January 7, 2010

Today, I paid the monthly bills. The mortgage, cell phones, car payment, and savings account are all good to go. Jeff takes care of the utilities, so I know those are done as well.

Then December’s credit card statement popped up on the email. The damage from Christmas: $3000.

At this point, I was glad I had not spent an additional $100 on dinners, celebrated New Years downtown, drank five Starbucks, or gone grocery shopping (except for the quarter). Therefore, I am better positioned to pay more off on the card when the next paycheck lands in the checking account. Only eight days to go before that happens, and the bill is due in nine days. With nothing extravagant coming out of the account in the next week, I can put a large chunk down on the card and possibly pay it off by the end of the month.

Then I remember, it’s January, which means we have to pay the taxes, since we do not escrow. That’s $5000, plus taxes on a little piece of land we bought on a Lake Richland Chambers some years back. I’ve saved the money throughout the year, but boy, it hurts when we write those checks.

The bright side of paying taxes to the city of Austin is that it is a gentle reminder that we live in a city rich with free services such as Lake LadyBird, where we exercise the dogs, Lake Travis, where we swim (not in January), the Capitol building (I could go on yet another free tour and get my Texas on.), the UT museum, and the library. With time to think about services like these, I realized that never got a library card. So, this weekend will be spend running that errand, grabbing some reading material, CDs for burning, and DVDs for weekend movie fests.