The first year of law school is done! Unlike a lot of my friends, I jumped right into my summer internship without a break. In retrospect, I don't know what my hurry was, and I probably should have given myself a week to rest and recuperate, and to catch up on grown-up responsibilities. Lesson learned.
As you saw in the previous post, seeking out renter's insurance became a priority for us recently. I still haven't found the time to go into the insurance agent's office to set that up, but it's scheduled for Saturday. But when it rains, it pours (literally), and that wasn't the end of the plagues of Egypt around here.
The fire was massive, and destroyed a building with 16 apartments. Four fire trucks were spraying it down for hours just to put the fire out, and all of that water had to go somewhere. In this case, "somewhere" was the lowest point in our apartment complex, aka the storm drain in front of our building. Along with it, that water carried leaves and debris, and it clogged the storm drain. The next day, there was an unusually heavy rainstorm. We came home to find my husband's car halfway submerged in water.
Coincidentally, we were out at dinner talking about getting rid of the car while the flood was happening. We had gone car shopping the previous weekend (not with the intention of buying anything that day, but just to see what the options were). That same day, the check engine light came on, and the repairs were going to cost about $200 (on a car worth about $1200). We had concluded that we should just share a car for the rest of the summer and save up as much as we could. But carpooling didn't work so well. My car is a stick shift, which he isn't comfortable with driving, and I have to be at work before he does. As a result, I had to drop him off really early, and I still ended up being late. So we were stuck with the choice of fixing his car or purchasing a new one, and apparently the universe thought we needed a new car.
We went back to the dealership, and a new (used) Prius had just been traded in. Somebody had bought a new car, and given up this one which was less than a year old and had only 5,000 miles. It was the last day of the month and the dealership hadn't made many sales over Memorial Day weekend, so they were desperate to make a deal. We picked it up as a certified used for $3,000 under blue book. So far we've been enjoying the great gas mileage -- between 50 and 60 mpg on trips around town, high 40's on the interstate -- but every penny is going toward the payments. I paid off my last car in less than a year, and I intend to do the same thing here, even if we're down to ramen noodles for awhile.
Along with planning what we could afford, we had to look at finances. Another great coincidence -- my husband got a pretty nice raise the week we bought the car, so that will go a long way. But the other problem is his student loans. I didn't realize just how bad his loans were, but then we sat down and looked at it... are you ready for this... $149,000. Crikey. He's looking for a public sector position (which he wanted anyway) so hopefully he'll have a new job that will qualify him for the public service loan forgiveness program by August when those come due.
How on earth did I get here? Five years ago I had no debt, a nice savings account, a growing Roth IRA, and everything I owned fit in my car. I love my husband, but he brought a giant pile of debt and crap with him. I'm back to the obsessive spreadsheet budget tracking that helped me pay off my car and grow my savings. We'll dig our way out. But it's going to take awhile.
I'm gaining a new appreciation for some of the old personal finance blogs that helped me. Man vs. Debt in particular is resonating with me lately, more so now that I have a household beyond just myself to maintain. I'm going to figure out how to put some sort of tracking app on this blog, for my own motivation if nothing else. But for now, this post has gotten way longer than I intended, so I'll end it here. Until next time.
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