I'm struggling with spending a lot of money this week. Last weekend I was upset with myself for spending $5 (despite saving $90) at the grocery store when I figured I should have skipped the extra item I actually had to pay for, instead of getting it with my overage on the next trip.
Then we decided its time to re marcite our pool. It's way past due and the water is harder to keep clean. A friend at work is getting theirs done and the contractor is doing a good job and its a fair price, so we checked it out. But fair is not always frugal. When we got our bid on Monday, the number came out to be in the neighborhood of $4K, with over a thousand of that just for the waterline tile replacement - 150 measly tiles costing me a thousand dollars is tough to swallow. I need time to ponder spending money - about a day for every $100, so this pool project needs about forty days and forty nights of thinking for me. But no, everyone else wants to do it now because of the dry weather. So, many checks will be written out this week as the work progresses. And many times I will be under duress thinking about spending so much money.
On Tuesday the final house payment was electronically sent to the lender and our house is now paid for. It will be nice to not have any mortgage payment anymore, but right now I'm lacking appreciation for that. We took a chunk of savings to pay it off after we calcualated we would pay more in interest on the house, than we would make on the savings account. I also forgot the motorcycle insurance policy is due this month and yesterday had to pay over $1000 for that for the year.
When I spend a lot of money on things that have to be paid but are not fun things (mortgage, insurance, home maintenance) I tend to get really tight with the little bit of money I do have. I don't want to go out to eat, I skip the beer at a concert, or pass on getting that item on sale. I miss my cushion of cash just sitting there not needing to be spent.
Now to top it off, both DH and I are getting 3% pay cuts starting in July. The idiot governor and his cowboys decided Florida state workers need to pay into the pension fund now, even though it is well invested and profitable without our contributions. 2014 will not come soon enough to get that dude out of office.
So, there's my rant. I hope no street panhandlers bother me today, I'm not feeling very charitable.