by Ashley
Hi all!
I’m about to run out the door to drop the girls off at preschool. The plan is to check out of the hotel today and go back to our own home (fingers crossed). Should know more about that in the coming hours….
Right now, though, I wanted to ask you guys’ advice about how to handle all of the extra expenses we’ve incurred (specifically regarding the hotel room and food). Would you enter these into your regular budget?? I tend to think I would just make one entry – the $500 deductible for our renter’s insurance. Then I would track all of our expenses separately (not inside of our regular budget) so we can be reimbursed through insurance. Is this the “right” way to do it?
Or would you add all of these expenses to your budget (e.g., adding food expenses to the eating out or grocery budget), and then consider the insurance money as additional “income”???
I’m sure there are several ways to handle the situation but right now it just feels overwhelming and I want to make sure I’m not messing something up. I’m just accumulating a bunch of receipts and don’t know if I need to add them to our budget or if they should all be kept totally separate???
Not sure what to do about this to best track financials.
Thanks for your advice!
Hi, I’m Ashley! Arizonan on paper, Texan at heart. Lover of running, blogging, and all things cheeeeese. Freshly 40, married mother of two, working in academia. Trying to finally (finally!) pay off that ridiculous 6-digit student loan debt!
So years ago there was a fire in our apartment complex and we went through the whole extra expenses, renter’s insurance process. My opinion – keep it all separate from your regular budget. We had replacement insurance plus hotel, etc. So we spent a lot of money buying stuff (all soft furniture lost), dry cleaners for clothes, etc and submitting receipts and getting paid. Having to track all of that in our budget would have been overwhelming – so I kept a separate set of books for that. And if you are buying “replacement” items – always keep on a separate receipt – much much easier to submit for reimbursement. The paperwork felt overwhelming at times – so it was nice to deal with it separately from the regular budget. Best of luck!
SAK’s advice sounds reasonable. But, if you really feel compelled to account for the extras in your regular budget you could create line item called Extraordinary Expenses and list the lump sum of what you’re paying out. Then, when you get the insurance check, place that amount as a negative in the Extraordinary Expenses line. That way when you look at your overall spending for the year you’ll see just the net amount this episode cost you.
I would keep them separate. Don’t sweat it too much just now…..just track the expenses and keep all your receipts. Then, when all the costs are over and the insurance has reimbursed you, you can adjust your budget for any over/under.
Like already mentioned, keep a separate accounting and “budget.” I would take the money out of your emergency fund and proceed with your normal budget for this month. Then, when you are reimbursed less the deductible, replenish your emergency fund. If this makes you nervous per SAK’s advice create a separate budget line for these expenses and take it out of what you would normally pay as the debt snowball payment on the car loan.
I don’t understand how this is not your landlord’s responsibility. That sort of contamination is a health and welfare issue rendering the home uninhabitable. I own a rental house and when we had a leak (behind the walls, not sewage!) and had to gut both of the bathrooms in the house, we paid to relocate our tenants. We did not pay food, but we paid to rent another house for a month plus the utilities.
I am almost certain the hotel reimbursement will be by your landlord. The extra food cost is a grey area. I think if you are in a hotel without kitchenette the landlord also must provide a meal allowance. If it had a kitchenette, I believe its just hotel only with no meal allowance.
Possessions will be done by renter’s insurance. Depending on how much was actually ruined (won’t include damage to apartment/carpets) and whether you had replacement or actual value renter’s insurance you may be under the $500 limit.
Definitely keep this one separate. One line item to “track” everything seems reasonable. If I were you, I’d start an excel spreadsheet listing all of the expenses out and then take photos of your receipts to go with it. That way when the insurance company needs the information, all you’ll have to do is send the file and photos over. This helps you from re-living every gory detail in the future.
I would suggest keeping them separate as well. One of the great things about tracking your expenses so diligently these past nine months is that once you get past a year you can start to calculate your average monthly expenditures over the course of a year. Then when you have super high months (like the summer for your husbands business) you know how much you will need to set aside for the super low months (like the holidays when no one is getting their floors done). Something like this past weeks events are not going to occur every year (hopefully) and could really deviate you from the true averages.
I was also thinking about how bad things often come in three’s; with your girls being sick, the plumbing situation, and now your husband’s truck you should now be in the clear! Just a little something to give you happy thoughts! 🙂
Cheers,
Meghan
I am just now getting caught up with your Posts Ashley and all I can say is well…(((HUGS))). I know how you feel and what you are going thru, made that much harder by 2 small kids ((Hugs again)). My house flooded during Hurricane Irene. I kept receipts for everything spent in the 2 weeks we were displaced (and I am so thankful it was only 2 weeks when neighbors were out for months….our first level is actually the basement so we lost our hot water heater, furnace, laundry room, and stuff in storage, the water stopped right at the step of the actual first floor…..thankful) and I am sure it goes by state and/or coverage but we could claim hotel or rent for another place for the 2 weeks, lost rent on where we lived, food(that we ate during the 2 weeks and food spoiled because we lost power), and then anything we lost like the clothing in the storage area, washer & dryer. Dealing with insurance was pretty easy. I sent about 10 pictures showing all the stuff now on the curb for garbage pickup (honestly that part I wasn’t ready for. I got so emotional to see kids toys, lil clothes with tags still on them, anything for my kids just really made me cry) and the agent called back in like 5 mins and said we didn’t even need to send receipts for the hotel/rent/food because based off of the “lost items” alone we will be getting the max. Hope you experience is just as smooth and here’s hoping your LL is as great about the situation as ours was.
Sorry I also meant to say I tracked it by subtracting the money I spent from the money I got from the Insurance company.