When Rebekah and I bought a home we were warned of the amount of work we would have to do. However, I really do not think we could have imagined. It seems literally every week it is another thing. Recently, at the house, we have had trouble connecting our dryer to the wall unit to remove the fluff and push it to the outside of the house. We have upstairs laundry in the smallest of holes in the wall and there is not enough space to connect the hose. We tried and it just tore. It turns out they built this for compact washers and dryers not our ginormous LG washer and dryer we got when we got married.
It was now time to hire someone and we brought them in yesterday. The guy had to cut into the sheet rock and remove about a foot of piping and it still did not work! UGH! I just see dollar signs all over the place on this one. If it weren't such a hazard I would forgo this and worry about it later, but he told us our house could catch on fire. So, I will gladly spend the $500 of anticipated cost to keep the house from going up and keep my wife happy, which is after all the most important.
In addition, we did some yard work over the weekend and we had to go buy some Bermuda sod to fill in this ugly patch of dirt. It was only $40 but it was still another unexpected cost incurred. I will try to post some pictures of our yard from when we bought in May to now. I always love showing before-and-after shots. It really makes us feel proud of our work. Good news is our electricity bill went from $240 down to $77! Woo hoo! I have just kept the air off and it really has not been too hot in the house. Hopefully I will not have to turn it on until December, doubt it, but maybe.
It is little things like this that really put a damper on our motivation. It seems like each month when you think you will have a couple hundred extra dollars to throw at debt life has to happen. This is the reason why it is SO important to get some money in the emergency fund! We have been working at this slowly but surely. We will be able to pay for this out of our emergency fund and not worry too much, but it is unsettling having to worry about something like this. I thought we were supposed to use the emergency to go on vacation? Geez.
Wow, congrats on that electric bill! That's quite a decrease. And if I may say this... a vacation isn't an emergency. The replacing the pipes deal may qualify for it, if you didnt anticipate or knew about it. But you should really keep your EF separate from a vacation or misc/surprise funds. Not sure how big your EF is, but that's my take.
ReplyDeleteThank you! The electric bill was a big relief! The EF and vacation comment was a joke. We know not to spend that money. I just wish life would not happen so we could use that money on vacation instead!
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That is a long list of loans, but they are all small at the beginning and you will be able to pick them off and as you do the others will grow smaller. Have you thought about consolidating them? My daughter is a lawyer and so is her husband and that is what they did, it made the payoff faster with less interest. Keep plugging you will get there.
ReplyDeleteThey are already consolidated. I need to go in and update it. The way we originally understood it was different than what it actually is. We thought about consolidating, but most of them already are and they are not private loans, but government. Not sure if we can consolidate government loans.
DeleteThank you for reading and your comment!