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Wow! November was a very good month! We had almost $1,900 left at the end of the month. So part of that is going to some necessities/home maintenance and Christmas gifts. The rest will be to pay off the IRS (Woo!) And the remaining $ will likely go to the state taxes we still owe (only ~$700 left to pay them, then all of our back taxes are paid). We were both really conscientious this month. The hubby has really started to become interested in seeing just how much we can NOT spend, which is awesome. It feels good to be making progress. The final check to the IRS is going out tomorrow. Can’t wait to see that clear!

My mother’s boyfriend of 8 years passed away suddenly in August. She was rather dependent on him financially. He ran his own business and they had probably been together less than a year when she ended up quitting her job through a temp agency and working for him. Anyway, she has been unemployed since August. She recently started looking for a job.

I am hoping she is going to find something soon. The scariest thing about all this is that they had nothing saved for retirement. She’s in her early 60s. He had started doing photography about a year ago and their plan was to do that for their retirement, I guess.

When my parents got divorced ~10 years ago I decided to stop going to school for awhile and come home to live with my mom. She had been very financially dependent on my dad. I thought I needed to do something that in my mind was “noble” and help her in some way. (Of course, I also needed a break from school and didn’t want to keep taking out expensive loans for a private school that I didn’t need to be going to.) So I lived w/ her for a few years and helped chip in for the rent. I brought her to a weekly support group for people who were recently divorced/widowed (she can’t drive at night) and that’s where she met her boyfriend.

Anyway, I feel bad that I let her fall into the same pattern of dependency. I don’t want it to happen again. In some ways I feel very callous saying this. She’s just suffered a major loss. But, she needs to learn to take care of herself. It’s certainly something she is capable of. She was pretty good at it during the time that I was back at home living with her.

It’s a tough situation. My younger sister has told me she would be willing to give my mom some money if she knows that she’s seriously trying to look for a job. It makes me feel like we should offer too. My husband doesn’t agree.

Anyway, this long drawn out entry is mainly getting all this off my chest. I want to do the right thing here. She has a bunch of cats currently and we did offer to take one of them, if that would help her out. I’ve gone over to her house and helped her with job applications and tried to offer suggestions to help her. I guess we’re just trying to avoid giving her a handout. I don’t know. It sucks.

Anyway, I just want her to become confident and know that she’s in control of her life and that she doesn’t have to look to someone else to take care of her. I want to help her however I can towards achieving that.

Just sent out a check to the IRS for this month for $700. That means that we’ve got less than $1,100 left to pay them! I don’t know if we’ll be able to pay the final balance next month but, if not, we can hopefully still get pretty close (still need to pay for that second set of tires early next month). Been selling some stuff on Ebay so that is bringing in some extra cash. My hubby’s also been getting a lot of extra hrs at work and just got a raise a couple weeks ago so that’s all been helping. I’m thinking about getting a seasonal job on the weekends (just for the holidays) to bring in a few extra bucks as well. I’m going to do some searching this Sat. It’s exciting to finally feel like we’re making real progress!