{"id":154,"date":"2005-02-10T23:56:21","date_gmt":"2005-02-11T03:56:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lopeyland.com\/?p=154"},"modified":"2006-06-28T15:33:39","modified_gmt":"2006-06-28T19:33:39","slug":"the-kinda-stuff-thats-been-on-my-mind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lopeyland.com\/?p=154","title":{"rendered":"The kinda stuff that’s been on my mind"},"content":{"rendered":"

What’s been on my mind lately<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, it’s money. Pure and simply put, Laureen and I are deeply in debt, much deeper than I’ve ever been before, and I hate it.<\/p>\n

I’ve often wondered why I worry about money so much. Laureen has a much different view about money, and she seems to be OK for the most part about things. Me? Yikes.<\/p>\n

A large part of our money woes result from two things: one a choice, the other not a choice.
\n1. My being a contractor. (The “not a choice,” in case you were wondering.)
\n2. Laureen’s not working.<\/p>\n

The combination of these two events leads to the following:
\n1. Catastrophic coverage for health insurance. That in turn leads to
\n2. Paying full price for doctor’s visits, medicines, etc.
\n3. Regular visits to dentists, etc., are more and more expensive.<\/p>\n

Apparently, credit card companies know that approximately every 3 months or so, you’re going to have an event occur in your life that will require a larger than normal outlay of money. This could be a car repair or accident, or a sick child, or Christmas, or goodness knows what. The effect of it is that even if you establish a budget and begin to dig out of that hole you’re in, here comes the emergency, and there you go, back dependent on a credit card.<\/p>\n

Right now, I’m shuffling debts between four credit cards with “low” or “no” interest. Our long-term solution is a home-equity loan to consolidate the debt. Again, that leaves a really bad taste in my craw, but what else am I going to do?<\/p>\n

The other side of the coin, the one where Laureen and I have to work a lot<\/em> harder, is the budgeting aspect. And again, I’m stymied. I think I make a decent amount of money, certainly more than my parents make (and that’s a crying shame, because they’re both smart, intelligent, and talented people), but when I look at any proposed budget for us, I can’t help but hate it, because it means that I’ll have to change some part of my lifestyle, and frankly, I don’t want to do that. I like my cable modem and my satellite dish recorder. But there are cheaper options, especially on the broadband internet side.<\/p>\n

I just want to know if this discipline and sacrifice is going to be worth it. If it lowers my stress level, if it keeps me from panicking in the night, if it keeps me from the constant, dull ache of worry that I feel, then it’ll be worth it. It’ll just take a lot of getting used to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What’s been on my mind lately Well, it’s money. Pure and simply put, Laureen and I are deeply in debt, much deeper than I’ve ever been before, and I hate it. I’ve often wondered why I worry about money so much. Laureen has a much different view about money, and she seems to be OK … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “The kinda stuff that’s been on my mind”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-administrivia","category-family","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lopeyland.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lopeyland.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lopeyland.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lopeyland.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lopeyland.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lopeyland.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lopeyland.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lopeyland.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lopeyland.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}