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The no-pants guide to spending, saving, and thriving in the real world.
A few weeks ago, I discovered the queue at my public library’s website. The process is simple: Select your books, wait a few days, then pick them up. They are available from any library in the county, delivered to my local library. That’s awesome. Much more convenient-and cheaper-than Amazon.
So I moved a couple of pages of my Amazon wish-list into the library’s queue.
I must not have been thinking, because two days later, I got an email telling me that 19 books were ready to be picked up and 10 more were in transit.
In this county, each checkout is good for 21 days. For items that don’t have a waiting list, you can reserve 3 times. That’s 12 weeks for 29 books. Hopefully, I’m up to the challenge. Please keep in mind, I’m a father of three, two of whom are in diapers, and I’m married, and I have a full time job.
I have frugally blown every second of spare time for months.
Update: This was another post written in advance. When all of the books came in, I suspended my request list. Little did I realize, the suspension cancels itself after 30 days. That was 30 more books. Whee!
When you run a big company that handles a lot of one-year renewable contracts with the government at every level from city to federal, you tend to expect that you’ll need to do some legwork on the contract renewals before they expire. Preferably, you’d do this a few weeks before they expire so the bureaucratic mess that is the federal government can process the renewal on their end.
That’s a reasonable expectation after 30 years in the industry.
If, instead, you wait until the expiration date on the contract to submit the renewal to the federal agency in question, you’ll have a department to shut down for a week due to lack of work.
Then, at the end of that week, you’ll be reminded that the wheels of the federal government grind. very. slow.
So slow, in fact, that the department in question gets to stay shut down for at least another 2 weeks.
If you haven’t been doing the math, that is a surprise, unpaid, three-week vacation for my wife.
Our emergency fund hasn’t grown to the size that can handle this, but it is enough to take the edge off for a couple of weeks. Yay!
We’d already decided that we would be skipping a vacation this year, to give us more time to deal with my mother-in-law’s estate and hoarding remnants, so the vacation fund will be tapped. That should cover the rest, assuming her job does come back.
That’s part 1.
Part 2 is the story of a cat whose butt exploded on our bed at 1AM last week.
Poo–the cat named for her coloration–has been acting funny. She’d suddenly sprint in a circle around the room, then poop on the floor. Irritating.
One night, her sprint crossed our bed, so my wife pinned her down, hoping to break the cycle.
The cat screamed, then sprayed blood from her butt all over the pillows, blankets, sheets, and my wife.
That’s called a midnight visit to the emergency vet.
See, cats have anal glands that they use to sign their work when they are marking their territory. Sometimes, these glands get infected. Sometimes, the infection gets so bad the glands kind of…explode.
On my bed.
While I’m sleeping.
Pop.
Fixing that involves sedation, an ice cream scoop, and a sewing kit. Or something. I wasn’t really pushing for details when my wife called from the vet’s office.
For those of you who’ve never had a cat’s butt explode in your bed at one in the morning (and if you have, I’m not sure I want to hear the story), the emergency vet isn’t cheap. This visit cost us $500. It probably would have been half of that if we would have waited until the regular vet opened, but…ewww.
We’ll be starting our emergency fund from about 0 in the next few weeks, but it beats going in to debt over a couple of setbacks.
How’s your emergency fund? Is it enough to carry you through any unexpected setback?
While I find it fascinating to read about other people’s net worth, I’ve never bothered to figure out my own. With the start of the new year, I thought it would be fun to do. This is me, upping my personal transparency bar.
Overall: $240,137
Update: I wrote and scheduled this before I paid off my car loan.
As I’m sure you’ve all heard by now, a young Mr. John Luke Robertson is engaged to be married at the ripe age of nineteen. While I’m positive you may be reeling in awe at how anyone could fathom being married at that age, the idea isn’t such a terrible one. The Robertsons have done more than build an outdoorsman’s empire; they’ve set the standard for wholesome values and American family dynamic. Even though I’m sure the two lovebirds won’t be dining on ramen and sharing a ramshackle apartment on the cheap side of town, they have the right idea. Let’s take a moment to explore why marrying young may not be such a bad idea for those of us less waterfowl adept.
In the beginning, there was man. Man loved woman. Woman loved man. They found that they were so completely enamoured with one another that they couldn’t stand the idea of a moment apart and decided, “Hey, let’s spend every moment of or life together, forever.” There they are. Two young, ambitious people with the world ahead of them. Now what?
Likely, college is still looming for the two. Instead of struggling to work through school while paying for housing, they help each other. Two incomes mean half the burden and twice the savings. Instead of going out at night, they stay in studying, bonding, burning cookies and making lasting memories. After four years, that time spent at home has paid off. Instead of tarnishing their unblemished credit by applying for for small loans to stay afloat and likely defaulting, they’ve been paying off credit cards, paying on student loans, and thusly establishing good credit.
Speaking of homes, it’s about time for that. Thanks to the lack of partying and indecision, they left school with great GPA’s, promising careers, and a near perfect credit history. They purchase a home. Likely, a nice home with room to grow and most importantly, equity. Now that they’ve made the leap, the mortgage payment isn’t much more than the rent would have been and they can afford to pay a little extra toward the principle each month. Settling down so early has paid in dividends, via two incomes and ever increasing property value. Our couple has accomplished in five years what would take a single graduate closer to ten or fifteen to obtain.
They may or may not decide to have children. In the event that they do, the kids will have grown and left the nest before our couple has even reached 45. Diligently working and supporting each other, they have continued to save. The house is paid off and the kids are gone. Retired at 50, they own their home outright. They can relax and spend the rest of life enjoying it from a comfy porch swing. There is no struggle or financial burden. They are free, while others their age may still be living paycheck to paycheck and worrying about keeping a roof overhead.
You may still consider the idea of marrying young to be frivolous, but it is likely that at this point in your life you could have been twice as well off had you only settled down with that girl from high school who would have followed you to the end of the Earth. Following your heart may not only make you happy, it can make you stable, self sufficient and and financially secure. They don’t make a duck call for that.