Off the Beaten Plan

plan: to devise or project the realization or achievement of

Browsing Off the Beaten Plan blog archives for March, 2010.

Freaking Out Over Water

I have a leak in my daughter’s room and now she refuses to sleep there because of the drip noise. I’m freaking out a bit because the rain isn’t due to stop until Thursday, and we don’t really have the money to get this fixed. I don’t want to hear that crap about “Oh, you’re a real homeowner now!”

I know, okay? Let me crab about my window and leave me alone. :)

But more seriously, I’m worried about the window. It could be a quick fix, but I doubt it. These things never are. And they certainly aren’t cheap. Never, ever.

Well, I can’t do anything but lay down towels for now.

Life is like that, sometimes. All you can do is do what you can and hope for the best.

At least the rest of my day went reasonably well.

Freaking Out Over Water was published on March 30th, 2010, with the tags , , , under the Financial, Planning category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

Cost Block

I’m sitting at IKEA waiting another 30 minutes or so to pick up my kids, and seriously contemplating this $20 desk for my son. I mean, come on. It’s a desk, and it’s only $20. What’s not to love? So I call my husband because we also have an old computer desk in our garage that we were going to give to my son this summer. It had some sharp edges before we moved, so I was further able to rationalize the $20 IKEA wonder as safer.

My husband says on the phone that he’s fixed the desk, and it no longer has sharp edges. He also points out that if we use the old desk, that we are saving that $20 for something else.

My knee-jerk response is, “But it’s only $20!!!”

The slightly more rational side of my brain says, “Dude, $20 will buy 4+ pairs of shorts for kids for the summer, or 3 wonderful lunches at Liu’s, or get us 20 more dollars out of debt.” And yet left to myself, I would still buy the damn desk.

Financially, I really want to be debt free. But it is also really hard for me to give up the shiny, new “bargain”. Shopping, buying new things (necessary or not), is fun. Cutting coupons and giving up trips to the movie theater so I can pay the utility bills and the mortgage and still buy groceries and keep the kids in daycare is not.

I need to remind myself that that’s the point that we are at.

Arg.

Cost Block was published on March 28th, 2010, with the tags , , under the Financial, Planning category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

A Little Bit of Yum

I had an amazing lunch the other day, and commented that I wish food didn’t make me so happy. Because it does, and so I eat a lot of it, and it makes me fat, and that makes me sad.

But yummy food is always good.

And if you live in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania, and you like Asian food, you really need to go to Liu’s House. Because the sushi is delicious. And the sesame chicken, which I happen to be a great fan of at any restaurant, is amazing. Amazing isn’t even really a good word for it – outstanding, sweet, plentiful, fresh, tender, seedy…it’s just good.

When I went for takeout around noon, the place was completely packed. Lively, happy patrons and busy, attractive servers making a lot of noise.

So it was good. And I’m going back – often, I hope. As funds will allow, of course.

A Little Bit of Yum was published on March 27th, 2010, with the tags , , under the Completely Off Topic category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

Budget Distress

There is nothing quite so eye-opening and sobering as doing one’s budget and facing the reality – again – that things aren’t as good as we hoped. It’s a necessary evil, though, and better to find out now than later.

I’m just spending some thought-provoking time sorting out what is really important, and where can our money do the most good.  It’s another two summers and one more school year of daycare before my youngest starts Kindergarten, and then alleviates a lot of the financial pressure.

It won’t be horrible, but it won’t be easy. As my son is currently quite fond of saying, “Life’s not fair!”

Budget Distress was published on March 22nd, 2010, with the tags , , under the Financial, Planning category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

Lovely, just Lovely

My husband likes to tease me about this thing I say. Once, he was in the car with me, my mom, and two other older ladies. Someone noted that the flowers in the ditch were pretty. I agreed, “Yep.” The other two women said, “Lovely, just lovely.” So when I’m cooing over something cute, he mocks.

Lovely, just lovely!

Which actually right now is a pretty accurate description of the weather we’re having right now. It’s gorgeous! Spring started at 1:32 yesterday afternoon, and you can absolutely tell.

My son spent the entire day outside, practically. And today my kids went to this huge castle park that’s about an hour away. They left around 2 p.m., and haven’t yet returned. I’m sincerely hoping they’re so exhausted that they fell asleep in the car and my husband has to call me to come outside and help carry them in.

The good weather has me thinking about all the things I want to do to the house this summer. Since we bought it at the start of fall, we didn’t really have a chance (or the funds) to do any sort of anything last year.

I want to:

  • Get the windows fixed – glazing, sashes repaired, the two broken panes replaced
  • Get someone to look at the roof and estimate when it needs redone, and how much it will cost
  • Get the tile in the bathroom fixed so it doesn’t leak into the dining room any more

(Speak of the devils – they just arrived home at 8:30 – what a day!)

My husband also mentioned getting the wallpaper off the walls, and we toyed with the idea of exposing the brick on the interior wall, upstairs and down. I think it could look truly awesome. My husband, I think, was just going along for the ride. It’s okay – if he hates it, I’m sure he’ll let me know.

But that may be a project for another set of funds. Until my youngest is in school, daycare is sucking the life out of us. A familiar tale. Perhaps someday when I have more time I’ll find a solution for that.

Actually, completely going off on another tangent, having a daycare exchange – where say two families work out flexible work schedules and then the kids spend time at everyone’s house in a rotating schedule for only the cost of food and supplies would be ideal, really. But ANYWAY…

So now that spring is here, there are things to be done. Money to be saved and spent, projects to be started and hopefully completed.

Yay, spring!

Lovely, just Lovely was published on March 21st, 2010, with the tags , , , , , , under the Completely Off Topic category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.