I have now moved my home office setup, back into the office room, which is both nice and sad, as it is pretty lame in here and without the cupboards bought yet, full of boxes again. This means that it is back to a blurred background for work meetings for a while.
And, it also echoes a lot.
I think I am going to have to get some of those sound absorbing panels.
The nice part is that while the office is again a shambles, the rest of the house is looking more like a house should look, though there is still some organizing to do to bring it up to speed. Once that is done, I think we are going to have to have it reevaluated to ensure that our insurance appropriately recognizes what we have done to it, as well as the bank in case we ever need to draw on the value.
I would also like to know how we are positioned in the current market, which is seeing a downturn in prices after modest increases through the pandemic. This is also going to be affected by the increase in energy costs on housing too, especially for the houses that rely heavily on electricity to heat them. Our house lays in the middle of that, where we are reliant, but also due to the air-water heat exchange system, not as reliant as we might be otherwise.
A massive amount of work has been done through this renovation so far and while the basement and garden is still largely untouched by anything major, even they are neater than they were when we moved in. We bought pre-Covid, so the price we paid was likely a little higher than we probably could have got it for, but not unbearably so.
Also, rather than taking a huge amount of debt to cover the renovations, we took a smaller loan that covered a few large items like bathroom addition and heating system, and then have been financing it through our monthly salaries instead. This has made it hard to track exactly what we have spent, but easy in the sense that we know that what we have spent on the renovation is within our means. However, it has also meant that we haven't been able to build a safety net with our salaries, so the coming months are looking a little squirrely.
Back to hand to mouth.
Fuck I hate living hand to mouth.
But for the next two months at least, it does seem like it is going to be a little that way and while this is common for many, for me I find it quite stressful. Throughout my life it has been the normal order of things for the most part, but over the last decade I have been working to break that cycle and build a better personal financial outlook, as well as improve my own relationship with money. The number one thing for me is perhaps the framing of money as a tool to build, not an endgoal in and of itself.
For me, this has meant shifting the goal from making money to use, into a reason to have the money available to use instead. It is a relatively subtle shift, but has been an important one for me, even when I don't necessarily have something immediately in mind as to what I need the money for. What I do know is that when opportunities have arisen in the past, I never had the option to take advantage of them, because I hadn't done the ground work to have money available when I needed it. It was always more of an afterthought, because of the hand to mouth living.
Building a foundation over the years has meant that I have been able to take some advantage at some level, even though it isn't as much as I would have liked. The last couple years of renovation however has put much of this on hold, but I also see what we are doing as an investment, even though it isn't liquid. If we were in great need, we would be able to sell our house, cover our debts and have something available relatively quickly, but I don't plan on getting forced into that kind of dire position - but it is a "never know" situation.
We are now into the last month of the year and it is often a stressful month, with a lot going on in the workplaces to close out the financial period and then, a lot of other family pressures and extra expenditures around the Christmas celebrations. At least on my end, we are going to be taking a very modest approach to celebrations this year, but I am sure that we will have some fun along the way too.
I also plan on taking back some of the time in lieu hours owed to me that I have collected over the last few months, and will hopefully take the days off between Christmas and New Year, with perhaps a few extra at the start of January also. I have a lot of days owed as pretty much every day is adding an hour or two on to the stack.
I plan on doing very little during that time.
Kind of like that 80s kitten poster, I think that the next few months will be a "hang in there" situation and hope that nothing too major causes us financial disruption. That hope generally goes begging however and then it is a hang in there by fighting tooth and nail situation.
But hey, one day it will all balance out, right? and one thing to remember is that regardless of what it might feel like now, the reality can always be worse.
Always good to end on a positive :)
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]