Closing Gaps

Yesterday was a bit of an adventure with  the finances.

On one hand I found how much my Social Security Disability is expected to be in September.  As most people would have expected, it just won't be enough.  In fact it's about 1/3 of what I need to sustain my budget.  This of course has me slightly panicked, but at the same time just urges me to action.  At least for the next few months, I think most of that gap will be taken up by the Long Term Disability (LTD).  However, LTD won't last forever, and that is also something I don't know: How long should I expect it to last, and exactly how much will it be?

As you know by now, I do have an optimistic nature, and I do think it will get us by while I look at the real estate investment that needs to be accomplished.  The real estate will be the true source of permanent income.

I also learned that the life insurance is only for $50,000 and not for $100,000 as I thought.

It's clear that because my pay stub shows no extra deductions for the life insurance premium, that I had only opted for the standard 50K that was offered to all employees.

Still the 50K will be enough to get the real estate started, and the capitalization rates of 15% in the Carolinas is more than the rough 10% I was planning.  I should be able to get the 50K to stretch far enough to get really close to covering the gap.

But this too will be a challenge, because I would not only need to cover the gap, but exceed it enough that the LLC will have funds to grow.

But I have alternate plans that should fix that as well.

Also, I have found that SSD will allow me to work a little, provided I don't make more than $810 in a month.  I think contacting one of my old employers in Massachusetts can fit that bill.  I have worked remotely for them in the past, and they often have little extra jobs I can do that would be a the right size for this sort of thing.

That $810 will only make up less than a 1/4 of the gap, and at the rates I would intend to bill, we're talking about 5-6 hours of work a week.  This would make it more of a C++ hobby than a real job and would just keep my head in the C++ world.

Probably the worst of it is that I will see my programs that I wrote some five or six years ago, and some "violence done" to it by the other programmers in that time. I've done this once before with them and it was astonishing how bad some of my really beautiful stuff had been damaged beyond recognition.

I only hope I don't get a ulcer from looking at this stuff now.

Oh and in all that, my mortgagee, PennyMac called yesterday and was able to streamline my VA loan from 4.00% to 3.25%.  Sure they tacked on about $6000 to the principle,  but cashflow is paramount at this point, and we lowered my monthly bill by $135.

Last night I also went out with the Men's Group at church for Benediction, Mass, and a beer after church.  I met up with a new guy named Mark who also has some financial planning resources, and in addition, Chris tells me that he's sold some seven cars using Craigslist, so there is some renewed hope that I can dispose of the Ion this way.

Reducing expences will be another way to close the gap, so I'm all for it.

tschüß!
or as Lesl4ie and I used to write before UTF-8 : tschu"s!