We’ve got trouble! Right here in River City! Trouble with a capital “T”, and that rhymes with.. OK, I’ll stop already. NOT because I’d have to roll out 76 trombones, but because… I don’t remember any more of the words.
Trouble you say? What sort of trouble?
TROUBLE #1
Well, it’s a budget buster that is going to screw up everything. Not just everything THIS month, or even NEXT month, but for the rest of the year, perhaps even my entire plan to pay all this debt off by december of 2010.
This year, we took all our 1099s and K-1s and Int-Divs and W-2s and THX1138s and 402SUCKITs* and all the other tax forms we could find, shoved them in a file and marched them to a real live official CPA, who then did our taxes for us and broke the news that we owed. $3600 worth.
So here it is, the end of June, and I thought, “Hmm. Perhaps we should check our withholding to make sure we don’t have to go through that again, eh?”
So I gathered up our most recent paystubs, estimated what we’d pay in mortgage interest, property taxes, daycare costs, and heaven knows what else and sent them over to the previously mentioned CPA.
He called back later to give me the bad news. We need to withhold an extra $350 dollars each.
$350 x 4 paychecks a month = $1,400 LESS to work with in our budget each month.
We still need to firm up these numbers. I forgot some mortgage interest, dug up the points we paid on the re-fi and resent to the CPA. But even if it comes down, we definitely looking at at LEAST $1,000 less a month. Which is, ironically, the exact same amount we pledged to throw at our debt each month.
*Some tax forms described may in fact, be made up. They may also, be a nerdy George Lucas reference in there somewhere. I am sorry, I’m married to a geek.
TROUBLE #2
Mr. 99k noticed we had some water accumulating underneath our furnace/blower unit in the basement. Maybe it noticed that we had gotten a new heatpump and felt neglected. Or maybe it was all the gook stuck in the pipe trap that clogged it and caused it to spew water everywhere. Yes, you’re right, probably more of the latter than the former. $180 later, we have a new trap with a handy dandy brushee thingee to clean out the gook periodically. Yay. Did I mention we’re already over budget this month?
SEMI-TROUBLE #3
Our auto insurance is in the $1250/6 months range for a 1999 SUV, and a 2006 4-door sporty zippy go-really-fast car. I am continually annoyed at this number, especially since it went up for some mysterious reason last fall and all they could tell me was they redid the rates in our area. Since we’re now about 2 years away from our latest moving violations transgressions, I did a check on Progressive. The rate came out to about $830/6 months. Yay! I’m not quite counting our chickens before they’ve hatched yet, because I know they sometimes let you buy your policy and then check out everything about you (your credit score, your driving history, the super secret insurance files, the color of underwear you’re wearing, etc.) and change the rate on you. If it does give us a better deal, I’ll be so ecstatic. The status when I log in to my Progressive account is “policy is being processed,” So I’m in wait and see mode.
Assuming our premium doesn’t change, we’ll be saving money in the long run, HOWEVER, they like you to pay your entire premium up front. Which is $830 we don’t have. So if all this goes through fine, we’ll be taking some money out of emergency savings/debt savings to pay the upfront 6 month premium. Going forward, we’ll make a savings category in our budget for the next 6 month premium, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that we’ll be budget busted over this right now. I still think it’s a worthwhile move to make, however.
TROUBLE #4
I don’t know if you’ve heard, but the new 3rd generation i-phone comes out in just 14 SHORT DAYS.
Temptation! Thy name is I-PHONE!!
I’m not an apple-phile, but my husband kind of is. He’s wanted one of these things since they first came out. Unfortunately for him, we were still in a 2 year contract with Verizon (Apple has an exclusive contract with Cingular for the i-phone for I think another year). Back then, I was unimpressed. My husband also just HAD TO HAVE the new Treo 600w. Once he had it? It decided not to ring most of time. Who was the one who called him the most? Me. Six months later, I hate the thing because he never answered it, and he hated the thing because his wife kept hollering at him for not answering his phone. So, I’m sorry if I’m not terribly excited at the prospect for throwing another $600 at a new gadget that in my mind, we won’t even want in 6 months.
But that was THEN. This is NOW. And the IPHONE! Well, it’s so pretty and shiny! I wanted one too!
So when Apple had their big developer meeting a few weeks ago, I said to Mr. 99k, “If the new i-phone is $200 or under, I think we should get a couple!”
People! When these things FIRST came out the cheapest one was $600! Sure, they lowered it a few months later to $400, but I thought I was on pretty safe ground with a statement like that! I never DREAMED they’d actually come in at around $200 bucks! Right at the end of Steve Jobs’ keynote speech, he dropped the $199 bomb. I was ecstatic, and totally bummed at the same time. I backpedaled with Mr. 99k, but honestly, I totally want an i-phone. Would THAT be the fiscally responsible thing to do? Hell to the no. Do I still want one? Hell to the YES!
Well, I WAS on the fence, leaning toward NOT getting some (because even if we cough up the $400 for 2 iphones, the monthly phone bill would be an extra $60/month which is just too much. TOO MUCH!)
And then… we have TROUBLE #5
My cell phone died. Now I need a new phone, our contract with Verizon is up, and oh, gee, look! The new (cheap(er)) iphone is out in 2 weeks!
I know it really isn’t smart, but I really want an iphone. If we can cut some other things out of our budget to make room for the additional $60/month the phone bill is going to run us..
Except that with the extra withholdings are going to kill our budget ANYWAY…
Yeah. This sucks.
Trouble. Right here in River City.
- 99k