The Active Family

Ahhh January. The shopping is over, the presents opened and mostly forgotten or returned. We pay cash for Christmas so we don’t dread that opening of the credit statement.

What I do dread is receiving bill after bill for all those lovely once a year payouts. Excise tax, rental insurance, life insurance, registration fees for the cars. They all come in January, and they are all due in February. sigh.

Thankfully, we save most, if not all of the amounts needed throughout the year. We haven’t always done that. In years past January finds us pulling our hair out and digging in the couch cushions for change. This year is starting off rather smoothly for us. Our taxes were finished yesterday, and we have already begun logging our insane amounts of clothing to be donated as we may be able to itemize next year. Our cars are getting old fast so our excise taxes are low, and our rental insurance is inexpensive anyway.

We are also researching various life insurance rates to see if we can get my rate down a little more. My husband’s rate is staying put, since he has diabetes and it is remarkable that he was able to get the coverage he has now. Otherwise, the only thing we will be changing this year is we are going to start putting away money every month so we can pay our car insurance in one swoop each year. Hopefully we can get that done by the time our insurance renews in July.