Adulting 101

Being an adult isn't always fun....but I recently decided to do the adult thing rather than the thing I really wanted to do.

You see, my street bike got totaled when a driver made an illegal U-Turn right in front of me. Thankfully I had all my gear on and came out okay. My bike didn't fair so well. While half of the claim hasn't settled yet, I did settle the bike. At first I thought I'd run out and buy a replacement - instead, once the check actually arrived, I had thought things through a bit more and decided there were better ways to handle this.

Instead of that shiny, new, bike, I instead decided to do the more adult thing. You see, I can live without a street bike now. I live close to BART, and I have my scooter for around town if I need it, plus my truck. Really, there's not a reason I would really need a bike other than random trips to the east bay areas - but those are infrequent enough that buying a bike just for that is, well, silly.

So, I took that money and did the responsible thing - I paid off ALL my revolving debt, paid off my smallest loan, did the maintenance on the truck that I had been putting off, and put some money into savings. I did buy myself the helmet I had set aside as my "treat" to myself for "behaving." I needed some conciliation prize for being stuck in cages and trains for the next several months!

I still plan to replace the bike, but will be waiting until later this winter once my credit has had a chance to rebound, I've saved up some more for a solid down payment, and I've paid off my highest interest loan. Most of that should be able to happen by the end of the year, so I'm thinking December or January for the new bike....

Forward Two Steps, Back One

     Things were trundling along pretty well for me - my credit was improving, I was setting some money aside (maybe not a ton, but some), and debt was slowly reducing. Then I broke my leg, ironically, one month before the new year. The reason that is so ironic is because of my shitty health insurance (thanks, Obama, for destroying my decent health plan and forcing me to get on my shitty work offered plan) - my "out of pocket" resets every January. So, at the end of 2016, I nearly maxed that out, only to have it reset 2 days after my second surgery on the leg. Apparently, it's not "per incident" as I had in my previous plan - nope, annual. Period. So, I have been hit with 2 years worth of out of pocket maximums in 6 months. I don't have that kind of money laying around.

     Now I'm back to getting piles of bills in the mail that I can't afford to pay. I pay them off as I can, but the big ones end up sitting there. I'm tapped out on payment plans, too - anymore and it would leave me just way to tight financially.

     Don't get me wrong, I'm still paying my bills and making it all happen. I'm still adjusting to the shorter commute and reduced commute costs now that I've moved MUCH closer to work. Even taking out a loan to cover move costs and deposits, I should come out ahead financially, but it hasn't even been a month yet, so I'm still seeing how my budget pans out in reality. Granted, I'm filling the bike up less, and certainly crossing fewer bridges, so I know I'm spending way less, but just haven't had enough time for the impact to hit my budget-mind yet (I still believe I need way more $$ to get through a week than I probably do).

    If it weren't for this, I'd be doing pretty darn good right now. The money I've already spent on medical shit (NOT counting what I still owe) would have paid off most if not all of my revolving debt. I could have taken a hunk out of my payment debt, and probably wouldn't have needed a loan for the move. Instead, as the saying goes, 2 steps forward, 1 step back. Just doing my best to manage it all again.