404s And News Updates

It’s been more than a year since I’ve posted on this page, and for very good reason — because I had moved my blog over to it’s own domain.  Unfortunately I got away from blogging for a few months, and in the mean time my domain expired without my being aware of it.  I lost everything I had posted on it, along with being unable to get the domain name back without having to buy it out from under someone which… is not very frugal!

So here I am, back on this blog, and this is where I shall stay.  I don’t want to take any chances on losing all my blog posts again, and the domain wasn’t increasing my traffic anyway.  It’s taken me weeks after discovering the loss to come back and blog here, mainly because I was so frustrated with losing it all that I didn’t even want to look at a blog.  But, what’s gone is gone and so I shall start again here and sally forth with what I have and what I can build.

A lot has happened since my last post here, so here are the highlights:

• Hubs was nearly laid off.  The store he worked at by our old apartment closed, and he was offered the opportunity to transfer to another store, or to take a severance package.  We went back and forth on it, but in the end, decided to move to another store.  He took a pay cut with the transfer because he’s no longer in a management position, but we concluded it was worth the small pay cut for him to be able to keep his job, and almost as importantly, to keep his health insurance.  We are blessed with very good insurance through his work, and with all my medical problems, we make much use of it.

This lead to:

• Moving.  This was a HUGE deal for us.  We had been in the same apartment for 16 years, since we moved to Columbus.  The only move we had ever made was from Hubs’ parents to that apartment, and that was a small move, since we had very little at the time.  16 years is a lot of time to accumulate stuff in one apartment, and WOW what a process it is to move!

The job change and the move was incredibly stressful and really sent my anxiety into overdrive.  In the end, the whole thing has turned out to be a blessing in disguise.  Hubs still had to take the pay cut, but the move has been wonderful.  Our old apartment was just a tad in the ghetto, and it was in bad shape.  We stayed there mainly because Hubs can’t drive and we needed to be within walking distance of his store.  We didn’t think there was much hope of getting lucky enough to find somewhere to live within walking distance of his new store but… we did, we sure did!

The new place is on the other side of town, in a very nice area.  It’s a 2 bedroom 1 1/2 bath townhouse that we are in love with.  A big part of the reason we were so scared to move was because our utilities were paid in the old apartment and we worried about having to take on utility payments.  As it would turn out, thus far our rent and utility payments have been less than our rent was at the old place and we’ve actually saved money.  And we’ve been doing it living in a much better area in a much nicer place.  Can’t beat that!

Since we’ve moved, we’ve been stealing too much from the small amount of money left from the money we inherited when Hubs’ Gramma passed away in the fall.  Some of it was legitimate needs for the new place, like a washer and dryer set.  The old place didn’t have hook ups to have a set, but we have them here and it was worth EVERY penny to be able to do our laundry at home!  We also needed a smaller dining table set, a couple of lamps, a microwave cart, and just recently we added a wooden top kitchen cart to use as extra counter space. We also just invested in some thermal curtains for the living room and the sewing room, and the rods to hang them.

Lest I pretend to be too virtuous, there were some “needs” too.  Some small decorative things and so forth that we could have done without, but I decided to splurge on anyway.  I’m happy to say that, of the things we’ve purchased, I have not come to regret any of them.  Even if they weren’t genuine needs, they were things I’ve considered “need” enough to be well worth what we spent.

But, even with my distinct lack of math skills, I was able to deduce that we couldn’t keep robbing from the inheritance money forever.  So the time has finally come to really work at getting ourselves back under control and living frugally again.  We need to ADD TO the savings, not keep stealing from it.

I will write another post later to address what our plans are for getting things under control and what goals we are setting for ourselves, I think this one is a novel already.

Thanks to anyone that’s hung in there and read the whole thing with me!  I hope you’ll come back for the next update.  🙂