Welcome to Second Listen Saturday on the Parenting Roundabout podcast, where we share some
fun moments from a past episode for your weekend listening pleasure. Look for new
episodes every Monday through Friday. Today, we're complaining about those surprise expenses that
seem to keep popping up, Nicole. You've recently had a few unexpected bills.
Oh, yes, it just keeps coming at the most inopportunity, of
course, as we get a patch like that. Yes, it's just been
one thing after another since oh May oh man. Yeah, it's just it's
little thing, well not little, but it's just things like you can't anticipate
them. So yes, you know, for example, back in the spring,
as you all recall, we found out that my daughter was going to
go to university in Canada, so we knew that we had to obviously get
her up, are and move. And we had also, just prior to
that book to our twenty fifth wedding anniversary trip to Europe. And I said
to my husband, like, those are two big expenses. Can I do
this? I was like, yeah, we need to because if we don't
know, you know, we might regret it kind of thing, right,
Yeah, And I'm like oh okay, like foolishly. So along with it
came all this unexpected stuff. So, for example, when we were away,
so we went on our trip first, and then we went and moved
my daughter. So while we're away, you know, we'd paid it for
all the trip stuff and everything, my son who's at home, decides too
well, I didn't decide to, but he went to the urgent care because
his heart was beating too fast, and the urgent care felt it was urgent
enough for him to go to the er. He went to the AR and
they hooked him up to the ECG and whatnot and um, and apparently it
was just the result of some medication that he had taken, some over the
counter medication that he had taken. So we get a bill for six hundred
dollars for that. And then of course, while we're away, my daughter
my son here at home, and it's in the middle of summer, and
they decide they're going to crank the AC because Mom isn't home for the AC.
And if you know anything about AC and southern count yeah, first of
all, it's extremely expensive, and second of all, you do need to
use it frequently, and it does need to be fairly cool, but they
decided that like sixty nine was going to be their average temperature. So um,
so then we got a bill for like five hundred dollars for that,
and then our car we get home for what our reason, our car is
like leaking oil everywhere, and so we have to take it in and that's
another six hundred dollars. And so these are just like these are unplanned emergency
expenses. And I know that you have to have an emergency expense fund,
but come on, I mean like, I mean, yeah, maybe most
people manage to have some money set aside for that, but yeah, thousands.
Really, this is We're just hard. Yeah, we're we're kind of
just getting tired. It's just been one thing after another afternoon and then I
supposed pick up our car today and the guy phones me and says, oh,
something else is wrong with the car and that'll be an extra three No,
no, yeah, can we just do we have to have it done?
Can we get by with it another couple of months? It is absolutely
necessary. It's like, well it's not that necessary, Okay, stop,
then I'm not gonna do it. It's an old car, you know,
it's on its way out. Um, so yeah, I don't how do
people how do people plan on this? I mean, did the normal people
have thousands in their safety and a safety account to deal with this? Or
this is just like a credit card job. I don't know. It's so
frustrating because just when you think that you're you know, you've got everything planned
out and accounted for. Yeah, um, this all this other stuff just
piles on top of it. And then you know, of course, our
trip to Vancouver to take Christen up to university was not cheap. I mean,
we we knew that, but then there was all these little extras that
we had to get and right yeah, man, yea. Ours this summer
was there was some minor thing wrong with our air conditioning, our HVAC you
know unit. Yeah, and so the guy came and fixed it, and
it was a I need minor fix. But he's like, but I would
say, you need a new furnace, like you need a whole new unit.
So he and he gave us an estimate and he's like, you know,
it's not like urgent, like it'll happen you know, right this minute.
And this was summer, but yeah, you know, I just feel
like we have to do it because if it breaks in the middle of winter,
well then we're really stuck right in Wisconsin being like the air conditioner and
Los Angeles is right, you know, oh yeah, because you know what,
it'll break when it's really cold and then everybody else's and the guy will
be busy, and so we what we call another place to get a second
opinion, and they haven't gotten back to us, so we need to pursue
that. But it's like, we need to pursue that so that we can
you know, like five thousand dollars. Oh yeah, that's really motivating.
So yeah, we don't have a lot of motivation too to track this Dowds.
Yeah, we went through I think last year we went through a whole
spade of that where there was you know, all three of our cars needed
work done and you know, um, we had to replace all our kitchen
appliances and the air conditionerer broke, and it just seemed like it was one
thing after another. You know, our neighbors decided to sell their house and
we have this tree that kind of hangs over their fence and was messing up
their grass, and so they asked us to do something about it. So
we had to take the tree down to the tune of a thousand dollars,
and it's just like it was. Every time you turn around, there was
something else. And then you know, when the property tax comes along,
that's a huge hit. And then there's you know, all the insurances do
it the same, seems to be do it the same month as you know.
You you try to get your plan, you try to get your budget,
you figure out, you know, we have enough money to pay our
bills, and then this stuff just comes in from nowhere, and what am
I supposed to pay this with? So we had, you know, we
had a really bad time. And then for a while I had all this
extra money and I'm like, where is this extra money coming from? Because
I was actually making less money at that time, and I realized it was
because we hadn't had any of these special expenses. Oh this is this is
actually how it's supposed to be cool. And then you go quickly knocked on
all the wood. I put as much of it as I could in the
savings account so it would be there when the inevitable hit. Right. Yeah,
yeah, it's like you don't want to notice it and appreciate it,
right because it's gonna go away. There's always something it's gonna come up.
Yeah, you know, we have a few things now there's the list is
starting to get along again of things that need to get done that are going
to cost money. So bracing myself. Oh yeah, that's the brace thing
happening over here. Yeah. It's like we talked about. You know,
your kid left for college, so it's like, oh, I should you
know, aside from paying for the college obviously, but like the day to
day like groceries and gas from the car and whatever you don't have, but
there will always be something to oh yeah, fill in that gap easily.
Yeah, like your son going to the ear because of some medication. I
don't mean to diminish it, but he said to us before where he's gone
to the ear because he I don't know. Something happened. He scratched his
toe or something though it was deep enough for stitches, so his friends took
him to the ar. No, the er, if you're talking, then
there was my son who didn't complain. It didn't complain, It didn't complain,
and one night suddenly started screaming and we took him to the ear and
his stomach ruptured because of an ulcer, and it's like, well, you
guys said something a little sooner that let me discard your sweetheart. Yes,
we could have gone to the doctor about this, you know, several months
ago, and that would have been better. But in that case, I
mean, the insurance paid most of that. But after just like six months
of phone calls, you know. So so I wonder what people do who
don't have a you know, some money set aside to handle these unexpected expenses.
And I also don't know what people do who don't have somebody who can
just be making calls full time. You know. Yeah, I was working
at home, so I could constantly call, you know, call the insurance
why didn't this get covered? And they would say, oh, well,
you have to call the hospital. They have to quote it differently, and
then you have to call the hospital. When you say they said it's coded
wrong, they said, no, we coded. You have to like do
all the stuff back and forth and eventually, you know, you hit the
magic combination of things and it gets taken care of. But wow, this
is how people go bankrupt, surely. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah,
that's a sad thing. I mean, you just do you get hit with
something big? Oh my gosh. Yeah, well we're all blessed to have,
you know, the money somewhere to cover it, even if we have
to take it out well you know, emergency supplies. It's you know,
we count our blessings for that. And of course, you know, the
the enormous pot of deo we make from our podcasting helps with that. So
people, the ones of dollars we make, Maybe we better stop talking before
we bring it on anymore twists. That's true, that's true. Yes,
even as we're speaking, something somewhere in our houses are breaking. Break,