Geez. It never rains but it pours. So they say.
Paycheck for these past two weeks posted (but not received by my bank until tomorrow): $200 less than expected.
Bill for car repair posted on American Express: $786.58.
I don’t have that much left in emergency savings, so about $90 of it will have to come out of cash flow. But it doesn’t stop there:
Rip-off to register the car: $72.56.
Rip-off for car emission test: $27.75.
Fortunately, exclusive of the unexpected car repair bill, I came in $55 under budget this month, for the first time in recorded memory. So despite the $787 car bill and the $140 in repairs on the pool equipment and the $95 to the electrician to repair the shorted, overheating light switch, and the $140.76 in medical bills not covered by Medicare, I have yet to overdraw my checking account.
Barely. Give it time, though. Today is only the 27th. This month has 31 days. Plenty of time for some new expensive fiasco to occur.
It’s clear now that we won’t be receiving next month’s Social Security checks. Bloody lucky thing I managed to land these two summer classes; tomorrow’s paycheck is just about the amount of a Social Security payment. It will tide me over August.
September, however, is a different matter: I stashed enough in my son’s and my joint account for mortgage payments to cover the summer, but in September I have to start coming up with $717/month again. And if those bastards in Washington haven’t gotten off the dime, I won’t be able to pay it.
Well. I will, but it will mean my savings to survive on for the next year will quickly disappear.
Damn it. Even when I manage to keep day-to-day spending well within the budget, I’m still swimming in red ink!
Image: Rain from a thunderstorm over Fogg Dam. Bidgee. Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.
Please don’t worry about your SS check. The folks in DC are using scare tactics. There are enough funds coming into the budget every month to cover SS and the majority of other bills. Don’t succumb to the fears. This is only the beginning of the mind games and they will persist until the 2012 elections.
I’d like to believe that, but I don’t.
There’s a reason that, despite some voters’ desires to the contrary, we elect politicians to lengthy terms: politics like any other profession requires experience, expertise, and judgment.
Just now the Republican party is infested by amateurs. Not only do they have no clue what they’re doing, they’re doctrinaire extremists laboring under a misguided dogma. They are, IMHO, fully capable of derailing the government. I don’t believe for one minute that they care about the safety and welfare of the elderly and poor (they’ve demonstrated time and again that they do not; one of them just remarked, on CNN, that he doesn’t believe that default will be “calamitous”). They loathe the duly elected President of the United States and have no respect either for him or for the office, they believe the end justifies the means, and in fact I think they would be gratified if they could bring the government to a grinding halt.
It’s very clear the party is unable to get control over this nutty faction. Remember, even before the Tea Partiers took office, this was the same party that brought us the deregulation and voodoo economics that led to a recession so deep that when only 400,000 people claim unemployment insurance for the first time, we think that’s a good sign! With an even wackier crew pulling at the reins, it’s entirely possible that we won’t get our Social Security payments.
We need to remember what has been going on.
I haven’t forgotten the loss of $200,000 from my conservatively invested retirement portfolio; I haven’t forgotten that many other people have suffered and continue to suffer far worse losses; I haven’t forgotten that my son and I are losing our shirts on a real estate investment that was not greedy, not ill-advised at the time, and not overreaching; I haven’t forgotten that anyone who has purchased any home of any size over the past half-decade is in the same pickle or worse; I haven’t forgotten that the local Tea Partiers’ determination to slash and burn education in this state led to the loss of my job at a time in my life when I will never get another decent job; I haven’t forgotten the scores of adults in my underpaid part-time community college classes who are there because they have nothing else to do, because they can’t get jobs, either; I haven’t forgotten my son and his friends who graduated with excellent degrees (including MBAs from formerly powerful institutions) who can’t get decent jobs (or in two cases, any job at all); I haven’t forgotten the elements in my state who are trying to cut off medical care and other services for children in poverty; I haven’t forgotten that the same worthies tried to pass legislation to force colleges and universities to allow students to carry concealed weapons to campus and succeeded in passing laws allowing us all to carry concealed guns into restaurants and bars; I haven’t forgotten the atmosphere of bigotry and hatred that infests the national discourse about immigration, terrifies Latinos whose families have been here (legally) for generations and does the same for Native Americans who are easily mistaken for Latinos; I haven’t forgotten a presidential candidate who thinks Paul Revere got on his horse to warn the Brits we wouldn’t give up our guns…
No American of good will should forget these things.
This is not typical, business-as-usual political grandstanding. We’re riding a skateboard to Hell, and there doesn’t seem to be a way to get off of it. Unless Obama invokes the 14th Amendment, this country is going to go into default. That is exactly what some people in Washington want to see happen.
Car registration fees help pay for road infrastructure, so I don’t consider it a rip-off; here in California our fees are about double what you’re paying & quite likely will go higher given our wonderful state financial situation. I think the emission test fees are about the same, but we don’t have to do it every year if we’ve got newer vehicles & pass them with no problem.