Bills Bills Bills

The whole year of 2010, the idea that I might not have a job in 2011 was pretty dang real. The City Budget of Doom was upon us in Libraryland, and so we had to figure out what the plan was should I lose my paycheck. One of the things that we did to prepare was to rip into turbo speed with the savings. We are already pretty good about saving money, but this year we did more than usual. We were counting pennies, yo. We paid for everything via credit card (and then paid it off every month) just so we could get rewards points that paid for all sorts of free shit. Literally, we went to the Midwest for 2 whole weeks and it cost us $14.50. Free plane tickets, free car rental, free hotels, free food. We also bought a new mattress this way, and some other stuff we need too. Cheapskates, party of two!


We also refinanced our mortgage to get a dirt cheap fixed rate and lower payment, raised the amount of our paychecks that went directly into savings, halted all home improvement projects (aside from the ones that we had to do in order to refinance), and budgeted ourselves down to the penny. Each week, we took out a certain amount of cash for food and other expenses. Once it was gone for the week, it was gone. We even made a game out of it, where at the end of each week, we compared who had more cash left over. The winner had IN YOUR FACE rights, which are kind of a big deal in our house. We also called the cable company to cancel our service, and found out that we apparently had the Stupidfuck Plan from Comcast, wherein we were paying a lot of money for not very many channels. The Comcast lady was all like "How about we sign you up for this Pretty Much Free Plan, which, by the way, gives you twice as many channels as you had before?" Why didn't we know about the Pretty Much Free Plan before, lady? And why do you have a plan where you get so much more for so much less money? Comcast, I am so tired of your mind games.

On Thursday of last week, I found out that I will indeed, for sure, have a job in 2011. HOLLA! Not only is that exciting in the Paychecks Are a Very Sexy Thing department, but in the meantime we had collected a nice little extry money pile to pay for shit I usually pay for, just in case I wasn't able to pay for it anymore.

I am not a hoarder, but with money? Hoarding it can make me do a happy dance.

So yippee for us! we said on Thursday. A job for me and also some extra cabbage on the side. Mmm-uh, mmm-uh, mmm-uh! (That's the typed out version of the Cabbage Patch End Zone dance that we did when we got the news).

Then, on Friday? The tree in our front yard busted through our main sewer line with the power of its root system. CRACK GOES THE POOP PIPE!

Dudes, it was like our house knew that we had a little stash of cash set aside, and was all "LISTEN UP! That money is mine, suckers!"

So we are getting our side sewer replaced. In case you don't know about these things, it costs about 5.2 trillion dollars to do that. You know how much extra savings we saved this year? 5.2 trillion dollars. So if we want to be able to flush our toilets, we have to flush that savings right down with it. Awesome.

But you know what? I am actually not that upset about the whole thing. Usually, spending money is not my favorite thing in the world. I am a tightwad and letting go of my dolla bills can give me a nut-ache most of the time. But this time, I am totally ok with it. I think it is because:

1. I keep thinking: what if the Hulk Hogan root system had busted our pipes ANY OTHER TIME? Now that would have sucked even more. At least we had this "extra" money to pay for it. Who has anything called extra money? Not us, usually. So, if it had to happen, it was perfect timing, really.

2. I am happy that I still have a job. Happy, happy, happy.

3. The ability to flush toilets is kind of a top priority in my life. Call me crazy. I am willing to pay for that service.