Today I am thankful . . .

Things I am grateful for this year.

1.  I am thankful for my son, who I have gotten to watch experience life through his fresh new eyes. Thank you for letting me be your Mommy.

2.     I am thankful for my husband.  He amazes each and every day, you are a wonderful father and husband.

3.     I am thankful for my family [including my husband’s family] – their unconditional love and support, has helped me in more ways than I will ever be able to repay them for.

4.     I am thankful for my co-workers and boss.  Their support this year, bringing dinners, and cheering me up was more than I could ever ask for.

5.     I am thankful for my friends (close and far).  From cards and emails, to Facebook posts, to the occasionally phone call, thank you all. And to those that just posted adorable pictures of their children or pets, thank you, as your posts helped get me through a lot of sleepless nights and cheered me up while battling cancer this year.

6.     I am thankful for my neighbors, who stopped by to check on us, or cheered us up whenever we were out and about.  Thank you for being there.

7.     I am thankful for the Doctors, who helped both my son and me this year.  Each day you have given us is a precious gift and I am thankful for the opportunity to watch my son grow.  And my therapist who has given me hope that I will have full range of motion in my arms again some day, and has given me the chance to start becoming self sufficient.

8.   I am thankful for my iPad, as it was my constant companion while others were sleeping, and when my range of motion in my arms would not allow me to do anything, I was always able to use the iPad! J

9.     I am grateful for the ability to sleep in my bed again.  After sleeping in a recliner for much of this year (due to nausea, surgeries, etc).  I am happy to be sleeping in my bed again.

10. Truly I am thankful for each and every morning.  I wake up knowing how today is another gift, and our time here is unknown.  I am grateful that I have today!

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

My Cancer Journey - Reconstruction Process

For me the time after my surgery was the worst part of the entire Cancer process so far.  Looking back and knowing what I now know, I would have made some different decisions.  I hope that my experience will help others.

After 3 days in the hospital I was finally released to come home.  I could barely move my arms, and was in a lot of pain.  I was taking a number of different pain killers [Tramadol, Robaxin, Atavian, Percocet].  Some were for muscle spasms, some for general pain.  Every 3-4 hours I needed something to help with the pain.

I had two Jackson-Pratt drains on each side.  These removed excess fluid build up in the areas where they removed the breast tissue.  I was lucky, and after 1 week, they removed a drain from each side.  And after 2 weeks removed the final two drains.  [I have heard some people that had the drains up to 5 weeks, and they were annoying, and I was having discomfort where they came out of my skin, so I was glad to have them out].

Once the drains came out, and the external stitches were removed, the Plastic Surgeon starting the "filling" process.  I would go in twice a week and he would insert a needle into the Expanders that were put in during the mastectomy surgery and fill each breast with 60cc of saline.  This caused my pectoral muscles to stretch as the expanders were placed in between my pec muscle.

What I didn't know was how rapid this really was.  After doing some research most patients are filled once per week up anywhere from 30cc to 80cc.  I was getting 120cc each week in each side.  The goal was to reach 480cc in each side.  This would allow me to end up with something close to a 34B or 34C bra size, smaller than I was but still a decent size for my body frame.

The reason I was doing rapid expansion, was because I still needed to have radiation surgery on my left side.  Because I was diagnosed was Stage IIIa cancer, it was determined to be in my best interest in order to prevent reoccurrence to have radiation.  Not realizing that they could not do radiation during the expansion process since there is metal in the expanders, I have to have the expanders filled, then removed, the implants put in, and heal from that surgery before we could start radiation.  The other reason I was given is that they want to start radiation no later than 12 weeks after the mastectomy surgery.

So in order to meet the 12 week timeframe and give me enough time to recover from the implant surgery, we proceeded with the rapid fill.

Each time I would go in for a fill I would spend the next 24-48 hours in severe pain, unable to sleep.  [I should mention that I have been sleeping in my recliner since my mastectomy surgery on August 28th, at this point, as I cannot lay flat on my back and I am terrified when I cannot get out of bed on my own].  After 48 hours, my muscle seemed to have stretched enough that I can get a little comfort.  Then it is time for the next fill.  I went through about 3 weeks of this, and then I had one fill where I was literally putting my feet through the floorboards of the car and writhing in pain on the way home.  It turns out the expander was now pushing on nerves in my arms and sides and I was just miserable.

We took a week off from filling, and then I came back.  Taking the week off helped me feel a little better and start to get a little sleep, but emotionally I was a wreck and I was terrified to go back for more.  Luckily I had one more fill which got me to 480ccs.  The plastic surgeon wanted to go a little more, but I finally put my foot down and said I was done.  I couldn't handle the pain and the emotional stress this was causing me.

During this time I had to be off of work as I was taking so many pain killers.  I was still not able to use my left arm, and I had very little range of motion in my right arm.  I didn't seem to be healing, and I was starting to get back spasms.  I also realized that I was walking like my 80 year old grandmother, hunched over with my shoulders rolled forward, and I was cradling my left arm.

I decided to go see a therapist, and was referred to an Occupational Therapist who specializes in lymphadema since my left arm was starting to swell slightly [why no one sent me to a lymphodema specialist prior to surgery to measure my arm and track changes I will never know, but if you are having lymph nodes removed speak up and get measured for a sleeve it could save you a lot of pain].  I still was not able to dress myself, and needed help showering and washing my hair.

I went into the Occupational Therapist [OT] a broken woman.  I was in tears as this was my last hope to get some help it felt like to me.  This was a big turning point for me.  I will share those experiences in a separate post, as this has gotten long.

Just a few words of advice and encouragement for others:
- It will get better, it truly takes time to heal, but the pain goes away
- If you are in pain, speak up.  Don't assume like I did it is because you are a wuss.  You really should not be in that much pain.  I spoke up too late and did a LOT of damage to my muscles and tendons.

Next steps:
- Occupational Therapy and then Radiation

What to do with all that Free Time

While I know in reality, free time is quickly taken by new activities, as I found when I graduated from my MBA.  I kept telling myself I would have all this free time, yet I never seemed to have it.

So I wanted to start a "bucket list" of things, that I wish I could do now but can't because I am working so many hours right now.  Hopefully I can refer back to this when I am retired.  I am especially looking for things that make me happy, but are low cost and not wasteful [i.e. a shopping spree at the Mall is OUT.  Taking Baby Breeze to the park in the middle of the week on a gorgeous Fall day is IN!]

So here is my list so far:
- Take Baby Breeze to and from School every day
- Take Baby Breeze to the park on a beautiful day just because the weather is nice
- Take Baby Breeze to the Community pools
- Take Baby Breeze to a local farm
- Take Baby Breeze to Museums [Art museum, Airplane museum, Science museum]
- Take Baby Breeze to the library at least weekly
- Enjoy breakfast with my family every morning
- Go for a walk in the middle of the day while everyone else is at work
- Go on family picnics and explore Nature
- Go to the grocery store [not at 5 PM or on the weekend!]
- Go on a 3 week or more vacation to explore others areas of the country [or world] in depth
- Come up with wonderful creative meals for my family which will also improve our health
- Be a "classroom Mom"
- Dry clothing on a clothes line and not a dryer
- Finally organized my closets and cupboards and purge the unnecessary clutter
- Go through ALL those wonderful "Pinterest" Ideas and do some of them
- Get my scrapbooks organized
- Really focus on my photography hobby [get creative with pictures, organized digital files]
- Find ways to give back [volunteering time, reading to kids, helping others achieve financial goals]
- Enjoy preparing for holidays [rather than just rushing through them]
- Spend time with family and friends
- Read a couple books a week to learn new things [use the library, don't buy more books]
- Ride my bike more, and continue to exercise and get fit

Most of these items don't take a lot of money, I am starting to wonder if I really even need that much to retire anymore, or if getting out of the rat race will allow me to spend even less while enjoying life more.

So here is my advice to my future retired self: Enjoy life at a slower pace . . . remember you got out of the rat race so that you didn't have to feel like you were running a race everyday.  Enjoy it!

I would love to hear others suggestions about how to spend their free time.

Living without a credit card

Before Mr. Breeze and I filed Chapter 13, we were always very responsible with credit cards.  We had 3 cards [Visa, Discover, and American Express] and would use them for rewards points, but pay them off at the end of each month.  When we filed for Chapter 13 we were required to cancel all our credit cards (well most of them cancelled us first ).

I didn't know how we were going to survive, I paid for everything with credit cards.  I rarely used cash or checks, and I had no clue what a Debit card was.  But Debit cards were all we were allowed, so I had to learn all about Debit cards.

First Debit cards charges come directly from your bank account, so you are required to have the funds available before you purchase something.  Okay, I could live with that.  We had to build up our checking account a little higher than I was used to keeping it, but the Debit cards forced us to save up before we bought anything [luckily since we always paid off our credit cards this wasn't a huge issue for us].

In the 2 years that I have been using my debit card, here are a few things I learned:
1) I actually spend less when I know it is coming out of my checking account. Plus it forces me to record every last cent (even the $3.00 McDonald's meals, or $0.99 Amazon purchases), when you have to track it you tend to rethink your purchase.
2) Do not use your debit card when it has to be taken out of your sight to be swiped.  Restaurants for example are a prime example.  For one thing the tip does not show up until days later, which really drives me crazy when I find our account balance does match.  Secondly, the one time we did use it at a restaurant it was taken and compromised.  The waiter had a swipe machine which allowed him to create a duplicate of our card.  Within days our card was being used to purchase food, gas and online purchases in Canada.  Luckily Chase Bank caught it, and quickly notified us so we could stop usage on the card.  I was actually compensated for the charges!  Hurray!  But it was definitely an eye opening experiences.
3) Using Debit cards for Travel can be a problem.  Hotels and Rental Car companies put large holds on funds in your bank account in order to protect themselves and you cannot access those funds, so you might accidentally become overdrawn or find yourself in a strange location with no access to your money.  We have learned to compensate by making sure we carry some cash, and beefing up the amount in our checking before we leave.

Other than missing out on the great rewards points that we used to get on our credit cards, we really have been able to function the same, except I don't have to pay a bill at the end of the month.  So debit cards have been a saving grace for us when our credit cards were taken away.

So when our Bankruptcy is over will I go back to credit cards?  I will probably get just one card that will allow me to have more convenience when we travel, and has a decent rewards or cash back program.  But I truly have released myself of the need to have a credit card at all, and for that I say  . . . So Long Credit Cards!

Dear Birth Mom - Year One

We do not know anything about our son's birth parents.  The mother who choose to give him life rather than abort him.  The wonderful woman who made the hardest decision I could possibly imagine, in order to give her son a better life knowing that for some reason she couldn't care for him.

As my little guy approaches his first birthday, I sit here and reflect on how he came into our life.  I mourn for his loss of his birth mother, and her loss of her son.  Yet I am so grateful for the opportunity to raise him as my son, to show him how to be a valuable and productive member of society.

If I were to have the opportunity to send her a letter, this is what I would love to tell her:

Dear Birth Mom,

I can not express the joy that your birth son has given us since the day we met him.  I wonder at times, what name you would have given him.  Did you have a nickname that you called him while you carried him for nine months?

I can only imagine that you think of him often and wonder how he is doing, and if you made the right decision.  I would like to share some of the highlights of his first year with you.

He spent 10 days in the hospital, mostly for jaundice and to run a number of test to ensure he was healthy.  We were allowed to bring him home on Thanksgiving Day, and we were so grateful and thankful that day.  He got to meet his new Paternal Grandparents, his Great Grandfather, Great Aunt and Uncle, and some cousins.  It was a busy day for our little guy.

Since that day we have watched him grow and thrive.  He is a very smart baby, and seems to figure out problems so quickly.  Whether it was discovering that his toy was still under the blanket when he lifted it, or how to open the cabinets, he always found a way.

He turns one today, and he is growing into a confident toddler who loves exploring his world.  He is not walking yet, but can hitch himself around by using the furniture or pushing a chair around.  He is a busy baby, who is constantly on the go until he finally falls asleep at night.

His favorite toys are cars, trucks, and anything that isn't a toy [cardboard box, empty bottle, paper that crinkles].  He loves being outdoors in nature.  And he is such a water bug.  Whether it is the bathtub, his kiddie pool or a giant lake - if there is water he is in it.

He is very independent and while he won't lets us cuddle him often, he can be super sweet and cuddly when he wants to be.  And his laugh is the most wonderful sound in the world!

Thank you!  Thank for you providing me the chance to be a mom, thank you for choosing life for our [yours and mine] son, thank you for giving birth to a very special little boy.

We are looking forward to every year to watch him change and grow.

Sincerely,
Baby Breeze's Mommy

What is Chapter 13?

I thought it might be helpful to give our experience with filing for Bankruptcy under Chapter 13 and what it means.  (Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer or financial analyst, I am just sharing our results and experiences.)

Mr. Breeze and I were caught in what I am calling a Financial Trifecta.

We were not having any financial difficulties until Mrs. Breeze was laid off in December 2008.  While searching for another job, she got an offer in the public sector, half way across the country in Ohio. So in March 2009, Mrs. Breeze moved to Ohio and Mr. Breeze stayed in Arizona until we sold our business, put the house up for sale and gave notice at his job.  He moved to Ohio in August 2009.  We expected to be able to sell our primary Arizona home; however we contacted a realtor and the estimate we were given to sell in this market was about $150,000 less than what we still owed on it [due to the Housing Bubble that burst at the end of 2008].  

We wanted to be able to sell or get out of this house as quickly as possible, tried to determine what options we had – Foreclosure, Short sale, Deed in lieu of foreclosure, Bankruptcy, other?

We were current on all our payments, however it took Mr. Breeze almost a year to find a job in Ohio.

We also had a Rental Property with a 1^st mortgage and a HELOC; which soon became difficult to rent especially being so far away.  We did purchase our primary home in Ohio before Mr. Breeze left his job [probably one of the smartest things we did].

We also sold our business during this time, however approximately a year later the new owner defaulted on the seller financing we provided [she filed Chapter 7, so we could not go after anything].  The primary house finally went into Foreclosure, and that is when we found out that the HELOC could come after us personally and garnish our wages for up to 25 years.  Plus the forgiven debt on the first mortgage could create a phantom "income" and cause a tax bill of close to $60,000.

The Financial Trifecta: Loss of Job, Housing Bubble burst causing Foreclosure, Buyer of Business filing Bankruptcy.

We finally decided to meet with a Lawyer to determine our best course of action, and in fact met with three lawyers who all said Chapter 13 was our best alternative in this case.

What is Chapter 13?

You may have heard of Chapter 7 Bankruptcy, where the court takes all of a persons assets (minus a few things that are protected) and then sells them and pays off the creditors with any monies. If there are not enough funds, the creditors do not get paid.

However the laws changed to introduce Chapter 13, for those in financial difficulties who still had decent incomes and could pay off some or all of their debts.  Each state is a little different, but basically the court determine how much money you need to pay for basic necessities, and any remaining income pays off your debt.  However it is capped at 60 months.  You pay as much as possible over 60 months.

For us, based on our income, we had enough discretionary income [in the eyes of the court] to pay off all of our debt. In fact we are paying off 100% of our creditors over these 60 months. The other benefit for us was that the forgiven debt of the 1st mortgages (on the two properties we had in Arizona) would not be considered "income", so we would not get hit with a huge tax bill.

Using the courts formula we were allowed $3,000 a month to pay our bills including our mortgage on our house in Ohio.  Our remaining monthly income of $2950 would be paid in 60 monthly installments.  We had to  short sell our Rental property in Arizona as part of the deal as it was not protected.

We owed nothing on credit cards, our cars were completely paid off, and we had no student loans.  Our only debt came from 2 Mortgages and 2 HELOC on the 2 properties in Arizona (part of those mortgages was for the business and in hindsight I will NEVER take out a HELOC especially for a business - as we could have walked away from a business loan).  

The benefit of Chapter 13 is that after 5 years we can start rebuilding our credit and have learned to live without that income, so we plan to start putting that money away once it is paid off.  If we didn't file, we would have had a huge tax bill, and the HELOC's could have garnished our wages for up to 25 years.  It also helped us to protect our retirement accounts [so many people dip into their retirement accounts when they get into trouble, but these accounts are protected if you filing Bankruptcy].

We are over halfway done on our Chapter 13.  We received a couple tax returns that the court also took a portion of, so we are actually going to pay off our debt a littler earlier than 60 months.

So there you have it, our Chapter 13 story.  I will be happy to have it paid off and done, but it has helped us to deal with the situation that we were in and we have learned that we can live on a lot less and still manage to survive okay!

Advantages of Pre-Tax Savings

Okay the Breeze family has set a number of goals for 2014, but one of the areas that I am looking to take advantage of is the "Pre-tax" benefits that Mr. Breeze and I are eligible for.

I have always thought I was financially savvy, but I am realizing now I have been going with the flow and utilizing the basics.  There are so many tools that would allow me to put more into savings and I haven't been taking advantage of them.  If I truly want to get serious and retire in 5 years, then now is the time to take advantage of these Pre-tax savings.

So for 2014 we are going to see how much we will benefit by making a few changes.

Mrs. Breeze is required to put 10% of her salary in to the state pension, and 10% of her teaching salary into the state teachers pension [luckily when she files for retirement they will merge these two together].
So she has already been taking advantage of the first 10% pre-tax.

But I am also eligible for:
1) 403(b) which is similar to a 401k in the corporate world, and I can put up to $17,500 away Pre-tax in 2014.
2) Dependent FSA - the IRS allows us to put up to $5000 pre-tax away to pay for daycare expenses.  In the 25% tax bracket that is $1250, over a month of daycare expenses for us.  So basically it is like getting a month free and since we are paying for Daycare expenses anyway why wouldn't you take advantage of this savings.
3) Our HDHP HSA* Savings account allows you to put at $6550 in 2014 for a family.  I am lucky that my employer puts in $2650 for me already, but why am I not taking advantage of the remaining $3900 pre-tax.  Even worse, up until this year, I was paying for medical bills with after-tax money.  Why????  Luckily our medical expenses were low prior to 2013, but this is still another savings I was missing.

Mr. Breeze is now eligible for a 401k through his work, and is allowed up to $17,500 to be saved pre-taxed each year.

I am still a big believer in the Roth IRA, although there is no pre-tax advantage, there are so many other benefits that I plan to still fully fund our IRA each year too.

So here are our changes from 2013 to 2014, I am not going to Max them all out in 2014, but I am taking a huge first step:

1) 403(b): unfortunately we have to wait until our Chapter 13 is paid off in 2015, but then I plan to take full advantage of this!!! So $0 for 2014
2) Dependent FSA - taking full advantage of this one: $5000 for 2014
3) HSA account: starting small - $1440 for 2014 [but this along with the $2650 from my employer allows me to meet the yearly deductible]
4) Mr. Breeze's 401k - we are planning to really hit this one for next year. $17,000 for 2014!


So for 2014 we are reducing our taxable income by: $23,440

That should save us almost $6,000 in taxes, especially since we were about to reach the 28% tax bracket!

If you haven't done so, I highly encourage you to look at all Pre-tax advantages that you have and see how much you can lower your taxable income and increase you savings!

*HDHP HSA is a High Deductible Healthcare Plan - Health Savings Account

Monthly Update - November 2013

I made it back after surgery!  Glad to be back and able to get on the computer again.

Okay, each month I am going to summarize our Net Worth so we can track changes over time.

This post will become our Baseline in which to track increase to Assets, and reduction in debt (however from the graph below you will see that there is some historical data).

Here is our Net Worth Standing for November 1, 2013:

Assets: $594,098.25 - Liabilities: $162,475.14 = Networth: $431,623.11

November 2013

If you like the graph, I recommend checking out YNAB (You Need a Budget).  This software tool allows you to allocate your funds to different categories (similar to the old days where we used to stuff money in envelopes).  It shows some great reports.  I will give a full update on YNAB a future post, but wanted to share where this great graph comes from.

Okay so the great part about the above graph is that my debt has been consistently decreasing since August 2011, and our Net Worth has been going up.

Now that we have our baseline we will track the increase/decrease each month.  Nice to see that while we had a slight decrease in June 2012, we have been increasing month over month, even with fluctuations in the stock market.

Time to set some goals and get that debt paid off!!!