Category: Finances

  • budget optimizations


    I have been on a rampage the last few months, trying to optimize our family budget as best we can.

    First, it started last May, when I closed my original photography business. I sold my second Fujifilm GF50sII body, and 4 of my GF lenses when I no longer needed them for business purposes. I did purchase a Fuji X-S20 with its kit lens so that I would have a second camera, but we still cleared a significant amount with the transactions.

    At the same time, I made a commitment, both internally to myself and also to my husband, to be entirely mindful of all of my spending. Historically, mindless spending when I am depressed or anxious has been a problem.

    Between May and September, that was the primary focus of my energy.

    In September, I decided we were done with the credit card rollercoaster. We’d previously had a personal loan that had a higher than optimal interest rate, at 11.25%, and we also had some minor credit card debt. We were offered and secured a different personal loan with a 7.99% interest rate, and rolled the minor credit card debt and the original personal loan into this 7.99% fixed personal loan.

    At some point in October or November, I called and asked about better deals for our internet only at home– we don’t have a home phone or cable service, we pay for internet only. I lowered our monthly bill from $79.99 to $65 and at the same time, I also secured us a better tier of service.

    Grocery-wise, we primarily shop at Aldi, Walmart, and Costco, with the bulk of our groceries coming from Costco. I have started paying attention to what is on sale weekly at Costco, and buying in bulk where it makes sense to do so. That has made a difference since I began doing this in October– last month we spent $400 less than the month prior, and we are on track to do the same thing this month as well.

    Then in early November, I started wondering if we could refinance our second mortgage…..its interest rate was secured when our credit was not as good, and its interest rate was 10.36%. At the same time, we had a home improvement loan for crawlspace encapsulation that was not only a 9.99% loan, it was a 15-year loan with 13.5 years left. So I looked around, and I found us a 7.625% second mortgage to roll the original second mortgage plus the home improvement loan into, and it is a 10-year term. We will save $14,000 over the life of the loan over what we were paying on the original two loans. (Our primary mortgage rate is 2.875% and thankfully the second mortgage is very minor by comparison).

    In deciding to open a new luxury photography business, I had to be extremely strategic in which expenses were non-negotiable. Ultimately, the LLC and occupational tax certificates were an “of course.” I also ensured my state sales and use tax certificate was put in place, and I re-opened a business checking account with Bluevine that has no monthly service fee at all. And finally, I secured a great deal on fairly comprehensive business insurance with Full Frame Insurance. The beautiful thing for my budget is that the photography gear I already had– and the fact that my primary Cinelux lens works on both of my existing cameras– is all I need to create beautiful luxury portraits.

    And finally, in this last week, I have managed to secure loyalty discounts and upgrades of 3 of the 4 phone devices in our household such that the upgrade cost us $174.30 in taxes, but I got upgrade and trade in fees waived, new devices included with payment of the plans, and payoff on my old phone all included. And with the loyalty discount in place that I was offered, our monthly phone bill for 4 lines will go down from $238 a month to $137 a month.

    So now, our highest interest rate on debt at all is 7.99% across all debt, and it truly does feel like our budget is as optimized as possible, given the circumstances we have created for ourselves.

    And as I make a renewed commitment to my artistic photography, all of this budget optimization frees up considerable brain space for concentration on what I truly love: my art.

    Read more about me here.

  • the plastic project

    ***This post contains an affiliate link.***

    The plastic-on-the-windows project is done. At least done enough, for now.

    Not really to my satisfaction really, but there’s nothing to be done about it.

    Liam’s windows still have shades on them (with sheers over the top just for my own edification really) because his window is the only one really on ground level. 

    To put plastic on Liam’s windows would mean I would have to cover the shades (the plastic goes on the window frame), which means Liam wouldn’t be able to peek behind them to see who was in the driveway, or if there was a weird noise outside. 

    Liam prefers to keep relying on his space heater when it gets really cold. 

    And Oliver just straight up doesn’t want plastic on his windows.

    And the dining room windows are complicated because the sheers are held on by a tension rod between the tops of the frames. So I couldn’t go to the top of the frame with the plastic.

    Porter’s room is a maybe later. But his room is in the middle of house and it’s typically the hottest room in the house anyway naturally. 

    And the kitchen is also a maybe, though that room doesn’t really get cold. 

    And so: the plastic is on the double doors in the living room, and the windows in our bedroom.

    Our bedroom is the coldest room in the house. Our room is above the almost-walk-in crawlspace/basement and I’ve been thinking about going to get some more roll insulation to put in the ceiling of the crawlspace/basement, between the joists. It’s a thought, though I haven’t talked to Jared about it yet.

    At the very least, the styrofoam tubing I shoved in the wider, disjointed gaps at the base of both double doors in the living room, along with the plastic sweeeps we put to block the air last winter, will help, in addition to the plastic on the window portions of the double doors. That was the biggest insulation worry, since I removed the heavy blackout drapes. 

    The goal really wasn’t to bring our energy bills down from what they already are. The goal was to prevent them from skyrocketing despite the very necessary aesthetic changes made to the windows in the house, for my mental health. 

    If anybody is interested in the plastic I bought, you can find it here. 

    It was the cheapest plastics solution I could find, though admittedly I dealt with an awful lot of waste. But the tape, despite the reviews, seem decent enough. And the hair dryer trick (waving the hair dryer briefly over the edges covering the tape) really does shrink wrap the plastic to the frame .

    And one thing I really was not prepared for was the mishaps: The first window I did, I didn’t know that I should keep the hair dryer to the edges by the tape, and I melted two holes that had to be patched. And the patching, while functional, takes away from the aesthetic. I really need to redo that window.

    Similarly, I hadn’t counted on the dogs seeing cats through the sheers outside and going berzerk. Trixie punched a hole in the bottom of the plastic in one of the doors in the living room, that had to be patched.

    At any rate, I am calling the project a success.

    You can read more about me here. 

  • better

    Thank you to everyone who reached out after yesterday’s post. I will be okay.

    Today has been better; I still slept in until 9:30 and didn’t get up until nearly 10:30. Jared is gone to a day conference and left about 6:30 this morning but he made sure the boys were up and getting ready and I got up and took my meds and stayed up until the boys left for school.

    One of the BIG bonuses to having a teen driver in the house is that he can take his little brother to school. We ask him to do it as little as possible, but this morning it felt necessary.

    My solitary task for the day, the one non-negotiable, is that I have to get Oliver from school, after school today.

    And I suppose if I’d had to I could have done it in my jammies– or more accurately– the clothes I put on after my shower last night. Most of my clothes double as jammies; one of the bonuses to living in leggings.

    But, when I got up, I came out and got myself some plain greek yogurt and walnuts for breakfast. I sat down at my computer and I did my gratitude list for the first time since October 21. I actually journaled, as opposed to coming straight here to blog.

    Things on the gratitude list for the day:

    — I am grateful it was a Democratic sweep yesterday

    — I am grateful for Abby

    — I am grateful we have plastic to put over the windows because of the cold

    — I am grateful I have the luxury of being bored

    There were 50 things on my list, but you get the idea.

    And then I remembered my Minolta lenses, and went to read a few reviews between the 58mm 1.2 (a lens I used to have and sold) and the 58mm 1.4 (a lens I currently have) and got the lens out and put it on the GFX:

    And obviously, I took a photo of the GFX with the 58mm lens on it, with the X-S20.

    And then I took this photo of Trixie, with the GFX:

    I do love Minolta lenses. And this one works in regular crop, so I don’t have to use the 35mm crop setting on the GFX. See the above photos? They don’t have the same dimensions because the top one is APS-C and the bottom one is medium format.

    And then after poking around online for a while…..I got myself cleaned up. And then I sent this photo to J:

    And along with the photo, I sent this text to J:

    “I cut on my hair so that it is now all close to properly one length; most of the layers including the thin section at the back of my neck are gone. Back to properly chin length but it felt good to give myself a haircut.
    And I got a shower. And now I am about to warm up 3-day old coffee.
    I feel not quite myself, but almost.”

    The hair thing: I desperately want long hair. But my hair is extremely fine, and thinning by the day. So chin-length it may be. Regardless: now that it is all one length, it is so very obvious that my hair definitely needs absolutely not one single solitary layer in it at all. Too thin for that.

    And yes, I do feel almost myself. A pizza is about to go into the oven for Oliver for when he gets home from school, and after I get him I am going to set to work about finishing the plastic-over-the-windows projects in both our bedroom and the living room. There is an awful lot more to do window-wise– the rest of the house– but if I can just get the hole in the plastic Trixie pierced the other day in the living room and the final door in the living room, along with the second window in our bedroom, it will be a successful day. I am determined to get most of this project done before the extreme cold hits next week.

    Tomorrow is the diagnostic mammogram with potential ultrasound. I’m trying hard to not think about it.

    If you’re new here, you can read more about me here.

  • i am not okay

    Jared and I joke about my “sleep emergency” tendency a lot, both to each other and other people.

    But it is a real thing. And it turns really, really dark if I ignore it.

    Last night was one such occasion. And it has seeped into this morning.

    In a matter of minutes I go from feeling relatively okay about my life to feeling like I am a literal waste of space on this planet.

    And, I cry myself to sleep if I am lucky enough to fall asleep.

    And the next morning, depending on things, is not good.

    This morning, for instance, I had my alarm set to take Oliver to school. And I took my morning meds. But I climbed right back under the covers. I did not go check on anybody. Jared was already up and taking care of things because he probably knew I wasn’t going anywhere this morning.

    After tending to me for a few minutes before he left, Jared encouraged me to think of this morning as a “refresh,” not as “hiding.”

    We both knew I was hiding.

    And, I didn’t go anywhere to help get anyone to school. I didn’t leave the bed until about 9:45– about 20 minutes ago. Jared took the car because it is not good to take Oliver to school on the scooter when it is this cold outside, and Liam drove himself to school in the other car.

    And I won’t go into all the reasons my life is sucky right now. I know to a lot of people it wouldn’t make sense that I view it as sucky. But to me, it’s pretty dark at the moment, even as I sit here with my light therapy lamp on.

    I try to clean it up sometimes. Both the state of the house and the state of my inner being. It just always ends up a mess again.

    Because here’s the truth, for anyone who might actually read this besides the internet bots:

    I sit in my house all day, every day, alone. My phone never rings. Ever. Unless it’s Jared or once every couple of weeks, my good friend Dena (who is really one of the best friends I’ve ever had in my life). Or random telemarketing bots. Nobody texts me except Jared, or occasionally Porter, or occasionally every few weeks my friend Sam (also one of the best friends I ever had in my whole life). Or random telemarketing bots. I don’t get emails except group ones related to church, or spam asking me to spend money we don’t have. My own family doesn’t even call or text me, generally.

    And I’m sorry: I generally consider myself a decent friend to others.

    But in the darkest of the darkness, which now apparently qualifies, I sit here in tears and wonder why, what is wrong with me, that I deserve to spend what should be the prime of my life sitting in my house, all alone, with nobody in the world besides my husband caring whether or not I am lonely at all?

    And that, that is why I cry myself to sleep sometimes, saying to myself that life is just not at all worth it. It’s not the severe money problems that I blame myself for because I don’t have a job and haven’t had a good one in over a decade. It’s not the “keeping up with the Joneses” mentality that I have to fight because I was conditioned to be this way from infancy because that’s just how my family of origin is.

    And yes. I could get out of the house. But literally anything I would do would cost money– gas money if anything– and we are in such a shape that I cannot afford even random once a week coffee out right now.

    I wasn’t kidding– if we could afford to sell the house right now, my dream house– I would. It’s that bad. As I sit here: We have a broken garage door opener. We have plastic over the windows because our energy bills are regularly $350 (more than, it’s $350 because I signed up for flat bill) because we need new windows and new double doors in the living room. We have a dual wall mount oven and microwave combo unit that has had chicken nuggets nuked to oblivion for nearly 3 years in the microwave portion because the door to the microwave stopped working, and then eventually the whole microwave itself stopped responding, but the oven works so we just bought a new microwave to set on the counter instead. The flooring we put in is delicate– we need to have someone come in and repair a portion in a bedroom even though we have the flooring. We have a leak in the shower in the boys’ bathroom. The garbage disposal needs replacing. The air conditioning hasn’t worked in Liam’s car in over a year and a half.

    We really cannot afford to fix any of it. And I’m out of expensive toys to sell that won’t harm my mental health.

    And there’s more debt than I will name here that we will be paying on for years and years, which is why we can’t just take out loans to fix all of the above.

    And I stupidly seek out drama as a way to soothe some portion of myself that feels not alive anyway, as I sit in the house and have no life while the world turns outside. And that drama turns into uninvited harassment, which I then blame myself for having invited the drama into my life all over again. And I tell myself I deserve it.

    And I’m sorry: therapy just will not help loneliness. I need more than just the professionals in my life. I need a sense of purpose. I need a decent income. I need a miracle, honestly. I’m not afraid of hard work.

    And so I sit. And I cry. And eventually the despair will pass.

    And when you see me in public, I will have a smile on my face, and I will say I am better, when you ask how I am doing. And that part won’t be a lie, because I will make myself better in order to even be in public.

    And maybe I will be better. Or maybe I just will publicly deny that I know I am headed next time I go home to sit alone while Jared works, while I have nothing to do while my relatively brilliant mind rots away doing nothing except making hand-type crafts which nobody really wants, and typing into the ether that nobody probably reads, either.