My Bright Side
Now that it’s October and a new, fresh month, I’m going to start looking on the bright side of things. So even though I was stuck in traffic yesterday and my car stalled again, absolutely freaking me out, I still said a prayer for the people whose accident caused the back up and got over it.
When I found out that when R suggested pizza for dinner, she meant to ORDER pizza instead of getting large frozen pizzas for last night’s dinner at her house, I started to freak a little. This wasn’t in my budget and I only had $3 in cash, but I’d already agreed to it. I went home and found my hidden coin stash (which took a good ten minutes of searching) and among the rolled up coins ($24 was rolled up) was about $3.00 in loose quarters! Score! I decided that I’d use that, but remembered to ask R how much money each person was supposed to have gotten back from our beach trip in August. It turned out that the amount was $7 per person per night and $7 was my share of the pizza we ordered, so I didn’t spend anything last night. Granted, this was money that was owed to me that now I wouldn’t get back, but that’s okay. The big deal was that I didn’t have to pay out of this month’s budget. Also, we split three medium pizzas and cinnastix between four of us and I pretty much got one whole pizza minus a couple pieces that C ate. The three leftover pieces are in my fridge now, so I got exactly what I paid for, for once.
I really think that I can meet my goal of $2.50/day for food since I have so much in the fridge / freezer and pantry that I can eat before I need to go grocery shopping. Also, this is the average that I want to meet…if I have a day where I have Ramen for dinner, that’s just 20 cents…actually, it’s free for the first twelve meals since B bought a 12-pack for me last weekend. So there might be quite a few days when it only costs me a dollar or so for food. I’m looking forward to it.
While searching for the hidden coins, I found a few books that I can list on half.com, too! Yay!
Something else I just noticed recently is that my ankles aren’t swelling up like crazy each month. I pinned it as bad circulation or something to do with my time of the month, but I noticed that they didn’t swell up in August right after the beach. Could it be the relaxation from said beach? I doubt it. The only thing that I’ve done differently is lose weight. So was it bad circulation because of being almost overweight? I don’t know, but I’m glad that I don’t have to sleep with my feet propped up on pillows for a week each month. Awesome! More things to be happy about!
My Pockets are Empty
When I started this blog in April, I wasn’t too bad off financially. I was “living paycheck to paycheck” a little bit while I waited for my tax refund and $600 stimulus, but once those were deposited, I was doing okay and my financial outlook was great.
Now, though, it’s not that great. In three weeks’ time I’ve spent $969.70 on car maintenance. To be fair, I should have been doing this for the last couple years, not all in two shots, but it just never occurred to me. My dad is great, but he sometimes forgets that I need to hear step-by-step instructions on when I should get my car maintained, rather than a simple, “Make sure that you’re keeping up with your car maintenance.”
When I talked to him on the phone last night and told him what I’d just had done he reminded me that I’ll save a lot of money in the future by getting these things taken care of now. I told him that I really want to get past 200,000 miles on the car and he said that since it’s a Toyota, I should definitely be able to do that…if I keep taking care of it. And I can’t expect to not pay anything for car maintenance each year, either.
So I’ve been naive…and foolish. And now I have practically no money. I’ll still have enough for the $5000 to my parents in 40 days(!), but not much more on top of that. In fact, if I had to estimate how much I have without the $5000 and subtracting what I’ve spent on my credit card this month, I have about…whatever change is in my wallet.
This is really scary to me! My big focus now is going to have to be on earning extra money because cutting expenses is really hard and I’ve been terrible at it. My dad said that I could work for him, but I need to press him a little to get that in the works. I should be able to get around $250 from that (before taxes). I may start looking at freelancing a little. I’m a professional editor and there are tons of people who need their stuff proofread and changed. It would be a pain come tax time, but honestly, I need to do something.
My Money Driving Away
$386.46 for diagnostics, new fuel filter and fuel injection.
I’m very quickly milking myself dry.
My Car Woes
So my car is going back to the shop.
On Wednesday, and once two weeks ago, my car stalled out. I could immediately restart it, but I want to make sure that it isn’t a major problem. I brought it to the tire and auto place near my apartment yesterday afternoon and they could have kept it, but I wouldn’t have had a way to get to work this morning, so I agreed to bring it in this afternoon. I hope that it’s something small and inexpensive and not the transmission like a work buddy warned.
Anyway, this is just another thing to thow money at. Yay.
In other news, I’m at 132 lbs. or so says my scale…I’m starting to think that maybe it’s off a little, but I’m not going to worry about it. I believe that I’m finally where I want to be, so I won’t be dieting exactly, just concentrating on healthier foods and cheaper foods. Now that I’ll be eating more, I’ll be spending more if I’m not careful, so I’m really concentrating on clipping coupons (I just subscribed to the Sunday paper for the ads) and planning out when I’m buying things.
Anyway, that’s all for now. As always, I’ll keep you updated.
My Good News / Bad News
The good news is that I still have another 14,000 miles to go before I need to replace my timing belt. The bad news is that I got a lot of work done to my brakes, costing me around $584. That’s more than half of my third paycheck for August. I’m glad that I don’t have to worry about my car for a while now, though. I also got the oil changed and everything, and here’s something curious: my new oil change date is 29 JAN 09 or after six thousand miles. Obviously, everyone should check their oil and refill it periodically in between oil changes, but it made me wonder if Jiffy Lube is hosing us all. Jiffy Lube runs a great ad campaign insisting that we change the oil every 3 months or 3,000 miles, but is that really necessary? A service station by my parents’ house once had 4,500 miles as the next due date for an oil change and I know that my parents trust that station for all their car maintenance / repair needs (I do, too, but it’s just far away from where I live).
Recently, one of my bosses told a few of us that years ago his brother-in-law considered buying a Jiffy Lube franchise. He shadowed at a nearby location to get the feel for the business and after a few days decided not to go for it. He said that it was much too shady for him.
I may have mentioned that the last time I went to Jiffy Lube, I felt like the guy was trying to completely hose me. Now I’ve started going to a Goodyear Tire and Auto and I like it. If they’re trying to hose me, they do so in a way that I don’t feel like they are. I feel comfortable there and will continue to give them my business until I move or am no longer comfortable.
My Timing Belt
I’m a bit worried about Atticus, my 4Runner. Since I got him two years ago, I’ve driven about 39,000 miles on him–crazy!! About 15,000 miles ago I passed the 90,000 mark and didn’t know that I should have things taken care of…like the timing belt.
Some of you may know what a timing belt is–the devil. If this thing breaks, your car is sunk. The engine’s dead. The whole world collapses. I feel like before I start with Dave Ramsey’s plan (if I decide to do it) I really need to get my car all set up like it should be in order to not have to pay a lot more later if things go wrong. Then my emergency fund might not have to come into play for auto related stuff…you know…as long as I don’t crash it or something.
So I think that I’m going to take it in in the next week or two and see about all that. And I’ll cross my fingers that the cost won’t kill me!
My Car’s Screechy Sounds
Yesterday I drove to Fairfax to visit my cousin and her new baby boy (which led to me dreaming that I was pregnant) and then stopped for gas on the way home. My car was fine until I turned it back on and started driving away from the gas station and it started making a screechy, metally noise.
“I know they say not to top off, but I didn’t think it would do this!” I thought to myself. I drove the five and a half miles home, praying that I’d make it safely to my parking lot as the noise got louder and louder as I drove faster on the highway. I made it home and opened the hood. I don’t know what I expected to find since unless something is leaking fluid or smoke (or fire?), I can’t tell anything by looking inside at the engine. When I called my dad, he suggested that it could be the fan belt and I MUST get it checked out before going to work. Great.
The car repair place is two miles from my apartment. My car still made the noise until I turned a sharp corner about halfway there. Then the noise simply stopped. I was annoyed. “It better start up again so that they know what the hell is wrong with it,” I said, either in my thoughts or aloud. I don’t recall. It did not start up again.
At the place they looked it over FOR NO CHARGE! I was excited about THAT, at least. Anyway, I was only thirty minutes late to work, which is cool because I’ve come in just a little bit early each day, so I don’t need to stay late to make up time.
Now all I need to worry about is driving to and from the beach this weekend. I do NOT want to get stuck on the Cheasapeake Bay Bridge and stop traffic for miles and miles.
My Jack Wasn’t Jacked
Well, I feel silly. My jack and everything else (minus the lug nut key) was beneath the back right passenger seat, under the floor. So the good news is that I don’t have to get a new tire change kit; the bad news is that I still dropped about $149 yesterday for: inspection, emissions testing, new lug nuts, labor for the lug nuts, and miscellaneous stuff.
Then I dropped $78.50 to the state of Virginia (actually, we’re a commonwealth, not a state) for the Inspection / Emissions for the next two years.
So, over $200 went to car stuff yesterday. More good news, though: if I ever have a tire problem, I know how to solve it.
My Unavoidable Foibles
So my car stalled on Columbia Pike today while I waited to turn into my parking lot. I almost freaked out. Two cars were behind me, also waiting to turn, so I put on my hazards, parked the car, turned it off, turned it on, and then it worked. Thanks, God!
I looked online for possible explanations and asked a couple of the guys at work. It could be something simple like a lack of auto transmission fluids or it could be something expensive. About eight months ago my “Check Engine” light came on and I found out that it was some sensor that was out. They said that I could still drive, but I should get it fixed within the next month or two. The next day B and I were sitting in traffic on I-66 when my car stalled. We were able to get it moving again fairly quickly, but I definitely freaked that time. I got the car fixed early the next week for a whopping $600. This was when I was unemployed and that took a big bite out of my savings.
So I’m hoping that this isn’t a big deal, and it’ll be fine until I can get it checked out this evening or tomorrow evening. I also have to get the emissions inspection done before the end of the month, and since I’ll be away from 20-27 July, I know that I should get it done now. The Goodyear Tire & Auto by my apartment offers a $3 discount on emissions from the 10-20 of each month, the times when fewer people come by. Of course, I wanted to go today, but now maybe I’ll wait until tomorrow for that and just get the oil change today.
I told B today in an e-mail that this is one of the things that I hate. I feel like my parents didn’t train me well, in a way. I should have no anxiety over taking my car into a shop, but I do a little. I have much less anxiety than I did the first time I took my car somewhere, but everytime I try something new I get a little freaked out. This will be the first time doing this in Loudoun County, so it will be an unfamiliar place. I’ve always gone to the gas station by my parents’ house for inspections, and the Jiffy Lube at Fair Oaks Mall for oil changes; now, those are inconvenient and I’m not sure if I can get the inspection done out of the county. None of this should be a big deal! I recognize how silly it is. I think that I have this deepset fear of looking stupid, so I want to avoid anything that might take me down that road. This is why I avoid going alone to places I’ve never been before. I never would have started tanning (don’t judge me!) if my cousin hadn’t gone with me the first time; I’ve never been to a tailor or a dry cleaner’s despite having dry clean only clothing because I don’t know what to do when I go in. I mean, I can guess…but I don’t know. I don’t want to look like an idiot by doing something incorrectly.
I told B that he’ll need to constantly remind me that I’m an adult and I need to suck it up and realize that as an adult I have to do things that I don’t want to do, break out of my comfort zone, and just use my common sense when going about unfamiliar things. I don’t want to go through life clueless.
