Money and the new Economy part 2 May 22, 2009
Posted by spacemom in : Life...otherwise , 1 comment so farWhere was I? Oh yeah, freaking out.
Strangely? Today is better. As in much better. I don’t get it.
So we are currently undergoing a huge "money in flux" issue. We have money coming in and going out. We took a crap load (no I am not going to give you the final number) out in September to do our kitchen. I am pleased with that and we have paid more than 60% from our savings and the rest we were forced by Jay’s parents asked to please take a loan from the in-laws. They have this thing about leaning money out. I always feel terrible because I would rather just pull it from savings, but they have this family thing so WHATEVAH. We are almost done paying for my car, and the biggest expense in our lives for the past 7 years is almost over….daycare.
Luna leaves daycare mid-June. We have a mini vacation to visit the in-laws and then summer camp begins. She will go back to daycare for the last 2 weeks of the summer because, for reasons unbeknown to mankind, no summer camp runs the last 2 weeks before school. Then, she starts KINDERGARTEN! Happy dance happy dance! Afterschool care is about 1/6 the cost of daycare, so that is great for us. For those of you who neither having children nor live in Boston, you may be surprised that daycare for a pre-K program can cost over $1500 a month. I’ll wait while you pick yourself off the floor. We could have gone to a private daycare, but I wasn’t comfortable with that. We could have made me SAHM, but then I would be in the insane asylum.
So we will suddenly have this money to start squirreling away. Yet… I still am freaking about the cost of everything. The cost of repairs (my muffler is going), the cost of electricity, the cost of water (I bought a rain barrel so we could not spend so much on watering my tomatoes this year), the cost of everything. I guess when your dad lost his job when you were in high school, you have a different feeling about money. I learned right then how much the loss of an income can hit a family. Then in grad school, I usually made meals with Ramen noodles that I had purchased with coins.
Now I have the extra money to save. So why am I still freaking out? Jay has pointed out that we have been barely saving since Soleil was born. He’s right. And since she started school, we’ve been putting stuff away again (we had been married 7 years before she was born). Now with Luna going to school, more will go away.
So why do I freak?…
