Wednesday, 22 August 2007

Kids and Finances

In some ways it's nice to have a break from their boundless energy, squabbling, shouting, screaming and irrational moods (teenagers eh ?) but in another it's only when they go away for a short while that you realise
how much fun they can be, it's only been a few days but we're both missing them, although it is nice to sit down in the lounge and watch TV without interruption or just talk for a while, it's the first time we have had alone since we got married and it's nice, Andrea only has 8 weeks left until the new arrival, and she it getting to terminal velocity as far as her bump is concerned, it's a very active baby always on the move, it's like watching "Alien" uncut for most of the time.


We are both looking forward to it's arrival, the kids are too, we have most of what we need, we got a very nice pram and travel set from ebay for £117 it's called a "Hauke Infinity", apparently they are quite expensive to buy new, all I know it's in very good condition and looks like it's hardly been used, so I guess it's a bargain !! my sister offloaded practically all of her baby inventory to us, because she has stopped breeding now, for which we are very grateful, (the baby inventory, not the stopping of breeding ;¬) )


I dread to think what it all would have cost had we bought it all new, probably well over a grand, possibly more !!! What did people do before Ebay???? I've also had to spend a fortune on a new computer for one of our friends who kindly lent Andrea a spare computer when her ex husband left, he took the computer with him along with half of the furniture including the bed !! so our friend stepped in and loaned one of hers, I wasn't involved in this "deal" but I have taken ownership of this "debt" by the default of marriage it seems, anyway the short story is, it blew up when moved, the guy who repaired it last (another friend), well lets just say his construction skills aren't up to much, and one of the screws in the motherboard came out and shorted the motherboard, unluckily it took out the entire computer, and my luck didn't stop there, I intended getting a computer of similar speed and capacity, like for like ...... as it turned out the cheapest I could get is 8 times faster than her original, I don't begrudge it she did after all loan hers out in the first place, so it's only fair to replace for similar or better :) however it is going to make things tight this month.....again !!! there never seems to be a let up in the finances, we squeak through every month with either nothing to spare or very little or like the last few months actually spending more than I earn.....my overdraft is like the north Atlantic trench, deep and very full..... :(


But I guess that's the price you have to pay if you want to stay ahead of what you owe, sacrifices have to be made, personally I hate owing money to anybody, although in some circumstances it's impossible sometimes to avoid it, although I know some people are perfectly happy to run up debt with their friends (or enemies) and not give a toss about paying it back, personally I would be mortified if I was in that position, thankfully Andrea is almost completely out of debt now, and it's the first time since her first marriage that she has been in that situation, we have both been working hard to clear the problem, we took some hard financial knocks, and there were a few debts I really didn't like paying because half of them were down to her ex husband, or in some cases completely down to him, but we have more chance of being hit by a meteorite than him opening his wallet anytime soon, besides I don't think 10 shilling notes are legal currency anymore are they ?

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