I feel very good about our net worth increasing $9K this past month! Glad I got some good news, because I got two pieces of bad news and one good but challenging.
First, the insurance policy I found is more than my mortgage broker thought it would be, by over a thousand. This means closing costs probably won't cover it and I'll need to come up with more money at closing.
Second, AS got another medical bill from her procedure. I was expecting another hundred or two, but instead it's for $1400 more! She'll call the insurance company, but I don't have much hope it'll change. It wasn't a strictly necessary procedure so we were pleasantly surprised by the insurance co's estimate of what they would cover. Apparently they're wrong. So we didn't set enough money aside for it.
Our budget was looking doable with about a $2000 surplus through December. Now the surplus is more or less gone. Shouldn't be a problem, just a bummer that we won't be able to start renovating the new home until next year. I'm sure there will be some things that NEED to get done this year, so even if/when I get a raise for my new position, it'll probably go toward bare necessities at the new place.
This is what it feels to not have a cushion, and I don't like it much. Will enjoy building our cushion back up again next year. (Note that we DO have a $16K cushion, but it's money that I would really like to use for the UK renovations, so I try to pretend it's not there.)
Since our budget loosens up a lot in Oct./Nov./Dec., one thing I did to even things out for the next few months was to cancel our Roth contributions for July through November. I still have them on the budget, I just moved them down to December. Cancelling them altogether would be a last resort. If anything I would postpone them a bit longer instead.
Oh, and the good but challenging news: our best UK friends are coming to visit immediately after our UK relatives visit. Which is awesome! Except we don't have any vacation money in the budget, so entertaining will come out of our weekly spending money. After this weekend I'm going to buckle down even harder on stashing as much of my spending money as possible. No eating out, no new clothes, no movies or other entertainment (unless it's free). I'll chip in for the weekly wine and buy gifts when necessary (weddings and shower) but that's it. I want to have SOMEthing set aside when we have basically 4 weeks of visitors.
I do feel it was the right move to make an offer on this house, which is uniquely suited to our needs, but since it was nearly a year before I felt ready to do so, the next 6 months to a year are going to feel a bit stressful. I'll be glad to get to a point where speed bumps don't stress me out as much!
And just like that, some speed bumps!
June 20th, 2014 at 01:05 am
June 20th, 2014 at 01:53 am 1403225611
June 20th, 2014 at 03:05 am 1403229926
June 20th, 2014 at 05:58 am 1403240284
June 20th, 2014 at 01:19 pm 1403266740
On the 18th floor we're fine, but I do worry about our new place. One thing the inspector pointed out is that the ground slopes slightly toward the house where the gutters are, so one of the fixes he suggested was redirecting rainwater so it didn't get into the basement. Of course we don't own the place yet so the basement may have taken some water yesterday.
In England they're used to flooding, huh? It's been pretty bad the last year or two.
June 20th, 2014 at 02:20 pm 1403270442
June 20th, 2014 at 04:08 pm 1403276903
June 20th, 2014 at 06:00 pm 1403283632
What happens if there's new damage after your inspection but before you close on a house? I should ask my agent about that.