Finances!

This week feels schizophrenic. Jeremy and I are both vacillating between happy and hopeful about the future and freaked out, overwhelmed and stressed about . Of course, the major topics to insert were centered around finances: job hunting, taxes, debt, bank fees, and missing disability checks.

But no fear. For the most part, the stress is short lived, and the reality is that we are sailing along pretty well. We did our taxes for 2008 on Sunday, which felt great. Our refund will go straight to paying off taxes owed from 2007, but hey, that's less debt for us to pay. Jeremy has a job this weekend, which doesn't pay anything, but will help in the networking department.

Last week he went to the Local Union Branch 80 - the union that handles grips and whatnot for film and TV production - and took the first steps to becoming a member. In order to be eligible, he has to work 30 days on a union job within a year. And the only time he can work on a union job is on days when a production needs so much extra help, they get a permit to allow for non-union workers. So Jeremy gets to call in between 4 and 6 am in the morning to check which productions have permits that day. Yikes! It'll be a while before he gets any permitted work through them, as the whole industry is suffering and there's currently not enough work for all the union members, but eventually, things will turn around.

In the meantime he's getting disability from his injury in November. We were getting pretty frustrated that his disability check was so late, and I was worried that it was delayed because of the whole CA state budget thing (they finally signed a budget today!!!), so I asked him to call, and what a relief! It wasn't delayed because of a lack of money, it was delayed because they were waiting on the lame ass worker's comp insurance company (who are not paying him) to send proof that they are not paying him. Lucky they sent it to Jeremy a couple weeks ago. Jer was able to fax that letter right over, and we should be seeing a check within a week. Not only that, but they are also sending forms over for him to get his doc to sign, so he can get payment for the month of December as well.

This totally relieves our stresses about paying for rent, car insurance, loan payments and food from one paycheck. We had gotten ourselves a bit stuck with this last one, and really could use that extra income.

Overall, things are good. And as long as I keep reminding myself how lucky we are, the stress doesn't stay for long. :)