I talked to Colin yesterday on the CoffeeCrew podcast, and Max was part of that discussion. He’s been part of a lot of discussions this Christmas because anyone who has been to our home in the past 13 and a half years has met him, and almost everyone seems to love him.
Max’s health is still hanging in the balance. He’s improving, but still in the depth of the fight. It seems surreal, to be trying to be happy and joyful and be in the Christmas Spirit while Max is fighting.
Trying to sort out how to pay for Max’s care (no, we don’t have pet insurance, we used to have a buffer to cover that sort of thing but 2014 has been a very rough year) brought us to the conversation we should have had a while ago about income, debt, and financial management. I’ve had to accept that financially we are past what should have been a turning point. While we are better off than many we are far too close to the edge and it’s a steep drop from here.
It wasn’t a fun conversation but we came to some agreements about priorities. It means work. Either I find a better job (higher pay), or a second job, or take on enough freelance work to make up the difference. Shawn will do the same. Bottom line, we have taken on too much debt and Victoria is too damned expensive for the salaries we’re currently earning — thanks to a decade of close-to-zero wage increases and a lack of movement within the organization my salary has not come anywhere close to matching the actual cost of living; and thanks to the challenges of freelancing, hubby had a few rough years in a row. In his words, “my income in 2011 through 2014 was poor because I spent too much time with tire kickers; and not enough time earning.” In quick succession, he tied his financial fate to “a U.S. company that chumped out on bills; an alcoholic who would go off the grid to go on benders; a shifty local who treated fellow freelancers like they were roadies; and an entrepreneur who refused to sell their product when she got it to market.”
Shawn started trying to change course in early 2014, but it took months to find a salaried job. He knew that the real cost of these bad decisions could have dire consequences. Bad business decisions don’t manifest as bad numbers– they turn into a financial catastrophe when all you add is one sick cat and three days in a pet hospital.
Once Shawn got his current job, he wrote about the next steps in October (The Next Eight Months); he is working on a whole Rebuild of health, finances, and outlook. I’ve been trying to gradually turn things, too, but it’s a big damned boat and it doesn’t have the best turning radius. It’s difficult to change habits, practices, muscle memory, and attitudes, but it needs to be done.
2015 has to be the turning point, no more bullshit excuses, it’s go time.