Monday, July 9, 2018

The Bizarro Hillmomba

I never thought it would happen. Or at least I never thought I would admit it.

I am growing jealous of Farmer H!

Farmer H might become a Future Junkyillionaire before I can even dream of becoming a Future Pennyillionaire! It's like we're living in the Bizarro Hillmomba. Now HE is a money magnet, and all I can attract is weirdos.

Sunday afternoon, Farmer H revealed that he'd taken in $348 at his Storage Unit Store over Friday/Saturday/Sunday. Sure, he had some money invested in his inventory, since he bought some of it at auctions. And sure, it was the first real weekend of the month, so people had money in their pockets.

"Wow. If you made that EVERY weekend, you could almost pay for one month of our health insurance premiums."

Not that I wanted to rain on his income parade. Just point out the outrageous money we are spending on health insurance for him, me, and The Pony. I would never expect Farmer H to use HIS money to pay for any necessities for US. Because HIS money is for him. And OUR money is for things like building him a junk-holding Freight Container Garage, complete with car lift thingy.

Anyhoo...Farmer H also saved us over a $1000 this week. No, it's not from NOT-BUYING shoe inserts from The Good Feet Store. Though technically, he did that as well. But I'm not ready to say he saved us $2000 this week.

The savings came in the form of auto insurance premiums. We have quite a few cars, you know. And two 4-wheelers, and two Gators. Insurance for them, and T-Hoe/A-Cad/ Trailblazer/Toronado/Ford F250/Rogue doesn't come cheap. Especially the 2013 Rogue, driven by The 1998 Pony. We were supposedly getting the multi-car discount, along with another for having our homeowner's insurance with the same company.

Funny how having all the bills come due on the same date can save you $1000 over a 6-month period. And I don't mean funny ha-ha.

Yes, since the beginning, we've paid our auto insurance every six months. As we started to amass more and more vehicles, I told Farmer H that I was tired of getting bills for them almost every month, which defeated the purpose of knowing when one was due, and how much to put aside. So, supposedly, he got them all to come at the same time. Almost.

But THEN he went in to pay in person for the 4-wheelers, since he had the coverage lessened, now that they're older, and if they get stolen, too bad so sad. The office gal told Farmer H that he could save almost a $1000 by getting all the cars due at the same date. Which we thought we had.

Anyhoo...this might be some new policy, and they weren't really holding out on us like my suspicious mind suspects...because the office gal told Farmer H that she'd just done that with her OWN insurance a couple months ago. True. She didn't have to point that out to him at all. But now we're getting a savings of about $2000 a year on auto insurance.

Which would pay slightly over the cost of one month's health insurance premium.

5 comments:

Sioux Roslawski said...

Yikes. My husband wants to retire but can't right now, because of the high cost of insurance.

I'm going to show him this blog, to impress on him (again) how I need him--I mean how he needs to not retire.

Ever.

Hillbilly Mom said...

Sioux,
Yeah, it's outrageous. We don't even have the top tier plan. Last year, we dropped down to the secondary plan with higher deductibles.

Just marking time for Farmer H to age out for medicare. It doesn't help that we are also subsidizing The Pony for at least two more years. Farmer H has always believed that it would be cheaper to sock that money away in our own medical account, and pay medical costs as they arise. The fear of a catastrophic illness keeps us paying.

I couldn't deny him his retirement though. Of course you might ASSume I just wanted him home with ME, 24/7/365. On the contrary. Farmer H has worked hard his whole life (and not just at annoying me), and as long as I determined that we had the assets to get us through that gap, I didn't begrudge him his non-working life.

River said...

Wait a minute, something's wrong here. You've got HIS money and OUR money, but where is YOUR money. Surely that little casino bankroll is not the only thing between you and poverty if things should go belly-up? And no, I have no idea how that may or may not happen

Hillbilly Mom said...

River,
I consider Farmer H's junking money HIS, and my casino/lottery money MINE. All the accounts are in both our names, so that falls under OURS. No way can Farmer H abscond with more than half. Legally...

I'm the one who pays all the bills, and manages the accounts, so Farmer H has more to worry about than I do!

River said...

fair enough.