Debt/Home Consolidation Here we come

So my life has been so crazy these last few weeks, I couldn’t even write about it.

Last week I went to an amazing wedding in Ireland full of interesting and creative entrepreneurs. The bride is a fashion designer and her crowd was so refreshingly inspiring. We were friends of the groom, so had no idea what to expect.  There was one guy who’s parents were migrant workers from Mexico in the textile industry and he worked his way up from the loading docks to having his own textile mill. He was the complete opposite of the characters in Devil Wears Prada which shamefully is what I kind of imagined the crowd to be like.  We had an amazing talk about manufacturing in the US, but too long a discussion to append to this post. 

Then this week, I had some minor surgery which made my head feel like it’s been hit by a 2×4. It all started with a friend who had something on his head that ended up being a brain tumor, so then my dear husband was like..you should get the lump on your head looked at.  At first they thought it might be a bony growth, so I told people they were going to grind my horn down like hellboy.  Ah the jokes. They were aplenty. Then, when they went in there, it actually ended up being a lipoma, which is a benign fat blob.  Disappointed that he couldn’t use the horn jokes anymore, my husband quickly smiled and said “so you’re a fat head?”  I looked at him annoyed but impressed at his quick wittedness and acknowledged the new pet name..fat head. Well played dear, well played.

If you’ve been reading the blog, you know we bought a dump house that isn’t habitable and have been rehabbing it over the winter.  I have not been enjoying paying  3 sets of bills, most notably heating and property tax but we knew it would be temporary, we so pushed on.  Then, some major unexpected job things happened that I won’t get into at present but it put operation live with Babci into high gear.

Sadly, this crazy ass week helped put things in perspective. At least my family is in one piece and healthy. At least my home isn’t flattened but there are some life changes that will need to occur in the future.  If there’s one thing you can count on, it’s change and with all change there is an opportunity to be in an even better position than you were in before. Sometimes you need a kick in the butt to actually make a big decision, so I see it as positive thing long term.

I’ll miss my Japanese Maple

So, I swung into action and pulled out my budget spreadsheet and looked at the numbers. As you can imagine, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out we need to get down to 1 house before any major changes can occur.  I took every free moment I had and  made my current house sparkle. It’s officially up for sale. (Did I mention I fell though the floor while moving stuff to the new place..ouch. Thankfully I didn’t fall a full story but was left dangling and only had one bruise on my leg and bloody nose to show for it.)  Babci made me bury a St. Joseph so that she could pray to him.  We still have a few weekends worth of work at Babci’s to finish it up but we need a non-leaking bathroom and laundry room at the new place before it’s bare bones habitable, so those tasks currently trump finishing babci’s and putting hers up for sale.

When a major life change occurs, I really don’t understand people who just maintain the status quo until it gets into a crisis situation. If you still have tons of bills, instead of waiting around for financial issues to become critical, why not monitor your debt load closely so you can have a better idea of when things start to get critical and you need to take action. There is always debt help available from companies like Consolidated Credit. When you see your debt load rising, you can then take steps to reduce your debt load and keep it within the limits of what you can afford to pay back.

I love having options. I hate feeling trapped. I feel like even though change is in the future, we have a lot of different options we can pursue. That feels good and comforting and I thank my younger self for looking out for my current self by creating emergency funds and building home equity. Thank you me.  I know older is wiser but you were pretty darn smart back then too.  Thank goodness a healthy fear of poverty made you save from day 1.

Today I’m taking Babci  yard saling. She has some major cabin fever and wants to get out of the house. I’ve been so focused on getting our place up for sale, I’ve neglected her.   She’s also ready to start moving bushes to the new place, but with my still healing fat head, I can’t do anything too strenuous just yet.  She’s been giving me daily updates on the frost line and the ground is officially frost free and workable again. Hopefully next weekend we can start moving shrubbery.  Who the heck knows how/when we’ll move the chickens and if they should still be there when we put the house for sale.

That’s all the news for now. I’ll try to scare up a good babci story for the next post. Perhaps in our day together, she’ll share some kooky memory with me.