Do You Ever Feel Like You Are Getting Financially Lambasted?

Kev’s car is falling apart. We’ve dumped several thousand dollars in repairs into the thing in the last six months. And the repairs have not been minor ones. The last repair, which was last month, was to replace the fuel pump which had cracked and was dumping gas all over. Not cool. And not safe. Due to the decreasing integrity of the vehicle, we’ve made a plan to replace it so that Kev doesn’t blow up on the way to work one day. But it seems that Murphy has a law about financial plans, a law in which every financially prudent plan must immediately be laid to waste.

Last year we replaced our water heater. The year before it was the water softener. Our house is thirteen years old so we are getting to the point where some of these things are just wearing out. And as we've noticed a decline in performance of our appliances, we've been proactive in replacing them so we won't end up with a flooded basement and an emergency installation than will inevitably occur on a Saturday evening which results in a bill twice what it would be on a weekday. We’ve noticed a decrease in air flow over the last few years, so the heat and air conditioning systems were next on the list. We scheduled an AC tune up earlier this week during which we discovered that things are not looking rosy. There are multiple components of our HVAC system for which failure is imminent necessitating a revision of the financial plan making the HVAC system the first priority and bumping the car to second place, all the while hoping it doesn’t blow up resulting in a complete loss of trade in value.

That was Tuesday. Last night I came home and when I pushed the button to open the garage door, it only lifted about a foot which did not bode well. Sure enough, the coil which provides the counterweight to lift the door is broken. If the motor was broken we could disengage the automatic system and open the door by hand. But without the counterweight, the door is way too heavy for me to lift. So repair it we must. The garage door repair guys came out today and knowing that the rest of the garage door opener is just as old as the coil and just as likely to break in the very near future (a fact confirmed by the professionals when they gave it a once over), we had them replace the whole thing. While it was definitely not cheap, it carried a significantly smaller price tag than the HVAC or car will carry. In spite of that, it still hurt…

Hopefully we are done with the circumstantially driven revisions of our financial plan. And if any of you happen to cross paths with Murphy, kick him in the shins for me.