The results of a recent $500 a month experiment have been making the rounds in the media this week. I’ve read a couple of articles and heard a radio interview about how people have applied their extra $500. (The experiment lasted a little over a year, I believe.) The study was small, only 125 people, and it was privately funded (so no need to worry about taxpayers’ money being spent). But it basically showed that people of middle and low income will spend the money on necessities rather than gambling, drugs, booze or deciding not to work. (As has oft been the stereotype.)

I feel I need to throw a disclaimer in here. I’m not necessarily saying that we should be dispensing $500 a month to everyone in need for the rest of their days. I am saying that a chunk of change when you’re having a hardship can mean the difference between poor quality of life and decent. (I do think we should raise minimum wage for the first time in 12 years.)

Dean and I use Whatsapp when we’re working. It’s just easier as I don’t like to look at my phone when I’m on the computer. This is us discussing plumbers and things that are breaking around the house.

I heard about this study only a few days ago, and, of course, heard about all of the arguments for and against. But before I even knew about it, Dean and I had decided how we were going to spend our stimulus.

You didn’t ask, or maybe you did, but I would consider us lower-middle class. I know how to save, and I know how to manage money and think long term, but we’re one job loss away from being below the poverty level. I don’t believe either of us are in danger of that, nor do I want to put that out there, but there it is. Right now, I consider us to be comfortable and fortunate. No, we can’t buy whatever we want, but with planning, we can pretty much get whatever we need. The kittens will never starve.

The first stimulus went to paying off debt. That was a huge relief as earlier in the pandemic, I was scraping by with my income having been halved.

We’re starting to feel a little more secure now, and so we have had multiple discussions about how to spend the second one. Here’s where it’s all going!

$818 of it went right back to the government. Yep. Despite getting a refund for 2019’s taxes, we collectively made more than $10,000 LESS in 2020 and ended up owing. I decided to do estimated taxes for next year so it doesn’t happen again. When I ran the calculator, it said that right now it looks like we’d be getting a refund of $1000. How? How. So I just made up a number and sent in an estimated quarterly payment and am hoping that I’ll get it back if it’s too much. I make less than $34,000 a year.

I paid our mortgage and our joint credit card bill off early rather than timing them out with paychecks. (As an aside, we put everything on the joint card. Gas, groceries, cat food, even some bills like phone and internet - we gave up cable - so it gets paid off in full every month and we reapply the points to get money off of the following bill.) We now have a little breathing room between bills and it’s amazing.

We’ve had a plumbing issue since shortly after we bought the house. The sink clogs. Not immediately, so it wasn’t caught in the inspection. You have to have been either running the dishwasher or doing a ‘we just home cooked something’ amount of dishes, but we do both fairly frequently. The U-bend was clear. Drano did nothing. I’ve tried snaking the drain myself several times and I’ve gotten chunks of sheetrock out of it. We’ve even tried acid. The only thing I can figure is that when the house was being rehabbed, somehow sheetrock got into the pipe, or some disgruntled sub contractor deliberately put sheetrock into the pipe. Fortunately, it does not affect our toilet or washing machine. We’ve been letting the sink drain through the clean out pipe in the side of the house. Since it’s only dish water (no garbage disposal, everything gets composted), we didn’t see a problem with it going into the yard for a while. At first, we thought I’d be able to gradually get everything out with the snake. Not so. I’ve run into a spot where nothing else is coming out. Then we didn’t want a plumber coming into the house during the first part of COVID because we knew a lot less than we do now. And then we were timing our bill payments and after all of Jake’s vet bills on top of the paying for “The shit you need when you move into a new house” stuff, it wasn’t something we could easily afford and it wasn’t something that was causing us immediate hardship.

Now we have stimulus, we have a recommendation, and we have a plumber coming out. I have no idea what plumbers cost. I know they are expensive. So an as yet unknown amount will be going toward that.

They’re good chairs. They have been stained about ten times. One is warping and all the anchors I put in place aren’t going to change the shape of the wood.

I have had the same two wooden chairs and little table as outdoor furniture for 12 years. I don’t know how many times I’ve restained and made repairs to them. The little table has a slightly broken side, but it’s still usable. One of the chairs finally bit the dust. Enjoying a meal or a cocktail on our back porch has been one consistent getaway for us since we’ve moved. Dean did a lot of research and he found a good, decently priced, pair of chairs at Costco (where we are now members, thanks to Dean’s brother who works there. Thanks, Gene!). Some of it is going toward that.

The kittens have been a shining beacon of joy and laughter for almost nine months now. Yes, they’re trying to destroy the house. Yes, they use us as ladders to get to the next highest place. Yes, they insist on picking out all of my reading material. But they are worth it. We are childless by choice, and these kittens have been our little world during this pandemic. I still have a huge hole in my heart left by Jake and they do not replace him, but I was amazed to learn that I have the capacity to love them just as much as I loved Jake and still grieve and love him deeply and differently.

We bought some flea and tick medication for the kittens. We also bought new harnesses and those extendo leashes. They had outgrown Jake’s old harnesses. (I still can’t believe that they’re not done growing.) They also really want to be outside with us when we’re out, and we want them outside with us, but we also don’t want to spend our whole time outside following them around the yard in opposite directions.

Today I plan to train them to do a leashed walk up our cul-du-sac with treats. Next week, take over the world.

Dean is one of many people around the world who dealt with depression during this pandemic. He sought help and got medication, but, as anyone who has battled with depression knows, it became difficult for him to do things. Especially things that might have helped. As with many people, he was working from home. So his routine was bed, kitchen counter desk, couch for lunch, kitchen counter desk, couch for dinner/wind down, bed. He didn’t have an exercise habit already in place. He didn’t have the motivation or energy to start one.

This is a place where I’ve always tried my best to tread lightly. As a fitness professional, I want him to know that I’m here if he wants me to help him, but I also never want to come across as being judgemental/shaming/pushy. So I’ve basically said that to him, and then let him know to come to me if he wants. (He has once, when he started having back problems. I gave him a routine and he did it until things got better.)

One of our first workouts together, during the Snowmaggedon.

Recently, Dean has begun climbing out of it. He’s reduced his medication (with doctor’s guidance), he’s starting working on his video game history podcast again, and he’s started walking on the treadmill. We hooked one of the television sets up to the wall in front of the treadmill and he hooked up a game to it and now he plays his game while he walks on the treadmill. At first it was just every now and then, and then he and I would sometimes go for a walk together after dinner. Recently, it’s become almost a lunchtime routine for him and I’ve been really proud of him.

I’ve also started using the treadmill for more than just running when it’s cold/dark/rainy. I put my laptop on the tray and walk during meetings or when I’m reading submissions for work. As someone who hasn't had a desk job in over a decade, it’s been really nice for my brain function and the neck and shoulder pain that I had been starting to suffer from. (Yes, I am still teaching and training people both in person and online, but I now have an awesome, part-time anchor job in publishing and I love it.)

The treadmill started to feel weird a few weeks ago. Like it was extra bouncy. As Dean’s sessions increased, so did the bounciness. After some examination and research, I have discovered that the deck is cracked. And the crack is only growing.

I looked into replacing just the deck, but my treadmill was used when I bought it in Chicago, and I’ve had it for at least 12 years. They don’t make it anymore. I could probably find or build a deck if I were really gung ho, but from what I’ve read, the motor will be going next. I began to research replacements and discovered that this treadmill has probably had a much longer life than it was supposed to.

I discussed the treadmill with Dean. This was not something we had initially planned to use stimulus money on, but I was unwilling to go without one. I run at 5am on the weekdays. I wear lights, I carry pepper spray, I am a black belt, but every now and then I just get a feeling and I would prefer to stay inside. Or sometimes it’s raining or freezing or I am squeezing in a run between things and I don’t have the time to gear up for outdoors. I was ready to pull from savings to replace it if necessary, but since Dean had also been using it, I shared the models I was looking at with him. If there were some features that inspired and encouraged him, I wanted them included.

After talking about it extensively, he agreed to me paying half and us putting some stimulus toward half. We’ve ordered it and I cannot wait for it to come in. The old one is really just about to crack and I’m kind of terrified of it going while I’m trying to sprint on it. I also don’t want Dean to lose the groove that he’s just achieved.

Dean also has epilepsy and he has a bill from the MRI he has to get every so often to make sure his brain is still doing what they expect his brain to be doing. Yes, we have very good insurance from his job, but he still has a $500 bill.

We’ve discussed a few other things around the house that we might repair/replace or just buy. (The cats have this tiny little scratching post, when really they should have a climbing tree. If you’ve seen our pictures of them scaling our kitchen cabinets, you know what I mean.)

Dean also said, once all the necessities were taken care of, that he would like us to divide up whatever is left and ‘do something fun for ourselves.’ Just buy something that we want.

He quoted a friend of his who said, “You were not put on this Earth to pay bills.”

But doesn’t it feel like that sometimes, though?

Buy something that we just want.

Wouldn’t that be fun?

This is how your middle/low income friends are using their stimulus money.