sunday, february 25, 2001
reevaluation

saxy and i had a long talk today about finances and have decided that a car is not the wisest option for us right now for several reasons. one, a car is expensive, far more expensive than a bus. bus passes out here cost $36 or $26 depending on full fair or student. a car would cost $50 in gas, $100 in insurance, god knows what in maintenance and repairs. even if we get TWO bus passes, the cost of the bus is cheaper than the cost of a car, especially when you consider that i get the student pass. so a big strike against the car, especially when you consider that our utility bills have been skyrocketing and don't look to be going back down any time soon, is the cost. second strike against the car is affordability in general. we'd have MAYBE $3000 to spend on a car. This translate into old, lots of mileage, possible a gas guzzler, and half a step away from the car graveyard in california. we'd rather put a couple thousand down on a car and make payments with a halfway decent car that isn't one step away from the grave, possibly with better gas mileage, and definitely with better safety features. knowing that this year isn't our last year to be able to do so, we figure that being able to get a better car is a good point in favor of waiting. finally, we have an outrageous amount of past due in default credit cards. not that we ever intended for them to get that bad, but things turned so quickly on us and the next thing we knew everything was down the tubes. with saxy out of a job, the surgery coming up and keeping him off his feet a few months, and summer coming, buying a car in ignorance of these particular bills is probably the worst thing we could do.

so...no car. as much as we want it, it isn't a very wise idea at all.

so we have all this money coming in from my school loans and our tax return that would have gone to some bills and school and a car. it's nice to have all this money, sad we won't get much playing with it. saxy really wants to play. i mean REALLY wants to play. but he understands we can't. but we still have a ton of other choices to look at. obviously we have to do something about the credit cards (and we are going to make significant payments to all - over $3500 total, with a few payoffs), but there have been many other things we've discussed and events coming up that we had to look at and decide on. school supplies and books are a requirement, obviously. but we decided to go for it on my laptop in the hopes that typing the notes IN class will reduce the amount of time i deal with the notes overall (it would cut about 3 hours of note typing out of my weekend). for saxy and kids, a new printer since their old one is gradually (ok, rather quickly) dying. we'll also pick up the hub we need for networking, pay off the horrendous electric bill, and, hopefully, have enough for a couple of birthdays coming up.

but the best thing about the whole thing? we talked. we talked agreeably, coming to decisions together. usually finances are my responsibility, and it was so nice to make the decisions together. we used to fight so much about everything that. for the most part, i just did the finances. it was easier that way.

but it is far easier to share the burden. together.