It’s time for another Mixed Bag Life Update, Coronavirus edition. The first thing to say is that my family and I are healthy, at least in regard to COVID-19, so we are thankful for that. I have been socially distancing myself for many years working from home, so nothing has changed in that regard.
Being able to work from home is a godsend at this time, as school districts across the United States are closing down, meaning that the kids will be at home with me for 5 1/2 months, as school is closed for the next 2 1/2 months in the run-up to the summer break. We are lucky in that regard, many people have been furloughed or laid off due to the COVID-19 pandemic, causing a massive financial strain on them.
Education for the kids will continue via the interwebs, this is expected to start by April 1, 2020, hopefully, this is not an April Fool’s prank. The kids really can’t afford to miss over 2 months of education. Although the Email that was sent out from USD259 was not clear, there was a lot of information, and I’m not sure what applies to my kids and what does not, so I am going to have to reach out to the school for more info.
Non-CORID-19 related, or maybe it is, given that some IRS employees might be quarantined? is the delay in our tax refund. We are due to get a little over $4,800 back from our federal taxes, we filed on February 4, 2020, and the e-file was accepted the same day. But, when we check the IRS website page for refund status, it’s still showing as “Your tax return is still being processed.”, with no refund date available.
Normally our tax refund is direct deposited into our bank account within 3 weeks. I did think I messed up and inputted the wrong account number, maybe transposing a couple of numbers. But, I quickly realized that was not the case because we received the massive $62 Kansas state refund, within 2 days of filing.
That money would sure come in handy to pay off some of our smaller credit card balances, which would save us about $200 a month in payments. Or with the current COVID-19 pandemic, maybe hold onto it in case my wife, Erin gets furloughed from her job, as apartment community offices are closing to the general public, it’s hard to be a service coordinator when you have to practice social distancing.
About a year ago, I wrote about a 70% increase in my water bill, which I thought was due to a misreading of the water meter. But it seems our lightly running toilets had gotten worse, causing a huge spike in cost as it pushed our water usage past the allowed usage limit before switching to a significantly higher cost per unit tariff, for which there is no recourse as Wichita Water has a monopoly. For about 6 months afterward, the bills normalized, but in the past few months, the bills have increased, culminating in a $140 bill last month, so we had our landlord replace the flappers in our toilets, stopping them continuing to run after flushing. Which, should bring our water bills down to the sub $70 level they were previously.
Finally, I was weighing up my options in regard to whether to stay with Erin or move out. After a week of minimal communication, 100% me being a dick, we talked and decided to try to make it work, for the kids’ sake, neither of us could face telling our daughter that Daddy would be moving out. The $77k of student debt that Erin has does not directly affect me, so I am letting her deal with it, or not deal with it!
As I said in the linked blog above, it’s not a matter of falling out of love with Erin, it’s more about me and the way I personally deal with our increasing debt. I despise being one cent in debt, let alone $20k in debt, and I don’t deal with it well, often taking it out on my wife, and for that, I am deeply sorry, and profusely apologize to my wife. She should not have read my feelings on my blog, I should have talked with her about it. As I said above, I am 100% a dick for this, I must do better in dealing with my emotions.
