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Apr 23, 2020    |       12 comments

Ready for a Break from Beans & Time to Apply

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Anyone else getting tired of their own cooking? Getting tired of stretching food and controlling the cost of each meal by adding beans? Or some other economical expander.

Sidenote: Did you know that bamboo can be used as a meal expander, it takes on the flavor of what it’s cooked with? I haven’t tried it, but I read about it recently.

Anyone else ready for some sort of normalcy?

We met with Princess’s guidance counselor this morning to talk about her senior year and the next steps for applying and financing college. Can you believe that she is 15 years old and a rising senior? I can’t! How did we get here!?!

We’ve got a laundry list of items to tackle, especially with the future so up in the air. And we’ve definitely got to start looking at scholarships, scholarships and scholarships. While Princess is on track to qualify for all the “free” college money from the state of Georgia including the Zell Miller, Hope Grant and more, with the goal of living on campus we are definitely going to need to add some additional monies to the pot.

I have to admit, I expected more guidance on the scholarship front from the school. She essentially told us she is too busy to help with that because of  all the colleges the kids at this school apply too. I was shocked! It’s understandable that this college prep school pushes for college acceptance, but they don’t seem to be as invested in making sure the kids are successful there. Or maybe just most of their kids are well financed that it doesn’t really apply to many. I was still shocked!

Any college scholarship gurus here in the BAD community? I would love any suggestions. We are going to make a plan for Princess to start regularly applying beginning next month when school lets out.

 

Apr 22, 2020    |       9 comments

The Road to Unemployment…

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We have three streams of income for our household. 1) My husband’s construction company. We ramped this down to nearly nothing last year. He takes very occasional small jobs. 2) My husband’s night job working from home for my dad’s company. He’s been doing admin work there for a few years. He’s ramped this up since the fall, most recently working 20-30 hours a week. 3) My full-time job.

My paycheck covers all our basic bills. Everything he earns we use to pay non-reoccurring expenses like car repairs, vet bills, etc.

I felt safe with this set up since we never put all our eggs in one basket. No, my husband wasn’t earning a full-time income, but his part-time work made it so we could breathe. In the last month, everything changed. The construction jobs completely disappeared. We had a flurry for a couple weeks and then nothing at all. Then he was laid off at my dad’s company.

Our three-legged income is down to a single leg.

Then my work announced pay cuts. Far better than a furlough or a layoff, but still a hit to our income. We don’t have a percentage yet but they’ve announced it will be no less than 10%. They’ve also announced we should expect layoffs in the summer.

My husband was able to file for unemployment from the job he had at my dad’s company. Some have recommended we apply for the Payroll Protection Program for my husband’s company instead but the income has been so low since the fall we wouldn’t likely qualify. It took three tries to file for unemployment since the website kept crashing but we eventually got through.

I know some folks like to pay family cash ‘under the table’ but my dad raised me to always be honest with the IRS. My husband has been an official employee paying taxes for years. In times like these when unemployment is essential, I’m grateful for my dad’s wisdom. For all you folks out there who pay people under the table, it will eventually burn you.

Remember how I shared that 2018 was a banner year for us and we were slammed with taxes? Whelp, it’s burning us for a second time. We earned just over $150K in 2018 so we won’t be receiving the full stimulus payment. ‘But it’s based on 2019 taxes!’ Yes, I hear you yelling that. We paper filed our 2019 taxes (which are WELL BELOW the $150K limit) in early March. Thanks to the pandemic, they haven’t been processed so they are using our 2018 numbers. Yes, I know we will eventually get the rest of the stimulus money next year when we file our taxes but that doesn’t help us right now. Even worse, we are one of the millions of folks who get the ‘Payment Status Unavailable’ response.

And the awesomeness just keeps rolling for us. We are expecting a $6K refund. Per the IRS…

*sigh*

We had to register the kids for summer camp when registration opened and I was playing a shell game with that payment assuming my refund was coming soon. We decided not to use the emergency fund (learned our lesson on that one!) and instead, emptied some ‘sinking fund’ categories like our phone replacement and our clothing fund. Now I’m praying like crazy that we don’t break our phones and the kids can hold off on shoes!

Despite my long rant, things aren’t that bad. I’m grateful not have debt at this time. I don’t worry about a credit card bill, student loan, or a car payment. We also still have our emergency fund sitting untouched. We’ll come out of this just fine. We’ll be a little scraped. A little bruised. But far better than we would have been a few short years ago.

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