Frugal Babe

Last fall, my husband and I, along with my parents and my siblings, spent a weekend getting my parents’ old house ready to sell.  They have moved every few years for the last 38 years - they love to fix up old houses, live in them for a while, and then move on.  We spent that whole weekend loading up the last of the stuff into a truck, cleaning, clearing out the yard, fixing stuff, all the things that you have to do to put a house on the market.  It was a great weekend, and we all had fun working together. 

Last week, the house sold.  Already, my parents are looking at some other houses that they can buy with the money from the sale.  They’ve had their current house finished for several months, and are itching for a project.  But they’re not using all the money to buy another house.  The night they sold the house, they called us to say that they were giving up $1000.  And they gave $1000 to each of my three siblings.  Wow.  That’s huge.  I have been very self-reliant for a lot of years.  I stopped taking money from my parents when I was 19 (before that, they helped me with room and board at college, but when I was 19, I opted to provide for myself).  My parents have given me so much over the years - but generally not money.  So that phone call took me by surprise.  My parents were obviously happy to be helping their children, and after I got over my initial feelings of guilt, I was stoked. 

My husband and I talked about what to do with the money.  We decided to put $300 into our HSA and use it to have a lipoma removed from his shoulder blade.  He’s had it for about 5 years now, and it’s always sort of bothered him.  He’s had it checked out and was told that it was not a medical problem, and that nothing needed to be done with it.  But it makes him a bit self conscious when he doesn’t have a shirt on.  I don’t even notice it, but if it were on me, I wouldn’t like it either.  So he has an appointment with a dermatologist tomorrow morning.  They’re going to do a full body skin screening, and then remove the lipoma.  Assuming he likes this dermatologist,  I’m going to make an appointment for a full body skin screen as well.

That leaves $700, which we’re splitting between the Discover Card and our HELOC.  We feel good about our use of the money.  We’re putting it towards things that we were already working at, and the visit to the dermatologist is something that we’ve been putting off for years.  Now we can justify the expense.