Timing During Chaos

It's not panic shopping, it's just that the careful timing Jim and I follow when we make major purchases suddenly became urgent.

We bought a car. And a new laptop. We bought them now, to avoid the coming tariff chaos that will re-order prices, availability and supply chains. Gulp.

But the thing is, we had laboriously planned these purchases for ages. My old laptop was an 8 year old model, and system upgrades won't be supported next year. It overheated, the battery wouldn't keep a charge, the trackpad mouse was jumpy, and the T key stuck (I had to go back and re-enter it forcefully on every line I typed). 

But it still worked. I was going to get a new one this summer. That was the plan. But they ship from China, and who knows how that will play out. So I now own a brand new expensive laptop and all the keys work like butter.

The car -- that purchase has been in consideration for three years as we saved up the money we thought we'd need. In March of this year we had already gone to the dealer and picked out what we wanted, expecting to wait a few months as he ordered the exact model and options to be shipped in from Japan. 

Our trade-in is a 2015 ten year old car with 100,000 miles. It was time. It is our only car -- for almost 20 years Jim and I have shared one vehicle, jockeying our schedules. We need a reliable car.

But then tariffs. Instead of waiting to order and ship exactly what we wanted, we told the dealer to get us a car already in the US and now we have a new Rav4. Not the features or colors we originally wanted (ugh, a black interior), but the model we wanted and it's fine.

The car, although not shipped from overseas, is still taking a few weeks to arrive at the dealer from another dealer, so we don't have it yet. The laptop already arrived. 

I'm calming my agita over finances by clicking the T key over and over. It's weirdly soothing. Click.

Click.

It felt panic stricken to buy these things so precipitously even though they were long planned and saved for. Actually everything feels panicky, unsettled and odd now. But with our finances tapped out and no more plans*, we'll weather what comes.

* Yeah, no more expensive plans, ha! . . .  we came home last week after a wet April snowstorm and the dining room ceiling was leaking. Badly, enough to fill half a bucket during the storm. Roof repairs are costly. 

Sigh.     $ 💧 $ 💧 $ 💧 $