Money, Money, Money....must be funny

Yeah. I'd like some. :)
Remember that last post, where we had our budget down to a fine science? Well, life happens. With teeth. It does have a semi-happy ending, I suppose, but I have to admit that I will be very happy in a few years, when I am back at work, the house stays clean, the kids are both off at school, and hubby is making multi-millions. Ha ha ha. Okay, I'll settle for us being back on two steady-ish incomes without the need for child care.
In any case...
On Friday I ended up with a major flat tire, as in, the kind where the car goes bumpitybumpitybumpity, you pull over to look at the flat tire, and find it halfway off the rim flat. And my tire iron would not work to remove the partially stripped lugnuts. So I had to walk home, get Hubby's, walk back, and use his to get it off and then get the spare on. Saturday, we got an appointment for new tires. An ouch, but do-able, as we had just built up a $1000 emergency fund, and the tires were going to be about $600. No big problem, we'd just have to rebuild the emergency fund. Right?
No.
They get the van up on the hoists, saying it'll be done in about an hour. Call us about 30 minutes later. Brake drum is shot, brake fluid all over EVERYTHING, not safe, spare is worn down to the core. Okay. Has to be done. Fine. We'll figure something out. While trying to replace the drum, the brake line snaps. Woo-hoo.
So over $1300 later I have my van back. Bye bye emergency fund hellooooo paycheck advance.
This sounds like a bad ending, but it isn't...we had the emergency fund, which is more than we would have been able to say in the recent past, and we will rebuild it, it will just take time...and in our budget, we CAN reduce our payments on a few things to recoup that extra money we technically didn't have. And as we keep on watching our pennies and sticking to our budget as closely as we can, slowly we will get things paid off. Most things will be paid off in about 2 years. The mortgage should be paid off in about 8 years. And then we will be totally, utterly, absolutely debt free. How's that for a concept? I like it.
As Dave Ramsey says (one of my Hubby's favourite authors/radio guys right now) "Right now we will live like nobody else so that someday we can live like nobody else". Get it? :)
And you know what one of the best things about our plan has been? NOTHING has been added to the debt. We paid cash from our income tax return for the new fridge when the old one died, cash for the broken furnace repair, cash for the furnace and vent cleaners, cash for the car repairs (or debit or cheque, but the cash was there, no floating cheques or credit cards or whatever). Nice. As in no interest fees, no waiting for things to appear on a bill.
And I rock with cooking cheaply. 75 pound bag of potatoes from a local farmer =$15
Do you have any IDEA how many potatoes that is, and how many fabulously delicious, filling, satisfying dishes can be made with 75 POUNDS of potatoes? :) Add that to 20kg of flour, farm fresh eggs, and discount meat, you can feed a family for next to nothing. :) Ask me for ideas if you need some...I'm having fun. :)