Hemorrhaging Money!

Lenten Thanks: Day 2

I thank God for my friends, those who live near and far, people I’ve met in teaching, on the choir, and through blogging. They are the gems that brighten my life.

Lordie! Money is pouring out of my bank accounts like it was water! One blinding expense after another: the $615 for the paint and repair job; $81 for the paint itself, another $98 for the light fixtures and junk from Lowes; $100 for a season’s worth of chlorine tablets for the pool; $97 for the little self-indulgence at Ecocentricity; $250 at Costco to restock the dwindling grocery cache; $78 for gasoline…gaaaahhhhh!

Even after paying for the $97 for the purse out of the diddle-it-away savings account, I have $29.43 left to last until the end of the current credit-card budget cycle: that’s another 11 days!

The $615 will also have to come out of that account, I expect. No word from the insurance company about whether any or all of that will be reimbursed. Sean the Adjuster probably hasn’t recovered from the shock yet. Actually, I sent the invoices for the paint and the light fixtures, too, so there’s an outside chance that the $179 for those items will come back. Someday. Not, presumably, in time to pay this month’s AMEX bill, though.

Hm. Half a tank of gas left, and today was the last day of class before spring break. If I can minimize driving, I just might stretch the gas long enough to last until the 21st. Running low on meat for the dog, which means least one grocery store run, but that won’t consume an entire half-tank. A single grocery run, however, could easily consume the $29 remaining in the budget, though; especially if it includes a meat purchase.

There seems to be no end to the extraordinary costs. I haven’t had the nerve to open the bill from the Mayo for the copays and whatever Medigap didn’t cover. More than $29.43, I’ll bet! Then starting the first week of the next billing cycle, a series of visits to a physical therapist begins, in an effort to help the injured shoulder that never healed fully from last year’s fall and dislocation—presumably a copay hit every time I walk through that door. And a trip to the dentist to smooth off the broken, jagged molars and build a new night guard: bare minimum 400 buckolas. And the turn signal on my car is broken, and the hinge on the visor has worked loose so the thing falls down in front of my face every time the sun gets in my eyes, and a chip in the car’s paint needs to be touched up…who knows what that will cost?

Then there’s that security door I’d really like to buy.

Well, by the time $615 is sucked out of savings, there won’t be anything left for a security door. Guess I’d better not count on the insurance replacing that amount. {sigh}

On the bright side, the electric bill arrived: only $58!!!!!

That is one of the lowest power bills in recorded memory. Last year the March bill was $65. It dropped to $57 in April, after the month of March passed without my having to turn the heat or AC on once. Last month I did have the heater on a few times, and once or twice I forgot to turn it off when I went to bed. So evidently the new unit actually is going to save a few bucks on the electric bill.

And the new accountant issued forth my tax returns: $3002 coming back to me and $1,500 back to M’hijito for the mortgage interest deduction. That certainly helps our cause.

Not only that, but her bills were just slightly more than half what the defunct tax lawyer charged to do the personal and corporate returns last year. Even after paying for both sets of returns, I still end up with $2,500 to add to this year’s survival fund. She’s more aggressive than T.L. and is willing to claim many more deductions than I’ve done in the past. So this is a distinct improvement.

That $2,500 plus the $3,700 left from RASL after topping off the Roth IRA plus the projected net $3,000 from next summer’s teaching will delay my having to draw down retirement savings until November of 2012. After that, according to my famously sophisticated calculations, I still may not have to pull out 12 drawdowns a year, as long as I’m working and as long as I can continue to land two sections each summer.

In 2012, after the short-term survival savings run out, I’ll have to make two drawdowns to live on. In 2013, if I get a comparable tax refund and if I manage to teach three and three in the academic year and pick up two sections in the summer, I might only have to take seven drawdowns. So that would be nice. The less I have to take out of retirement savings, the longer I can live on those funds after I’m too feeble to keep teaching.

So. In spite of the impression that more money than Croesus could imagine is flowing out of the coffers, I guess I can’t complain.

Image: Scrooge McDuck. © 1981 Carl Barks. Link to Wikipedia.com.