I just opened today’s mail, and I got another letter from the IRS telling me they applied my stimulus check to my IRS debt. That sucks. I guess you only get to stimulate the economy if you don’t owe the IRS.
Now I’ve got to come up with an extra $774 to finish paying my dentist and my attorney. I’ll have to focus on the dentist first and the attorney second. My permanent crown was installed last week and I still owe $325 on the work.
I still owe my attorney $449 before I can file for bankruptcy.
Can you go broke going broke? If you can even figure out what I mean by that…
Good news? Why yes, there is some. I’m earning a fair amount of money from home working with others on their websites for an hourly rate or flat fee. With the on-going hourly rate jobs, I bill weekly. With the flat fee jobs, I bill half up front and half when finished. I’m already making as much monthly as I was when pizza delivery tanked on me. I don’t have to drive around to do it either, so that good.
Tutoring is starting out slowly, but I have two steady students and expect more in the coming couple of weeks.
I printed two fliers to put around at friend’s and colleague’s offices, one for tutoring and the other for website work. I need to get my backside over to Kinko’s, make copies and distribute them during the rest of this week.
A broadcast email will also be going out to my friends’ email list letting them know I’m available so they can help hook me up. I have a fantastic network of friends that I don’t ask to help me often enough. I’m not an island unto myself and I have to remind myself of that sometimes.
Technorati Tags: debt, income sources, IRS, stimulus check
August 25th, 2008 Posted by joubess | Bankruptcy, Debt Reduction, Earnings Updates, Unexpected Costs | 3 comments
Whenever anyone embarks on anything new, especially something that is a rather big change, there always seems to be a test of their commitment to the new direction they have chosen.
I am continuing working on my internet business, searching for a new career (possibly in tutoring full-time) and I’m filing a Chapter 7 bankruptcy. I’m also delivering pizzas and tutoring as many hours as I can get this summer, and there is plenty of tutoring this year where there was none last year. The internet business is not taking more time, but I’m working very hard to use the few hours each day I can devote to it in the most efficient, profit-driven manner possible. It’s taken a much stricter schedule with a daily set of marching orders that will be accomplished, period. There is no “or else”. It will be done on time and I will stay on task.
But into everyone’s life (and grand plans) some rain must fall and some tests of faith and will must be endured.
My tests came today. They are all big, and the smallest of the three will likely involve some physical pain. Here is what happened:
- A large piece of one of my molars broke off while I was eating lunch; crown $1,000
- I owe the State of Louisiana (Louisiana Department of Revenue) $2,737 in taxes for 2007
- I owe the IRS $3,598 in taxes for 2007
Some good news
I qualify for a stimulus check, so I’ll be able to turn it around and pay it right back to the IRS, I may use it to pay the rest of my attorney’s fees for the bankruptcy, or I may have to use it to pay for a portion of the cost of my crown. I can work out a payment plan with the IRS and LDR if need be.
I was lucky to get in to see the dentist this afternoon, and they were able to put a temporary plug of cement in the hole in my tooth until next week. They didn’t charge me anything for today’s visit or for the temporary plug. I have an appointment at 11 a.m. next Wednesday to start the crown process.
Dental Work
The tooth is mostly amalgam from being filled many times during my life, and about 1/4 of the tooth broke off. There is so little tooth left that it can no longer be filled. It has to be crowned. We all hope that the temporary filling will last the whole week until they can grind the tooth down and put a temporary crown on it. I’m not looking forward to 2-3 hours of grinding in my mouth, but once the temporary crown is in place, my mouth will feel more normal. Right now I can’t chew on the right side and I’m supposed to eat only soft foods.
The other part of the bad news is I don’t have $1,000 I can put my hands on immediately. I had to use a little over a third of my savings to pay all the doctor bills we had during June. I schedule all the check-ups, dental appointments, and anything else I can in the summer so appointments won’t interfere with tutoring hours, and thus, income. The good news is the dentist will accept payments in 3-4 installments. There are 2-3 visits involved with a crown (depending on whether the tooth abscesses), and I can pay some at each one, and pay one in between. They do want payment in full by the day they place the permanent crown.
Taxes
I talked with my CPA at length about my options for paying the taxes since I don’t have $6,335 sitting around. He advised me to send in the returns without payment and wait for the letters from the IRS and LDR that will come in 4-6 weeks with my payment options. Those letters will also contain all the necessary contact information I will need to negotiate with both agencies.
My CPA advised putting the most energy into getting the IRS paid first, then work on paying the LDR. LDR is here in town, and I can go over to their office, sit down with them and talk to them in person. The IRS isn’t so easy to get with face-to-face.
The IRS will allow up to three years to pay off what I owe them. The other thing I must do is make sure I pay enough in taxes this year so I won’t owe any more for 2008 or going forward. I thought I had it all worked out, but I made too much money tutoring in 2007, and it offset all the losses from my failed business.
I work for a tutoring company, but I’m a 1099 contractor and I have to pay my own taxes. In 2006, I overpaid significantly because of all the losses and deductions from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Some of the bigger exemptions went away in 2007 and I made more than I planned. I paid more taxes in 2007, but it still wasn’t as much as I owed.
How I’m going to come up with the money
- Federal stimulus check
- Have another garage sale
- Sell the hundreds of zipper-pulls I made over the last year while watching TV or listening to audio books or podcasts.
- I just picked up another student this summer for at least 2 hours a week, bringing me to 13 hours per week. I asked for more students.
- I’ll get a tutoring pay raise in August.
- I was just notified someone bought some advertising on this blog through Text Link Ads.
- I’ve joined a new PPC program, ShopZilla, I earn per click and I earn a commission if anyone buys anything through one of my links. I get to pick the products that go on my sites and I got a $25 sign-on bonus.
- Keep up with the daily marketing of my blogs and keep my traffic counts increasing.
- Add another day a week to pizza delivery
- Add product/merchandise pages to more of my blogs to increase passive income. Some of my side-bar affiliate links get extremely few clicks and no sales, so removing them won’t hurt revenue and it may even help. I started getting more sales on a site just by adding a page where all my products were located. I guess people can go there and find what they want quickly and buy it instead of having to hunt a link down. If they have to hunt, they won’t, and they won’t buy from me.
- Find better-paying affiliate programs than Amazon.com. Clickbank and eBay are much better.
- Cut the budget again somewhere. I don’t know where, but I’ve got to try. We are taking more drastic energy-saving measures, and I hope those will lower the gas/electric bill at least a little. The measures we’ve taken so far kept our bill from going up 10% when rates went up 10% this spring. Our bill stayed the same. I can probably cut a little more out of the food budget by cutting back on the amount of meat I add to soups, sauces and beans. I can cut the amounts of meat from a pound to a half-pound and I doubt we’ll notice.
Technorati Tags: Cost Reductions, dental emergency, federal, state, taxes due, test of will, unexpected expense
July 2nd, 2008 Posted by joubess | Unexpected Costs | 9 comments
UPDATE: The bee man came this morning and took care of the bees. Two large hives cost $350, but the bees are gone! Now we don’t have to run for the mail anymore!
We have an unexpected cost this month, at least $200. There is either one really big bee hive or two somewhat big bee hives under the siding of the two-floor portion of the house. The bee man said they are probably also in the space between the two floors.
The bee man is coming at 7:30 in the morning. He thinks he’ll have to destroy them because they are really hard to get out of spaces like that. He may be able to capture some and place them in the wild, but likely most will have to be destroyed. I hope he can also seal up where ever they are getting in so a new hive doesn’t come in and take the space over again.
The bees are not completely docile honey bees. They are a bit aggressive. A few chased my son into the house this week and one stung him. About 50 swarm around the outside light each night. We can’t get in or out the front door without letting a few in the house. There are a lot of dead bees on the front porch and I can’t sweep them up because they come over and investigate anyone staying on the porch for more than a minute.
I’m not sure how the mail carrier delivers the mail, but he/she does, and so far hasn’t been stung. I also manage to get the mail, but it has to be during daylight and I have to move quickly. I guess the mail carrier moves pretty quickly and doesn’t attract their attention.
Technorati Tags: bee problem, unexpected cost
May 22nd, 2008 Posted by joubess | Maintenance & Repairs, Unexpected Costs | no comments
I wrote in my last post that my laptop failed again. I bought a refurbished desktop computer to temporarily replace my broken laptop. I didn’t mention I got the money for it from selling some stuff. This month’s budget had no wiggle room at all.
I tried to get the IDE-USB adapter to work with the refurbished machine to load my laptop data, but it didn’t work. It also turned out that the refurbished desktop had more problems than the old desktop we already own. It had trouble starting up and the PS2 ports didn’t work, so I had to use a USB keyboard and a USB mouse. I returned it and got my money back, $305.19.
Upgrade the Old Desktop?
That left the problem of what to do about a working computer. After some thought, I decided to have a serious look at our old desktop and see what needed to be done to it to get it up and running reliably.
Getting it running again required knowing if it could be upgraded as well as what needed to be repaired. It’s 5 years old now, ancient in the computer hardware world. But, when I bought it I bought the best processor and motherboard available with the maximum amount of upgrade capability, including the ability to add lots of RAM to it. Paying $150 more 5 years ago to get the most upgradeable machine was worth the money.
The CD-RW drive no longer worked, so we couldn’t load software, some of the USB ports crashed the computer when used, it needed a wireless LAN card so I could move it to my office, it only had 256 Mb of memory, and the mouse was broken. The interior was also completely caked with a thick layer of dust (1/2 inch-thick layer). It was absolutely disgusting!
I bought some compressed air in a can, took the tower outside, put on a dust mask, and sprayed it out until it was completely clean. I removed the broken CD-RW drive, and took the RAM card out so I could have the shop match the type to upgrade to at least 512 Mb or 1024 Mb (1 gig).
I got two 512 Mb RAM cards (it has two RAM card slots), a new DVD+/-RW multi-drive, and a new mouse. I kept the wireless LAN card I already bought, and I still have the IDE-USB adapter. The total cost for everything now is $250.65. I hope to work on transferring my laptop hard drive data to the desktop today. If that doesn’t work, I’ll return the adapter.
It’s working great! I’m using it right now to write this post.
Repair the Toshiba Laptop?
I’ve also rethought the issue of repairing my laptop. The main cooling fan needs to be replaced. Once that’s done, the only part left to fail will be the hard drive, which I will back up again as soon as I get the laptop back from the shop if I can’t back it up onto the desktop. There isn’t much I really need off the laptop’s hard drive. Over the last year I’ve moved to mostly web-based applications and storage. A lot of the stuff on that drive can be deleted.
Honestly, I don’t need a new laptop. The old one works fine for my needs. It was a very high-end machine when I bought it 4 years ago, and I can upgrade it with more memory and parts (including a new hard drive if needed) are still widely available for it. I talked to a technician at the shop, instead of a sales guy, and he said it would only cost about $200 to replace the fan, parts and labor. I’m going to get it repaired at the end of this month or next month, whenever I can afford it, and keep using it.
How am I going to pay for the repair?
We’re having another garage sale the Friday after Easter. The money we earn from that will cover the repair and there will be plenty left over to put toward bills and debts. Dave Ramsey says to sell so much stuff the dog goes into hiding. When you’ve lived in a house for 15 years and you don’t spring clean regularly, there is a lot of stuff to sell. I’m on a quest to clean out every room, every closet, every nook, cranny and attic (we have 3) until everything we don’t need and isn’t a family heirloom is gone.
I grew up in a military family so we moved often. When you move regularly you clean everything out then. I’ve never had to clean things out without getting ready to move before. I’m learning a whole new way of living by having to clean things out and not pack them up. I’m also going to have to look the house over and start repainting rooms that haven’t been painted since we moved in 15 years ago. That’s another thing I never did growing up. We were never in a residence long enough to have to repaint anything, or re-wallpaper, or remodel.
If I wait until next month, I’ll have my paycheck, a new budget in which I can include this item, and the money from the garage sale. I’ll probably wait to bring it in until the end of March so I won’t have to pay for the repairs until I pick it up in April. I can bring it to the shop on March 30 or 31.
Two Working Computers for Less Than the Price of a New One
For $450 we’ll have two working computers that will last awhile. I’ve started another savings fund for computer repairs, upgrades, software, and replacement. By the time we need to replace a computer I’ll have the cash saved for it. Computer prices keep going down, and I hope by the time we need to buy one, we’ll have more than enough saved. Otherwise, we’ll be sharing the working machine until we have enough for a replacement.
Some of you will ask, and rightly so, why I need a computer. Some will ask why I need two computers, again a valid question.
Here are the answers. I make part of my living online from my blogs through affiliate sales and advertising. If I can’t get on a computer and work productively, I don’t make some of my living. We need a second computer most of the time because my son is homeschooled and he attends an online school. He needs to get on the computer frequently to get his work done. When we have to share a computer neither of us gets as much done as we should. Temporarily, it’s okay, but long-term, we each need our own machine.
I hope you all will leave comments on what you would do in this situation. It helps me a lot when others make suggestions. It gets me thinking about alternatives to situations I may not see.
Technorati Tags: cost reduction, repair old computer, upgrade old computer
March 13th, 2008 Posted by joubess | Cost Reductions, Unexpected Costs | one comment
