So What Do We Make Of This?

For a pretty non religious person I seem to think God is sending me messages quite a bit. Things happen in interesting ways around here and I sometimes think that if there is a God maybe he's trying to convert me himself... I know... how very narcissistic of me. Or maybe life is filled with meaningless coincidences. Or maybe I'm psychic. Only time will tell.

Okay so here is the latest... make of it what you will...

As you know we have been trying to sell Mr F's Volvo sedan. We bought it used a couple of years ago and snagged a really good deal on it. It was already 5 years old and we paid less than it's actual value. It was worth about 12K and we got it for 10K.

Well, I've been really worried about our 2008 taxes. Mr F had still had his freelance work while we were in Michigan and we hadn't paid any estimated taxes. In 2007 we owed around 10K in taxes. This year I knew wouldn't be as much since we only had about 6 months of ever dwindling freelance work.... but I didn't know how much we would owe. I thought it best to guesstimate 50% of our 2007 tax bill which would mean we could need about 5K in a month and a half.

We don't have 5K sitting around since we didn't get Mr F's bonus in December as we had hoped/expected. The only disposable asset we have is Mr F's car. The truth is we don't need that nice of a 2nd car. Up until he bought that one he had driven two junkers into the ground. We figured we could sell it, pay our taxes, and then just get another piece of crap that would suffice for his 4 mile drive downtown. Or better yet he could ride his bike (the one he bought 2 years ago because he was going to commute to work on it).

So Mr F priced his car at what he felt was a good (for us) price. It wasn't the most expensive Volvo listed but it was up there. It's a beautiful car so that seemed warranted. Plus if someone wants it at that price... we need as much as we can get.

No one wanted it. We've had it listed for weeks. People came but no one bit. Mr F kept lowering his price little by little.

At the same time I've been doing our taxes on Taxact.com. It's free for your federal return and you pay for your state returns. Better yet you don't pay until you file. Up until now we have used an accountant to prepare our taxes. We pay around $200- $300 for that. Mr F has his business stuff and we have investment stuff... and it is just what we have always done. This year we don't have $200 -$300 sitting around so I figured I'd give this online resource a shot. If I felt like I couldn't do it I could just send the stuff to our accountant... and I would have organized our stuff in the meantime. Plus (the real reason behind all this to begin with) I'd get a pretty good estimate of what we'd owe.

I am so glad I did this!! We don't owe any federal money and we only owe Michigan less than a thousand bucks. That is a huge relief and an upside to our down turned financial existence. So with that information in hand I told Mr F that it wasn't imperative that we sell his car. I mean the worst thing that could happen is we sell a well maintained used car (that we own outright) for a junker that might need 2K put in it 6 months later (it's happened). If we don't need the money why take the gamble... we can always sell it at a lower price if we need to down the road. But it's used and it's getting older and since it is a high end car it's not going to depreciated much year to year... we could sell it next year for a very similar price.

We felt good about that decision. I thought it was a prudent smart choice.

Then the phone started ringing. In less than 24 hours two people have made offers on the car.

I feel like I'm being tested. But I don't know what is the right answer. Stick with my gut and hold onto the car... or sell it for less than we want to get the cash reserve?

Remember when I thought God was telling me to homeschool? But I didn't do it I put Kid in her private school. Then she loved it and I dismissed a high power intervention. Then Mr F lost his freelance & bonus and it turned out if we had homeschooled we would have avoided financial ruin. I thought at the time that the message was about Kid's happiness but then later in retrospect maybe it was about our financial situation. You know? If you were to side on that having been a providential message.