Money Again
Sep. 4th, 2001 11:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ralphmeltonSo, if I may focus for a moment on the financial implications of Aunt Gerry's death:
Because of the funeral travel, this is not going to be a financially normal month. The last time I had a financially normal month was September 2000. That's a full year without anything that I could point to and say "that's normal".
In that time, there have been two major upheavals to the budget--buying the house and getting married--and I have yet to be able to see the normal pattern beneath the one-time swings associated with the job change and the wedding. Argh!
Right now, we are down to less than $25 in our primary checking account. (I exaggerate slightly; we will be tomorrow after I move money around to cover the second mortgage.)
I actually have received my check for the second half of August, though I'm supposed to be paid September 7. (I actually got it on August 30, which I found a little odd.) I ought to go ahead and deposit it, since the hold the bank put on the last check would mean that we wouldn't actually get access to the money until the 7th anyway. I've been holding off on depositing it, feeling that I need to be able to hold off until those halfway points in the month, to avoid splurging too much or something.
And I had planned to try to pay that whole paycheck as estimated taxes. I need to; we're way behind on the estimated taxes. I guess that's not going to happen.
And this all means that if we do want to hire any work done on the house before it turns cold, we'll have to spend money we don't have to do so.
I hate it. I hate it all. I want a raise that will put us back in the comfort zone.
Because of the funeral travel, this is not going to be a financially normal month. The last time I had a financially normal month was September 2000. That's a full year without anything that I could point to and say "that's normal".
In that time, there have been two major upheavals to the budget--buying the house and getting married--and I have yet to be able to see the normal pattern beneath the one-time swings associated with the job change and the wedding. Argh!
Right now, we are down to less than $25 in our primary checking account. (I exaggerate slightly; we will be tomorrow after I move money around to cover the second mortgage.)
I actually have received my check for the second half of August, though I'm supposed to be paid September 7. (I actually got it on August 30, which I found a little odd.) I ought to go ahead and deposit it, since the hold the bank put on the last check would mean that we wouldn't actually get access to the money until the 7th anyway. I've been holding off on depositing it, feeling that I need to be able to hold off until those halfway points in the month, to avoid splurging too much or something.
And I had planned to try to pay that whole paycheck as estimated taxes. I need to; we're way behind on the estimated taxes. I guess that's not going to happen.
And this all means that if we do want to hire any work done on the house before it turns cold, we'll have to spend money we don't have to do so.
I hate it. I hate it all. I want a raise that will put us back in the comfort zone.
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no subject
Date: 2001-09-05 05:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2001-09-05 06:17 am (UTC)I've never been a contractor; I assume the estimated taxes have something to do with that? Are you getting actual professional advice on this, or are you just doing what TurboTax tells you to do? (TurboTax has done well by me in the past, but I've always had pretty normal returns.) It would really suck to find out that in the end you've *overpaid* the estimated taxes, after all.
(You know that if you pay at least as much this year as you owed last year, you don't get hit by penalties no matter how much you underpay by, right? Disclaimer: I am not an accountant; that's what the IRS booklet and TurboTax said. Check this before relying on it. But I'm pretty confident about it.)
Sigh. Queria was supposed to have medium-term financial risk (you might give it a go for 6 months and then have it fold under you), not immediate financial pain. I always thought that the risk of startups was that the final paycheck might bounce, but that the money was good up to then.
no subject
Date: 2001-09-05 12:36 pm (UTC)Paying just as much as I owed last year is definitely my plan. It makes a substantial difference.
On the whole, it's more of a financial chafing than outright pain--it's mostly that I've taken a lot of financial chafing this year (particularly the wedding and Lori leaving her job) in the assumption that things would get better for Queria.