It has been a long, long time since I have done one of these things and it is time I get back to it, I think.  Payday was Friday and this one has quite a bit of overtime on it.  Thank goodness, because a large chunk of the check went on the Citi card to pay for the adjustable bed for my daughter that I talked about in the previous post.  The rest of that bed will be paid off on Wednesday with the tax refund.  You have to do what you have to do when you have a medically fragile kid.

DH, DD, and I don't have a lot of spending money.  We don't need it.  We don't really do much of anything.  If there is anything we need that is bigger, we budget for it.  DS gets paid to do some basic caretaking of his sister and his grandmother, just things I am not able to do.  He also helps me, though I am a lot more mobile after procedures at the pain clinic and losing 70 pounds.  I need him to lift heavy things.  While I have improved from only being able to lift 5 pounds, I can still only lift 15.

We are also paying for a gym membership for DS and for him to see a personal trainer once a week.  It is pricey, but it has done him a world of good and he has been able to do a lot of things around the property that need doing that his father can't do anymore.  Those things are reflected in the budget.

I was able to put a tiny bit of money in the EF and a substantial amount in the Bathroom Fund.  And I was able to add to some sinking funds/envelopes that I add to monthly so I am not stuck with big bills or needs at anyone time during the year.

Anyway, on to the budget.

$449.78 Tithe

_400.00 Groceries

_500.00 Bathroom Fund

__75.00 Household Envelope

_200.00 Property Tax Fund

_150.00 Gas Money for the Month

1809.13 Citi Card

_104.44 Life Insurance DH

__80.74 Life Insurance Me

__48.74 Long Term Care Insurance DH

_100.00 Car Maintenance Envelope

__50.00 DH Spending Money

__50.00 Me Spending Money

__50.00 DD Spending Money

_120.00 DS Caretaking Money

_160.00 Trainer for DS

_100.00 Christmas Envelope

__50.00 Emergency Fund

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$4497.80 Total Money Spent

I have my two April budgets set up.  I won't be able to save anything the first paycheck, but the second one should see a good chunk go to the bathroom fund and a bit more in the the EF, I hope.

Murphy struck in threes three times, for a total of nine in the last nine months.  Not that I really believe in that sort of things, but we have had a real string of broken things, which is why our Emergency fund is $1010 and not $15,000.  The most recent thing that broke was my daughter's adjustable bed.

Now she needs this because of her special needs.  Because she has ideopathic intercranial hypertension and it is pretty bad, she has to sleep with her brain elevated above her body or else the build up in spinal fluid can kill her.  But because she also has a tendency to swell because she is on prednisone for her secondary adrenal insufficiency, she has to keep her legs elevated (just not above her head) and wear compression socks, which can force fluid towards her brain.  Without the bed to keep her in the right position, she can have serious problems and even death.

She can't stop taking prednisone because her pituitary gland is dead and she doesn't make cortisone.  One dump of adrenaline and she's in serious trouble.  Two and she's most likely dead.  Even with the prednisone, she has to carry two emergency shots with her at all times.  So we can't take her off the prednisone to stop the swelling.

So new bed frame.  It couldn't just be a cheap bed frame off of Amazon, either.  It has to be a special medical bed frame that keep her in exactly the right position and most of the ones available don't keep the feet high enough, just the head.  So lots of fun there and they were all expensive.  We ended up getting one of the bariatric ones even though we didn't need it for weight, just because it did the right heights for head and feet, but they are extra sturdy as well.  They just cost a lot more than the cheap ones from Amazon.

The new one arrived today and will get put up tomorrow.  The old one is stuck in the proper position at least.  It makes it difficult for her to get in and out of, but my husband will need my son to put up the new one, but he has his session with his physical trainer and didn't want to risk messing himself up before that, so they will do it tomorrow after supper.  It wasn't even supposed to arrive until April 4th.

All that to say our EF is now dangerously low and it is still going to be a while before we can seriously contribute to it, because we are still saving up for fixing that bathroom.  We had to stop for a while, because we've had a ton of medical expenses so far this year.

It still bugs me that we had a black mold problem and the insurance wouldn't pay up anything.  If my mother would have just stopped talking everything would have been fine, but she has a tendency to go, "Well, it could have been this or this or this or this or this that caused it."  She's super talkative and has never met a silence she could stand.  Sometimes less is more.

The mold remediation guy said exactly what caused it, but my mother had it in her head what caused it and she was determined that everyone was going to know that what she thought was right even though it wasn't and that is what lost us the claim according to the adjuster.  He thought the remediator was just saying what we wanted him to say.  The man has a highly qualified reputation.  He wasn't going to just ruin it for us.  I mean, come on.  The company just didn't want to pay a huge claim.  Not for the remediation and not for any of the replacement costs.  So we got nothing.  We appealed on the basis that mom was 84 at the time and on powerful medication that altered her thinking, even had a notarized letter from the doctor, but still nothing.

Oh, well.  You lose some, you lose some, you lose some.  And then hopefully Murphy is well and truly gone and you start to win some.

Wow, another month gone, and I realized I haven't even posted for March.  It has been a difficult month for various reasons, but this post is just a financial one.  I am updating the retirement, the emergency fund and the net worth.  For what it is worth I have a net positive for the month, but it is a squeaker.

I came out of retirement for the month with a net gain of $1,759.63.  If it weren't for our contribution rate of 17% of monthly income, I don't think that would have happened because this month has been crazy.  But our 401K bought a lot at the dip and when things straighten out things will skyrocket.  That's the thing about being in it for the long haul.

We did have to use a good portion of the emergency fund and I was only able to contribute back to it $50 this month, so the new amount there rests at $1010.  That means what I gained in net worth from the 401K, I lost from the EF.  I can only add a total of $494.92 to the net worth.

$311.623.29 Beginning Net worth

+___.494.92 Amount added

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$312,118.21 New Net Worth

It's something, anyway.  The way this month went, I'm actually happy it came out in the black and not the red.  I was afraid we might actually end up with credit card debt, a big yikes, but we made it with money still left in the EF to spare.  But not very much.  I'll get into the reasons why in another post.  Right now I have to go do the banking since it is payday.