A little too optimistic

So, my last post I was overly optimistic. It doesn't look like this virus is going away anytime soon, and as usual, life is constantly changing.

The last few months have been so confining, as in, we are not leaving the house, not seeing friends, all of the stuff everyone else is doing. However, it has also been a time of expanding change.

I was living with my daughter, son in law and the grandkids. It was wonderful. I was able to pay off one of my credit cards, build a little bit of an emergency fund and start on my way to FI.

Then the reality of three adults, working from home, with two elementary aged kids home all the time, made the house seem very small. We were talking about how to make it work if this was still the reality in the fall, and my daughter found out she was pregnant. Very quickly we realized that they needed the space I was occupying for their expanding family.

So I found an apartment and within two weeks was moved. This caused me to dip into my emergency fund a bit because I had downsized so much. Not only was I living in a smaller space, but I was planning to move across the country.

Now I had to replace all the things I had sold in preparation for the big move. It was a little stressful. For the first time in my life, I didn't want to spend any money!

I'm in the new apartment and it has come together very well. My expenses, of course, have gone up a lot, so I'm working on a new budget and trying to figure out how to still pay off my remaining debt, build a retirement fund, and rebuild my emergency savings.

It's stressful, but I feel like I have a better foundation since finding the Choose FI podcast. We'll see how the budget goes!

Birthdays and Quarantines

Everything is rapidly changing and coming to a stop. My grandkids are out of school and my daughter and son in law are out of work. My daughter has been laid off so she can collect unemployment. My son in law is at risk of the virus due to some health issues so his time off work is seen as voluntary so he does not qualify for unemployment.

Since he is in one of the highest risk categories I don't know how his time off can be seen as voluntary, but I don't make the rules.

On the bright side, I'm renting the basement from my daughter and son in law so they have some help with their bills. Another positive note, I'm quarantined with my grandbabies so I still get to see them every day.

Both of my grandkids birthdays are in April. In February and March we were talking about where they wanted to have their birthday parties and who they wanted to invite. Now, we are just trying to figure out how to make their day special when they can't leave the house.

My granddaughter's birthday is first, her parents got her a bike and I had bought her a scooter. I've been feeling bad that she won't get to celebrate with the rest of her family- she won't even get to see her mom on her birthday- so I wanted to help make it more special.

So what did I do? Spent money of course! As I've talked about in the past, my spending habits are awful. I will happily spend my money to make someone else happy. I went to Walmart and bought her several craft kids and then Easter stuff for both kids. Not very frugal of me. I spent $200 and still have one April birthday to go.

I did not need to do this. She would have been perfectly happy with her bike and scooter. My daughter always decorates the doorway so that when the kids open their door in the morning balloons rain down on them. The birthday kid gets to pick meals for the day and the house is decorated. My granddaughter would have been happy with that.

But I wasn't happy. I felt she needed more! My daughter just got married in November so this is my (step) granddaughter's first birthday with us, I really wanted it to be special.

The reality of this is, I didn't make her any happier, if anything, I caused additional stress. I bought three craft kits, kits that she wanted to do immediately and her parents told her she had to wait, which lead to tears and pouting. The poor kid is bored and her parents are overwhelmed. I couldn't help at all because I'm in the basement doing training over Zoom.

Hopefully, I've learned something from this. I will do the same for my grandson because you can't do something like that for one child and not the other. Going forward I'm going to set a budget and stick to it!

Famous last words..........