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Due to a string of household catastrophes--namely, a number of appliances dying, including the TV, the oven, and the air conditioner--we were hit particularly hard by our 2008 tax bill... to the point where we faced having to come up with a total of $15,000 at various points in the year to pay off the whole mess.
Oh my God. I just found out that we're going to have to pay $6200 in taxes--in part because we didn't realize they weren't withholding them already from my stepfather's military pension or whatever it is. We're going to get about half of that $6200 back, but that's the problem: we have to pay it all first in order to get any back. And this is on top of the $5000 air conditioner which I still believe was a gigantic ripoff, although it is very nice. I have no idea in the world where we are going to get all this money from, and neither does my mother. Well, she has ideas, but they involve loans and eBay. So... uh. I will be putting some things up for sale shortly.
I have a bad habit of 1) paying in cash and 2) never with change, so I have a gigantic stash of coins. And only about half of them are pennies, which means that I have a small fortune in quarters squirreled away. Thirty-eight dollars, to be precise; they're all sorted now, and my fingers are nasty with dirt or tarnish or cocaine residue or whatever it is on our currency nowadays. Ick. And let me tell you, internets, it's an extremely weird feeling to be counting jars of change to pay off debts while Ryan Seacrest and half the world's celebrities are on TV exhorting you to give the starving children money. Because, on one hand, the starving children need it more; on the other, the dying children aren't going to charge 29% interest on your home equity loans if you don't pay them off by June. I try to tell myself that if we don't keep ourselves afloat we can't help anyone else. But... you know.