Today is my third missed day of work this week. And all because of a cold that I most likely caught from going to work. Ugh! In all fairness, yesterday would have probably been a day off because of the holiday. But that still leaves me with no hours for the week. For all these missed days, I’ve left it up to the kiddo’s mom whether or not she wanted me to come. In trying to break the cycle of passing this cold back and forth, I think it is wise to avoid more contact until these germs die. The kiddo’s mom traced it back to (in her words) a “snot-nosed kid” where her daughter attends gymnastics. I’d take it a step further and say it was the parent who should have kept the “snot-nosed kid” away from a non-essential activity. At least with it now being several days into this cold, I feel that the worst of it is over.
Since I haven’t left the house since Sunday, I’ve been saving on gas for my car. Going to work is 40 miles round trip. I briefly thought about going to get the mail today, but since I do need to go to the post office tomorrow, I will just get it then. Our mail is delivered to a locked cluster box almost three miles from us at the entrance to our road. Going to our local post office adds yet another 2 miles.
As for my needed trip to the post office tomorrow, I’ll be mailing a letter to our mortgage lender requesting PMI to be dropped! Along with getting our mortgage below the 80% LTV and making 24 payments, tomorrow is when we can officially make this request. I’m going to send this letter (and check for the required Broker’s Price Opinion) via certified mail to make sure it is received. I have some trust issues with the post office. My son and his family still have yet to receive the Christmas card and check I mailed to them two weeks ago. It isn’t the first time (or recipient) where there has been a delay. When it comes to dropping PMI, I’m not taking any chances.
Before Hubs left to go back to work, we decided to reduce the insurance on our pickup to storage only. We just aren’t driving it enough to justify the cost. I emailed our agent on Tuesday to make the changes. The change resulted in our semi-annual bill dropping from $950.00 down to $534.33. That is a savings of $415.67. I will add that $46.17 is a credit since our policy doesn’t technically renew until later this month. Why is our bill even so high to begin with? Google “what state ranks #1 in the nation for the cost of car insurance”, and you’ll get the answer. We pay an insane amount for coverage, which is one reason we play the “on-off game” with insuring our vehicles.
One area of saving that I would have been happy to have done without seeing is pet-related. We are no longer buying dog food, which was costing roughly $60/month. Nail clipping and vet bills are other expenses we no longer have. We still have a cat, but she hasn’t been to a vet in 15+ years. I have also seen a reduction in paper towel use and laundry costs from cleaning up pet accidents. Again, these are all things I would have gladly continued to pay for, but none the less, are areas of savings in our budget.
I cut out our subscription for Philo TV, saving us $20/month. We had it for a total of two months and binge-watched the shows we wanted to see. We did something similar with Sling TV the year before. Now we are back to free YouTube and Amazon Prime. For news, I get that from a site called LiveNewsNow.com. It is, as the name suggests, live news. I’ll miss watching HGTV on Philo, but still have plenty to watch. If any of you have any recommendations for debt-smashing You-Tubers, please let me know. Be it blogs or vlogs, I’m always on the lookout for extra motivation.
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