January Change

I am off this morning to the city for an appointment with my specialist.  It's a 3 hour round trip, plus $60 in gas,  plus 20 min of parking and another ---- minutes of waiting, for a 10 min appointment.

I really appreciate having a specialist. Taking a day off of work and the cost and time it takes to do so is not a fun part.

Before I head out I will stop at the bank to deposit my coins for the month. This will go towards my Back to School goal of $500

I had:

• 1 roll of toonies - $50
• 1 roll of loonies - $25
• 1 roll of dimes - $5
• 2 rolls of quarters - $20

for a total of $100. 1/5th of my back to school goal.

Pay Day

As I sat getting ready for work today, I had an amazing thought...... I may be close to not having to budget for 'college' in my monthly spreadsheet.

Don't get me wrong...the LOC payoff will continue for a good while, but the $ I put aside to get converted painfully to US for college....that part may be close to and end. What an exciting thought.

For a few years now, my budget lines have remained mostly unchanged in category, and not much differently in amounts.

It will be interesting to think about how I will rearrange things. of course debt payoff will be top of the list, but it's fun to imagine what I could do with that money.

I love the freshness of payday. I move anything left in my chequing to my savings and start with my paycheque for the month in chequing.

A challenging 2018

I will be honest....2018 is a tough one.

Mom and dad 's health is still quite iffy. We just about lost dad a couple weeks ago so DS took him to ER and they tested him up the wazoo. Couldn't breathe. Exhausted after a couple steps. They didn't really come up with any 'this is why' reasons. They did give him pills for water on his lungs, but those have lowered his blood pressure too much and he's close to passing out.    Mom continues on. She is done her radiation. She's done a couple more biopsies and a bone scan. She has good days and less good days.

My niece had her baby prematurely. They knew ahead of time there were issues so she was in the city with a top team of doctors. Thank goodness because as she went into labour 4 weeks early, she started to hemorrhage. The doctor said they had less than two minutes to get her to the OR or they would have lost them both. Baby is not great. She had to have a surgery for blockages in her intestines. She hasn't been able to pass anything through her intestines and out. She is breathing on her own so that is good. Tests have been sent off to determine genetic issues. We kept this from mom as long as we could to get her through her radiation trips to the city without added stress.

Work has been..... I have no words.  just one. Tragedy.  I won't discuss it on here, but suffice to say there are a whole lot of people putting one foot in front of the other trying to keep moving while we deal with things that are hard to understand.

I come home from work, go take care of mom and dad and make them supper, then come home and just want to collapse. I am literally mentally exhausted.

needless to say I haven't been blogging and WW has taken a sh*t kicking.

First week back

was EXHAUSTING

It's always tough going back to work after the break. Tougher when you are trying to get kids back into a routine after so long without. Tougher yet when you have kids you know have dicey home lives and it takes a few days to get them to trust again.

Along with work mom had four trips into the city that included one radiation mask prep, three sessions of radiation, one liver biopsy and two meetings with oncologists.

Keeping those trips and their drivers organized as well as taking care of dad and making sure he eats and is taking care of his health issues...well that wears a girl out.

Along with that I did some baking, a run to the recycling depot, a trip to the bank and watched some world junior hockey.

I made my first snowflake originated bonus payment on the LOC this week. $100 of my $1500 goal of bonus payments. The snowflakes came from lotto scratchers $10, recycled bottles $15, and $75 hoarded from my first week of jar money. It felt good to get that started.

The weekend seems full of a basket full of to dos but honestly I spent most of today in bed. I  ran out earlier to get the things mom needed at the drug store. I took my vehicle in for an oil change, and then I took dad as he wanted to go grocery shopping. But the rest....in bed either dozing or watching Netflix. I feel.. 'off'. Maybe the flu coming. Maybe just exhaustion and my brain needed to pause.

Hopefully I am more productive tomorrow with the to dos and getting some marking done at school.

5 day week ahead along with 2 nights of extra curricular with school teams.  Mom has two more radiation trips to the city as well as some sort of endoscopy that they are going to try to do here.

Where the money stands

as of January 4th

Debt
Mortgage - $10 720.67
College LOC - $21 093.44

Total Debt - $31 814.11

Savings/Planned Spending
TFSA/EF - $8200 
RRSP -$15 351
Back to School 2018 - $100
XMAS 2018 - $200
TFSA 2018 - $400
RRSP 2018 - $1000
Plates 2018 - $0