We got a break in the rain today, and it was marvelous! I was so taken by the color of the skies on the drive to work this morning, and I realized it’s the first time I’ve seen the sunrise since before the winter break. We’ve been getting SO MUCH RAIN. And there is more to come. Today was the only break in a week’s worth of rain. Tomorrow it starts again and it’s supposed to pour through Monday.
Our back room, the one that already had water damage, has gotten REALLY bad. It’s basically just a mold incubator now. The walls are covered in mold and it smells AWFUL. We already keep the door to that room closed, and don’t use it much in the winter because it’s FREEZING back there (it doesn’t have insulation), but now I don’t think we’ll be able to use it again until we get it gutted and rebuilt.
Normally this kind of thing would send me into a panic spiral, but it’s not. I think this is because it just has to happen now, so no choice has to be made. And if we have to do this now, we are pretty certain we will not be doubling (or tripling) the cost of the project to build inside stairs to connect the units. Would I LOVE to have inside stairs, absolutely. Am I willing to spend $50K on them? Absolutely not. And honestly, it’s probably best for both spaces if we just leave them separate. So now that I feel pretty confident about what we’ll do, I’m not so stressed about it anymore. I guess the thing I really hate is making difficult decisions.
Do we know how we’re going to pay for this? Not yet, but we’ll figure it out. This has been a back burner project for us since before the pandemic, we were just able to keep punting it because of the drought. That is no longer an option, and we knew at some point it wouldn’t be. We’ll figure it out.
Speaking of money, one of the main ideas of Your Money Your Life is to figure out how much money you make an hour (the actual amount, so how much you make a year, minus all the stuff you spend for your job (including clothes, work dinners, coffee breaks with your boss, commuting costs, etc) divided by the actual number of hours you work (which includes all the off-the-clock hours and commuting). I did a rough estimate of this (it was hard because I wear Vuoris to work at least once a week, which means I can’t really say that ANY of my clothes are work related, and I’m better about not spending my own money on school stuff, but I’m not better at tracking how much money that still is. Even commuting is hard because we charge our car in our house at night, so that exact expenditure is lost in our monthly PG&E bill).
So I calculated it as best I could, and the number ended up being pretty high. I’m sure I didn’t consider enough spending that happens because I work, so I rounded it down quite a bit, but it’s still a pretty decent number, one that might not help me reconsider my spending in quite the way I’d wanted. If I had done this 20 (or even 10) years ago, it would have been a MUCH lower number that would have made me think very differently about a lot of purchases, but now if the question is, is this purchase worth 30 minutes of my working life, the answer might be yes a lot of the time. I’m going to have to think about it some more, because I wasn’t expecting this result.
The happy part of this is that I make a decent amount of money now! I’m sure in comparison with others in the area it’s not impressive, but to pay a mortgage that we acquired in the 2012 market, it’s not bad.
Having said that, this home repair project will definitely be felt, which means we could absolutely be saving more than we are. A lot more. So, so much more. And now we need to, for something much more serious than a trip.
Off to a totally unrelated topic: today I had to get my blood pressure, heart rate and oxygen levels checked for my ADHD meds refill, and the nurse asked me if I work out a lot, before telling me I was like a 20 year old. That felt really good, because I don’t look anything like a 20 year old anymore, and my weight gain is making some clothes a little tight, I was also SO RELIEVED that she didn’t weigh me, because seeing a number right now would do nothing for me except trigger old body issue stuff that I’m trying really hard not to fall into. (I was going to request she not say how much I weighed, but I’ve had mixed results with that in the past). I had been dreading the appointment all week, but instead I felt good about myself when I left. Hooray!
Did I mention the sun came out today? It really did wonders for my mood. I also think my hormones are leveling off. I hate having so little control over my base-line mood, but I guess I should embrace the days when I’m up instead of down.
Today was really energy intensive at work, but tomorrow should be a lot less so. And then we have a three day weekend! My sister is in town starting Saturday and it’s my mom’s birthday on Monday, so it won’t really be restful or relaxing (both of them require.. a lot of consideration, especially when they are together, so it will be a lot to spend 24 hours managing my mom’s birthday expectations and my sister’s but-this-is-my-vacation expectations, especially with the rain making it impossible for us to be outside). Still, I will take a day off when I can get one, because it’s almost impossible for me to take days off when I want to.
And my elliptical workout is done! I didn’t get to run today because of the appointment (all the parks are closed anyway, or I would have been a lot more upset about that), but I did get my cardio in. Nice to know it’s actually doing good things for my body!
(Hilariously, I’m pretty sure I’m in WAY better shape both physically and mentally, than I was in my 20s. Which was not lost on me when she said that.)
Comment on “Your Money Your Life” that is such a good idea to do…I just am terrible at math so don’t think I can wrap my head around it…. My health insurance has gone up 3x since March…once with the company said they were not going to cover dependents anymore out it went up $800 per month, then they raised it in June another $300 and now again as of Jan 1st it was raised another $300. It is incredible. Almost my entire bi weekly paychecks go my insurance premiums. Question for other readers “Does your company pay a portion of your dependents premium? My company quit and said most all companies got away from that? I wonder how true that is? Only one friend I know has the same thing with her company.
Really appreciated yesterday as a dry day. Pruned 12 rose bushes and took good walk. Delightful and good prep for back to rain over the weekend. We need the rain. Some places are getting too much. The ground is squishy from over saturation. The biggest state reservoirs are still not adequately full. The drought reality is not over. This is a desert state. It is complex.
Wow about the moldy room. That is also complex and sounds like an increasingly urgent problem. When it is rebuilt and leaks stopped what will it’s purpose be? You have only 5 1/2 yrs (I THINK) til your eldest is out of high school and possibly not living at home full time. That time passes so very fast.
Glad you are in great physical shape and congratulations on the work you have done. Am also impressed by Your Money Your Life work. The concepts in the book need to be taught/shared/learned/explored early on in life…. but not everyone is receptive to them. Happy for you and hope you are pleased.
Happy Three Day Weekend!
I liked the YMYL concept earlier on to give myself better perspective on spending. Not the way you’d have expected, of course, I was and still am sometimes too tightfisted by nature so it gave me a similar feeling to what you took away. Honestly, I needed that.
The break in the rain was really nice. I’m kind of afraid to look at our moisture -prone walls but I had better get into them this weekend before any damage gets a lot worse.