows no sign of ever becoming so. Part of the problem is that she doesn’t indicate, the way most dogs do, when she feels the urge — it’s unclear whether she even does feel an urge, or whether she just kind of leaks. She doesn’t sniff around. She doesn’t circle back and forth. She just creates a puddle. Last night I had her penned in the office with me while I sweltered through another piece of Chinglo-academicese that needs to be returned to its authors within the next few days. In spite of being right under my nose, she peed under the chair, silently and seemingly motionlessly leaving a great puddle for me to find when I got up to let her out.

Given her general stubbornness, training her to get out of the pool is highly problematic. There’s only one spot in the entire, large pool — which must look like an ocean at dog’s-eye level — where either one of the dogs can get out. That’s the topmost of three steps at the shallow end. The corgis’ legs, even in adulthood, are too short to reach any of the other steps or to reach the bench at the deep end. That one, single step is only about three feet long and eighteen inches wide. The chances of a panic-stricken dog finding that thing, once it fall into the drink, are slim to nil. And “panic” is the operative word. Both dogs are so frightened by the water they can’t think.

In the second place, this proposed fence has to be custom-built and will cost $1,100. I am not at all sure I should spend eleven hundred bucks to protect a dog that I probably ought not to keep it all. Really, if I had any sense whatsoever, I would return her to the breeder. It’s painfully obvious that this dog came to me with something wrong at the outset, that she probably will never be well, and that I’m going to be dealing with yellow puddles all over the floor for as long as she lives.

Hate to do that, because she’s such a sweet little gal. But probably I ought to cut my losses while I can.

Because…more losses lurk on the horizon.

Sooner or later I’m going to have to get a car. The Dog Chariot is now almost 15 years old. It won’t run forever.

The pool has grown a permanent coat of algae. Nothing I do is getting rid of it. The best hope for a DIY fix is to pour an entire container of PhosFree in there and hope for the best. That will require having someone come and clean out the filter again (just had that done a month or so ago): another $150. That’s on the low end. And it’s a temporary fix.

The house needs a paint job: inside and out. That’s likely to cost around four grand.

The cracked tiles in the living room need to be replaced. And most recently, the kitchen cupboards or the wall next to them have settled, opening a big crack along one countertop and splitting a whole row of Mexican tiles. So, at best a couple dozen tiles need to be pulled out and replaced — quite a trick, with Mexican tile! At worst, the cause for this subsidence needs to be determined. God only knows what that will cost. And the middling possibility? It’s not outside the realm of possibility that the tiles can’t be replaced and so the whole countertop will have to be yanked out and rebuilt.

Those damn palm trees need to be removed. There are four of them. Cost could be, all told, as high as four grand.

So…think of that. We’re looking at tens of thousands of dollars in potential upcoming expenses. And we’re probably already pushing ten grand in unplanned expenses so far this year. It that’s not a sasquatch, I’d like to know what it is.