A yoga update is that it turns out I can’t use “getting better at yoga”/”seeing if I like yoga” as motivation for doing yoga. It doesn’t work, and I end up hissing “Are plank, cobra, and downward dog LITERALLY THE ONLY YOGA POSES YOU KNOW??” at the video and then giving up in tears. I can only do yoga medicinally: for back pain, or for joint pain/flexibility, or for stress management. I find I WILL do yoga if I think “What issue will I work on today?,” and then choose a dose of yoga for what most ails me. The stress/anxiety ones are particularly good, I think, because not only do they feel like I am working on stress, but also they tend to be slower and stretchier and less sweaty/vigorous.
Speaking of stress management, it is a little concerning to me how stressed I am recently, considering I don’t have anything truly serious to be stressed about. This morning I lay awake at 4:30 with my brain asking me how I’d cope if something REALLY TERRIBLE yet TOTALLY ROUTINE and ABSOLUTELY EXPECTED life-wise, such as illness/accident/death, happened to me or mine. My brain then helpfully listed many of those possible happenings, with accompanying helpful little movies to let me imagine how each one might feel, until I gave up on sleep and got up for the day (and did stress-management yoga, which also felt like it did some nice things for my aging knees).
The other day, and I am going to breeze past this story as quickly as possible because I am still finding it don’t-think-about-it levels of stressful, I discovered accidentally that our homeowner insurance had lapsed. I told myself not to freak out, and that I would just call and get it reinstated, and please stop mentally rehearsing terrible-outcome conversations in advance. It turned out I was actually correct to freak out, for reasons that are still unclear to me, but the upshot is that instead of paying $900/year for our homeowner insurance, we have to pay $2600/year, and we are lucky that any insurance company was willing to cover us at all; our former insurance company (National General, the one who says they sent us a bill, but we did not receive it, and we were not inspired to think of it without a bill) (though YOU CAN BET that “Homeowner Insurance Day” is now a recurring holiday on my calendar) would not insure us at any price, nor would the company (Amica) we used for nearly twenty years for our old house without ever missing a payment or making a claim. (After a year of this new expensive coverage, we can call and get a new quote, and we will very likely have better choices, IF we haven’t had a claim during that time. So if you believe in magical thinking of any sort, if you could please send little protective-dome thoughts to surround my house for the next year or so, until we get more reasonable insurance. After that we can take our chances like everyone else.)
When I went downstairs to tell Paul the results of my 1.5 hours on the phone, I almost opened my remarks by saying it had been a disaster. Immediately my mind rejected the word. A DISASTER would be if our recent plumbing incident HAD flooded the entire downstairs and basement with sewage, and THEN we discovered we were not insured. THAT would have been a disaster. If THAT had happened, I would have considered “happened to think of the insurance, called and had to pay a $1700 penalty for letting it lapse but DID get covered again, and thank goodness nothing happened while it was lapsed” the DREAM FANTASY OUTCOME. If something bad happened to a parent or sibling or child, and I were given the opportunity to undo that bad thing by switching to the timeline with the LATE FEE, I would GRAB IT GRASPINGLY WITH BOTH HANDS
And in terms of household expenses, $1700 is, well, it’s not NOTHING, but certainly I think of household repairs as coming in units of thousands or tens of thousands. Refinishing hardwood floors: thousands. Repainting the exterior: thousands. Metal roof: tens of thousands. Remodel: tens of thousands. A $1700 expense can be seen as a normal sort of household expense. Sure, it is disheartening to pay it when theoretically it could have been avoided, but it could perhaps be filed with other accidents that could theoretically have been avoided: if the child hadn’t left the water running; if the leak under the sink had been discovered sooner; if we hadn’t left that back door unlocked; if we’d worked harder on ridding ourselves of the mouse issue before they chewed through those wires and started the electrical fire. And so on. Things happen, and that’s all they ever do.
Ugh.
I, too, have been ANXIOUS lately. I’ve decided (and I feel better for absolutely no reason the past 2 days, things have legit gotten MORE stressful) that it’s March. My vitamin D and sun reserves have depleted themselves. Air quality is at its lowest before everything blooms and blossoms and starts filtering again. I have no idea if this is true, but we’re going with it. I also vaguely remember other Marches also doing this thing but not as much. But other Marches were not in this weird pandemic-limbo and I’m about (cross fingers, don’t jinx) to go to my annual Jazz Fest sojourn for the first time in THREE YEARS and it’s the first thing I’ve done and there is an airplane and staying with friends and….
It is a bummer about the stupid insurance. Insurance is stupid. AAAAAHHHHHHHHH. I mean, sometimes it is helpful, but oftentimes it would be just as helpful to save that premium money in your own bank account for years and years because that’s all you’ll get out of them anyway.
I hope it all brightens up for you. And the blooming, filtering, oxygen replenishing plants are helpful to your state of mind.
I think that plumbing/water/sewer issues are absolutely the worst. Here’s what we are going through:
We inherited a 100-year-old house in a fantastically beautiful location, but it has issues.
One of them is that we do not have wastewater management in our town. Everyone has their own septic system, and ours happens to be a cesspool which, if we were to sell our house (we’re not), we would have to upgrade to a proper septic system. We decided, for a number of reasons, that we would go ahead and do the upgrade anyway. (it’s the right thing to do for the environment; we want to do projects and we need to know WHERE the septic will ultimately go before we have to rip up landscaping/patio etc.)
So we’ve started down the road of getting an engineering plan, and once that is completed (thousands of dollars), we will have the septic system installed (many tens of thousands of dollars). So far this process has taken six months and we are barely begun.
Now, we learn that our town is thinking about wastewater management, and they would, under one scenario, start with the part of town that is where we live. It’s all very early thinking/planning, but the year 2025 is being kicked around. No one has answers (of course), but do we really want to spend $40,000 on a septic system that MAY be obsolete in 5-10 years? Mind you, we have already paid for the plan, which would be money thrown away if we don’t use the plan.
That is frustrating!
And, naturally, if you do the work, they will bring in sewer and your house will be first on the list! But if you do not they will at least hem and haw forever and start across town.
UGH these are exactly the kinds of scenarios that my brain cannot leave alone when I wake up to use the bathroom or something at 4 am. I wish I had some good advice about how to stop one’s brain from going over these situations again and again and AGAIN at 4 am, but I haven’t found the answer yet myself. I can offer only sympathy
Man, that is frustrating. And only slightly less irritating than having finished everything and THEN finding out they were putting in sewers. Though likely that would’ve felt like a gut punch, one worth tens of thousands of dollars.
I’d first check and see if there is a way to step back from the plan despite it being paid, even if it means you lose some money. If that’s not an option, I’d find out for how long The Plan will be valid and usable, and if I needed to do any active work to keep it viable.
And then, if it turned out that waiting at least on the building part would be an option, that’s what I would do. One, because that kind of work is hugely aggravating to live through, and if at least part of that can be avoided, I’m all for it. You still won’t be able to get around a lot of the stuff that will come up when the city comes to your street, like the street being torn open etc., so you might as well make the work needed just on your land part of that whole deal.
And two, several tens of thousands of dollars is a LOT of money, money which with an old house would almost certainly be quite useful in other places for repairs or necessary upgrades. That’s a good bit of new roof, or new flooring throughout with money left over, or a new kitchen, or a greenhouse, or (less fun) a heating system upgrade… and likely unfun things I’d never consider, not being a homeowner myself.
So if there is a chance I could not pay all that money, and the tradeoff were to just do nothing for a few years, I’d be on it. I’d do nothing so hard! Especially since if nothing much happened even though you’re 6 months in on all this, you might get to a point where you’re finishing your tank while the city’s work begins, or worse, ends, and that would be so frustrating.
That choice would of course subject to change, so if you found out that the city would indeed start at the wrong end of town, or that your cesspool situation becomes untenable and things back up into the house or whatever, you can always decide to go ahead with getting your own system anyway.
ALSO, if the city does bring you sewer, often homeowners are assessed some portion of the cost. Which can be a lot. My IL’s had septic and their unincorporated neighborhood rejected going to city sewer several times because even though it would ultimately be a good thing, many people don’t want to pay their assessed portion.
So if there’s any way of finding out how firm those plans are, now is definitely the time.
Thank goodness you discovered the home insurance issue BEFORE you needed it! You’re totally right, the penalty sucks BUT it is better than an actual home insurance disaster.
As for yoga, if you want my opinion, I think using it for stress/ anxiety relief, as well as pain relief, is probably the best use for yoga. Yoga for lower backs and hips, and stress in general, is so lovely and I think that is the exact right way to think of it!
I am sorry for all the stress. The homeowners’ insurance would get me, too.
We have an old house, too, and we also have mice. Sometimes we have more and sometimes we have fewer but we always have some, even with pest control involvement. It’s a worry.
I have found that song useful sometimes, when I am upset about things that are out of my control, mostly snow days.
https://allfortheloveofyou.com/things-happen/
I wonder — and this is just totally a random thought — if the homeowner insurance bill could have been thrown out with the other items that were placed in the trash (I think some other items were trashed??) during the Housecleaner Incident?? Does the timeline work? Although I would totally believe the bill didn’t make it to you. I have a life insurance company that routinely doesn’t send me bills and then sends alarming YOUR COVERAGE IS ABOUT TO LAPSE notices.
My in-laws could easily pay off their home, but they didn’t want the risk of forgetting insurance or taxes (which are both paid out of escrow from mortgages) so they chose to keep a small mortgage so that this exact issue wouldn’t happen. It’s a Roman Know Thyself kind of thing. It’s possible they’d forget so they wanted it to be someone else’s responsibility. So, if you do need a huge chunk of cash to deal with something that happens, you might consider the mortgage route so that it will once again be someone else’s responsibility to remember and pay.
Deep. Breaths. That is an instruction to me because GAH. We too have had an experience where a “bill” was “sent” for insurance we never made a claim on nor missed a payment on in years, and yet the “bill” did not arrive and so we lost our coverage. I think we discovered it by fluke fairly soon and got the company to reinstate it but wow. It was a heart pounding few moments. Your $1700 is WELL SPENT.
We had this exact thing happen with the homeowners insurance for my mother’s house, which we now keep as a rental property. The agent who handled our business left the company and they apparently did not reassign a new agent, so they don’t seem to have sent a bill and certainly no late notices. My sister happened to think of it, called them, and they cheerfully confirmed that it would now be thousands and thousands of dollars per year to insure the house. GAH.
For me it was medical insurance. I can’t remember why one insurance plan was stopping. Maybe it was when my husband quit the job that had the insurance and then was hired as a contractor so he didn’t get benefits. Doesn’t matter. What matters is that I did not get things squared away with the new self-insurance in a way that we would have overlap. We, in fact, had an entire month with no health insurance. The stress dreams that month. Yikes. I think I held my breath the entire month until the new insurance kicked in.
Re: Homeowners insurance. I imagine that you went to other local agencies to see if they had a insurance company they deal with that is less expensive? Also, in my state, MA, if you bundle your car insurance with homeowners, it’s hundreds less.
If your old policy was grandfathered, then I can’t help but wonder whether they sent a bill. They would also send a late notice. Your mortgage company would also need to be informed (if you have a mortgage) as they are the lien holder.
Sometimes I despise people. Their mistake, your penalty. Ah, I guess it’s March/April and I need some Vitamin D or Florida!
Thinking of you. And I don’t know if Geico insures in your area, but I have found them easy to work with and have set up auto-renew and auto-pay.
I am not bendy enough at the hips to do yoga (ie, I cannot and have not ever been able to touch my toes when my legs are straight), but I can do other stretching exercises. Maybe listening to a physical therapist video might be more your speed?
The insurance thing IS a stressor, for sure! And thank goodness you didn’t find out about the lapse after something even more horrific than the latest horror (which, at the very least, did not require a call to the insurance company).
Personally, I’m in knots over here about *waves hands wildly* EVERYTHING! Which includes the weather, The Husband and his ability to keep me from killing him (you can correctly assume his retirement might be at the root of this one), the whole will COVID come storming back (I’m very afraid it is), etc. The list is endless.
This must be when you finally realize – you ARE a grown up…and it’s not as fun as you’d hoped when you were a kid.
Re insurance: I’m surprised your mortgage lender didn’t alert you – having your home insured is a term in your mortgage policy. You may wonder how I know they may alert you.
Our mortgage holder is responsible for paying the mortgage. They want this responsibility because they want to make sure their collateral will be there if we ever stop paying them. And every year around a certain time they send us letters telling us we better hand over the money for them to pay the insurance. And then they just, like, don’t pay it. The first time it happened, we found out because we got a letter from the insurance company saying our coverage had lapsed. So my husband called frantically for an explanation. Then he had to pay the premium himself, again, and hand over proof of having given the money to the mortgage holder to avoid a penalty. But we did avoid a penalty and they continued to insure us.
Now, every year, after the mortgage company gets their money, my husband starts calling the insurance company to find out if they got paid, and is ready to pay again before the due date if they don’t. This past year, the insurance didn’t get paid. The mortgage company INSISTED they sent it. But the insurance company INSISTED it was not received. So we paid it again. Turns out the mortgage company sent the payment to the wrong address.
Every year we do this song and dance because the mortgage company doesn’t trust us to pay the insurance ourselves, but they won’t actually take responsibility for paying it, either. Every time we end up double-paying the premium, we eventually get the money back several months later, but it’s such a hassle.
As someone who decoupled taxes/insurance from our mortgage after refinancing because I am a household budget micromanager, I find this story deeply infuriating. My sympathies!
The lying-awake-at-night and feelings of stress you describe seem totally normal in a PTSD kind of way – you’ve just been through two really awful situations that came out of the blue and couldn’t have been predicted. Now you’re on high alert for how to deal with another such situation. I can very much relate to this response! I think good ole time may be the best answer for it, providing no more surprises pop up.
I have to confess that your plumbing issue made me spend DAYS researching how I would deal with such a problem (and pay for it), because my house is 120 years old and my husband was the one who dealt with any and all plumbing issues. Now that he’s dead I have no idea what the state of our plumbing might be. I actually feel better knowing the possible signs of roots in my pipes and stuff like that – something I’d never even considered before I read your post. So thank you, from the bottom of my heart!
Total tangent, but I read, “I think good ole time may be the best answer for it…” not as an instruction to let time pass, but as an instruction to party. I spent waaay too long trying to figure out how that would help, because I really wanted to believe it would. :D
After coming very close to the same insurance scenario we have our insurance directly billed to a CC every month. There is a small charge for doing it this way but it saved me a lot of stress.
Writing this comment while happily paying someone an exorbitant amount to comb thru my daughters’ hair to remove and kill lice. Things happen.
Been there, Mari :)
Want to know my theory? I’ve just lived through maybe the three hardest years of my life. For context: Bought our first home, had our second baby. House flooded within a month, insurance company dropped us after our claim. House has gone on to flood 4 more times (eventually tracked down to a drain to the side of our lower-ground level, we are insured but can’t claim because we can’t be dropped by any more companies. SO HELPFUL.) Baby doesn’t sleep, pandemic hits, the endless home-school-work juggle ensues on and off for two years. Baby becomes a toddler, still doesn’t sleep. Oldest child has BIG feelings and struggles a lot with any change of routine which is… less than ideal when school is all over the show.
So fast forward to now. It’s all relatively calm. One kid in school, one kid in nursery. For now. Work is fairly standard. For now. We are healthy and the adults are vaccinated (kids not yet eligible here). House hasn’t flooded in a while, drain company have done some work that *might* have stopped it. Insurance premiums gradually dropping a bit. And I HAVE NO RESILIENCE LEFT. I’m exhausted. I feel so traumatised by everything we’ve been through that insomnia has reared its ugly head and I can’t really pinpoint an exact reason why. It feels like my whole body is tensed, all the time, for something else to go wrong. And I can only assume I’m not the only one who feels this way? We’re all just waiting for things to fall apart in new or old ways.
Oh Cece. I just want to bring you a coffee and a blanket. Good lord.
One year, my husband forgot to do the health insurance enrollment questionnaire for our family. The insurance dropped our 1-year-old entirely. He and I were auto-enrolled and thus were insured, but our costs were higher because the company went with their default worst-case settings. They put us both in the system as if we were worst-case scenarios from a health standpoint–as if we were smokers with a bunch of other issues. We couldn’t get well-care insurance for our kid at all because we were outside of the enrollment period. I ended up getting catastrophic coverage and just paying cash every time I took her to the doctor. Didn’t have to lean on the catastrophic coverage, thank goodness, but: what a mess.
I now check in with him every year to make sure he’s done it.
My old boss used to say, If you can fix it with money, it’s not really a problem. My husband scoffs at that, because many people don’t have the money to fix things. But I think there’s something to it.