Society for Aesthetic Deletions

He's been our landlord for four years now, and never raised the rent since he took over. I'm not really surprised by it, I was just hoping it would never happen.

I tell anyone who asks that we pay really, REALLY cheap rent. Like, we SO lucked into this apartment, and we've been singing its praises ever since.

But it's also been a bad thing. Because we pay so little rent, we spend all that extra cash on other things. And we'll never be able to just say "Instead of paying rent, why don't we pay a mortgage?" No one offers mortgages for our miniscule amount of rent.

The woman who lives on the floor below us was upset. It appears that we all got letters. I have no idea what she pays in rent, but it's probably more than we do. She's going to be consulting a lawyer, but I'm betting that the most we'll get out of that is a month or two delay in the raise.

So, I took a look at some of our loans and such last night, and got some good news and some bad news. The good news is that the loan I thought we would have paid off at the end of December has two+ payments left on it. We're debating now about just paying it off, paying more on it so it will be paid at the end of October, and leaving it as is.

The biggest issue there is expenses in November. We're going to the wedding of one of Lou's high school friends (whose fiancee attended the same college I did, but much later), and planning on going down to Virginia (where James lives) ahead of the wedding a few days, so we can visit with them. But we need to stay at a hotel, and four days can add up, even at a cheap hotel. Then there's food, and the trip down and back (we'll be driving).

And let's not forget our trip to North Carolina at Thanksgiving. Fortunately, that expense is pretty small, and we can get by with minimal cash.

The bad news is I thought we would have the Caravan paid off by next October. Turns out I was off by a year - we had a five year loan, to keep our payments down. So the loan payments I had thought to roll into paying off the van early next year must now be more carefully doled out amongst our credit card debt.

And that's because we need to buy Lou a new car before next summer. We drive the van more than we originally wanted to because Lou's car doesn't have air conditioning, and he drives it for his work. And the heat (and humidity) can be killer, even in New England.

I think I'm going to have to change my policy on doing consulting computer work for people at the office. I need to bring in some extra cash, at least for a limited time.

And I don't want to sound like I'm complaining, when I have friends who have been laid off and are also struggling to make ends meet. I'm not...I know how good I really have it. I just have to take the time to appreciate it more than I have, and not take it for granted.

And we really, really need to budget ourselves, which we do not do. Which is why we're in such a mess, after getting clear in '98 with an unexpected inheritance from my side of the family.