April Wins and Losses

[sadlebred]

L: I had a large tree branch take down a few branches from another tree in storms last week. They will require a chainsaw and manpower to get cut up and to the curb. The city will take them next week. $250 from the tree service to do that. $350 if they chopped it up. Nope, I already pay the city to do that. My city will take branches up to 4" and sections up to 8'(?) long every week in addition to yard bags, small sticks, etc. I'm also having the house cleaned this week. Friends gave me the $$ to do so since I had surgery in Jan. I'll still have to pay $100 OOP and a tip. It will be worth it. So much for putting money in savings this month....

[chpmnk1015]

W: ill take this as a win.. Was in charge of ordering group tickets for an event.. everyone paid me and i put it all on my CC for the points.. it was like $13K. Woot

[quesyrah]

Apr 15, 2024 13:41:32 GMT -5 chpmnk1015 said:

W: ill take this as a win.. Was in charge of ordering group tickets for an event.. everyone paid me and i put it all on my CC for the points.. it was like $13K. Woot

It’s always a win when you don’t have to chase people down!

[chpmnk1015]

Apr 15, 2024 14:30:26 GMT -5 quesyrah said:

Apr 15, 2024 13:41:32 GMT -5 chpmnk1015 said:

W: ill take this as a win.. Was in charge of ordering group tickets for an event.. everyone paid me and i put it all on my CC for the points.. it was like $13K. Woot

It’s always a win when you don’t have to chase people down!

Well, i was chasing down lol. but finally got it all from everyone.  

[simpsongal]

Well update to mine - a huge loss in everyway: pandce.proboards.com/thread/641652/dog-lymphoma-update

Our pup has lymphoma and the treatment we're opting for is at least $6K (that doesn't include all the routine drugs he's taking). I went ahead and cut my 401K contribution, I'm overfunding anyway and it'll help lessen the budget hit. FWIW we're not taking a spendy vacation this year.

[midwestmama]

Does having an Aldi open up only a few miles away from home count as a win, lol? If so, then that is a win for me. In the past, I used to have to drive 10-15 miles away (20+ minutes each way) to get to an Aldi, so I only would go when it was convenient/when I had time. Now I can incorporate an Aldi trip with my weekly grocery trip to Meijer, which is awesome.

[bee20]

W: I temporarily gave up my car for earth month, so no gas or repairs this month.
L: -$1500 in federal taxes.

[EvieEthelGarland]

W-I am going to Alaska in May. When I first stated booking everything, cars were about $650 for the week. It dropped to $500, then $480, $410, $370, $306 and this morning I rebooked for $286 for an SUV.

I love Costco.

@@@kid W@@@ He is booking up his weekends pressure washing and doing lawns. Not just our neighborhood, but my parents as well. Apparently, none of the neighborhood teens by them are interested? They're about 45 minutes away so that takes up a bit of my time driving him up and back, but whatever-I'll support this endeavor.

[sadlebred]

I knew I couldn't get away from a month without a loss.

L: Half of a big pine tree from the neighbor's house behind me fell on my fence and into my next door neighbor's yard. $500, which they split with me. We save $100 by having the tree company cut the limbs up in less than 8' sections and having the city pick them up--which is included in our trash fee--instead of having the tree company bring the chipper out. That part of the fence is destroyed--but it's a mid 1970's chainlink fence. Eventually I'll have someone come out and get rid of it. It's at the back of our yards that neither of us actively use. You can't see it from the driveway .

[noodleoo]

Apr 22, 2024 15:08:18 GMT -5 EvieEthelGarland said:

W-I am going to Alaska in May. When I first stated booking everything, cars were about $650 for the week. It dropped to $500, then $480, $410, $370, $306 and this morning I rebooked for $286 for an SUV.

I love Costco.

H did this on our last 2 trips to visit my parents and it saved us a ton! I love Costco too. We joined in 2020 because it saved us $750 on closing costs to refi our mortgage and wow it has been a game changer in so many ways!

[EvieEthelGarland]

Apr 22, 2024 19:44:03 GMT -5 noodleoo said:

Apr 22, 2024 15:08:18 GMT -5 EvieEthelGarland said:

W-I am going to Alaska in May. When I first stated booking everything, cars were about $650 for the week. It dropped to $500, then $480, $410, $370, $306 and this morning I rebooked for $286 for an SUV.

I love Costco.

H did this on our last 2 trips to visit my parents and it saved us a ton! I love Costco too. We joined in 2020 because it saved us $750 on closing costs to refi our mortgage and wow it has been a game changer in so many ways!

I had an issue with our rental last spring break--we double booked and were charged for our no show. They're not supposed to do that per the reservation T&C but they refused to refund it. I talked to a real person in Costco's office in Issaquah and had their direct line and email with their name. It took three days and I had my money back.

Their used car buying program was also the easiest car buying experience I've had. 

I have my insurance through them. We were paying twice for auto as much through a broker for the same coverage. I think we're only paying $220/mo for four vehicles? No idea how the claims might go, but I have a lot of trust in Costco. 

[aprilsails]

@@@ mentions

I'm complaining about total FWPs here.

I'm now a shareholder in my company. We received the first dividend cheques and the value is at the bottom of the $10k range which I was given as their average annual payout. Unfortunately the value of the shares I purchased was finalized and I have to pay an additional $10k for the purchase. So my budget projections for the business loan payback have had to be recalculated.

In the meantime I got back a tax return of $6k, so that's going straight to the purchase. This will be my last year of large tax returns due to graduating out of daycare deductions (hooray) and also due to the dividend cheques not having taxes deducted at the source. I'm now setting money aside in a HISA to cover tax payments next year.

None of this is really all that bad and I cannot complain. It's just a lot more moving parts to track and the payback for the shares purchase process will take up to 8-9 years if interest rates stay high and the dividends stay the same. So I won't see the benefits all that soon. And in the meantime we're not pursuing other plans to be able to buy the shares.

I'm also feeling some kind of way about being a shareholder. It's hard to explain. Especially since there are so few women shareholders. We're talking 6%, representing a whole 2.5% of the share holdings. I've got the ick from my own company now. My goal is to make the change happen from the inside now. Stupid capitalism.

[trissie18]

April became a big L with my horse's surprise birth of twins resulting in a $1k vet bill for the littlest one. The W is they are the cutest and so far both are doing great.

I don't know how to do PIP but they have their own FB page, www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61558802693167, since it is an absolute miracle all three survived and both babies are thriving. 

[ssmjlm]

With 2 days to spare our upstairs HVAC is dead.

We paid $279 just 2 weeks ago for them to fix it. Well that didn't work. They are putting the repair money towards the new one, but when you're talking THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS, a couple hundred seems minor.

[niq]

Win(?): I actually looked at our spending and it seems like our baseline spending -- like no changes to eating out or shopping -- is break-even. I'm still going to do a finer-grained look at spending but it helped with panic to see that we're not actually in the red on day-to-day spending, it was just the Midwinter and Spring break vacations that did it.