Engaging In The Stupidest Of Passtimes

Counting chickens before they hatch.

Or in my case, counting the money from my mom's estate before it's accounted.

At one time, all I expected was half of the proceeds from the sale of her condo. I saw papers when I was out in Colorado that seem to indicate that it will be substantially more than just half the condo.

The condo should sell for between $95 and 120k. Mom paid $102k in December. I get half of that.

I found paperwork that indicates that there is $426k in her various retirement accounts. I get half of those as well. The paper I read was dated March 5th, 2007. Mom died in May, so I imagine there could be a lot of medical paid from those accounts. My sister thinks that Mom's insurance and medicaid paid all her bills, so perhaps there is not much difference between the 3-5-07 and time of death. I have been led to expect 1/3 of the retirement accounts to be sucked up by taxes.

So, $51k from the condo and estate sale, $142k from the retirement accounts. That sure seems like a lot of money doesn't it?

We have a list of things we wanna do (not particular order)

Replace house AC and duct work
Convert existing back porch to an office.
Add new back porch behind garage.
Expand living room out onto front porch, eliminating the front porch.
Make the driveway two car.
Privacy fence.
Shed for the yard equipment.
Generator for hurricane preparedness.
Fix the shower in garage bathroom.
Remodel house bathroom, perhaps combined with remodel of garage bathroom.
Replace remaining crank windows.
Paint the crown molding.
New master bedroom furniture
Picnic table.
New patio furniture.
Replace fuse panel with circuit breaker panel.
New washer/drier.
Insulate attic.
Pay Geff back.
Pay Rhonda back.
Buy Marv a G6 tranny and kit.
Toss some bucks at Bev and Bubba (they've been very supportive).
Send Curt on the Power Tour.
New desktops for The Boy and Me, New laptops for The Lovely Harvey, Her Mom, and me.
Real live gun safe.
M-1 Garand.
M-1A.
Trike for The Boy.
Family ring for The Lovely Harvey.
Adopt (finally!) The Boy. The Boy McThag has such a nice ring, doesn't it?
Two pairs of inserts for The Lovely Harvey's shoes so she can wear something besides dress shoes.
Fix the puppy. (SNIP SNIP)
Lots of nice clothes for The Lovely Harvey.
Engine/Tranny upgrade for the Biscayne
Paint/Hood/Rims/Tires for Biscayne.
Instrument upgrades for Biscayne.
Rear disc brakes for Biscayne.
Paint/Hood/Body for 9C1.

That's one hell of a wish list, huh? Paying back the people we owe and getting the house repairs done are the #1 priority for me. Then adopting The Boy, then the rest. But since the planning for mods to my car are nice and distracting, it seems like that is my sole priority. Nope. I wanna do a lot to my car, but a house with some value is more important.