I had to do some creative financial stuff last year.
Shrinking spending was needed.
We were able to do this while working and taking classes from our air-conditioned home. The pandemic, of course, caused our financial straits. Straits isn’t an accurate description because we still had tasks. Had we not been able to work from home, in air conditioning, my wife and I would have absolutely been in financial straits. Still, our spending had to go down dramatically. We were able to save a lot on entertainment – there wasn’t any. No trips or movies or going out to eat. Saving that cash helped. We also tightened the belt in other ways. In the middle of the summer, though, a problem caused me to come up with a ridiculous idea. We noticed the heating and air conditioning system wasn’t keeping up. The heat pump was running constantly and couldn’t keep up. I thought I could fix it myself after watching online videos. I convinced myself I could recharge the refrigerant. How I got so confident in my HVAC diagnosis skills is beyond me! Thankfully, my wife shut that down furiously. She knew better than to trust our fancy Heating & Air Conditioning component to a guy who watched an online video. She called the Heating & Air Conditioning supplier. We spent the money on a normal repair call.