Not sure whether to laugh or cry or sit staring into space or what.
Found letter in my mailbox on the way to work, saying:

"We confirm the application for payment of superannuation and death or invalidity benefit for the late C--- K--- has been approved.

Please find enclosed two cheques ..."

I was tempted to dash back into town and put it straight into his Credit Union account.

At this stage have $290 in my own account, $203 of which is from a Medicare payment and $67 from MBF Health Insurance.

On Friday am expecting ~$1800 monthly pay. Now, $550 of this is for my living expenses & some ~$1900 more is committed to Chris' bills, of which $1000/mo is one Visa Card debt, probably down to ~$10,000 by now. There is another Bankcard debt for $4500-$5000 hanging fire.

And people wonder why I sometimes lose patience & shout when mother interrupts my letterwriting or other work for the eleventy-first time in a morning to ask me a question I've answered eleventy times in the last few hours.

I could bank it in the Credit Union estate account and then get cheques for the two credit card bills. Clear them right off the slate <hand trembles>

That should leave some few thousand in that account, from which one set of mortgage payments are deducted.
I can then put 1/3 or 1/2 of that into the other bank account for the other mortgage, which is in arrears by around $2000, pay out those arrears & leave a cushion to pay out the surplus ongoing monthly payments above the receipts.

This would bring my current expenses for Chris' bills down to only ~$900/mo, and keep mortgage payments going for several months (especially if the place stays rented and free of further unexpected repair bills). Without that $1000/mo, paying the quarterly council & water rates on everything and electricity & phone for his house become much more affordable.

The surplus mortgage payments are still a struggle, but I can't really renegotiate/pay off any substantial amount until the large superannuation payment comes through.

If the insurance (about a year's wages) does come through before the next superannuation, I could pay my friends & mother some of what I owe them for the emergency help in the last eighteen months. If it looks like the larger super payout will take much longer, however, it might be an idea to put most of the insurance into the mortgages. On the other hand it might be better to keep a fairly large chunk in liquid form in the estate account in case of something unexpected. So many unexpected expenses have turned up in the last year or so - not just medical & funeral & legal ones, but all sorts of things raining down like frogs from rainclouds.

Once the large payout comes <thinking positive, no 'if'>, there should be enough to partly pay & renegotiate the mortgages so that there aren't surplus payments beyond income. Then I'll know how much is left from that to repay those personal debts and should be able to see if my own personal savings have anything left. By golly, the rainy day certainly arrived that I had them for. Not all that optimistic about future weather conditions, so having some left over would be really quite good.

Should I wait until tomorrow morning? It makes me jittery, the only times I've had this much liquid assets on me were around August 1980, when I paid for my house (1/4 my funds, 3/4 the bank's), and a cheque for what I lent C--- in 1999 (about half the price of the house, and all my own money).
[permalink][comment] - posted by Mez @ 11/12/2003 01:12:00 pm