Could you do it?

Today on Oprah... Suze Orman's Recession Rescue Plan.

Step 1: Live on half
Prepare yourself for the worst by living on half of your income and banking the other half. This will help you to establish an emergency fund and help you to look at your budget and spending now, before something traumatic happens like losing your job.

I look at Jason's take-home pay and at our current expenses and I don't think there is any way we could do it. I mean yeah, if we lost the income and had to reduce we sure could, and I do have a plan if it comes to that, but it would be by giving up stuff that I'm not willing to give up now on a six month trial "just to prove we can do it" basis. Why do I say that? What would we have to give up? The house. If I add up just the mortgage, taxes, insurance and basic utilities (electricity, water and gas, not cable, internet or phones) and we're left with $65 less than half of his income.

It amuses (and somewhat scares me) that to live on half on an experimental basis we'd have to give up:
- food
- one of the utilities (electricity or water)
- the car (we wouldn't be able to pay the insurance much less the gas)

To hell with all the luxuries like eating out, new clothes and hobbies, we'd have to give up FOOD and we'd either have to live in the dark or stop drinking!?!?! Maybe in 10 years when Jason's income has gone up a little, and maybe I'm back working again, and the impact of the mortgage payment has been reduced by virtue of inflation we could do it. Heck, it might even be possible in 5. But right now, not a chance.

I'd love to know if there is anyone out there reading this that could do it. Could you live on half your income? Is it even possible for you?

Photodump

My last orchid from Ikea (by which I mean the last one I bought, not the last one I will ever buy, I'm honest) and the first orchid we bought from an orchid show when we moved here. Great condition on that orchid. Very few flowers and the colour is nothing unique or particularly flashy or special but they came out before any of the other orchids and outlasted them all. As of a few days ago they finally faded and fell off though, so I've only got the one orchid left in bloom now.

I'm feeling like a photodump today. Pics of my SCA campsite at Ansteorra's 30th year last weekend, orchids and beagles behind the cut.

( Read more... )

They finally started construction on the lot next to us. The "sold" sign has been there for almost 2 months now, and it seems to me like several other lots have sold and been built on since that sign went up. I was hoping they'd be done before the baby arrived, but with a house taking about 8 weeks and the baby due in a little over 5 the chances of them beating the baby coming home are slim. At least they'll be done most of the work and the bulk of the really noisy stuff at that point. I'll just have to deal with the painting crew and their Mexican ooom-pah music.

While it takes 8 weeks to complete a house, it takes very little time to get it looking like a house at least from the outside. I've decided to take a pic every day of the construction just to share how fast it really is. The whole process absolutely fascinates me.

Here's the house yesterday at noon when the lumber truck pulled up and dropped off the stuff they use to frame out the foundation. I happened to be outside in the garage working on my viking box so I grabbed the camera to start taking the "before" shots.



Here is is today around 3pm or so. The foundation is all framed out and they've dropped off the sand that goes under the concrete. I think tomorrow is just levelling the sand and the noisy concrete work will probably happen over the weekend - just great. And yes, they do work on the houses here every day of the week. I guess one of the many the advantages of illegal immigrant labour is that you can make them work even on weekends.

Projects

What have I been up to this week? Quite a bit actually. Especially when you consider that today was a complete write-off. For some reason I'm feeling nauseous. Especially right after I eat. I'm not sure if I'm coming down with something or if the baby is just kicking in weird places. She's fine, the first thing my mum asked was if she was still moving. Yes, plenty, and I'm sure that's not helping me at all. So I spent most of today in bed and all I got done was unloading the dishwasher and cleaning up all my sawdust and debris from the woodworking out in the garage.

Sunday however was fairly productive. I cut all the pieces for the first box and started the assembly. Monday I completed the last little bit of the assembly (I only had enough clamps to do 2 corners at a time, and even then I didn't have enough to do it well, so on Monday I bought more clamps). Yesterday I did the reinforcing dowels and sanded the whole thing. As of now all that needs to be done is some sort of finish. I've told Jason that this is his box, so I'm waiting on him to decide what he wants to do with it. His choices are stain, leave it as-is or I can paint something on it for him (his arms or whatever he likes) and then whatever he chooses I'll throw some urethane on it to protect it. So far he hasn't made any kind of decision at all and it might take him some time to come to one, so I'm just going to post what it looks like at this stage.



Nice looking box if I do say so myself.

There's another little project I finished a few weeks back that I'd been working on since around when my parents came to visit, so I figure I'll post some shots of that too. This isn't so much a construction project as a re-purposing. A friend of mine was using this as a medicine cabinet or something (at least that is what I assume based on the stains from the purple hair dye and the q-tips that were still in it when I got it) and she was getting rid of it when she moved. I figured I'd find a use for it, though I didn't have an idea at the point that I took it. Shortly after moving in I realized that Jason needed a place near the garage door to put his keys and wallet since we no longer had the shelf that we had in Edmonton. I could have put the shelf back up since we still physically possess the shelf, but it doesn't match the style of the room and it was messy having everything just tossed there. So I sanded down s4rah's old medicine cabinet, painted it to match the walls and installed some cup hooks for the keys and here we have the perfect key/wallet/passcard solution:



I'm really pleased with how it turned out. And also I like that it reminds me of Sarah when I look at it. I miss her.