Had some time today to see where things are with the checkbook and such.

**We are getting 2% back on our Visa this month, due to a temporary promotion. In fact, the 2% promo kicked in the day we bought our new garage door (& they did not accept our 2%-back AmEx). So, phew!!

**Sent $5,000 off to the AmEx, earlier this week, for plumbing bills.

Kind of a non-event, because I had already transferred $5,000 from savings when we got the first quote. I thought it was possible we'd need a lot of money *fast*. But, we were able to charge it in the end, so I got to hang onto it for a month. {We keep checking balance around -0- and so I don't bother to include it in my net worth. It has felt like the money was *gone* since the minute I put it in my checking account}.

**I was $10 in the negative, as of 8/31, so I decided to fix that before I forgot or got distracted. I didn't think much about it because it's been *crazy*. But I realized since we could not charge the garage door repair that I had paid cash for that from checkbook, without pulling the funds from savings. (Which makes me not in the negative at all).

I usually do one net transfer a month, but had not done the August transfer yet. Once I added that garage door money from savings to checking, I was back in the green. This was much easier than moving $100 over now and moving it back after payday, which was my initial plan. Phew!

This is one of the biggest reasons I really like using Quicken (or any electronic system). It's easy to move things around and just keep things simple. I threw in all the September deposits and bills, and it seemed to $0 out (income = outflow). So, phew.

**Total cash still seems to be hovering around "6 months of expenses." I stopped funding ROTHs, due to all this hoo-ha, so that explains the most of the why. If things settle down, we should be able to fund one entire ROTH by 12/31. I always send 20% of every month's pay, to savings. So, that is why we are treading water. I also receive January 1 paycheck on December 31, which is why it should be enough to fund an entire IRA, through the rest of the year. The worst case plan is to fund the rest of second IRA in Feb, March, April. I have already put $1,000 into one IRA (plus $500 credit card rewards). We should also have some Christmas gift money to help fund the IRAs.

**We did an unofficial inventory and this sums up my year, financially:

--Two Dead TVs (the only two we had/both fairly new)
--One major car repair
--One MRI
--Vet bills/lost pet
--Replaced computer (was crazy old)
--4 Plumbing Repairs in one month
--Clothes Washer broke
--A/C broke
--Garage Door broke
--Cell phone Broke (it was rather new)
--Major carpet cleaning (more ailing pet stuff)

& it's only August??? OMG - I am exhausted. (& I am sure I am forgetting something...).

Many thoughts and comments on this (wanted to put this all in one place).

I've seen the comment to save 1% - 3% of home purchase price, for home maintenance. Given the overall low maintenance of our home (we aren't maintaining acres, and many other low-maintenance factors) and due the general higher cost of housing here, I find that 1% is more than ample. In the grand scheme of things, if we had done this from Day 1, we'd have about $30,000 saved today for home maintenance. (& I am not aware of any large repairs on the immediate horizon). The reality is we got about $-0- saved up specifically for home maintenance, because we had some really low income years and weren't particularly saving. Which is fine - our house was bought new and has been VERY low maintenance. Which was our plan, and has worked out fine. We can save more now to make up for lost time. If we save 2% of home purchase price, every year for next 10 years, is about what we are doing anyway. In the meantime, we have fully funded our car replacement funds (with no plans to replace anytime soon) so can borrow from that. Just to say, planning ahead is a VERY good thing, and is most of our ease with this crazy financial outflow.

When we started the year, we were thinking along these lines for things we might do this year: Replace carpet and reface kitchen cabinets. (The kitchen cabinets aren't the best quality and are really messed up).

In the end, we got a GREAT carpet cleaner who has our pet stained carpets looking like new again (we still have to bring them back to do the upstairs. I was giving it time to see if it was true - but yes, the stains are totally gone). SO, we completely crossed "carpet replacement" off of our list (might never do so as long as we can hire these people) and started thinking about the cabinet refacing. We like to do one big project a year, and just spread it out a bit. I suppose cabinets came next into our line of sight once we wrote off the carpet replacement.

But, this year has been crazy, so I think we will put that off to next year. I share because keeping on top of things and being able to be flexible, I think this is also all key to not panicking in times like this. Anything that has to be done, is done, but things that don't *have to* be done, we try to space out as much as possible. I can survive with fading cabinets a little while longer.

Notes on each of the above:

--It's unfortunate that dh's newer TV died, but the older one we were able to fix very inexpensively, all on our own.

Even if we aren't the most handy people, being willing and able to fix things or hire people to fix things, is a HUGE financial savings. (Versus tossing everything that breaks, which many people seem to do).

--Car repair and MRI - these are kind of usual and predictable, but just add to the insanity of this year, I guess. Seems like I have had a $1,000+ bill every single month. Gah. We do have a great very trustworthy independent mechanic to keep our costs way down.

--Vet bills... I think we got off easy with this. Could have been a *lot* worse. This just added to the overall crappiness of the kind of year it has been.

--Computer replacement was more than expected - dh called it the old Frankenstein computer. Which bought us a lot of time. Why did it have to die *now* though? Gah! Dh built his own computer and got something way better for the money.

--Broken stuff:

We have reasonable low-cost contractors we can call for basic repairs. So, did this with the AC, the washer, and our new faucet.

We installed our own garbage disposal. That was a long time in the making, and we had already bought a new one, but it did literally die the end of June, before we had replaced it. It is one of those years!

We had a freezer water leak and fixed it ourselves before calling out any help. (That one was at least easy).

Major plumbing repair was a freak thing, but it happens. That's what "$30,000 saved" should have been for - something like this. We were lucky we had some time to do some research and to gather various quotes and opinions. A truer emergency would have not given us that time.

{This is actually the first time in 12 years of home ownership that I actually felt at a disadvantage for being less handy. It's possible we could have fixed this ourselves, for about 1/10 the cost, but the odds did not seem good. With the way things panned out, I think we made the right choice. I've mostly felt that our other strengths - computer and tax and financial skills - make up for hiring someone for $100 labor here and there}.

--Garage door - it's unfortunate we spent a fair amount of money last year trying to just fix the stupid thing. When it broke this year, even after we had just spent a large sum on plumbing work, we just wanted to replace it and move on. I could not stomach spending one more dollar to just put another bandaid on it. Our only complaint before was that it was loud, and just really cheap quality. It wasn't giving us any issues. But, it just wasn't worth saving, once it broke. I am so happy we ended up replacing it - it cost far less than we were expecting. & Was able to cross that off our more near-term repair list.

--Cell phone - not much to say to that - a freak thing but nothing substantial in the end.

The next question is: Are we done yet??? Because if this is it, I can deal. But, I don't know what else the year has in store.