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Apr 30, 2021    |       5 comments

May Challenge – Reuse, Repurpose

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Lots going on this next month…Princess turns 17, both girls graduate, my parents and maybe my brothers come to visit and I might be buy a house. Maybe.

But there’s a lot that has not happened due to my being ill. For one, our garden is not planted and our flower beds are a mess. Frankly, I’m just getting the house back in order after being down for the count for most of the last 6 weeks.

And you will learn in a later post that there’s been a great deal of work going on at our house the last couple of weeks so we our carport is full of wood, shelves and more.

I look at all this “stuff” both in and out of my house and then think of the things that should be done. And I am overwhelmed a bit.

While the kids have really stepped up to help, they are busy. And I just can’t require any more of them.

And I guess the final component to this is that now that my mind is fog free, I recognize that while we didn’t over spend, I did spend a bit frivolously the last couple of weeks. While I have no regrets about the car loan or prom, I need to get back on track.

May Challenge

My May challenge is to get my yard into shape by reusing and repurposing what we have around. I can split plants, use wood for borders and trim existing plants and bushes. There are seeds from last year to sow. I just move a little slower these days.

As I’m writing this, I have a toilet, a medicine cabinet and a sink sitting in my front yard. We are those people right now. For the record, I will not be re-using these items. But do plan to give them away as they are no longer needed in our house.

Apr 30, 2021    |      0 comments

Where Did Our Stimulus Go?

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As I’m sure most of you did, we received the latest stimulus check. We have four kids so it was a nice sized check. What did we do with it? I wish I could say we booked a nice vacation to Hawaii but, things definitely didn’t go that way.

 

We received the bill for my son’s ER visit and although it wasn’t as bad as I expected, it ended up being just shy of $1,000. It would have been less but since we went to Urgent Care first and then over to Children’s Hospital, we got hit with bills from both places.

 

My husband broke a tooth! We hoped to be able to save it, perhaps band-aid it together but our dentist told us it was unsalvageable and it had to be pulled. My husband decided to get an implant rather than have an open spot (and I agree!). His implant will be just over $2,000 when all is said and done. Yikes! He and I have both had implants before and we shop around every time but that’s the going rate for a quality implant here.

 

I have a cavity under a crown and I’m not sure how that will turn out. I’m planning for the worst and holding onto some funds to cover that expense. We go to our dentist regularly and for the most part we are cavity free! But when it rains at the dentist, it pours for us.

 

All three of these expenses could be paid by our Health Savings Account but since we have most of those funds tied in investments, we decided to pay out of pocket and leave those alone. In a family of 6, medical expenses are always going to be a part of our lives and if we have the cash now, it makes the most sense to do it this way. I’m always looking at mitigating risk down the road and storing up funds in the HSA is a good way to do that.

 

We split the rest between the truck fund and our upcoming Great Lakes trip. My husband’s truck is starting to go downhill and we are thinking we will need to replace it sooner than expected.  We were still a little short on gas funds and campground fees (for the trek out, it’s free while we are there) for our Great Lakes summer trip so that tidied up what we estimated our needs to be.

 

I’m hoping you made good choices with your check if you got one.

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