So I've had a lot of large life changes happen over the last few months.

I did get a job at the library one day a week and I love it! Gives me a little spending money and I get a break from my kids and some peace and quiet. The job is super easy and I have a lot of downtime to read or play on my phone or whatever. 

I GOT accepted into the experimental lung procedure for my rare disease! I'm still trying not to get my hopes up, and I don't have a date yet but I'm told likely July. It will require traveling across the country and a two-week (on average) hospital stay. So it's going to be rough. Mentally and healing wise.  A couple weeks after I get home I will get the heart stent placed. I was also told last week that I will still need a lobectomy to remove the dead lung lobe. Bummer. I am hoping to fly for an appointment at the experimental procedure hospital and beg they do it at the same time as the other procedures since they will already be in there. That is what my pulmonologist recommends. Otherwise, it will be another surgery at a later date and I'm told more risky. 

A family friend did a fundraiser for me to help with costs of travel and all the medical bills I've had and will have. The outpouring of generosity from my friends and family was SO HUGE. I am still in shock and awe. Money is still trickling in but I think the total is somewhere around $26k!! That is nearly half of our income for the whole year!

So far I have paid off our last couple medical loans and refilled our buffers which we drained to pay for medical bills this year. The rest will just sit in a high yield savings account until after my surgery. I am hoping to be wise and frugal with the money and really use it to make a difference in our lives. But with medical costs unknown I don't want to touch it until that is all squared away. 

Got the heart cath. I do have a significant blockage but unfortunately, they were unable to place the stent. They found a blood clot in my heart during the procedure and had to stop because they were afraid of dislodging and causing a pulmonary embolism. 

I am on eliquis for the next three months and then they will try again. It was over $400 for a one-month supply after insurance...

If the blood clot is still there again, they will have to stop and I will have to go to a different hospital is get the clot removed, and then come back and get the stent again. So at least 1 more, possibly 2 more heart procedures.

Healing is going okay. Two days after the procedure my heart rate was going up to 160 when standing, and 100 at rest. I'm usually in the 50s to 60s. So they sent me to the ER because they were worried about internal bleeding or pulmonary embolism. I got labs, and a cat scan and they couldn't find anything except I did test positive for covid. I'm sure I've had it for a couple weeks already because I've had congestion and a runny nose for that long. No other symptoms. I guess the procedures and the covid just stressed my already strained heart. It's been rough but starting to feel a little better.

Always seems like one step forward and two steps back with my health. Nothing to do but wait and hope the medicine does it's job for now. 

I made it through my lung procedure. It was much easier this time so feeling pretty good and a lot less sore.

TMI warning: It was good news and bad news. My lung disease was still soft after two months and hadn't solidified. So they were able to use suction instead of cutting it out with a laser for hours like last time. So that's good that after two months it hadn't hardened back yet. The bad news is that the damaged parts they were hoping would recover did not at all. Parts of my lung are officially non-functional. So now we will have to decide if it's worth getting the dead parts of my lung removed or if we will leave it for now. 

I was a bit of a celebrity which was funny/weird. Everyone recognized me this time and were super excited to see me. They said it was one of the rarest and coolest things they had ever seen in the lung department.  There have been almost no documented cases of my disease in adults especially not at the severity I have. The doctors asked me to sign a release so they could write about me in a medical journal, and I allowed about 20 extra people to watch my procedure. Anything that will help others like me. I think they were disappointed it wasn't as bad this time, lol. 

They want me to continue getting lung cleanouts every 4-6 months permanently. That is a lot of anesthesia, but not a lot of other options. I am on a waitlist and still waiting to hear back from the one hospital in the country that does a sort of experimental treatment to see if I am a candidate. I have been denied in the past but we'll see. A one-time intense surgery would be better than a lifetime of procedures if there is a chance it would work.

We are supposed to get our tax refund tomorrow. It's over $8k. (I like getting a large chunk back)

We had big plans for it but unfortunately, I had to pay a $2.2k downpayment for the lung procedure and next week I will have to put down $2.8k for the heart cath. There will be more bills afterwards. That is just the base price pre-payment. So for now we will be using the refund to pay medical bills. We will eventually reimburse ourselves once the HSA fills back up. But I didn't want to miss out on the 15% discount for prepaying that much money. 

We also need to put $3k into retirement before April 15 because I claimed that on our taxes.  After we reimburse ourselves we plan on saving for vacation, getting new tires on the car, and then saving the rest. 

Heart cath next week.

It has been a crazy couple weeks!

 My surgery ended up getting cancelled again. I was in pre-op, with an IV and labs. I paid, signed, etc. and the doctors were just reviewing stuff with me prior to surgery. They pulled up my CT scan from over a month ago (for the first time...) and were shocked. It showed a huge mass/abscess in my lung and they decided that it was likely that I had a very serious and fatal fungal disease. It was too risky and complicated to do at the current hospital, so they stopped everything.

Then I had to wait almost a week until they could get me in as an emergency with the new pulmonologist at a more specialized hospital. So I got to spend a week thinking I was dying and they were talking about lobectomies, and months of IV medicine, multiple surgeries, timelines etc.

Finally got surgery last week and thank GOD I did not have the new disease they thought I did. It was just a very severe form of the rare Plastic Bronchitis I already have. My bronchi which should be like pinky finger sized or smaller had a baseball sized mass which they were able to remove plus lots more. Surgery took much longer than expected but when I woke up it was wonderful to learn I wasn’t about to leave my husband as a single dad to two toddlers. All the cultures came back clean and I am breathing so much better now.

My throat and lungs are very sore and blistered but it’s improving. My lungs now have several large empty cavities which will likely fill back up so I will get another CT scan in a couple weeks, and another bronchoscopy in Feb to check progress and clean out things again. Overall the best outcome I could have hoped for. I really like my new lung doctor as well, and I am so thankful to finally get some relief from my constant breathing issues.

I am still feeling fatigued and lightheaded. Which will probably not get better until I get my heart stent put in. That is currently on pause until my lungs are improved but will probably happen sometime in the next few months.  My stamina is also very low after months/years of poor health. I’m sure it will take me some time to feel normal again. Hopefully I will now be more closely monitored on a maintenance plan with the new doctor so I don’t get this bad again.   

Since my last post a couple weeks ago, I got strep throat again! My immune system is so bad.

 I ended up going ahead and pulling the money from savings to pay for the surgery and get the discount, BUT in a sad turn of events the Dr. decided the day before with all the recent illnesses that I wasn’t healthy enough for anesthesia and cancelled it.

 I was absolutely devastated and bawled and begged but they would not give in. I think that is so dumb since the entire reason I am sick is because I need this surgery and I will continue to decline until it’s done. I’ve already waited for 5 months.

 They still did my CT scan as scheduled and it showed my lungs are worse than they thought, and besides my normal exceedingly rare lung disease it looks like I have aspergillus which is a serious fungal infection from black mold.

Will have to do the surgery to test it, which they rescheduled for December. They are now saying “oops I guess we should have done it as originally planned.” Yeah no kidding. They told me it needed to be taken care of asap but have no sooner appointments, so as of now I just get to be miserable and sick for another month.

I am instructed to come to the ER if I start running fevers again, and hopefully they will be forced to do surgery. We’ll see.  

Got my federal refund today. I tried to stick mostly to the plan but due to some unexpected expenses I did have to shuffle things around. Here's out it shook out:

$8,600 Received

$3,000 to IRA

$3,000 to vacation fund

$1,000 to new tires, alignment, and plate renewal

$500 to HSA

$375 for dinner and new clothes

$650 to checking buffer

$75 to utility bill overages

---------------

My car's tires were bald and going flat every week. It was time to get new tires. I did manage to snag a buy 3 get 1 free deal, but I needed an alignment and my plates were due. I felt it was a good use of money since I use my car to haul around our kids, and we will be traveling across country in it in a couple months.

Our automatic payment for our trash bill charged us twice this month for some reason. Sigh. I turned off automatic payments, and it will be applied as a credit for next time. Our electric bill was also up this month. So I used a bit to cover that.

Got my buffer back up to normal levels, went to dinner and the family bought some needed clothes.

I was hoping to send $500 more to HSA and save $500 for Christmas. But I still do have $400 in state refund coming to allocate somewhere. Overall I feel like we saved the majority of our refund and/or used it on things we definitely needed.

I haven't filed yet because I am waiting on one more thing, but we finally got my husband's W2 and I can make a pretty good estimate on what we are getting back. It looks like right around $9,000, which is great! I was honestly only expecting at least $4k with hoping for up to $8k, so even better than I planned.

This is the first year completely without my W2 income and my old job was a major tax leech.  I was expecting our refund to go up, but then a lot of things that we got extra credit for the last couple years got removed like the extra kid payments and the charity contribution bonus.  I've heard lots of complaints about the refunds dropping this year.  Pleasantly surprised. I know we could reduce our deductions and get more money in the paycheck each week, but I kind of prefer the big chunk. Something to consider now that we have kids and get a refund each year. Before I was always concerned about paying in because we were so close to the line each year with my income. But without my job and kids lowering our taxes we may need to change things.

Crazy how much tax I had to pay on my previous tiny W2 income, which was part of the reason for quitting. The numbers just didn’t make it worth it. My web design last year only netted a little over $1,000 after all my expenses, BEFORE taxes. So barely worth it, but it does pay for a lot of business-related subscriptions and programs I use.  

As far as a plan for the return here are the current thoughts:

$3,000                   IRA

$3,000                   Vacation

$500                       Christmas

$300                       Clothing

$100                       Date/Dinner

$750                       Buffer

$1,000                   HSA

$350                       MISC

That would complete all my financial goals for the year, save some for future vacation, Christmas and clothing expenses, and get my buffer/EF back up where I like it to be. Husband asked to use a bit to go out to dinner, and the left over $350 would just be put wherever needed at the time or saved.

Plan is subject to change along with actual refund amount we get back, but this is a pretty good start.

Upon reviewing our income and spending for 2022 and forecasting for 2023 I am feeling very discouraged. I track everything and so I know the numbers are accurate. With our estimated income I am putting us at $4,800 short in 2023 for our budget NOT including vacation spending, home improvement or IRAs.

Adding those three categories makes our deficit a whopping $17,200! Which is almost half of our total budget.

Well how did we get here? The main thing I can figure is that we have received over $11,000 in tax returns and/or stimulus payments for both of the last two years which has given us a deceptively inflated income. I am estimating our tax return this year to be somewhere between $4-7k. Which will help offset some of the deficit, but we are going to have to make hard choices of where to put that money and where we are going to have to cut and/or scrounge up more income for the rest.

This is estimating very little side income besides husband’s paycheck, so if I can hustle a little, pick up more web design, sell things, etc, then we will be in better shape but it’s still a large mountain to climb. I’m also not sure what the impact of husband’s raise will be over the course of a year because he works so much overtime it’s almost impossible to see the difference in the last couple months. But I’m thinking it should give us $3k+ more to work with than I am budgeting.

Unfortunately there aren’t many areas to cut drastically, but every little bit helps I suppose. I may have to seriously consider going back to the workforce if we can’t hustle and cut enough in the next few months. Such as bummer since I don’t feel like we have added too much extra spending, the price of all the normal things have just increased dramatically.

Things have turned out better than expected! We are getting approximately two acres and he is only charging us a total of $10,000!!! We were honestly expecting to pay around $30,000. 

This changes things because now we can take a lien out on our car instead of getting a second mortgage. This reduces the loan fees from over $1,000 to around $75. We don't have to get an appraisal or do a proper closing or anything like that, so it also speeds up the timeline by over a month!

We are getting the survey next week and I already have a lawyer in waiting to prepare the deeds. Unfortunately, we must get a deed on the new property and then combine it with our current property and get a new deed again. Which means lawyer and recording fees x 2 but we are still getting a huge deal. We are estimating a final cost of $13,500 and hopefully it will be ours by the end of the month and then a few more weeks to get it combined.

The septic will take a while longer, but we are still hoping to complete it by the end of summer. It’s $700 just to file a permit and do the required soil testing which can’t be started until the land is purchased and combined.

We had septic problems last week again. Our septic is 50+ years old, homemade, and every year we just hope it holds on another year because replacement is expensive. 

Well we finally told the company to go ahead and put us on the list for replacement this year. Then we realized that our property line is too close to our house to put it where we want. Currently part of our septic is on the farmer's land who sold us the property. We would have to put it in the front yard and also do a more complicated and more expensive type of septic because of limited room and distance from the house.

So we called the farmer and asked again if we could buy some more land from him. (We have asked multiple times over the last 10 years and he has always said no way.) Surprisingly he said yes! He is going to come over and walk about and talk to us about how much he is willing to part with. I'm guessing somewhere between 1-3 acres.

We are suuuuper excited to be offered the chance to purchase more land, but also a bit nervous because we were not expecting that and so we are going to have to get a loan. Which is a bummer when you are debt free. But we can't pass up this chance of a lifetime!

We will have to wait and see how much land and what price he offers and then decide if we are going to have to cancel the septic or not for another year. I've already talked to the bank and have some options. Most likely a land loan for 4.25% which we would pay off asap.

We have been working on all our different yard projects. We got our old trees all cut down. Still need to bury the gutters, run the new main water line, get a hydrant installed, install the septic, regrade the yard again and plant grass and trees. I wish we had known about buying more land before we agreed to all these expensive projects. But it is what it is. 

I submitted our taxes today. We are getting back a little over $10k which is super high but most of it is from having a kid in 2021 and qualifying for the child tax credits and 3rd stimulus. 

We are putting $3k into my Roth IRA, $3k for vacation, and I'm saving $4k so I can continue to "pay myself" a monthly salary. I don't want to use it and then have a deficit later in the year without my income. So I will continue to pull and use only $500 a month from my saved buffer towards specific savings or expenses. This is working well so far and making the transition to a one income household much easier. If husband has overtime (always does) or I bring in any extra income then I don't have to pull from the buffer. I have enough saved to keep receiving my previous salary for this entire year and therefore not put any strain on our normal budget. 

I still have the original $2k I saved for maternity leave back in September. I have pulled from it a couple times and then was able to refill it with extra income. So perhaps keeping a $6k buffer seems a bit superfluous but it makes me feel more comfortable about not having a job to rely on, and we could always pull from it in a pinch. Just increasing our emergency fund I guess.

Husband got notified of a possible class action lawsuit a few months ago regarding ADP at his last employer. Well he filled it out and thought nothing of it, and last week we received a surprise $400 check for our settlement. Sweet! His employer also just sent him another one concerning his health insurance, so we submitted it as well. I used to think they were scams, but I’ve successfully received money for several of them now. Never hurts to fill them out and see what happens.

I am seriously considering quitting my office job again. I am feeling very burnt out and busy and tired. I’m sure part of it is pregnancy, but I can’t see me getting anymore energy or time after having two kids. My work also hired someone new as a salary position, and I’ve been asking for salary pay for many years. I’ve worked 10 years now (with one year off in the middle) and the new person is making pretty much the same as me, gets to do all their work from home, and doesn’t have the responsibilities that I have… I was a bit upset and asked if I could also get salary pay. I was told if I wanted more money I needed to work more, and that I wasn’t as needed or as important as the new hire which is why they got salary and I didn’t…

Since then I feel like the office attitude has shifted. My boss seems short tempered with me, and I know I feel pretty unmotivated to put much effort in and want to only do the bare minimum. I am good friends with my boss and I feel like this is detrimental to our relationship, which in my opinion is worth more than the job. The problem is I really need the income to pay for my animal hobbies since my web design job is also struggling. So I am a bit stuck at what to do.

I have never aspired to be a stay at home mom but it seems to be heading that way at least for a while. I want to be able to take my kids to the park and to story hour at the library, etc. Right now I’m just too busy and I feel like I’m being run ragged. I think a couple years break from working would do me good while the kids are young.

 I’ve already started saving for my maternity leave, our medical bills are all saved for, and husband’s income pays our bills. My income is literally only used for my animals, my spending such as eating out, and extra savings/spendings like vacations or house projects. I will continue to get some income for web design which will help, but it will be about a $500-$600 drop a month in total income. Honestly the new child tax credits are equal to my monthly pay, and part of me hopes they will continue thru at least next year as that would replace my missing income and make the transition much easier. Or I need to make some serious animal cuts and reduce the spending.

 Current goal is to possibly quit my job when I take maternity leave in October. Stretch goal would be to quit in September and have a couple weeks without working to prepare for the baby, spend some extra time with our current child and to relax towards the end. I haven’t decided 100% what I want to do yet. Thoughts?

The reason we needed to save for our Medical OOP again this year is that I am pregnant again! Baby #2 will be arriving this fall. So far things are going well. My kitchen remodel was definitely a project based on nesting. lol. Construction work is done and now husband and I are finishing up the trim and small details. 

In sadder news my grandma passed away recently very unexpectedly. This is quite a shock since she was healthy and we had dinner plans only a couple hours later. Her and my grandpa have been extremely frugal and hard workers their whole lives. They left a sizable inheritance to their children which they are in the process of sorting out. But my family has graciously gifted me her car. It's only a couple years old and much nicer than any car I have owned or could probably ever afford to own. 

My husband is still driving his first car and it's basically one mile away from dying at any moment so we have been saving off and on for several years for a replacement. He will start driving the new car which gets about 3x better gas mileage and we will use our car savings budget for other things. 

Although we are all sad about grandma it is such a nice parting gift to leave your family an inheritance instead of debt. I hope someday I will be able to leave something for my own children. 

I have most of my taxes filled out and it looks like we will be getting back around $6.5k!!?? Usually we break even. 

This is a combinaition of a lot less self employment income, having a baby and also the stimulus checks for the baby which we did not get yet. 

If the numbers are correct we will basically be able to fund all our goals for the entire year which is just crazy to me. I'm not sure what we will save for this year. Perhaps retirement, or some other future large home projects we want to do in a year or two. 

Anyway, every year around tax time I always re-evaluate working. I work 2 part time jobs which are both sort of high stress. I only pulled in about $12k this year, and my tax rate is crazy high because of it being self employement income, AND it pushes us out of some tax breaks. Around half of my income seems gobbled up by taxes. Which I am just not sure is worth working a few days a week plus random weekends, evenings, late night calls, etc. Especially since we are basically getting back in taxes what I net in a year. lol.

Especially now that I have a child and finding a babysitter has been hard. Our parents watch her, but my in-laws are super afraid of Covid, so we are frequently banned from visiting and babysitting if we see anyone else. Example: They will not be babysitting for possibly the next 8 weeks because of a few engagments we have to attend.

My mom is in healthcare and works crazy hours, and although she is always willing I feel terrible making her babysit when she worked 12 hours all night and has to babysit for 8 hours and then go back to to work. It's not really fair. I also can't pay someone to babysit because I would have to pay more than I bring in. So it's just kind of lose lose. We have been talking about more children and that just seems like it will make it even harder. 

I am afraid of quitting my job(s) though. I like having a little spending money, and I also like getting out of the house a couple days a week. I think I would get extrememly bored and lonely at home all day every day. I'm also afraid I would get lazy and fall into the trap of laying around all day. If I had some hobbies, or a few things to do every week I think I would be okay. But I'm just hesitant. I have always worked. I took one year off to do only web design for a year and I kind of hated it after like a month. I was so stir crazy. But that was before I had kids, and I enjoyed my 6 weeks maternity leave so I just don't know. 

My part time office job can be stressful but it is also kind of gravy. Especially since Covid, I come in late and leave early whenever. I called into today because of snow and I'm working from home. I don't get paid much, but I also like the flexibilty and time away from the house, so I am hesitant to give that up. But part of me would also like the 2 or 3 days a week at home to do other things. I'm worried if I quit I will regret it like I did previously. But I also see quitting as possibility if I get pregnant and have a bad pregnancy like I did last time. 

Thoughts? Has anyone else transitioned to stay at home mom?

I spent a lot of money this week but surprisingly my finances are in as good of shape as ever. It makes a huge difference not having to use all extra income to pay debt. Besides the fact that husband has been working 6 or 7 days a week and some long hours. 

We got our on demand water heater installed and it's glorious to have all the hot water we want. Hopefully it will lower our electric bill slightly but I'm sure our water bill will go up with all the baths and long showers we have been taking. lol. 

We bought a used sectional, a new tv and some wall art for our livingroom. All told we spent about $2k this month on home projects, but our livingroom is almost complete. We had been using hand me down furniture for almost a decade and it is nice to have something that is more what we want and matches. Besides just cosmetic issues our baby is almost on the move and everything needed to be child proofed.  So a new tv that can hang on the wall out of reach is great. We still would like to purchase a recliner and some new end tables, but not in any hurry. 

I did sell the last of my available goats and added $850 to my animal fund along with pay for and pick up my remaining hay for the season. 

Also spent about $100 buying outfits for our upcoming family pictures. We never got any real maternity or newborn pictures so we are finally getting some. A friend is a professional photgrapher and is only charging us like $50. Which is insane! He did the same for our wedding. Usually his wedding photo shoots are $2k+ so I really appreciate his enormous generosity. 

In order to make anymore progress on https://budgetbloggers.com/ I need to add some blogs. Are there any bloggers here that would be okay with me copy and pasting a few of their posts over on my new website? After that is successful I will also be looking for a couple people willing to set up an account and make a few posts to try out the system. Let me know if you would be interested in that as well. Thank you!

If you are interested in setting up an account to test please email me at support@budgetbloggers.com

I have almost all my clients switched over to either the new company or to myself. So far everyone except one account has paid their bill upfront for the next year. So I have a huge inflow of cash right now, but I have to remember it will only be once a year. I already saved back the amount I need to pay for the subscriptions that are due in a couple months, and paid for the hosting for all the accounts for 3 years. The rest I went ahead and put towards savings and debt pay off.

Still sad about loosing my job but I will be okay. The few clients I have taken over will pay for my personal websites and subscriptions. I have two companies I am picking up work from, and I can always find solo projects as well.

I have three more goats sold which will be picked up and paid for over the next month or two. 

Lots of things to do on the farm before winter.