You would not BELIEVE how 8 months in another country can affect your financial life. Here, I thought I had a foolproof plan to make sure all our bills were paid and our miscellaneous expenses were dealt with. But apparently my plan was anything but foolproof. Just some fun tidbits about our current state of affairs:

* When I set up the online billpay so I could pay the bills from overseas, the car payment was being shorted by $9 each month. You would think, “$9 is nothing. Probably the bank barely noticed”. You would be wrong. In November, when we were home, we got no notification that there was a problem, so we carried on our merry little way. In April, we got a letter saying our car was going to be repossessed. Now, anyone who knows me well probably has their jaw on the floor by now because I.DO.NOT.MISS.PAYING.MY.BILLS ….EVER…EVER!!!! And here I found myself with the threat of a car repo. A CAR REPO, people!!! So we called the bank, explained the mistake, blah blah blah. We apologized, they apologized. Love was between us again.

Until we ran our credit report. And found that they had reported each of those $9 late payments as 60 days late. Ummm……problem!! I had a stellar credit rating, one that most people drool over and here we found out it had dipped into the 600s. Our brief love affair with the bank promptly ended. Until they retracted their mistake and cleared up the credit. Now we are working on our relationship. Maybe counseling would help???

* The post office decided to stop forwarding our mail in February even though I had signed up for the year long service. Our mail is in some warehouse somewhere and we can’t seem to get our hands on it.

* Our home loan…well….we won’t even discuss the disaster that is our home loan, except to say that we must quickly refinance before we are on one of those crazy variable rate loans. This, of course, will raise our mortgage significantly. Which is just what you want to hear when you are now a one-income family until the end of August.

* Do you think our dogs are mad at us? One after another, they keep getting sick and needing substantial veterinary care. Guiseppe needed his hips xrayed and his teeth cleaned. Dakota needed his teeth cleaned. (For those of you who are dog-less, they don’t clean doggie teeth while they are awake. You know…the biting thing…so they put them to sleep. And yep, anesthesia costs extra dinero.) Now Lola has a gnarly ear infection which will require several follow up visits. I guess this is revenge on us??

* Our renter will need an extra month or two in the house. She is trying to buy her own house and the escrow thing…you know. So, we will be “homeless” even when we move “home”.

So much for my plan. Time to formulate a new one. I’m thinking of that one where you just keep a bunch of cash under your mattress and then when you die, someone finds millions hidden in the springs of your bed. What do you think? Will it work???? And should I hide the money in my Bulgarian bed springs or my San Diego ones?