{gasp} Maybe I should type this entire post in virtual red “ink.” Today is the seventh—fourteen more days to go until the current budget cycle resets—and I’m already $93.77 in the hole.
Augh, augh, and augh!
Well, two causes for this predicament:
1. I bought that Shark vacuum cleaner from Costco that I mentioned, after having mulled it over for several days. By the time the obnoxious 9.3% sales tax was added, the $158 selling price ballooned to $174.
It’s too late to return the clunky Eureka I bought from the Fry’s electronics last March. What a piece of junk! So that’s about $300 ultimately paid in search of a decent vacuum.
2. My car was way, way, way overdue for an oil change, tire rotation, safety check, and windshield wiper change. That trip racked up an $86 bill.
Lordie! The last time I had the car serviced was in August of 2009!!!!! Inexcusable. Plus the car has needed new windshield wipers for a year. They had reached the point where their only use was to mix dirt with water and smear it around like paint. Artistic, but hard to see through.
So, those two things pushed me into the red. The vacuum cleaner alone would’ve done it. Add the car service, and now I’m in the hole with two weeks to go and not enough food to last that long.
Last month was the first time this year I’ve run in the red on the discretionary budget. But it was huge: $1,600!
That notwithstanding, I still have some money in savings, and so there’s something left to pay for the car and the vacuum cleaner. But I can’t keep on drawing down savings to meet living expenses.
Ordinarily, a fair amount is left in each month’s nondiscretionary budget—money set aside to pay utilities, Medicare premiums, and long-term care insurance. But summer is now here. Yesterday was a 110-degree day, and it’ll be the same today, cooling to 106 Wednesday and Thursday. That won’t max out the air conditioning bill (the electric company walloped us with a hefty rate increase this spring, BTW), but I expect this month’s bill will be close to $200. Same with water: if you want anything in the yard to stay alive, you have to run the water. The watering system is now on its summer schedule—and I can tell you one thing for sure: drip watering is about as overrated in the economy department as the digital thermostat. The water bills go through the roof when that thing is running. Plus of course I have to refill the pool every day; it loses an inch a day to evaporation.
If the electric and water hit their maximum levels this month, I’ll have $2.59 left in the nondiscretionary fund come June 30.
All of this is happening, natch, when no income other than Social Security and a pittance from Fidelity is flowing in to the coffers. No word from the college about when they’re going to pony up the first payment on the stipend they say I’ll get for preparing the online course.
The problem with that is they’re making me schlep up to the college every week, and that runs up the gas bill. Eighty bucks down the drain there, and two more weeks to go. Just bought gas yesterday; the last fill-up was 12 days ago. So there’s an outside chance I might make it to the end of the budget cycle without pumping gas again…but not likely.
It’s impossible not to drive around this city. Today, for example, I have to deposit some checks for the S-corporation. The credit union is way to hell & gone up at 43rd and Thunderbird, a fourteen-mile round trip. The last time I tried mailing a deposit to the CU, using their self-addressed envelope, they lost the checks. It was over two weeks before the deposits cleared, just as I was about to call clients and tell them to cancel payment.
And a couple of days ago I went over to the downscale Albertson’s, which theoretically is within walking distance, to buy some salad to feed our bloggers’ group. They didn’t have the basic things I needed to make a very ordinary meal. Wanted some cherry tomatoes: the only ones they had were in plastic boxes, and in each box about half were shriveling up like raisins. So ended up having to drive seven miles, round trip, to the Safeway to buy salad stuff!
M’hijito gave me $22 to reimburse for dinner out a week ago. I can apply that toward groceries. Plus I have a few paper dollars stashed away from other reimbursements. Over the past year, I’ve been squirreling that money for these summer months, when I figured to run short on funds. But I’d expected that would happen in August.
Not June.