Sunday: Weekly Wrap-It-Up #30
Posted by Sarahbear on January 30, 2011
This week has been crazy. We spent our date day hopping from car lot to car lot trying to find a great deal on a good vehicle. We narrowed our choices down to either a 2010 Chevy Malibu ($16k) or an Impala ($15k). We thought we liked dealing with the people from the lot that had the Malibu on it because they weren’t so pushy and Chad was able to haggle them down to taking $15k for it. Then they tried to pull one over on him because it was our first vehicle purchase. We’ve got vehicles, but we paid cash for them. This one was to be financed. We figured up our payment with interest going by what our bank offered us on a loan but wanted to see about financing on the lot. It was at least double what we expected. Why? Because they thought we would accept a 28% interest rate.
Um, no. We’re not desperate for a vehicle. The ones we have run. We were just going to get one before our trip so that we didn’t need to rent something and waste $400 on a rental. We decided we’d wait. We’ll pay down some of our debt and save up some money to combine with Chad’s bonus next year. I’d rather have a bit of wiggle room. We’ve been working on refinancing our mortgage and other ways to cut back our expenses. It has been significantly easier to manage our finances without my two siblings living here.
Did I mention I kicked them out about two weeks ago? Yeah. My sister was more of a nudging. She wanted to move in with her boyfriend (a guy she’d been seeing for a few months). I thought it was a bad idea considering how short a time they had been together, but she’d been making plans behind the scenes. There are a lot of things I tried to give her advice about, but she’s hard-headed and will have to learn the hard way. They’re now signed onto a 1 year lease at an old house that’s being converted into 3 apartments. I told her to take my mooch of a brother with her. He moved in right before Thanksgiving because he screwed around and got caught with pot. Again. You would think that being on probation for 2 years and going to AA meetings would have taught him a lesson. Nope. He wasn’t off probation for 6 months and he got busted again.
He sat around here for nearly 3 months wasting his time. Did not apply for jobs, did not attempt to get his probation requirements seen to and just laid around not doing much of anything besides listening to music. My sister had agreed to meet me halfway on taking care of him until he could get a job to do it himself, but I wound up footing the bill for everything. I told her that bothered me and she could take him with her. I was sick of supporting him since he wasn’t even trying.
We’re all on better terms now, but it was a pretty big blow up. The house is peaceful again. It’s just me, Chad and the kids. We’ve lived in this house for 2 and 1/2 years and most of that time we’ve had people living here with us. I’ve had two brothers, one sister and the neighbor’s daughter living here. It’s time for us to have our life back and our privacy. I’ve enjoyed spending the past two weeks getting my house back in order. Kristen’s room is set up how I originally wanted, without my sister’s giant furniture hiding the hard work I put into painting it. The toy room is cleaner, with a closet emptied of my brother’s crap. The laundry is caught up. Chad actually gave me a huge break today by getting the kids to tidy up the house and he vacuumed everything. Tomorrow we’re hoping to steam clean and grocery shop. Buying food for 2 adults and 4 kids is loads cheaper than buying it for 4 kids and 4 (sometimes 5 if my sister’s bf was over) adults. I swear I was spending $800 every 2 weeks to feed this crew. I spent $250 two weeks ago and we still have food left. I have to replace some of the perishable items, but the meat lasts forever now.
Since Chad cleaned with the kids, I relaxed to an all day marathon of Bridezillas. I was really hungry all day, for some reason, but I tried to make up for it with a Zumba workout. My calves are still tender. Maybe now that the house is cleaned up I can focus on completing some reviews. Valentine’s Day is coming up and I know people need some of my recommendations. I’ve got some great products I’ll be talking about this week.
Have a great week, everyone. =)
Heather Bear said,
The best thing I ever did was kick all of the siblings out! Never again will anyone of them live with us again! I can much better help in other way! This is our home and I will never sacrifice that again….Good luck and I hope you continue to feel refreshed with out them! And I hope kims relationship works out and he isnt a complete doush bag thatll knock her up and send her back to you
Sarahbear said,
It really is. I talked to my father-in-law about it, saying that they were helping out and it wasn’t costing that much. He said I had no idea how much it was costing for them to live here and that they would continue to let me carry them as long as I did it. It just kind of made me realize that it was beyond time for them to be on their own (He is 22 freaking years old, ffs!)Kim is only 19, but she’s got that teenager mentality of knowing it all and has to learn the hard way usually.
I hope things work out for them too, but I have my doubts. Relationships that start off sexual usually don’t have much basis for anything substantial once the sex slows down. She’s on the Nuva Ring and they’re supposedly still using condoms (she recently went on antibiotics and I warned her she’d get pregnant because it screws with birth control). I told her that if they broke up she could move in here, briefly, until she can get deposits and stuff for her own place. 3 months, max.
It’s so freeing to have our place back to ourselves. Having siblings moving in and out (Michael lived with us a few times and so did Kim, even before we moved in here) probably contributed to how screwed up our marriage got.
Add A Comment