Challenges

The January income statement is done, I just haven't gotten around to scanning it. I am still tweaking the March budget, too.

Some things have come up. This is what Dave Ramsey calls Murphy.

The good: I got a dog this weekend. Um. I know I said I wouldn't. But I knew I would know the right one when I saw him (on the internet). I had let some others pass me by, but this one I couldn't. I hate going to pet organizations ~ I always want to take them all home, so I guess it is good I stuck with just one. He is a rescue - he was surrendered to animal control. He is a silky terrier, registered with AKC with papers. Blows my mind. He is house broken (YAY!) but we are having some problems with him chasing the cat. I hope this will settle itself some soon. The cat is staying upstairs, and sometimes under the bed. We have him confined downstairs. I paid for his adoption and his things at Petsmart in cash, though. In future budgets, I will raise my pet allocation and I also will have to board him in May for a few days, so will have to account for that as well.

The rest:

My mother in law was diagnosed with lung cancer. She has to have surgery to remove part of her lung. She has never smoked and is the healthiest, most in shape person I know. My father in law is a disabled vet, who just went through an amputation. My husband has to go out there to take care of his father while his mother goes through surgery, and then possibly both of them. Luckily, his parents have since offered to pay for his flight, and he can work remotely, so that takes the financial strain off of an already stressful and emotional situation. From what I understand, her prognosis is good.

Our roof. We have a leak which really appears to be a lost flashing. The water comes in down one of those silver pipes that sticks out of the roof, then drips down and there is some water damage in the ceiling of the bedroom below. We have gotten a ton of rain in the last year, and that is how we came to notice it, though there was previous damage in that spot. We put a bucket in the attic and went on about our lives. Meanwhile, we had our gutters cleaned a couple months ago, and the guy alerted us that there is damage on the roof of our porch. There is a huge crater in the roof (we can see it from a window) and the wood underneath is rotting - all the way down to where you can see the rot on the ceiling of the porch. On the one hand, it is just the porch and I don't feel it is an emergency. On the other, it could be an indicaiton of further problems we can't see over the main house. You just never know with insurance companies, and I have never had to deal with them before so I didn't know what to do. Roofs are always the huge scary expense. It turns out that while our deductable for most things is $1000, like we thought, it is $3800 for hail or wind damage. That is how most people have been getting their roofs replaced. This is a HUGE additional amount of money. The insurance company is sending someone out to look at it. I guess what we do from there depends... If they will cover it and redo the whole roof, I have to find $3800 somewhere. If they don't cover or won't do the whole roof, we will just fix the porch, and I have no idea what that will cost at this point. I have chosen not to pay off cc4 this month ($500 extra payment) and to pull $1000 from our debt repayment the next couple months to help cover. We will pull the money out of savings and pay it back. This really throws a wrench into my payoff plan, though.

Dentist: My husband needs two crowns. Luckily, insurance is going to pay for 80%, but that still leaves around $500 for us. We will use the med card for some of it. I guess when my husband finds out when he will be out of town, he will schedule around that and we can go from there.