December 22nd, 2009

Lots of financial ups and downs for us in 2009. The year began with Jen starting a new job. While the job was the right move for her at the time, she wound up bringing in less money overall, and the once-a-month paychecks she received made balancing our bill payments into a fun game. (And by “fun game,” I mean a game that isn’t actually fun. At all. Kinda like any video game that requires you to collect magic points.) But we got through that. We even managed to save up enough money during those months to get us through the summer, where she made less money while working a different job, and even had one month without any work at all. Not long after she resumed her regular job in the fall, she was let go from that position with a single day’s notice. She immediately filed for unemployment benefits. We were lucky because, for some reason, her last paycheck from the old job was larger than usual, and that helped keep things afloat. However, in the time between that money running out, and the time it would take for the unemployment benefits to kick in, things looked bleak. I consulted two attorneys offices about bankruptcy, in the hopes that we could dispatch our unsecured debts, thereby converting those monthly payments into cash. We were told that we could do that, but we’d also have to file against our home. And while we weren’t likely to lose our home, there were no guarantees. We decided to give it a little more time before taking drastic measures. And, after waiting almost six weeks, Jen began receiving her unemployment benefits and she’s been getting them regularly ever since. And not too much longer after that, she picked up a part-time job. Then, I got some good news in relation to my own income. It seemed as though things had turned around. It felt good. And during this happy-fun-time-feel-good period, I had some ideas. One of which is to do some shifting of rooms around here so that we can have a more dedicated studio space for our many multimedia endeavors. As things seemed to be looking good financially, one of the contingencies I placed on the move was that we would get rid of our old TV, a 32″ Toshiba CRT behemoth that weighs like 1.5 tons (rough estimate). Here’s a not-so-great photo of the Toshiba:

And since we’d be ditching the old set, that of course would mean that we’d have to get a new one. And indeed, we did. We purchased a big, fancy flat panel LCD TV (kinda like this one but I think ours is a different model). We arranged to have the new TV delivered on Monday, January 4th, as the weekend before is when we’ll be making the Big Room Move of 2009/2010. Everything seemed pretty damn sweet. Until this week. It’s beginning to look as though that part-time job of Jen’s is growing a little more tenuous with each passing day. She’s still got the job. And who knows? She may wind up having it for a long time. But, things are… uncertain. And I don’t do well with uncertainty. It makes me anxious. And when I get anxious, I get analytical. Overly so. And that over analysis lead me to wonder if the purchase of the TV is still a good idea. We financed it, and we got a good deal as far as that’s concerned. But if Jen does end up fully unemployed again, we’ll have less money coming in. Sure, the unemployment benefits she has (which she’s been drawing even while she’s had the part-time job) will be raised, and that’ll help. But those benefits won’t last forever. We had a pretty lengthy discussion about it last night. And we’re gonna keep the TV (damnit!). The payments aren’t that high, and we’ve always got the nuclear option of selling it if our finances get so screwed that we can no longer make the payments. But, yeah. Uncertainty = bad.

In related news, the TV stand we purchased to use with the new set was delivered today by TWO dudes from UPS.

We have dubbed it boxolith. It’ll look something like this if (when!) it’s finally assembled.

Tags: Flickr, life, money, TV, work
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