Catching Up-Long Post

I am back from my trip!  Had a great time, but it is always good to get back home.  I was gone a total of five nights, although it felt like much longer than that.  I’m guessing this is because I hadn’t gone anywhere overnight for well over a year.  Three of the nights were in hotels, and the other two were on a couch at my brother’s lake house.  I won’t bore you all the details (or at least not in this post), but I spent time with my new grandbaby, my son along with his wife, two siblings along with their spouses and kids, and of course, my elderly father.  

After getting home late Wednesday, it was back to work for me on Thursday.  I worked yesterday as well.  Today would be my usual day to take care of the baby, but the family is out of town.  As much as we could use the money, I was kind of glad to have a couple of days off to catch up.  Hubs will be flying out again on Monday, which is another reason I’m thankful for not having to work today.

With all the hecticness of my trip and everything that goes along with being away, I wasn’t able to do an end of the month report.  As for the numbers, our debt is now at $29,972.85.  We started June at $32,786.43, so this was quite a drop!  To keep this post from getting crazy long, I’ll write a more detailed post later next week.  July and likely August, won’t be near as stellar as we have two hefty unexpected expenses coming our way to the tune of close to $6K.  Ouch.

The first expense is more of the preventative nature.  A few weeks ago, an area not too far from us experienced some major flooding.  Many people suffered significant damage to their homes, which is not covered by homeowners insurance.  I happened upon a post made in one of my Dave Ramsey groups from someone in the area.  She said that thanks to Dave’s teaching, she had additional coverage which will pay for the damage her house sustained.  Her experience had me placing a call to my insurance agent.

While we have $5,000 in place for sump pump failure (max available), that would be useless in a flooding situation.  Flood insurance is what is needed.  Although we live on a lake, we are not in a flood zone.  Given our elevation, I have zero concerns about that causing us to flood.  What concerns me, however, is the hill above our house.  Our house sits midway down, and if we were to see the heavy rains that the neighboring community experienced, I could see a mudslide/flood happen in our basement.  As it is, the basement wall on that side of the house at one point needed reinforcement.  Was it because of pressure from heavy rainfall or poor building?  We don’t know.  All we know is there is a now a double wall in that part of the basement.

Getting flood insurance is not as easy as it sounds.  Fortunately, our community does participate in the National Flood Insurance Program, making us eligible to purchase it.  Cost varies (zoning, windows, foundation, etc.) with our quote coming in at $499/year.  We did decide to get this in place.  I realize one can over-insure, but you will understand more after I tell you about our driveway.

Living midway down a hill, part of our driveway is also very steep.  In the three years we have been here we have lost gravel with every heavy rainfall. I can’t even begin to tell you how many times Hubs and I have raked and shoveled the driveway to make it passable after these rains.  The last rain washed out close to a foot deep gully alongside the edge.  No amount of raking or shoveling could fix that.  Our first thought was to add more gravel, but in reality, all this would be is a band-aid fix.  We’ve learned via the grapevine that this is the approach the former owner used.  While hauling in more gravel might be cheaper at first, in the long-run, it ends up being more expensive.  Time to put the shovels and rakes away and fix it once and for all.

The cost associated with fixing the driveway is $5,300.  The repair includes gravel, recycled asphalt, three culverts, ditching, trucking, labor, 200 feet of geotextile fabric, and riprap.  Hubs was surprised the estimate wasn’t higher.  He expected more in the $8K range.  For the record, the company has been around for over 30 years and has an excellent reputation. The last thing we want to do is use some fly-by-night company who doesn’t know what they are doing.  After all, we are talking about a lot of money here!

How are we going to pay for these additional expenses?  It will be a combination of  Hubs cashing out his vacation pay, and we will also borrow from our sinking funds. Our debt snowball will also be put on a temporary hold while we rebuild these funds. While I’m not happy about it, the repair is needed.  The good news is the driveway will again be passable, and the flood insurance will be protecting one of our biggest assets.

Well, I feel like I’ve bored you enough for one day.  For those of you who don’t blog, I hope all is good in your world.  For those of you who do blog, I have been reading bits and pieces as time has permitted-trying my best to keep up!