My weeklong headache

“Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.”
-Woody Allen

Talk about a stressful week. Financially stressful, too—the worst kind. Fortunately the stress is due to having money rather than not having money. It’s just a matter of how to use the money.

First of all I screwed up our taxes by misunderstanding how to contribute to my retirement funds. I thought I understood (I even contacted the brokerage service before filing), but as I’ve looked into actually depositing money, I realized I knew very little. I’ve learned a lot about taxes and IRAs this week. It looks like we will be able to “fix” my mistake before April 15th, but man, I wish I had taken the time to get all of this information up front. And keep your fingers crossed that Rob agrees with my plan. Live and learn, right? Hope so.

Then, Rob’s got his eye on a leasing special on a Mazda3. I’m not very risky with my money at all, so much so that I probably miss some opportunities. But, we’re new at leasing vehicles, and I want to make sure that we fully understand what we’re getting into, from start to finish. It seems like this is a genuinely good deal, and my vehicle seems to be on the brink of total destruction (lots of little annoyances that are really starting to get on my nerves) with no warranty and no maintenance manual. I know financial gurus preach against leases, but I imagine that we won’t be keeping cars for 5-10 years anyway.

Oh Mazda3, you could be mine!!

Financial discussions make my head spin and my tummy queasy. I just want to curl up in a little ball and have someone else make the decisions for me. Honestly, I won’t actually ever make a decision for or against because I dread it so much.

Let’s hope that this all ends soon.