unexpected cost Archives - Page 2 of 2

January 2016 Budget Update: It’s retooled!!

So we’re not sure what the best budget format to use is, and while we are sure that some of you out there like poring over the nitty gritty and seeing if our daycare exceeded our mortgage this month (it typically does), or what our groceries did this month (it’s usually our stumbling block), we know some of you couldn’t care less. We decided to retool it and give you more of an overall view and maybe just put out hard numbers quarterly. This is where you can say, “Please, don’t take away the numbers!!” or “Thank-you for taking away those stupid charts and monotonous budget drivel” or maybe you’re in the middle and just skim most of it anyway. Let us know and we’ll see what happens in February.

This month was ridiculously boring on a budget and spending front! Yeah, I count that as a win!!! Comparing January 2015 to January 2016, we overspent in Jan. 2016 by $55. Most of this was attributed to a new haircut for me, and a set of clippers for cutting our oldest’s hair at home. I went from a longer sort of hairstyle to a shorter more trim style, but I didn’t want to end up like Mrs. SSC and have to get it redone once or twice, so I went to a good stylist to start with. Now that it is cut well, I can resume my usual haircuts at the cheaper places. Cutting our oldest’s hair was actually easier than I expected, and it should get easier the more we do it. Plus, Mrs. SSC decided that now that her short hairstyle is dialed in, she can also go back to the cheaper places. She has figured out that it currently costs about $1/day for her new haircut, so she is shopping for a lot cheaper place to get it cut. Plus, she trusts me, so I can trim it in between cuts now that we have clippers. Mwahahaha…..

The trend has crested and is now falling! Sigh.... — The trend has crested and is now falling! Sigh….

As you can see in our overall chart of “% to FI Goal” – our numbers are dropping, and no longer climbing. Booo….. That was expected after our year review showed that our only growth in 2015 was essentially from our contributions. Whoa! Oh well, markets are out of my control, so whatever… As far as our “how to deal with the market” approach, I’d be in the BUY, BUY, BUY camp, and get stuff on the cheap, which we are. However, for the immediate short term, we’re stocking up our cash reserves more than investing in the market. We have a decent nest egg, but since savings accounts have such a low return, we don’t like keeping a lot in there. With our industry being where it is (in the toilet, and today I saw gas was $1.49/gallon) and the stock markets tanking as well, we decided we’d rather know that our $5k will still be $5k in 6 months if need be, and not $4.5k or less. Don’t worry, we have more than $5k saved, it’s just an example number. If it wasn’t for hedging our bets that we would need to tap into some of those investments in the next 6-12 months, we would still be throwing more money into the stock market and not building up our cash reserve above our normal emergency fund amount. Especially, if we just throw in the towels and decide to become ski/snowboard bums for a few years.

Time for a new segment we’re rolling out called, “Crazy stories from Lay-off land!” Yes, as people are getting axed left and right, the water cooler talk is getting more and more crazy. For instance, I heard of a couple that had both gotten laid off, and burned through all their savings in about 3 months. Now they’re really scared, because the industry hasn’t picked up, neither one has gotten a job again as they were banking on (literally), and they’re out of savings. The main reason this happened, they didn’t cut spending back immediately and just kept spending and living like they were still getting paychecks…

On a similar thread, a friend of mine at work is about to commit to a $300k mortgage, even though he thinks buying is a bad idea, and renting is better, he is still proceeding with buying a house. This is compounded by his wife interning for a company where if she gets an offer, it will be in a town and state that is not Houston, TX and they would move there rather than stay here. Mind-boggling!

Another friend of mine got caught in the middle of leaving his company to join a new one. He’d gotten approved for the job and it just needed the CEO’s approval (smaller company). He hung up the phone with his “new company”, went to tell his current boss he was done, and by the time he got back to his office he found out the “new company”, had cut the department he had gotten a position in. They sold the asset and were exiting that whole area. So, he was told there weren’t any positions available for him now, because that boss now had to find spots for his current employees that didn’t have an asset to work anymore. Sorry about the timing. Oooops…

Finally, my mentee/protégé was at a party this weekend and she was the only one of her friends that wasn’t laid off yet. At the whole party… It was about 20 other geologists and engineers. She said it was a bit awkward, especially when they started asking, “Well, why haven’t you been laid off yet?” Yipes, I think I’d need a few cocktails to stay at that party!

On a lighter note, a group of us have decided that if we all get laid off, we will follow one of our colleagues back to her parent’s farms, start a co-op, and we will just farm. She has 300-400 acres and farm equipment that we can use that is just sitting idle. The only draw back – none of us know anything about farming, especially, “what do you farm in Michigan in the middle of winter?” Answer – “I don’t know, use a greenhouse?” (shrugs shoulders) Oh, and it’s in northern central Michigan, so, there’s that down side as well. Laurie at Fruclassity was just mentioning the unseasonably warm 40 degree weekend in neighboring Minnesota, so maybe not too high on the list of back-up plans. Brrr…. It would be an exciting one I bet!

That was our January, fairly mundane, thank goodness. Hope your January was pleasantly uneventful too! Let us know if you want more number details, even less number details, or if you’re still reading. For those still reading – congrats, you made it!

A new FI plan emerges…

We are going to try to not make this a long post – please forgive us if it is. But, we are just so excited with our new Fully Funded Lifestyle Change (FFLC) plan, we can’t keep it from the world anymore!

You may have noticed we’ve been somewhat silent the last month or so… just a budget update and what not. Well, we’ve been busy doing some thinking about some circumstances in our lives and gotten a little distracted:

As you all know the markets aren’t great… no biggie, it happens and we don’t need that money for a while, but that does change our hope from hitting our FI number from mid 2017 to likely sometime in 2018 or later.
With the declining price of oil, it is likely one or both of us may get laid off this year. If it’s Mrs. SSC that is actually a good thing, since she would love to spend more time with the kids. If it is me – well, I like my job, and I am not 100% sure I can do the stay-at-home thing.
When we tallied our 2015 totals we realized that we spend a lot of money maintaining our house – and we began to question the rent vs. buy. This was mainly due to realizing we spent the equivalent of ~$1.3k per month on top of our mortgage for maintenance, and this house is only ~10 years old. That’s a lot of coin and it got us thinking. A lot. And this, is where it gets interesting…

#1 and #2 made us realize that we may have to wait to FI longer than we want, or that we may be forced into a move and a job hunt at any time. We don’t necessarily want to wait possibly years for a market rebound and personally, we need a finish line that isn’t floating. So, we have decided to pick a new date. July 31, 2018, it’s a Friday. There it is, our new FFLC date. Well, unless we get laid off. But, we think that date will get us close enough to our FI number even if one of us gets laid off this year. So, July 31, 2018. We will both still be 40 – just barely for me. We will have spent all of our 30’s working big corporate jobs and the beginning of a new decade for us seems like a great time to make a huge change.

Because of #2 we are also changing our investing strategy for the near term. We have 75% of our FI goal invested, which is awesome. But, with the possibility of impending layoffs, and having two children we need to support, we are going to spend this year being more conservative and increasing our cash reserves in case our income is cut off, we will at least have some easier money to access without having to sell investments at a loss. This could lead to our backup plan referred to as our MFLC (Mostly Funded Lifestyle Change). The main goal being a Lifestyle Change, come hell or high water.

OK, because of #3 now let’s address “rent vs. buy”, because this is where our big “A-ha!” moment came. I’ll try to explain it briefly, but to get a better understanding, feel free to click through to these links. Go Curry Cracker and MMM have written good posts about this choice, and they’ve made great cases for renting and not buying. However, the ones that really resonated with me are these posts by Can I Retire Yet, along with a post about house maintenance by Money Smarts.

The numbers seem to work out... — The numbers seem to work out…

Using some of Money Smart’s numbers, along with some of our own, Mrs. SSC made a spreadsheet – which is essentially how we make every decision. What we realized is that owning a house isn’t that financially awesome, no matter if it is “the American Dream”. You can see from our chart that we estimate that the cost of maintaining a house is close to $6000 a year- probably more when you include the yard and random stuff like re-staining a deck or fixing a shower door or replacing a ceiling fan. Looking at a quick estimate of the difference of the cumulative cost of buying a house vs. renting is almost $200,000 for our time frame!!! Whoa! That is nothing to sneeze at, that’s a lot of dough!

Lot of upkeep here... — Lot of upkeep here…

Maybe someday when we want to settle somewhere it would be nice to own a house for the stability, and it wouldn’t be in limbo that we may want to move in ~5 -10 years and take a big loss. We also dream of a non-traditional rental house with acreage that Mr. SSC could build a woodshop on, or build a tiny house for guests/renters. Realizing that we don’t have to immediately buy a house when we FI kind of opened our eyes to the possibility that we can go live in a “dream location” for a few years while the kids are still in elementary school, before moving somewhere that’s maybe more practical (for us Virginia or North Carolina) to settle while the kids are in middle and high school.

Mrs. SSC has always wanted to live out West in the mountains with big snows and big sky, surrounded by pine trees without a Walmart in sight. I got to live in Denver for 9 years before the Gulf Coast move, and while it isn’t “in the mountains” I did work for a company that allowed me to spend most workdays in the mountains. It was awesome, because I caught myself a lot of times, looking around thinking, “Ah, this is one hell of an office view.” On weekends I would take advantage of hiking (I climbed 23 – 14’ers), snowboarding, fly-fishing, snowshoeing, backpacking, it goes on and on. However, Mrs. SSC hasn’t had that experience or lived in a place close to the Rockies to get those same types of experiences. Recently she has been even getting kind of down on the NC/VA idea just because she felt like she would be settling and tampering her mountain dreams.

With the realization of the relative lower cost of renting and with the kids still being young’ish, we decided – why not go live in a mountain town? Maybe near the base of some ski slopes where we can drop the kids off at school and do a few runs before lunch. Teach the kids to ski or snowboard all winter long, and camp and hike all summer long! By the time we get to our FFLC or even MFLC we will have put in 10 years on the Gulf Coast and we feel we deserve to be ski bums (and snowboard) for a few years!

Mr. SSC never learned to ski... :( — Mr. SSC never learned to ski… 🙁

Thinking that our new date is only 30 months away – we realized we need to start traveling ASAP so that we can find our dream town! Right now we have 3 contenders on our list – Couer d’Alene, ID; Whitefish, MT; and Durango, CO. I’ve gotten to spend some time in Durango, so it’s on my “Oh yeah, that’s a good front runner” list, but I’m intrigued with trying somewhere new too. We have more on our list, but these are the top ones we want to try to get to this year.

Do you all have any suggestions? Our fairly short wish list is – good elementary schools, close to skiing, hiking and fishing, and house rentals (3 bed w/garage) for around/under $2000/month. Give us your ideas so we can start to book some plane tickets!!!

By Mr SSC
Posted on January 21, 2016January 21, 2016
45 Comments on A new FI plan emerges…

Layoffs – 3 weeks and counting…

Storm on the horizon... — Storm on the horizon…

Well, we’re drawing closer to the date, and the outlook is getting grim. We will find out what the verdict is by Oct 5^th, but morale has dropped significantly around Mrs. SSC’s office, and our house. Initially, the spin from management had been that there would be available jobs to apply for in Business Units, and therefore some hope was instilled in the troops. When job postings came out last week, and everyone began combing them for positions that they could apply for, it became very evident that the amount of actual jobs posted, versus the amount everyone was led to believe would be available was dramatically different. There were about 8 Houston jobs available, and 12 or so overseas jobs, if you want to move to the armpit of “enter country name here”. For those jobs, the compound life, horrid commute (an hour plus each way, but at least you’d have a driver) and longer work schedule make Houston seem like Shangri La! Also, most of those positions are already spoken for and aren’t an option for our family for many reasons.

On the positive side – yes there are lots of positives, we are in a better position than most of our friends who are in the same situation, and may or may not have a spouse with a second income. We’re also not leveraged heavily in our house, cars, credit cards, or lifestyle, so we can continue on and figure out what the heck to do from here, fairly unscathed. I can switch my work schedule to a 6:30 am – 4 pm sort of schedule and get home in time to have dinner with the kids. Plus, I get to see them for an extra hour each day. That also means I will probably have an easier commute in the morning, and well, my afternoon commute will probably stay the same, as a LOT of people leave the office around 3:30pm and later in our fair metropolis. I’ve actually found that my commute is lighter and quicker leaving at 5:30 pm on the rare days that has happened.

The biggest toll here is more emotional than anything. Mrs. SSC has been having a hard time getting okay with the fact she will most likely be let go. She understands it’s not her or her performance as a worker, it’s just a wrong place, wrong time scenario. She’s the newest and least senior person on her team, and when compared to her peer groups in the same job, they have more seniority in that position. Coming to accept that has been trying. Also, losing the sense of worth that is innately tied into working. She has been struggling with the fact she will feel like she’s not contributing if she gets laid off. We talk about these things and I tell her that I’m perfectly fine with her getting laid off. I understand the emotional toll, but she’ll be contributing in way more ways than a paycheck. Plus, it’s not as if this job is really making her feel happy, or giving her any satisfaction right now anyway. It’s like a catch 22 – losing the paycheck will hurt a little, but keeping the paycheck for a job that’s not very satisfying is almost like a lose too, especially when we discuss the positives for our family life that will change.

How will this all relate to our Fully Funded Lifestyle Change date? Well, we’re not too sure at the moment. We had recently changed it dramatically, even if it meant it was a Mostly Funded Lifestyle Change, but there’s no point in putting all that out there until after Oct.’s layoff deadline. So stay tuned for that, haha! We did decide that this life event has us re-evaluating what is important to us and what our priorities are. We’ve realized that we’re not driven by material items, but rather how we can spend more quality time with the kids and ourselves as a family. Not that we haven’t realized that before, but it sure has driven that point home. The sooner we can make our Lifestyle change, the better.

Until then, everyone have a Happy Monday and a good week ahead!

Kaboom, went the budget!! June 2015 Update

Man, was this a rough month for the budget in the SSC household. As I’d teased last month, we were expecting a few overages due to the A/C repairs, new tires, new greyhound adoption and the like, but I wasn’t expecting the hits to keep rolling. Fortunately, there haven’t been any breakdowns, repairs, or otherwise costly expenses that have cropped up yet this month, and we’re almost a third of the way through it. A quick glance at the bar chart shows June (appropriately orange) topping the charts in almost every category except the stable ones like mortgage, car note, and home utilities. How did this all happen and where did the money go you wonder? Since we don’t have the usual “numbers” chart for this month (it will return in the July update and you can peruse it then) I’ll just tell you.

Phone, tv, internet got hit with a $65/month increase due to 2 years’ worth of discounts finally running out. I called ATT, asking about any other ways to reduce our bill, and besides getting a 3 month $40 discount applied to our account, it was just lip service. I shopped around and 2 days later have our service switched and added bonus, NFL Sunday package is included for free this year! I count that as a win, since I’ll probably have to pony up for that one from my discretionary funds if we continue it in the future. Increased daycare costs – no clue. I’m guessing it’s a combo of short month in May, little longer month in June, and the difference was made up in June. Groceries were okay, trending a little higher than usual, but we’ve been on a “grocery spend watch” just to see if we can keep it steady.

Home repairs… Oh, home repairs…. Besides the A/C drip line getting clogged up (~$450), we also got 2 solar screens made for the bathroom windows (~$140) and it is now cool as can be in there, and not sauna like every day. We also had our wall mount A/C controller go out, so there was some added cost there. When we looked at replacing it with the same unit, we realized we could try the Nest for a little less (~$250). So far it’s been working great! The garage door springs also broke in this month, and that was another $440 to get them replaced. The car needed new tires, so I went a middle of the road option for that, but it was still ~$650 we didn’t want to spend.

The kids had their birthdays this past week, and we had a party. No, no, not some thousand dollar extravaganza with entertainers, balloon animals, and bounce houses. Oh wait, there was a bounce house, but upside, it was paid for over a year ago, and overall, not that pricey. Essentially we just had friends over and did snacks, drinks, and appetizer sort of food, beyond the cake and ice cream.

I designed and decorated James’ cake, and Mrs. SSC did Marie’s.

James wanted a construction cake, so I built this one.

With the food and extra drinks, juice boxes and gifts (For our kids not those give away bags for the party, I just don’t get those) it was still ~$200 or so for entertaining.

The bigger kicker of the month was our shower in the master bathroom. The metal for the hinge on the door fatigued and split. When this happened the pin that rests on this tubular metal hinge now sat about ½” lower and started hanging up on the lower part of the door. Imagine any door you use dropping a half inch and you get the idea. After hours of scouring the internet and talking to 4 different shower companies, we found out that they don’t make replacement parts for the style of enclosure we had. Seriously, what a racket! None, no parts. They have to be connected to the mob somehow, but no, they just expect you to replace the WHOLE thing if something like a tubular hinge fatigues and splits. So, after getting 3 quotes all within $50 of each other, we got our shower replaced to the tune of $1350….. Ridiculous! Now you understand where the comment about fixing all the “custom everything” on the Living Big Sky show came from, as it was playing the night after we’d ordered our standard shower door replacement. Ugh…

Finally, we got the newest member of the family our new greyhound, Coffee!! Kidding, we went with Lola instead of her racing name “Rusteze”. She’s been great, but the adoption fee of $250 and the $200 vet checkup/heartworm and tick/flea medicine and some other costs added up to just over $500.

So to recap, we’re about $3600 over budget this month. Fingers crossed that we don’t have the same string of spending in the next few months, but I see it trending back downward again.

How was your month?

Did you get any crazy unexpected bills,repairs, or new pets that threw your budget for a loop?

By Mr SSC
Posted on July 9, 2015
20 Comments on Kaboom, went the budget!! June 2015 Update

Retiring “Big Sky”?

If you don’t know, Mrs. SSC and I like to watch home renovation shows, Renovation Realities, Property Brothers, and even home buying/selling type of shows like Love it or List It, House Hunters, and recently, Tiny House Hunters and Tiny House Nation. You’re probably thinking, “Thanks for sharing your TV preferences, but what does this all have to do with ER or finance or anything?” Well, recently Mrs. SSC discovered a new show called Living Big Sky, essentially a house hunters for Montana. It has amazing views everywhere you go, and people keep using phrases like, “we loved it so much during vacation, we decided to move here,” and “Every day we wake up we feel like we’re on vacation. Just look at these views.” Which led Mrs. SSC to ask me, “Are we setting the bar too low in the Appalachians? Will we feel like that when we retire? What if we got big views like that too?”

It's No Montana, but it's still beautiful! — It’s No Montana, but it’s still beautiful!

Yes, there are some impressive views, but we’re basically talking about moving from the Gulf Coast to Southern Canada. Previously, we’d investigated places in Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, and the like, but ultimately found what we “think” we’re looking for in Virginia, North Carolina, Eastern Tennessee.

I say, “think” because, except for vacationing around those areas, hiking through those areas, and other short term type of trips, we’ve not gotten out there to visit for a week with the express purpose of house hunting, community snooping, and general poking around to get a feel of the town and surrounding area. The little things like, where are the closest grocery stores, is this area “too far” from town? We’re hoping to get there and do a recon trip in the fall, but that is highly dependent on if Mrs. SSC’s mom can cover the little ones for a few days. I’m not spending 4-7 hours in a car driving around with toddlers in the back. That sounds horrid for everyone involved.

Virginia is nice and has great properties with excellent views. It’s like we discussed, yes, I love the west and Rockies, and those sorts of views, but the Appalachians feel comfortable, and homey, and I find them beautiful. The mountain laurel, rhododendrons, streams, and green-ness of the landscape just brings me back to my growing up days of hiking and backpacking in Eastern Kentucky with my Grandad, and at Mammoth Cave National Park backcountry. I love the hollows and ravines, and rolling hills, broken up by some mountains, and most of all, Fall! I miss seeing leaves change colors, the smell in the air, the crisp bite of winter on the back of a warm fall breeze, reminding you that winter is coming. Almost as nice is Spring. Real Spring, where you feel warm air mixed in with the biting cool breeze, and see trees bud, bright blossoms emerge, and watch the brown landscape become green, lush and vibrant again. After 8 years on the Gulf Coast, I guess I really miss seeing seasons change, and realize that’s something I definitely want.

We are hoping we will have a view like this from our porch!

In the meantime, we started looking out west again. Except for some real fixer uppers that are already at the top of our budget (~$300k – with reno included) we would have to work another year for some out west living. With the experiences of fixing things in the last 2 homes we’ve lived in, plus the horror shows that unfold on Renovation Realities, and Love It or List It, I realize we could spend more than anticipated on a fixer upper. If we’re already at the top of our budget, it gets tight finding something we can afford, with land, etc… Nothing that warrants a whole extra year of working.

If I had a million dollars, I'd still probably move here. — If I had a million dollars, I’d still probably move here.

It reminded me of one of the couples on the Living Big Sky show. They bought a house at the top of their $600k budget, saying “We’ll find a way to make it work, because this is our dream house.” It was custom everything, and they both said, “We just love the uniqueness of everything being custom.” Before I even thought about it I blurted out, “Oh you’ll love it until it breaks, and you’re paying custom prices to fix it.” Side note – our shower door broke Sunday, and after 3 estimates, consultation with 4 companies, and about 5 hours online we found out, there is no repair – only replace…

Ultimately, we think we’ll end up on the East Coast though. The land is cheap, houses are affordable, and we love the views. We may end up somewhere else, but unless we find something amazing at a great price in 3 more years, we’re most likely East Coast bound!

What are your “Big Sky” ER plans?

Are you planning on moving or staying where you are when you pull the trigger?

June home repairs are killing me!

So far, June has been the month of things breaking around the house. I alluded to one repair that cropped up in our May 2015 update, and I was expecting to have to get new tires soon as well, but man, it seems like every time I turn around, something else has broken. What all has gone on? Well, let me tell you.

It started a few weeks ago when we noticed one of our pipes coming out of the house was dripping water. Mrs. SSC googled it, and found out that, “Yipe! That is our AC overflow drain and it shouldn’t ever be dripping water!” We immediately googled DIY AC drain cleaning. Looked pretty simple, just find the original drain, hook up a vacuum and it “should” suck out all the built up algae and what not. Bada-Bing, Bada-boom! Clean drain! I get in the attic, as this is where our main units are located, and trace the pipe across the attic to where it drops into the wall and into the guest bathroom where it is tied into the P trap under the sink. I start monkeying with the joints, and hooray, they have glued every single joint… At this point, I don’t want to start cutting PVC, and get myself into a plumbing rabbit hole nightmare, so we call around and find out it’s only about $69 for drain cleaning. I find this price point definitely worth it, so I set up an appointment.

The guy gets there and cuts apart the joints, and snakes the line, and nothing. He gets in the attic, cuts apart the line somewhere else, snakes it, vacuums, and nothing. He keeps at it for 4 hrs. and kept re-iterating that there was no guarantee on this drain cleanout. After about 5 hrs., he got a bunch of gunk out of the line and it was all sealed up. However, because this wasn’t a typical drain cleaning, it was in the $450 range, and not $70, but I had signed off on this before he started, and inwardly I was a little glad it took 5 hrs., because I felt a little more justified. I also watched everything and asked lots of questions, and realized that with 5+ hrs. of my own time, I could’ve saved $450. Lesson learned for next time.

Three days later, we notice the drip is back. Yep, remember the non-guarantee about cleaning? This time I call no one, and head to Lowe’s for some PVC connectors, piping, and then start cutting up the pipe. I essentially cut the pipe near the unit, and disconnected it at the last place the plumber cut it. This was about a 10’ section of pipe, and after some finagling, I got it outside. There I turned the jet nozzle of our hose into it and even that wasn’t getting the blockage out. I poked it with a sink snake I had sprayed some more, and about a cupful of algae, scale, and God knows what finally came out. Then I go upstairs and 15 minutes later, clean drain. Yeah me! I was sorry that I didn’t try that sooner, but I’ve always had poor luck when I work on plumbing, so I didn’t feel confident enough to try it on my own the first time. Not anymore!

The second major cost was a broken garage door spring. I went to open the garage door, and heard a loud snap and banging sound. I went to investigate and I saw that the one of the mounts had ripped out of the wall. This was the mount that holds up our garage door overhead bar that the belt travels on, and keeps it attached to the wall.

The people who had installed it had just barely hit the stud with their bolts, and it had ripped out of the top of the stud, and out of the drywall, and was laying on the top of the garage door. I sighed, cursed a little, but 15 minutes later I had it repaired and sunk into a solid stud. Yeah me!

Yep, this is where it ripped out of the top of the stud.

When I hit the door button, it would only travel about 4 inches and stop. I investigated closer and saw the spring was snapped in half. Aye yi yi! I disengaged the motor and tried to manually lift the door so I could at least get the car out, and no. I could get it up about 2 feet before the other spring forced it back down. A couple of calls around and I got some rough quotes and found a place that could get out there that afternoon. This was about 2 pm, because I was home taking care of a sick little one. That repair for both springs (why wait for this to happen again) was right at $440 too.

I think home repair folks just look at some papers, shuffle them, and say, “Meh, that’ll be about $450.” And then shrug their shoulders at you with their hand out waiting for payment. It’s only June 10^th, so I can’t wait to see what the rest of the month brings.

How about you? Have you run into any unexpected home repairs recently?

Did you have the time to DIY them, or did you call someone?

Anyone else feel like it’s at least $100 for someone to show up to your house to say “This will cost more than $100.”

By Mr SSC
Posted on June 10, 2015
14 Comments on June home repairs are killing me!

Ice Storm: Travel not advised!

Hearing about the travel blights caused by winter storm Pandora, reminded me of my own recent weather related travel woes. So for those of you stuck in the airport, here’s something to read while you’re standing in endless lines… A few weeks ago, I got to go visit my brother and his family outside of Nashville, TN and I got caught in winter ice storm, Octavia, that shut down a lot of flights. It turned into an interesting time to say the least.

Not canceled yet.... so optimistic! — Not canceled yet…. so optimistic!

I got up that fateful morning and everything was iced over, but it still looked doable. I started checking my flight status online and nothing cancelled yet. We were about halfway to the airport when Southwest cancelled ALL their flights for the day, but I was on United. Ever optimistic we plowed on, literally, because there was about 8-10” of snow and there were no plows anywhere. I got to the airport around 9 am, just as they cancelled my flight. Not that I wasn’t expecting this, but my philosophy is, I’m not going to get home by hanging out at my brother’s house. It’s time to put on a smile, deal with lines, and try my darndest to get home as soon as possible.

I got to my gate and found the shortest line to an agent and started waiting. She was flustered already so I put on my best smile, asked her how she was doing, joked some about cranky people, and did my best to be “Mr. Nice guy you want to get to his destination.” I’d already rebooked my flight for later that day, but I wanted to get my name on standby, if possible, for an earlier flight. She checked and amazingly the 8:40 am flight hadn’t left yet, and I could get standby for that flight. This was excellent, I thought! I then realized I had eaten very little prior to leaving, due to wanting to get to the airport and on standby ASAP. Silly me. I left a refrigerator full of “free” food to come to the airport for a long day. Lesson learned. So I sought out a place to get a bite and a beer. I ate and relaxed a bit before heading back to the fray to wait, wait, and wait some more… I noticed activity near our gate, and low and behold, there were planes coming to our gate, and better yet, Sunshine! A break in the weather, and a few planes were getting de-iced, and there was even one lucky plane heading out to the runway to escape! They made calls for our plane to board, and then called my name and I had a real seat! Haha!! I got on the plane at ~2pm and everyone getting on had a grin like the cat that ate the canary! We were escaping! We just needed to get de-iced and we were on our way. Woo hoo!!

40 minutes later, we were still sitting with nothing happening when the captain made an announcement, “Um folks, there’s been a problem with the thermometer on the de-icing equipment and they’re not sure how hot that fluid is coming out. Since that’s pretty critical to us staying in the air, they’re going to switch out trucks and then de-ice us. It should only take 20-30 minutes before they start de-icing us, then we’re on our way.”

40 more minutes later, we were still sitting at the de-icing spot, and they finally started de-icing our plane. It was about 30 minutes after that when we heard another announcement, “Uh, folks, this is your captain speaking. Uhhhh, as you can see they’re de-icing us, but they still have to apply the final solution and we can be on our way. Unless they take longer than another 30 minutes, then we’ll have to go back to the gate and top off our fuel so we can make it to Houston. In the meantime, our weather window has closed, so Uhhhhh…. Uhhh…. We’re waiting on word from Headquarters for a weather update and then we’ll be on our way….?” He literally finished with an uptick in his voice at the end like he was asking a question.

Free at last - but still in Nashville... — Free at last – but still in Nashville…

The de-icing finished up, and we got tugged back to the gate to top off fuel since we missed our weather window anyway. Then we hear an announcement, “Folks, this is your captain again. Ummm, we’re going to have the flight attendants bring some refreshments around since we’ve been out here a while. We just need to have this snow dissipate and we’ll be (you guessed it) on our way….” It has been ~3 hrs and then we got pushed away from the gate again and taxied out to get the final de-icing solution sprayed on. That happened, and we went and got in line out by the runway. 40 minutes later, our captain cancelled our flight officially, and we made our way close to the gate to debark onto the tarmac.

I’d gotten to reschedule my flight while all this was happening but I had no options for staying the night somewhere. I suggested the airport was doable, but Mrs. SSC found me a room for the night instead. I got off the plane, already booked for Wed. at 6 pm, so I headed to my hotel.

At check in I decided to extend it one day more since I wouldn’t fly out until Wednesday. Bad move there. I kept calling United and after a few hours, a single seat opened up for Tuesday afternoon at 3pm. I went downstairs to cancel my Tuesday night room and this is where it gets fun… I was told they could cancel but there would be a fee due to it being less than 24 hrs… Seriously?! With the ice storm and travel disruptions, they couldn’t waive the fee? It was almost as much as the room, too. The topper though, I was told to “take it up with corporate, but we can’t do anything here.” Gah!!!

I tried to stay positive and just went to bed. The next day, I tried again at the front desk, but to no avail. An even crankier lady was working and she got defensive from the get go. It actual put a smile on my face her tenacity was so impressive. Side note – I don’t think that helped my case much. Same song and dance, “Take it up with corporate.” Then I asked about checking out. In a cranky Southern voice “Well, you can check out if you want, but you’re getting charged for the room!” Mr. SSC: “Yes ma’am, we’ve established that, but can’t I get something saying I checked out or tried to check out to show corporate?” Front desk: “Well, you can, but if your other flight gets cancelled again and you come back here, you’ll have to get another room, because you let this one go because you checked out! You already paid for the room! Why would you want to check out?!” Mr. SSC: (inward monologue – “So I don’t have to deal with this for one more day?” lol) “That’s a great point. You have a nice day, stay warm!”

I got to the airport, and found the shortest line and again I got on standby – just in case. All flights were “full” until Wednesday night, but I wanted to remain optimistic, because there’s nothing else to do… After a couple of “Your flight has been delayed.” I heard “Your flight is cancelled –kidding, we’re just delaying it some more.” I literally heard a gate agent say that. She got the look of death from the passengers and her co-workers after making that joke. She must’ve been new is all I can think because you just don’t mess with people like that.

Ultimately, I was able to fly home Tue night and I got in around 9 pm. Even better, I did take it up with corporate, and I just got an email stating that they would waive my fee for the 17^th, and apologies around, someone must not have gotten the notice that the cancellation fee and policy was waived during the storm. Win!

Have you ever run into some situation like that? Did you keep it together or did you lose your top? Better yet, have you run into a situation where you also “lost your money”?
Let me know, so I don’t feel like the only one that’s dealt with this sort of thing.

By Mr SSC
Posted on March 2, 2015March 2, 2015
10 Comments on Ice Storm: Travel not advised!