Let’s talk mania.
And finances.
Last fall, I went full paranoid manic for close to two weeks. With how the world was behaving, no one realized my frothing was anything other than a reaction to everything.
I bought end of the world supplies.
A lot of end of the world supplies.
A wood stove.
A grow system.
Close to $4000 in end of the world supplies over that time period before my husband realized I had lost it and cut me off.
Ya’ll, I hadn’t been manic since… 2010? It has been so long that my new doctors were hesitant to believe I was Bipolar I when I met with them, despite my assurances that I had in fact gone off my rocker before.
Well, here’s your proof.
And all of those purchases BOMBED my budget. Bombed my tax savings. Bombed my sinking funds for dog bills. ALL OF IT TOTALLY RUINED.
And I’ve been trying desperately to rebuild since, living as tight as we could manage.
Meanwhile grocery costs doubled so we were bleeding money every time we bought food. I dug in my heels and pulled from my emergency, end of the world supplies and my storage freezers.
Still not enough.
Every month we were bleeding close to $700 just trying to catch up and pay the credit card bills. Meanwhile, bills are rolling in for the dog, the car registrations, and taxes are looming.
I did NOT pay my quarterly taxes during this.
It finally culminated in a melt down, and we looked into a home equity loan to at least lump all of the bills together and ENSURE that taxes would be paid.
I legally cannot do my job if my taxes are not paid in full.
It’s humiliating.
It feels like a million steps back.
I called my mom and cried about what a failure I was.
So I’m filling out paperwork, and we’ve backslid, and it’s humiliating, but we’ll work past this. Once we’re no longer drowning I can focus on rebuilding our sunk cost funds and shift the credit card to the lower interest home equity line of credit.
I can draw from it to pay our taxes.
We will recover.
I’m embarrassed, but I’m not going to lie about my mistakes and pretend our finances are working as they should.
0/10 would not recommend mania.
