Our finances have been travelling pretty well, so lately I've been feeling that maybe I don't need to have blog label "trying to survive the rollercoaster ride of my finances"... and then I'm reminded why I have that label up there.

1) to remind me that my husband's work is seasonal, so when savings get to a certain point not to get too complacent, because there are three months of the year where work is hard to come by and savings are needed.
2) because he's self-employed there can be big ups and downs.

Right now we're dealing with a sucky small business problem. Hopefully it will be short-lived, and expenses will not balloon out in this time.

He's been lucky enough to work for about 12-18 months (somewhere in that area) for pretty much one guy at a new homes company. The company pays weekly-fortnightly (some of B's jobs take longer than a week, which is the reason why I say weekly-fortnightly) and we've never had a problem with them.

But.... the guy changed jobs. (as these things happen)He told B that he wants B to do his jobs for him because he loves the quality of B's work (he's a great carpenter), and there will be so much work he should have 1, maybe 2 apprentices. We were talking about getting an apprentice but we're still slowly getting back on our feet after him being out of work so long. So we said we'd think about getting 1, but as we are being conservative, nothing has come of this. (We don't want to hire staff until we know for sure that there is enough work for them, otherwise we wouldn't be able to afford it).

So he changed about a week ago, and B just started working for him at his new job this week. B finds out that they pay fortnightly too, but there is a waiting period first of a week, so you are looking at receiving money in 3 weeks (not great). Day 2 of working there (today) and the other carpenter for this company, who happens to be related- it's a family owned company, finds out the supervisor has got somebody outside of the company doing carpentry work and completely cracked it. As he is family and has six employees, the new supervisor had to apologise and state that B will only be doing one job for him, he will use the family-owned carpenter now.

Lucky we didn't hire someone!

So he is looking at one week of work, which will be paid in 3 weeks, and the previous company he was working for do have work for him (luckily) but not for a couple of weeks. UGH.

The four months of no work taught me what rock bottom is for us financially, so I know what we can function on. We should be ok. But we are both on the same page (discussions have been had), that we don't have a lot of money to spend. That way if we really need something we can dip into the EF, but it's a last resort.

We have three weeks of $567 per week to live off including business expenses (where it gets dicey- B's car can cost $100 a week to fill if he gets a full week of work).

I saved $149 to the mortgage, as the difference between old and new mortgage, and the monthly insurance savings. I updated Banking the Difference, but I'm guessing that's my last snowflake for 3 weeks or so.

Wish us luck to make it through the next few weeks with little out of the ordinary expenses guys!