today was the beginning of starting to catch up. we had about $650 of past dues all crash together this week (that implosion i posted about before), plus we had to have transportation funds for saxy to get to work this week and grocery money. before the job, no way in hell i could pull this all together. but even with saxy's smaller paycheck this week, it's do-able. tight, but do-able.
we will so take do-able after months of stressing and having to make the best out of a bunch of bad choices.
this isn't quite catching up yet. it's just the start. i've got to get from paying past dues to paying on time, and the only way i can see to do that is to pay a little more than the past due each month until i catch up to the current due. the only place this might be a problem is the water. see the water doesn't put a 10% past dur charge on the base amount due; it puts that charge on the whole amount. so if the past due is $100 and the current is $125, the 10% isn't $10, it's $22.50. this adds up horribly, and the bills get horrendous pretty quickly. i'll have to somehow get that bill down to manageable first. it's the one utility that kills us. and the one utility that gives next to no leeway on those disconnects. they can actually get quite bitchy when you ask for more time, actually. most of them anyway. last month, i managed to talk to someone more reasonable. anyway, right now, i've just got to keep us from crashing and burning while we stagger back to our feet.
hubs should have a really decent check next week (lots of work days on this check), so i might use some of that to pay the past due payment from our old auto insurance to prepare for getting a new car with the tax return. which might take awhile. seems the place he worked in early last year did its own crash and burn 8 months after opening and is now delaying the w-2s we need to be able to file. if we ever do get to file, we'll be getting my new glasses, possibly tickets for this year's dragon*con, and either buying a car outright or putting a down payment on a better car than $2700 can buy us. i'm not sold on the latter because, while i think i can squeeze insurance payments into our very tight budget, i'm not at all convinced i can put in car and insurance payments, especially once the girls start moving out. i'm thinking that next year, we'll have a bigger return and might be able to pick up a better car then, but a carmax car (or whatever) is at least two years away. he's got to have the stable job history and the time to work more hours, which means he needs to be done with the b.a. as well as the a.a.
i'm also not sold 100% on dragon con, but those tickets are cheaper than a car, so it'll probably be easier to talk me into it. lol
besides, i like dragon con.
but you know what? even if all we do is talk about the car options, it's nice to be able to do that. we're just starting the slow climb out of the hole we've managed to tumble into over the last 18 months, but we are starting. we just have to keep the "having money coming in" thing from going to our heads and stay on track until we are indeed caught up. at least now we have the opportunity. for a long time there, i was beginning to wonder if there was a chance in hell of going anywhere except further into the hole. i'll take starting to catch up over digging deeper any day.
~*~
word of the moment: shebander
a harbor master, or ruler of a port, in the east indies
