March 09, 2020

Sometimes you just have to hit "publish"

I have gone back and forth and back and forth on posting about this but finally after my twitter rant and once again realizing that this is MY blog and I can post what I damned well feel, here we are. Sometimes I just need to ramble (hence like the majority of my blog posts).

So most of you might remember my posts about the army messing up our BAH (rent money). If not, you can go here and read about it to get caught up. Basically the army messed up and were taking out $350 a month to fix their mistake.
Anyway, after that it just seems to have gone downhill.

We pulled Maddie from preschool and adapted a bit better financially. Don't get me wrong, we literally had enough for food, gas, bills and that's it. No extra spending money. Which became okay. We hated it, I'll admit it, but we adapted. It was fine.
Then David wrecked his bike and we talked it over, did some math and realized he could get a new bike and it'd time out perfectly to when the army money stopped so it'd be great.

We also knew that with our income taxes we were going to pay off the loan for the first bike (the wrecked one) and the credit cards. Then our finances would be pretty freakin' decent again. We'd only have the new bike payment (and the other normal monthly bills) and not a new bike payment, the army money and an old bike payment.

Then we woke up to our taxes.
They were $9,400 short.
That is a HUGE chunk of change to be missing from your tax return.
We called the IRS-they informed us that it was withdrawn to cover student loans in MY name which is odd considering I've never taken out a student loan in my entire life.  (I'll get to this in a bit)

We managed to pay off one of the credit cards, paid off the cable bill (the new one had just come out so the old one was just due) and the cell phone bill (same as cable). And we paid half of the other credit card off. And we paid ahead about $100 on Fin's lunch (it's about $40 a month)

Payday was a few days later so paying that now meant we'd have a bit extra on payday and I planned to sort of stock up on food since I knew our budget would be about the same since all of our plans had fallen through.

Well, payday comes around and it's $561. I guess since it was the last army payment, they just went ahead and took it all at once instead of splitting it in half like usual. I cried. I panicked. Then I realized that we'd just paid the bills for this pay period (aside from $8 for Netflix) and I was a bit calmer. All we needed was groceries and gas. Phew. This whole thing is just completely ridiculous but so far it seems to have been working out decently enough. THANKFULLY.

Also, this whole mess has given my husband a new found appreciation for my little blog.
The random income it brings in and the Paypal debit card that I have have helped us a lot for random milk runs or days that he needs lunch because he didn't realize he wouldn't get to come home for it.
So if you've happened to notice an increase in sponsored posts or anything like that, I'm only sort of sorry. This is my source of income and my little way of helping out. Any ad space that is bought no longer (currently) goes towards me investing in advertising--it goes to making sure Owen has milk in his bottle at night.

Next payday will be better, back to "normal" (shitty) but liveable so I'm thankful for that. Like I said it's all timed out decently and worked out decently to where we haven't starved and I'm SO SO thankful for that and I know that it could be worse and we could be hurting more and I'm thankful that we're not but this has still been hell. It's still been hard, stressful, annoying, frustrating and overall a giant pain in the read.

This is long enough for now. I'll do a part two that continues on about the IRS/student loan mess.
(And for those of you curious as to how we got so much back on our taxes, David claims 0 dependents so the most taxes are taken out, we have three kids and he spent part of last year deployed--I had a police officer shocked and asking about it when we went to file a police report so I feel the need to clear that up too because he way he said it implied that we did something wrong when filing to get that much back--asshole.)



8 comments:

Jenn said...

Girl, I would be LIVID if that money was missing because of some dumb "student loan". I hate that you might not ever see that money for years!!! At least you guys are staying afloat! I feel you. We literally live paycheck to paycheck and it sucks. I feel overwhelmed knowing they took all your money away that I'm not sure I can read your next post without drinking a Mike's hard lemonade lol

Becca Stockman said...

The Army is SO frustrating with how they do that! They gave us extra money during our PCS to Fort Sill and didn't realize it until later, then sent us a letter demanding the money IN FULL BY CHRISTMAS EVE. I was like wow, ya'll are super. Merry Christmas to you too.

And I can not imagine how angry I'd be if the IRS screwed us over like that! I hope ya'll get everything figured out with your apparent stolen identity!

Analilia said...

I am right with you when it comes to finances. Things are tight around here, but at least we are managing somehow. Thank goodness! It could be worse, right?

Samantha Curtis said...

I think I would have a mini heart attack.. the army has also messed up our stuff so many times too. Don't even get me started on the fact that they don't pay enough to begin with... lol hope it gets back on track!

Tawny's Tid Bits said...

Amber! I love "real" posts like this! This lets everyone know they aren't alone in dealing with every day stuff. And every once in awhile, ya gotta vent, I feel ya there! Love ya! And things will get better.. no worries! ;)

CeCe said...

I think it's great that you posted about this if it was in your heart and your mind to do so and get it off your chest. Our lives are not perfect! Hope you get everything sorted out. Money problems are so stressful.

Kristin said...

I've read this post twice now and keep forgetting to comment because I really wanted to leave a worthwhile comment.

I'm really sorry you have to deal with this. There's always SOMETHING going against the way we wish to be going, right? I know things will never be perfect and we all have our struggles. It just seems like the army keeps hitting you where it hurts!

The dumb thing about money problems is that it's never a "problem" until we don't have any. I'm slightly freaking out about my salary disappearing soon.

I'm thrilled that your blog is coming through in a big way though. It really validates the time and energy you spend on it.

I hope your week is starting off better than last week ended :)

Carly said...

I'm just catching up on this....what a NIGHTMARE! I hope the last few days this has calmed down for you! I'm so sorry!

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