Last year, we had to do some creative budgeting.
Reducing our spending and living more frugally was a necessity.
The cause of our financial straits was the pandemic. Straits isn’t the best term, because my wife and I still had our jobs and schooling. Without our jobs – we were working from home – we would have been in dire financial straits! Still, we had to reduce our spending significantly. There was no leaving the home for entertainment, trips, or going out to eat, so the savings there helped. We also saved money in other ways. By mid-summer, though, my wife and I had a problem that caused us to consider a very bad idea. We noticed the air conditioning wasn’t keeping up. The heat pump was running all the time! I decided I could fix this myself by watching some online videos. I convinced myself I could recharge the refrigerant. How I got so overconfident is beyond me! Thankfully, my wife knew how to shut this down, and not to trust someone who had watched some online videos. She scheduled a repair with our HVAC company.