Where’s Clever Dude?

Some of you have been wondering why my posting frequency is down. Well, there’s a few reasons, including graduate school (last 2 classes!), work (some major deployments and activities lately), and church (I’m the “deputy grand poobah” in a church organization and it’s taking more of my time lately). And there’s some financial impacts to all of these as well:

1. School: During the summer, I’ve been “working” (barely) on my self-study class. I knew I wouldn’t get it done in the summer, and they allow us to take an incomplete and extend it into the next semester if needed, which I did. I thought I would have gotten more done, but I was lazy. Now I’ll have 2 classes at the same time. Cost of my last class? About $2800 plus books.

2. Home: Pools are expensive, and ours is one of the least-complicated in-ground pools. In past years, we’ve spent maybe $1000 or so each year on maintenance costs and repairs. However, this year we need to replace the brick coping and waterline tile (the dark brick “frame” you see below and the tile right below it). Cost? $6,300, and that’s after a 10% discount and heavy negotiating (originally $8,000). We also had to buy a new pool vacuum this year for over $600. Ugh.

Also in the home area, we repainted a room at a cost of about $100, but it took an entire weekend. It took 5 years for us to get around to painting that room, and we’re very happy with the results (we had to do trim, doors, ceiling, and we even rented a carpet cleaner while the room was empty). If you want to totally change a room for not much cash, repaint it!

So this fall, we’re looking at spending over $9,000 on the pool and tuition. But I’m not stressing. You know why? Cause we’re almost out of debt AND we have a budget. We’re able to pay for all this in cash! No credit card company is going to get our money in interest!