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Welcome to Second Listen Saturday on the
Parenting Roundabout podcast, where we share some

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fun moments from a past episode for
your weekend listening pleasure. Look for new

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episodes every Monday through Friday. Today, we're complaining about those surprise expenses that

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seem to keep popping up, Nicole. You've recently had a few unexpected bills.

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Oh, yes, it just keeps
coming at the most inopportunity, of

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course, as we get a patch
like that. Yes, it's just been

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one thing after another since oh May
oh man. Yeah, it's just it's

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little thing, well not little,
but it's just things like you can't anticipate

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them. So yes, you know, for example, back in the spring,

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as you all recall, we found
out that my daughter was going to

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go to university in Canada, so
we knew that we had to obviously get

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her up, are and move.
And we had also, just prior to

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that book to our twenty fifth wedding
anniversary trip to Europe. And I said

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to my husband, like, those
are two big expenses. Can I do

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this? I was like, yeah, we need to because if we don't

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know, you know, we might
regret it kind of thing, right,

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Yeah, And I'm like oh okay, like foolishly. So along with it

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came all this unexpected stuff. So, for example, when we were away,

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so we went on our trip first, and then we went and moved

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my daughter. So while we're away, you know, we'd paid it for

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all the trip stuff and everything,
my son who's at home, decides too

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well, I didn't decide to,
but he went to the urgent care because

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his heart was beating too fast,
and the urgent care felt it was urgent

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enough for him to go to the
er. He went to the AR and

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they hooked him up to the ECG
and whatnot and um, and apparently it

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was just the result of some medication
that he had taken, some over the

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counter medication that he had taken.
So we get a bill for six hundred

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dollars for that. And then of
course, while we're away, my daughter

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my son here at home, and
it's in the middle of summer, and

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they decide they're going to crank the
AC because Mom isn't home for the AC.

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And if you know anything about AC
and southern count yeah, first of

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all, it's extremely expensive, and
second of all, you do need to

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use it frequently, and it does
need to be fairly cool, but they

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decided that like sixty nine was going
to be their average temperature. So um,

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so then we got a bill for
like five hundred dollars for that,

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and then our car we get home
for what our reason, our car is

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like leaking oil everywhere, and so
we have to take it in and that's

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another six hundred dollars. And so
these are just like these are unplanned emergency

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expenses. And I know that you
have to have an emergency expense fund,

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but come on, I mean like, I mean, yeah, maybe most

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people manage to have some money set
aside for that, but yeah, thousands.

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Really, this is We're just hard. Yeah, we're we're kind of

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just getting tired. It's just been
one thing after another afternoon and then I

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supposed pick up our car today and
the guy phones me and says, oh,

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something else is wrong with the car
and that'll be an extra three No,

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no, yeah, can we just
do we have to have it done?

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Can we get by with it another
couple of months? It is absolutely

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necessary. It's like, well it's
not that necessary, Okay, stop,

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then I'm not gonna do it.
It's an old car, you know,

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it's on its way out. Um, so yeah, I don't how do

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people how do people plan on this? I mean, did the normal people

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have thousands in their safety and a
safety account to deal with this? Or

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this is just like a credit card
job. I don't know. It's so

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frustrating because just when you think that
you're you know, you've got everything planned

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out and accounted for. Yeah,
um, this all this other stuff just

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piles on top of it. And
then you know, of course, our

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trip to Vancouver to take Christen up
to university was not cheap. I mean,

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we we knew that, but then
there was all these little extras that

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we had to get and right yeah, man, yea. Ours this summer

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was there was some minor thing wrong
with our air conditioning, our HVAC you

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know unit. Yeah, and so
the guy came and fixed it, and

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it was a I need minor fix. But he's like, but I would

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say, you need a new furnace, like you need a whole new unit.

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So he and he gave us an
estimate and he's like, you know,

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it's not like urgent, like it'll
happen you know, right this minute.

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And this was summer, but yeah, you know, I just feel

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like we have to do it because
if it breaks in the middle of winter,

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well then we're really stuck right in
Wisconsin being like the air conditioner and

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Los Angeles is right, you know, oh yeah, because you know what,

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it'll break when it's really cold and
then everybody else's and the guy will

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be busy, and so we what
we call another place to get a second

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opinion, and they haven't gotten back
to us, so we need to pursue

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that. But it's like, we
need to pursue that so that we can

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you know, like five thousand dollars. Oh yeah, that's really motivating.

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So yeah, we don't have a
lot of motivation too to track this Dowds.

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Yeah, we went through I think
last year we went through a whole

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spade of that where there was you
know, all three of our cars needed

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work done and you know, um, we had to replace all our kitchen

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appliances and the air conditionerer broke,
and it just seemed like it was one

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thing after another. You know,
our neighbors decided to sell their house and

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we have this tree that kind of
hangs over their fence and was messing up

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their grass, and so they asked
us to do something about it. So

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we had to take the tree down
to the tune of a thousand dollars,

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and it's just like it was.
Every time you turn around, there was

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something else. And then you know, when the property tax comes along,

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that's a huge hit. And then
there's you know, all the insurances do

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it the same, seems to be
do it the same month as you know.

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You you try to get your plan, you try to get your budget,

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you figure out, you know,
we have enough money to pay our

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bills, and then this stuff just
comes in from nowhere, and what am

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I supposed to pay this with?
So we had, you know, we

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had a really bad time. And
then for a while I had all this

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extra money and I'm like, where
is this extra money coming from? Because

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I was actually making less money at
that time, and I realized it was

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because we hadn't had any of these
special expenses. Oh this is this is

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actually how it's supposed to be cool. And then you go quickly knocked on

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all the wood. I put as
much of it as I could in the

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savings account so it would be there
when the inevitable hit. Right. Yeah,

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yeah, it's like you don't want
to notice it and appreciate it,

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right because it's gonna go away.
There's always something it's gonna come up.

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Yeah, you know, we have
a few things now there's the list is

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starting to get along again of things
that need to get done that are going

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to cost money. So bracing myself. Oh yeah, that's the brace thing

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happening over here. Yeah. It's
like we talked about. You know,

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your kid left for college, so
it's like, oh, I should you

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know, aside from paying for the
college obviously, but like the day to

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day like groceries and gas from the
car and whatever you don't have, but

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there will always be something to oh
yeah, fill in that gap easily.

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Yeah, like your son going to
the ear because of some medication. I

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don't mean to diminish it, but
he said to us before where he's gone

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to the ear because he I don't
know. Something happened. He scratched his

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toe or something though it was deep
enough for stitches, so his friends took

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him to the ar. No,
the er, if you're talking, then

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there was my son who didn't complain. It didn't complain, It didn't complain,

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and one night suddenly started screaming and
we took him to the ear and

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his stomach ruptured because of an ulcer, and it's like, well, you

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guys said something a little sooner that
let me discard your sweetheart. Yes,

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we could have gone to the doctor
about this, you know, several months

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ago, and that would have been
better. But in that case, I

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mean, the insurance paid most of
that. But after just like six months

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of phone calls, you know.
So so I wonder what people do who

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don't have a you know, some
money set aside to handle these unexpected expenses.

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And I also don't know what people
do who don't have somebody who can

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just be making calls full time.
You know. Yeah, I was working

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at home, so I could constantly
call, you know, call the insurance

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why didn't this get covered? And
they would say, oh, well,

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you have to call the hospital.
They have to quote it differently, and

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then you have to call the hospital. When you say they said it's coded

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wrong, they said, no,
we coded. You have to like do

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all the stuff back and forth and
eventually, you know, you hit the

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magic combination of things and it gets
taken care of. But wow, this

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is how people go bankrupt, surely. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah,

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that's a sad thing. I mean, you just do you get hit with

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something big? Oh my gosh.
Yeah, well we're all blessed to have,

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you know, the money somewhere to
cover it, even if we have

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to take it out well you know, emergency supplies. It's you know,

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we count our blessings for that.
And of course, you know, the

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the enormous pot of deo we make
from our podcasting helps with that. So

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people, the ones of dollars we
make, Maybe we better stop talking before

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we bring it on anymore twists.
That's true, that's true. Yes,

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even as we're speaking, something somewhere
in our houses are breaking. Break,