@crystal626 wrote:
lol I couldn't imagine how that conversation with hubby would go.
"Have you ever thought of taking the bus?"
He has to get up at 5AM as it is to make it to work on time as it's about an hour drive from here and he needs an hour to wake up before he leaves.
He has his scooter and a motorcycle, which covers his trips for most of the year, especially lately where we don't get much snow in the winter anymore anyway, but he still needs a vehicle for those days.
The restaurant was my treat because we had a big fight that day about, you guessed it, money. We usually eat out once or twice a month but that's getting to be too much. That said, the meal I got was $16 and provided me with two meals, it's the ~$22 for two drinks that did us in.
Fluoride is industrial waste that was added to the water supply because there was nothing better to do with it. Yes, it has benefits for teeth, but it has other health consequences. I alternate between tap water and ZeroWater (which filters near 100% of the fluoride) and brush with David's nano-hydroxyapatite toothpaste. I haven't had to have a filling since I switched from Sensodyne to that, my tooth sensitivity is way better, and my hygienist always compliments me on my oral care. Your other points are spot on though.
Well, you know, I've been pretty wiped out by this move and everything, so the car is just not high priority if I have to let something go at this point. I'll recover faster without it and it will stop finding new ways to burn holes in my pocket.
I told the shop if they can figure out how to rig it so it runs and just doesn't leak oil and I can offload it then that's what I'd like to do, and maybe that involves a tighter fitting seal or something. I don't know. I'd like to get it to where it's running and not throwing oil everywhere long enough to get $1800 for it because that's the best I'm gonna get and honestly I would never want to offload something like this to a private buyer and obscure that it has an engine problem.
Yeah, Dave Ramsey is right, when money becomes a problem in a relationship it's going to be the thing you're in there fighting over all the time.
When I do go out to eat I like to just get one drink and split it, or even ice water. Nobody working a fast food restaurant gets paid enough to care if you're splitting a drink.
Yes, the restaurant industry is getting hit hard because less customers are showing up. With $100 at the grocery store I can eek by through an entire week. With $100 at a restaurant, well, that depends, but normally two meals at a cheap one and less than one meal for two at an Outback Steakhouse. You'll never win financially at a restaurant v. cooking at home and having leftovers later on.
So the car and eating out are some holes in the budget I can do something about. I can't really improve on our incomes too much but I can soomewhat control expenses.
The RTA said I could always have a free transit pass as long as I renew it every 5 years. The cost of insurance on the car was $1400 a year PIF and even if I cut it to Liability, that would only get it down to $950.
Then there's all this $5 a gallon gas, and the repair bills, the state wants over $160 to renew a license plate every year, the city wants $50 for a sticker.
Mechanics want hundreds or thousands of dollars on a routine basis.
There's nly so much that can be done with a Social Security check and some odds and ends, and the car is eating too much of that, and if I don't get rid of it it's going to become a huge problem more than it's worth. It'll deplete me and then I'll have to ask my new partner to start footing more of the bills.
So it's like a cowboy when the horse is dying anyway, he pulls out his gun and shoots the horse, and it's not to be mean to the horse, it's because it's at the end of its life and he has nothing to spare to feed a horse that can't work anymore. At least this is just a machine.
I looked into the water issue, and I mainly use Amazon Basics filters for the Brita, I have a lot of them. They just had a Prime Day sale $14 for 6 of them, that's a good price, very good filter. Very competitive with the brand name standard Brita filters. It's actually German Brita that's making the Amazon one, at their factory in the UK.
German Brita tried entering the US as Mavea some years back. If you still have a Mavea (they stopped selling them because nobody knew what they were), you can still import Brita Maxtra+ filters off Amazon UK and they'll fit and work, and Waterdrop also makes some that fit, albeit with mixed reviews.
These are not a "purification" filter, the carbon and ion resin will just improve on a few points, and they work best on organic pollutants and some heavy metals, even when they make no specific claims they do something to contaminants of concern.
I found a pile of Brita Elite filters for 99 cents, factory sealed, at Goodwill. Those are better, but it's all about the problem you're trying to fix.
We get very good water from Evanston, it's from Lake Michigan, we have advanced water treatment plants, there's nothing that bad about it other than some slight taste issues.
I looked at Costco water delivery and they wanted over $1700 a year for water. That's more than I pay in car insurance, for the car I'm getting ready to offload because it's breaking me.
Ideally, all water in the US would be as safe as it is here. Illinois has made water quality a high priority and is ahead of the nation in removing and replacing lead service lines. The major impediment is getting homeowners to work with the city.
In some cases, Waukegan (where I lived) was having problems getting Hispanic/Latino people who are US citizens to even open the door because they're worried anyone who says they're from the government might be ICE, and they don't want to be falsely arrested, disappeared, and then maybe released after a month or three when ICE admits they're a US citizen or legal resident, so sometimes you can't even get someone to answer the door because they think the guy from the water department is a setup.
It's one of those things where the culture of fear has made having members of the public who haven't done anything wrong worried about interacting with their government, or reporting to the police that they're a crime victim, which is sad because we're dealing with that when someone has been assaulted or the city just wants to upgrade their pipes so they're not being exposed to a poison substance in the water.
That's what the mayor told us.
It's pretty bad when people who are allegedly law enforcement professionals don't bother to make sure they have their facts in order or at least let you grab a pair of pants or shoes in the middle of winter, but I suppose that's where we are now. And it's having some very serious effects on trust across the board.
Being able to tell someone your home was upgraded to lead-free service pipes makes the house more valuable if you go to sell it, so these people who are afraid to answer the door are foregoing building home equity because they're afraid they might end up in some other country.
Having experienced serious police misconduct myself, I know how traumatizing it can be many years later even if they agree to wipe it from your record. Nothing can ever undo the mental pain and anguish that it causes. Even the locals tend to act with complete impunity when they're wrong, so I can only imagine if it was the feds.
They often don’t face consequences: they can wreck your life, and you spend years picking up the pieces while they remain police officers and continue on. I've spent time in therapy sessions on this topic alone, and it helps me to think about them as a force of nature really, almost like a tornado that blows through and carries your house and car away. Something to be avoided if you can.
