This Is Starting To Get Depressing

So the original plan for this year was to spend the $10K or so of "home improvement" money that we'd saved up for that purpose (as part of our regular budgeting). We wanted to replace the existing siding, since it was all but falling off the house in places, cover a few more wooden areas with vinyl (as we've been slowly doing over the past decade) and upgrade 4 or 5 windows that significantly predate our purchase of the house in 1998. We figured that we had just about enough money in the bank to cover all of that.

Then we opened the pool and discovered that the liner had pulled away from the coping over the winter. We also reached the end of our rope for dealing with the old style of winter cover for the pool, and decided to not only replace the liner but also get the new style of cover that's easier to take off in the spring. That was about $5K of expense that we hadn't counted on for 2010, but we couldn't really use the pool without dealing with the liner, and so it didn't make any sense to procrastinate any further where the pool was concerned. We couldn't abort our siding plans by that point as materials had already been ordered.

The siding, meanwhile, ended up being about $1K more than we'd expected, thanks to adding a few little upgrades here and there. With all of the expenses mounting, we re-directed a few thousand from other discretionary places so as to bulk up our "house" money for what was beginning to look like a big bill. We decided to put off replacing the windows so as not to go into the hole in terms of our available renovation money. We paid all of the pool costs earlier in the month, and then Vicki wrote the cheque for the siding on Friday. It looked like we might just about be able to pull this off.

Until we discovered yesterday (while we had guests over) that the central air wasn't working anymore. This unit was far from new when we bought the house, so we've known it was going to die at some point... but did it really have to give up the ghost right now? We figure it doesn't make much sense to try to fix a machine that old (probably 20+ years now) so on Monday Vicki will call around to see how quickly we can get a 21st century version installed. And in the meantime, it's going to be lots of warm nights like the one I barely got any sleep during last night. We figure this will be about another $4K to $5K, putting us close to $20K for the year... the year which we're not even halfway through yet!

I have to admit to being more than a little depressed about this right now. With neither of us working (other than my tutoring), it's beginning to feel like we may not have allocated enough money for us to really live on. And that, if true, would be a huge downer.

Or, to put it another way: if you've been thinking about buying a copy of No Kid of Ours is Failing at Math (How Parents Can Help) but haven't gotten around to it yet... now would be an excellent time!