Seeking to Understand

I’m so stressed out right now that I can’t even think straight. I have a massive headache and even typing a blog entry - something that’s quite easy for me - is a huge mental strain right now.

The root cause of all this suffering? Money. Or, rather, the lack of it.

Up until a few hours ago, we had an emergency fund. It was a nice cozy feeling to have some buffer between us and total chaos. It wasn’t a really big emergency fund, mind you, but it seemed like it’d be a decent size. The thing is - life hits you all at once. You’re collapsed, groaning on the ground in pain, and that’s when life, standing over your quivering body, looks down upon you with a sly smile and twinkle in its eye - and kicks you a few more times - just for fun.

A long standing issue that we’ve been saving for is car repairs. Our car has about 131,000 miles on it and the breaks constantly remind me with each red stop light that they’d really like to be retired. On top of that, the clutch is now slipping and I have to drive like an old grandma to avoid making it worse. Neither of these are going to be cheap repairs - but we’re saving up for it - and besides, we’ve got an emergency fund!

Last week I was walking through the kitchen when I happened to catch something strange on the ceiling. I looked up and saw a fresh water spot. Uh oh. I kept an eye on it for a a couple days and determined that yes, it really was growing and no, it had not always been there. So I called a plumber. He came, looked it over, and decided that maybe, possibly, it was just water leaking from around the tub and we should put down some towels and see if it stops getting bigger. Okay, sure thing. We did that. The spot grew and grew.

Today I called the plumbers again. A different dude came out and had a look - he doesn’t buy the first guy’s argument and thought it was actually the toilet. So I let him have at it and he cut a hole in the floor upstairs. He found out that the toilet was installed very badly and was even missing a rather important flange or some such that helped keep it sealed. The wood around the toilet was rotten so he had to cut it all out and replace it. That’s all fine and dandy except that while he was working on this he found out the real source of the spot on the ceiling below - two pinhole leaks in the hot water line just behind the toilet. So yes, the toilet was leaking, but it had noting to do with the spot on the ceiling! Arg!

Over $800 later, he’s got the toilet fixed but the original problem still remains. His rough guess is that we’re looking at another $800+ bill - possibly more if the pipes break at another joint when he tries to cut into them to replace the broken section. That’s just great. And this has to be fixed pretty much right now because it’s only going to get worse - but hey, we have an emergency fund, right?

Well this is where things get even more fun. Today was our very first mortgage payment. And, coincidentally, today my paycheck did *not* arrive in my bank account. Guess what? There goes the emergency fund! Yep. It’s gone now to pay the mortgage payment. So I had to put the plumber’s bill from today on my credit card. He’ll probably be back tomorrow to fix the main leak and I’ll have to do that again.

So as of right now I’m facing the fact that the car is in dire need of repair, there’s over $1,600 in plumbing to be paid for on credit, I have no emergency fund, and oh our bank account is essentially empty - just like the fridge.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 5th, 2007 at 3:44 pm and is filed under Life, Rants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.