Dollar$ and ¢ents, 2014

So the year has come around the curve and is streaking toward the finish line. Time to take stock of the money predicament.

Turns out it’s not such a predic’ as expected. Really, I expected 2014 to end in Flaming Financial Disaster, what with the car bills and the dog bills and the house bills and the healthcare bills and the jacked-up property taxes and the one. freaking.  screaming. EXPENSIVE. thing. after. another.

Last January, I started the year with a cushion of about $11,000 in the bank. Rather than draw down from savings quarterly, as I did in 2013, I decided to estimate the amount I would need for 12 months and pull that out of investments in January: $13,000+.

That was a gulp-making maneuver. Yanking that kind of money out of savings triggers a Bag Lady Syndrome fit in me. But in theory it would all come out in the wash — one way or another, I’d need about that much to live for a year, and trying to calculate how much to take out in Q3, when little or no teaching income is forthcoming, was a verifiable PITA.

And I will say, Q3 was damn scary. I pretty much took up residence at the Mayo Clinic, a mighty pricey hotel, and precious little income was materializing from teaching, editing, or blogging. But in the fall, the piddling pay for three adjunct sections, surprisingly, took up the slack.

I have no idea how much I’m going to end up paying for surgery after surgery after surgery after surgery. Bills come from the Mayo — eleven grand here, fifteen grand there — but they seem to have no meaning. Medicare is picking up some portion of that; Medigap is picking up more. Apparently the victim mark patient has to pay something, but it’s so difficult to tell what it is that even the billing people at the Mayo can’t figure it out. Or at least, they claim they can’t. Right now, every time a check comes in from Medicare B or the Medigap insurer, I just throw it in the Mayo’s direction. That leads them to imagine I’m at least trying to pay the bills, and that, mercifully, has kept them off my back. So far.

Weirdly, despite all the extraordinary expenses, at the end of November the balance in checking was just a few hundred dollars less than the January 1 balance: a little over eleven grand.

But now for the BIG weird:

Hang onto your hats, folks.

The balance in investments and retirement savings at the end of October  was $107,633 more than the January 31 balance.

Yeah, you read that right: one hundred seven thousand six hundred thirty-three DOLLAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That’s after drawing down $13,000 to live on and after paying out $7,350 for my share of the mortgage on the downtown house.

Holy mackerel. And we want to put the Republicans back in charge of the government…WHY?