Hello my terrific friends! Welcome back to the party. January afforded me incredible opportunities to practice gratitude and my “make do” muscles while getting very clear and appreciable evidence that going no sugar impacted my anxiety at unbelievable levels.

Truly having all that sh*t hit the fan in the middle of a January Whole30 was a blessing. Seeing myself in action really gave me a load of proof of just what a difference it made and reinforcing my commitment to food freedom in the future.

If it is possible to believe – even more wonderful things happened in January! All that kindness and generosity I discussed in the last post just kept happening all month.

A client dropped off a couple dozen eggs she over ordered by accident. I go through eggs like no one’s business. Sometimes 5 dozen or more a month.
My dog recovered from his illness and I was able to open myself to boarding again.
Another client gave me a $200 gift card to SouthWest because, “We don’t fly SouthWest anymore.” UM. YES!! Hello future vacation!

I joined a running group back in December at the urging of a friend and the support level is outrageous! I have only had a few runs with people, but the group is super active and boosts me every day even when I solo. They have contests and challenges that are very active and I won a recent challenge which was a reward of 25% off at LuLuLemon. I won’t use that, so I asked her to reuse it for a future challenge. It could have ended at that, BUT. IT DIDN’T. Because January is the month of amazing things!
She then listed a few other items she had in her catalog of challenge prizes and I am so happy to report one was a free code to enter a local 5k.

Since I started running (I say running, but it’s intervals, yo) I have wanted to schedule a 5k to coincide with the end of my couch to 5k training program, but I just couldn’t stomach paying $35-55 fees for runs I do all the time. I still wanted to participate and celebrate the completion, but my frugal muscles said no. So I hemmed and I hawed and decided I would just do my own “official” 5k one day, but now, I don’t have to! I’m officially entered to a 5k coming in March.

I thought the running group was local, but it turns out it is a national group with local chapters. Check out yours! Moms/she Runs this town.

You would think: “Wow! What a great month! What more could possibly happen?!”

I WILL TELL YOU.

All this wonderful stuff happened all month long so I decided if the universe was going to be so accommodating I would issue it a challenge. On January 22nd I posted on Facebook the following:

I keep putting things out there and good stuff keeps happening! My prescriptions magically cost half as much today. Dog food just showed up at my door out of nowhere. So universe: Here you go. I’m challenging you. 2010 or newer Dodge Grand Caravan or Chrysler Town and Country for a price I can handle. I need a lower to the ground car for the dogs to jump in and out of – prefer leather seats (uh dogs), and also so I can work with/flip larger items without borrowing a truck. Stow and Go seats for the win!

I kid you not that very same evening I logged onto a local auction house that I follow and they had 15 Dodge Grand Caravans 2010 or newer that were fleet vehicles released from the local municipality. I inspected them as best I could and narrowed it down to four that I would be comfortable bidding on.

I was up until 1am because of dynamic bidding, but I won my van and after all is said and done – fees included – I came more than $1,500 under blue book. I had it inspected post auction and it has been wonderfully maintained (as expected) and has loads of wear left on the tires and brakes and is good to go.

Now, this was probably the worst time in the world for this to happen financially, but I saw this same thing happen 2-3 years ago at the auction house and I know they only release vehicles every few years. I challenged the universe and it answered so the opportunity had to be taken!

I bought it outright on my credit card and got all the airline miles. I then utilized a 0% interest until 5/2020 balance transfer offer with an only 1% balance transfer fee. I’ve already made a payment since my dog bookings are up again and once my car sells, it will be paid off in full. I could have waited a few weeks to do the balance transfer because my car could sell any day of course, but that was causing me some worry in regards to being hit with interest. $60 balance transfer fee bought me all the time in the world to see the car sold to the right buyer for the right price and relieved me of any worries. #worthit

And now, after all the wonderful, here is the last crappy thing after a slew of crappy things in January. I misunderstood self employment taxes. I made assumptions and didn’t think I would have to pay much. I was wrong. I also didn’t pay them quarterly.
If you know anything about this, you know I screwed up. At this point, I believe I owe between $1,500-$2,000 to the IRS. Since I have $0 personal income tax liability and extensive medical deductions I thought I wouldn’t owe very much. HA. WRONG.

It appears that the next thing to do will be to open an LLC. I feel very out of my depth and am not confident in my ability to do this correctly, but I’ll go to the library. I’ll get some books. I’ll do some research and I’ll figure it out. That’s another 2019 goal to add to my goal list. I know. I’m super behind on the times posting about 2019 goals, but I needed this time to determine what my goals were. I get tangled up in everyone else’s sometimes and what would be cool or impressive instead of really working my values, but I got it now. Just need to put pen to paper.

I am waiting to file my taxes until the last minute to buy myself some time. I’ll keep working on it and hopefully be able to save enough to pay them between now and then or at least make a decent sized payment upon filing.

Lots of terrific things. One crap thing. I’ll figure it out. Life is good, even when it is hard. Rise to the challenge my friends!