Crystal G

I can tell that Gettysburg Tourism season has started. I hear it’s a nightmare. Fortunately I think I’m enough out of the touristy area that I shouldn’t have to worry about it too much unless going through town.

I’ve seen a lot of campers drive by recently. The Grove plans to have a yard sale up here one weekend to make some money for the Grove. I’m definitely in a decent spot to do so I think (I hope).

Dad had a biopsy done on his leg last week to see if there’s anything else going on with his leg that’s helping cause the ulcers (you’d think they’d have found something, I dunno, a few decades ago). No results yet.

I got a call from dad today that he ran over his cellphone with the lawnmower……….again. It cracks me up when he does it, cause I know he feels bad about it. But it’s still funny how often it happens (one time he did lose it plowing snow though, I’ll give him that).

Fortunately for me, Virgin Mobile (our carrier) will send a replacement phone free, you just pay shipping. I will have to buy him a new case to wear on his belt though, so all in all I’m looking at $20 I’ll be spending.

It’s moments like these that I’m glad we have a land-line though. As opposed as I am to it, knowing my dad it’s definitely a good thing to keep around, despite the extra cost.

And if I don’t hype how much I love Virgin mobile enough, no contracts! Best cell service I’ve ever had out of any I’ve tried. And reasonable prices (for me).

Each month I want to see how many $0 days I can get. All costs are rounded.

April 01: Bi-Monthly Bill Payment Day + $152 on new brakes for the mustang
April 02: $102 at the grocery for quarterly necessities, mainly shampoo, deodorant, toothpaste, laundry detergent etc. for dad and myself
April 03: $15 lunch with my cousin
April 04: $0
April 05: $0
April 06: $22 for gas
April 07: $130 at grocery for food
April 08: $0
April 09: $25 gas and $40 to my dad for gas
April 10: $34 to treat my sister to lunch while she was over
April 11: $0
April 12: $25 on gas
April 13: $0
April 14: $0
April 15: Bi-monthy bill payment day and $25 on gas
April 16: $34 on gas for dad and $20 donation to Mountain Rhythm Cafe
April 17: $0
April 18: $0
April 19: $0
April 20: $0
April 21: $0
April 22: $25 on gas
April 23: $38 to my dad for gas
April 24: $0
April 25: $21 on gas
April 26: $0
April 27: $0
April 28: $0
April 29: $23 on gas, $150 on groceries, and $37 on a frivolous purchase with buyers remorse!
April 30: $0

Days in April not spending money: 16. That’s 2 days more than March! That’s more than half the month! I want to see if I can do another 2 days in May. Don’t think I could do much more than that, as everything else is kinda necessary. Still, more than half a month without spending money is a good thing.

I tell ya, it ain’t easy, but it’s gonna be well worth it in the end

See also: March

Once our debt is all paid off except for the mortgage, I plan to start not only putting more money away into savings, but starting up a “home improvement” fund. There are some big ticket things I want to do to the house, but also some smaller ones I can do in the mean time. The bigger ones I probably won’t be able to start for at least another year or two.

Big Items

• Completely renovate the upstairs bathroom, removing the shower stall and putting in a bath tub. Especially rip out the carpet in there. Who the hell puts carpet in a bathroom? I’ll probably hire my uncle to do this.
• Put on a new roof on the entire house. This is a biggie, and probably one I’ll need to do before most of the others. Good way to spend $10k.
• Rip out the ceilings in both rooms upstairs and extend them all the way to the roof, also put in ceiling fans if possible. Right now we have this…cubby hole of sorts above the upstairs bedrooms. I don’t know what’s there (if anything), but it’s wasted space. The ceilings are low in the bedrooms so this would open them up at least a little bit. This’ll have to come after the new roof.
• Eventually rebuild the walls in both bedrooms upstairs, after the new roof and after the ceilings are redone. This would include rebuilding and finishing off the side cubby spaces, as well as redoing the closets. Then I have to…..repaint them :/
• Build a greenhouse off of the basement
• Refinish the basement so that it can be used as either 1. Business, 2. Apartment, or 3. Room for rent for Gettysburg tourist season. I already have an area picked out which should work for a kitchen.
• New windows throughout the house, hopefully those eco-friendly ones that help keep things warm and cool at appropriate times. This needs to be done upstairs sooner than later, because these windows look like they are falling apart up here.
• New siding around the whole house. Maybe a cedar siding?
• Maybe eventually run heating/air ducts to the top two bedrooms. But I’ll have to keep the floor vents for the wood-stove.

Smaller Items

• Build a large back deck. I put this under small because we’ll be doing it ourselves, we’ll only need cost of materials.
• Put shelves in the root cellar
• Finish sanding the floor in my bedroom and put down a natural finish
• Put up shelves in the basement
• Tear up the messed up concrete in the basement and redo. This is a smaller item too cause it’ll only be cost of materials since my dad has been doing concrete all his life anyway.
• Lots of little things on the kitchen. Repaint, remove piping from old washer/dryer hook-up, fix the pipe under the dishwasher.
• Hire my cousin to redo some electrical work around the house. Move my bedroom switch inside the room, install lightning in the office, rewire the outside light pole to a switch in the house. Might wait and do this after the ceilings are done in the bedrooms.

No idea how much some of these upgrades will raise the house value, but I imagine some of it will be significant. I imagine if/when I ever decide to sell it, I may invest in new cabinets in the kitchen as well, but who knows.

We’ll save a lot of money on most of these projects because we’ll do them ourselves or hire family, since most of my family on my father’s side are laborers. Course if I can hire friends to come up too, that’d be awesome as well. Kinda…share the spending amongst people I care about.

The roof I may hire professionals to do though, as I don’t want either me or my dad playing around on the roof to be honest.

Ambitions, I haz dem.

At least for me.

Last night I came home and really wanted to order a pizza. It was a Friday evening, weekend was starting and I had the money in the bank.

Sadly it wasn’t the whole “wanting to eat better” thing that stopped me, it was the whole “I’m trying to beat last months record of days without spending money” thing. Since I am posting that every month now, I feel like I am being held accountable for my actions, which is a -good- thing. Even if no one reads it, I still want to do it.

The eating healthier and more frugally thing is a bonus.

I decided to loan a friend $95 to get a discount on something that was important to him. I know he’ll pay me back as soon as he is able, and I mostly did it because I wanted some good financial karma right now. Those that give will receive, afterall.

Dad has also gotten some baby keets (Guinea fowl), so we will be having some tick eating ugly birds in a couple months. I am excited I’ve missed having them.

I checked my escrow account and saw that my taxes were paid on time, so I was able to get the $100 or so discount for paying early. I’m still going to call and confirm the tax collector that it was received just for my own peace of mind.

I’m very excited for the coming months. So many possibilities

Why you ask? (Okay maybe you don’t ask)

Because that means my dad gets a couple extra hundred dollars each month to mow lawns down by our old house for our old neighbors. That means he uses less of -my- money, and that will allow me to focus more on getting him debt free quicker and not struggle each month with his overdrafts.

Yes, I loooove lawn mowing season.

I got an offer from Union Security Insurance Company, on the behalf of Chase to get some Mortgage Life Insurance, in that if either my father or I die in an accident, it will pay off the mortgage on our home. It states that we must die with in 365 days of a covered accident (90 days in MD), and is covered no matter what other type of coverage we may have.

Considering I have a huge amount of trouble trying to find my dad life insurance because of his diabetes, I am giving this some serious consideration.

It would cost about $24 a month to insure both of us each month. Not too hefty of a cost.

The only downside is that it’s only in case of accidents, so no natural death type of thing. So I’m still going to run into problems in that case. Hopefully I can find someone who will insure him for at least $10k. I think that’s really all I’d need.

Some notes from the form, it states that this is NOT:

• FDIC Insured
• Insured by any Federal Government Agency
• Not guaranteed by the bank

It also states that it will pay 100% until my dad is 69, whereas afterwards it will start to decline. Age 70-74 it declines to 50%, and age 75 and up it declines to 25%.

Has anyone ever purchased this type of insurance before?

This weekend I taught a Basic Personal Finance workshop at the Grove. I’m not a very good public speaker (I just don’t do it enough, really), and I was nervous, but I think the workshop actually turned out really well. There was a lot of participation from everyone who stayed for the workshop, and I mean LOTS. People had a lot of good experiences to share and I think everyone learned something. It ran for about 3 hours, and I made paper copies and the pdf copy available for the participants.

The only drawback was that a lot of the people who I think could have benefited the most from the workshop were not in attendance. I chalk most of that up to being done on Easter, so I will have to go through and teach it again sometime (or just share the pdf with them, or something).

If there’s enough interest, I may post the document for others outside the Grove as well.

Afterwards I was treated to dinner at Amer’s Cafe for my birthday, which is a Mediterranean restaurant down in Baltimore. I was also given two bottles of mead that I love

I also henna’d my hair as a treat to myself.

I did go to work today, despite it being my birthday, and my co-workers devised a cake surprise for me, the topic of which had me cracking up most of the day. Picture below:

(this is a photoshop image I did a while back of one of our IT guys on Fabio’s hair/body)

The upcoming weekend is a camping trip to see some good friends that I’ve missed very much.

Two doctors appointments this week so far for dad. One where the insurance company said his leg was not “bad enough” to get the hyperbaric treatment, despite the 3% flow of oxygen through his leg. They did test his arteries which appear to be in -good- shape, which is great, but the little veins throughout his skin are not so good due to phlebitis, which we knew about. The insurance company is trying to see if there’s something else preventing his leg from healing because they think the circulation is not as bad as they think (which I think is a crock. If the hyperbaric treatment healed him fast before, then fuckin put him in it again and see what happens).

The second appointment was to the doctor who was supposed to perform a biopsy on dads skin to see if there’s some sort of infection. But when dad arrived, and still had his bandage on, the doctor is like “So….you’re going to take the bandage off, right?” Dad says he doesn’t have any scissors, and the doctor goes and fetches a pair of scissors for dad to take his bandage off. What? You’re a DOCTOR.

They also said he may have an infection in his toenails, which is really to be expected considering the leg has been infected with bacteria for almost a YEAR NOW.

Christ almighty I’m so sick and tired of insurance companies. I need to write a letter or something.

In worse news, a former co-worker of mine and friend I’m told is being admitted to John’s Hopkins today for neurological issues that they believe to be terminal. This was someone who, along with another former co-worker were literally like my best friends at work. I really didn’t know all this was going on, and I just feel so bad for someone so young having to go through something like this. It makes you feel helpless as a friend. I’m praying for the best for him and the people close to him, and that the powers that be let him pull through.

This weekend dad and I did some general maintenance to the mustang. I changed the air filter, which was surprisingly a pain in the ass compared to what I’m used to on the bronco. Instead of unscrewing a lid I’m unclamping rubber hoses, pulling off large plastic pieces with electrical wires, etc.

In addition to that, we have mice in the garage, apparently. How do I know? They started eating my old air filter…which means they are getting up into my engine. Not a good thing.

I was going to change the oil but ran out of time because the brakes took 7 hours to change. Apparently my emergency brake has been locked up for some time. No, the emergency brake handle hasn’t been up all this time (Mike K), but at some point the compressor completely locked down.

Front brakes were easy to put on, but the back brakes were impossible, even with a c-clamp. By dark we still needed to bleed the brakes and dad and I were too tired to mess with it so I decided to just drive his truck into work yesterday.

On the way in his engine light came on, which apparently is normal, but I called him up to check and he said that he and my uncle had finished bleeding my brakes and if I wanted he would come switch vehicles. I wasn’t too far out of town so I agreed.

A cop stops behind me wondering why I was sitting on the side of route 15, so I lied and said I was broke down and waiting for my dad.

When dad and I switch vehicles, the brakes seem like they are working fine, but once I switched into 5th gear I lost all power. It seemed like my brakes were frozen again, and I could smell it when dad had pulled up. I stopped and got gas and when I got back on the highway everything was fine and I had power in 5th gear again. I thought maybe it was just that there was brake fluid on the rotor or something and maybe it just needed to burn off. When I left work later in the day they were fine so I’m hoping it was just the one time thing, but I’ll have to keep an eye on it.

I’m definitely going to invest the $100 into a floor jack sometime soon, these hydrolic jacks just don’t cut it on these smaller cars. Have I mentioned I hate fuel injection? I eventually may invest the $3k or so into a lift in the garage, especially when I start restoring my bronco.