Wednesday, September 20, 2017

Late monthly finances post

It's been a good long while since I did a financial round up, or at least it feels that way.

Last time things seemed kind of apocalyptic, but people came through and helped out and now things are more like . . . half apocalyptic.  So maybe there won't be demon locusts, but the seas will still boil and whatnot.

I have been so god damned out of it of late.  I managed to set up physical therapy for my foot, but since I spent three weeks unable to make a phone call (was it three weeks?  I think it was three weeks) it was much delayed in getting set up and for two weeks running I've managed to miss the actual appointments because my brain didn't start working until too late in the day to actually make it there.

At least with the appointment today I managed to let them know I wouldn't make it.  Last week I tried calling, got sent to the answering service, and just kind of shut down.

What does any of this have to do with finances?

One of the results of being out of it is that I'm not exactly eating food on any kind of predictable schedule.  Twice (or was it three times?  I think twice) I had to give up and order out just so that I could have calorie intake.  I didn't order anything particularly fancy, but it's still as expensive as all fuck.

So money that I was hoping to use to deal with financial trouble instead went toward not starving which is a waste because I have a special fund that can only ever be used for not starving, so I should never spend money not in that fund for that.

So I don't know exactly how it was supposed to add up, but here's where things stand now.  The fallout from the broken ankle will officially be over by the end of November, but between now and then I have a confluence of absolute shit that adds up to $3,130.46.

That includes everything from the broken ankle, quarterly property taxes, trimester house insurance, and the 12 (or was it 18) month grace period on paying for my computer ending.

In theory, and this is highly theoretical, I can drop that down to $2,590.72.

And that assumes that not only will everything go right, but that nothing will go wrong.  As you might imagine, being in a state where I've been having trouble doing basic things like eating has not, in fact, been conducive to getting payments made on time.

And it might actually be closer to $2,770ish even if everything does go right, nothing goes wrong, and theory holds in practice.  So many god damned numbers.  Keeping track of them isn't easy.


* * *

Next month is the really bad month.  Between October 23rd and November 1st I need $1,671.00.  (I really didn't expect that to come out to an even dollar amount, but I did the calculation twice and that's the result.)

Then I need property taxes ($635.40) in the first half of November.  I have completely lost track of when property insurance is ($288ish.)

It's hard to tell if my utter lack of hope for a brighter future is because my brain is fucked up right now, or because the numbers are just that bad.

I mean, looking at the theoretical $2,590.72 figure, that's about half of what it was before, right?  So it is the case that I've come half of the way to not completely screwed in two months and I've got . . . well, not quite two months left to go, but it seems like there might be hope.

On the other hand . . . I've spent a long time waiting for my good fortune to finally end, for all of the seemingly impossible shit that's kept me going to finally wither and and fade, giving way to reality.  I'm still amazed everything didn't come crashing down when my furnace (which is actually a boiler but we call it . . .) broke so completely that it needed to be replaced.

I wonder if the time has finally come for reality to beat me.  Because you know what's not in any of those calculations I did?  Heating oil.

Even if the fallout from breaking my ankle in February coinciding with the fallout from my warranty falling well short of the replacement cost of my computer (I also had to pay for a back up and the external hard drive on which to put the backed up files) a year ago (or 18 months ago, I really don't remember at this point) doesn't break me, I still won't be ready for winter.

Someday I want to share good news with you all.

It is not this day.

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