Financial Freak Show

My budget last week took the gloves off and gave me a serious punch in the mouth. I’m bleeding and a bit dazed, but I know there is still some fight left in me….I hope. Ohh, where to start? It amazes how the saying “when it rains…it sucks!” seems so true at times. Well here you go,I’m gonna to lay the boys on the table for public judgement!  

1. The third week of October is apparently our week for eating dinners out. Sunday we took my wife’s mother out just to enjoy her company and thank her for watching our daughter five days a week for free (I figure that’s worth tossing some Thai food her way every once in a while). Monday we I needed to pick up my vehicle (I’ll get to that one in a minute!) so that lead to another dinner out. Though this time we were hooked up with a $10 off online coupon so that covered the beer. Tuesday, my favorite aunt was in town for a business conference so once again we headed downtown to catch up over some chow. Friday we find ourselves at a rehearsal dinner for a friend’s wedding – true, the dinner is free but the baby’s new outfit necessary for flower girl duty…well that’s not so free! I consider this a dinner related expense.
2. Saturday gets pricey downtown again even with our crazy hookups! Due to the above mentioned wedding we spent the weekend in a downtown hotel suite. True we only live 30 minutes from downtown but with the baby and a lot to do we decided to get a place to stay in the city. With my wife’s crazy hotel hookups (she works in sales in the hotel business so she knows everybody that matters) we got the room for less than a third of the regular price. And since I worked my crappy second “get out of debt” job as a valet at this same high-end hotel the $38 per night parking fee only cost me a smile and a couple fist-bumps with the ex-coworkers.
3. The crazy hookups continued to ease the pain through the weekend but we still dropped some dough.  Saturday my hot little sales-lady wife pulls some more strings and we find ourselves at the Zoo with $30 worth of free passes. Well free that is if you exclude the $5.00 parking, the $12.00 snack and the $7.00 Starbuck’s drive-by on the way there. I guess that’s the cost of some beautiful moments with my little girl. And you can’t buy that at your local Wal-Mart!
4. The wedding Saturday night had no official cover charge. Dinner was provided by our hosts but there was a gift purchase involved so in a way there was a cover charge. No big deal though, dinner was good and it was all so terribly romantic that it probably would have induced vomiting if any outsiders were watching. (take a moment here and wipe your eyes – I know, I’m a little choked up as well).
5. Here was our big budget killer this week! I had the pleasure of forking over the money to replace the engine in my SUV.  This expense stung like hell but the good news is since I got such a sweet deal on the car (once again Viny Financio and his fist full $100’s talked louder than the seller’s asking price) I was still right at Blue Book value even after we dropped in the new engine. Of course this was due to me having a very good friend that does this sort of stuff for a living so instead of laying out the estimated $6,800 I was in it less than $4k I’m glad we were able to cover all this with cash from our emergency fund because they don’t accept credit cards for homie-hookups! And thanks to another good friend I also managed to get by without needing to rent another PT Cruiser/death Trap.

So all-in-all this week cost us right around $4,500 not including our regular living expenses! Things did work out though, and it helped that October is double a Magic Month for us. In a way though I still feel sort of like I was accidentally kicked it in the groin by my own friends and my own possessions but we’re still rolling FinancialFreakShow debt free and we’ll keep fighting but I promise you Vinny Financio will keep fighting dirty!