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Jul 20, 2018    |      0 comments

Ways to Pay for Emergency Expenses

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Most of us will have a sudden expense at some point. For example, the car or air conditioner may break down. We may be hit with a huge medical bill. Dealing with an unexpected expense can be difficult. Fortunately, there are a variety of ways that you can deal with unexpected expenses.

Use Your Emergency Fund

It is always a good idea to have extra money put away for unexpected expenses. If you have a savings account then you should use it to pay for a sudden expense. An emergency fund can make it a lot easier to deal with an unplanned event.

Personal Loan

If you do not have enough in your savings account to pay for the expense, then you may want to take out a personal loan. The requirements for getting a personal loan can vary from lender to lender. While a checking account and a source of income are usually enough to look for fast installment loans online with success, banks will want to see an excellent credit history and high credit score on top of these other qualifiers.

Credit Card

If you have a credit card, then you can use it to cover your expense. However, you should make sure that you pay off the credit card as soon as possible. Many credit card companies charge high interest rates.

Sell or Pawn Your Belongings

If you have things in your home that you no longer need, then you can make money by getting rid of them. You can sell them or pawn them. If you take your items to the pawn shop, then you will be able to get your items back if you pay the pawn shop back.

Sell Plasma

Selling plasma allows you to make money and save lives at the same time. You can make anywhere from $25 to $75 by donating plasma. You can donate twice a week. It can take up to two hours for you to donate plasma. You will have to fill out a lot of paperwork and undergo a physical exam in order to sell plasma.

Dog Walking or Pet Sitting

If you love animals, then you can make money by pet sitting or dog walking. There are a number of websites that will let you set up a profile as well as guides to dog walking to help get started. People who are looking for a dog sitter or dog walking will look through the profiles.

You can start working shortly after you are approved. You will likely be able to start earning money within one or two weeks of setting up your profile.

Borrow Money From Family Members and Friends

This should be a last resort. It can be humiliating to have to ask for money. However, it may be your only option. Make sure that you let the person know that it will be a one-time thing. You should also let them know that you will pay them back. Most people will not mind lending money if they can trust you to pay it back.

Additionally, you can offer to do a favor for them in exchange for money. For example, you can watch their children, clean up their house or do yard work for them.

Jul 20, 2018    |       25 comments

Crappy A/C Situation

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After taking the day off work and dealing with sweltering heat (inside our home was 90 degrees), I was able to have two different A/C companies come out to look at the damaged A/C unit and give me their opinions. Folks, the news was not good.

Our brand new unit, not even two years old (put in as part of negotiations when we bought our house) is totally shot. Done-zo. The first repair guy thought the unit may have been struck by lightening. The second repair guy thought it was blown due to a power surge. We had some flooding with a recent monsoon that would’ve partially submerged the unit and the guy think it caused a power surge that blew the whole unit. Both companies agreed we would need to replace:

  • compressor & compressor plug (which was blown right off the compressor)
  • condenser coil

In addition to these, we’d have to fill the Freon, use an acid neutralizer, and I don’t know….give our first born child??? Ugh, typing it here it doesn’t seem like a long list but one repairman referred to the compressor and condenser as the “heart and brain” of the A/C. Both said it’d be better just to replace the unit all together. But we just can’t afford that. So we’ll repair it instead.

We thought about trying to file a home-owner’s insurance claim. We do not have a home warranty, but lightening is covered through home-owner’s insurance. Flooding, however, is not. It was a separate policy that we declined.

Since the unit is still super new, the main parts are covered (which, I was told, run about $2,000/each, so we really luck out there!). But for the items not covered by warranty (like freon, acid neutralizer, etc.) and the labor to do all the work, we’re looking at about $1100. Oh yeah…..and the condenser coil has to be ordered direct from the manufacturer. It takes TWO WEEKS to arrive. We agreed to pay a $150 rush charge, which will put it here in 5 days. But that’s still FIVE DAYS with no working A/C in the middle of a Tucson summer where temperatures are predicted to be up to 111 degrees!!!!

Not okay, folks.

We started to initiate a home-owner’s insurance claim (when we thought the damage was due to lightening), but I think we’re going to just close it out and pay ourselves. If the total ends up being about $1200-1300ish (that’s the estimate + rush charge to get the part here faster), it doesn’t really make sense to file a claim. Our deductible is $1,000 and I don’t think having the extra $200-300 “benefit” would outweigh the cons of having our insurance go through the roof and having a claim on our record. Is that what you guys would think? I’m open to suggestion here, head still a bit reeling from taking in the news that our brand new A/C unit is totally shot.

We still have the issue of being displaced for the next 5-6 days, too, though. We stayed in the house last night and it was one of the worst nights’ sleep of my life (taking me straight back to the day of having twin infants type of no-sleep). It was 88 degrees for most of the night, but it’s hot stale air. It felt suffocating. We all slept downstairs (the bedrooms are upstairs, but the upstairs was at least 5 degrees hotter than downstairs), and we all tossed and turned and sweated our butts off. It seriously felt unsafe and I’m not going to do it again.

I already booked a hotel to get us through the weekend (Fri & Sat nights). That’s another $100/night. This is serendipitous timing, but one of my old friends from grad school is moving back to Tucson on SATURDAY. He bought a 3 bedroom home but is a single guy so he has tons of space and not a lot of possessions to fill it. I already reached out, “I know it’s stressful timing since you’re going to be in the middle of a move…..but could we bring over some air mattresses and crash for a few days if needed????? Oh, and welcome back!!!! 🙂 ”

He agreed and said he’d be happy for us to stay. I hate to put a friend out like that, especially in the midst of their cross-country move. But he’s literally the only person I know in town who even has the space to house a family of 4. I’ve had a couple friends say they’d take the girls, but at this point (they’re 6), they still haven’t even had a slumber party and I’m kind of scared of/opposed to the idea. This is a bit different since it’s a safety related thing. Oh friends…I think you can see I’m kind of all over the place here, grasping at straws and trying for any reasonable band-aid of a solution to get us through the next week until our A/C is in working order again.

So that’s the update. Right about $1300 out of pocket (could be much worse, but the main A/C components are all warrantied). Even so…we literally don’t have an extra $1300 sitting around. Our “EF” right now is like $500. So this is a huge hit. I’m going to have to figure out something to move money around. It’s really bringing to light our dire financial situation. Obviously that will be the point of future blog posts but for now I’m trying to figure out the immediate crisis at hand. Our broken A/C.

Any thoughts or suggestions in terms of whether to try to file a home-owner’s insurance claim (again, we’re leaning against it….not sure it’d even be covered, but I’d like your thoughts) AND what to do in the meantime while we wait for the unit to be fixed? We’ve also thought of renting a portable unit – it wouldn’t help the whole house but might allow us to “camp” in the living room and sleep comfortably there? Thoughts? Ideas?

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