Honor Thy Father, revisited

Well it's a busy day at the blog. Two post on one day!

 

I told you in a previous post about my new job. That's good news in general.

 

On the other side of my emotions, my dad had colon surgery tuesday of last week.

 

He was doing a good recovery and was sent home last Thrusday night. He spent friday at home. However he started feeling very very ill on saturday and had to be admitted again at the hospital that same saturday. Oh did I mention that it was his birthday too ?

 

I spent most of the weekend with him since I wanted my other brothers to rest so they could look after him during the week when I knew I wouldn't be able to even visit him given my new job and my day job.

 

I won't go into gruesome details of what they had to do to him to improve his health but at one point his digestive system and kidneys weren't working. His blood sugar level was very high and he was unable to sleep due to non-stop hiccups.

 

He is better now, still not out of the woods but at least everything is working again and within normal ranges. It's been almost two weeks since his surgery and he has had only three meals , one of which was probably the one that complicated him back to the hospital. He's lost a lot of weight and it shows because he wasn't fat to start with.

 

As you can imagine at some points during these days I wondered if I would have a father alive for christmas. The guilt of my debt to him consumed me during his worst night. He's retired and living on his pension with basically no savings. He has assets but nothing easily changeable for cash in an event his medical coverage doesn't cover something he really-really needs. He took a loan out for me and i'm paying him back but every now and then I miss a payment and the credit card company calls him and the he calls me and I eventually pay.

 

So, with the snowball plan in mind I noticed that my debt to him is the smallest debt of all and even if he really doesn't owe all that money right now I feel that I should pay him back as soon as possible. I'm counting on my first pay from my new job to pay back the $750 and change that I owe him that he owes to the credit card company.

 

It's not an extreme situation either way. He is not strapped for cash and he doesn't have an abundance of it either. So deciding this is mostly something I'm deciding for myself not because he needs it but because I feel it's the "right" thing to do.

 

Financially, it could also bring some benefit to me since an early payment of the loan might mean that I could end up paying less than $750.00 since that figure includes interests for the next 10 months. We would have to call the credit card company (at least when he is able to speak again with enough strength over the phone) and see how much I would have to pay.

 

As you can see, the more people around you that you are related to , the more difficult it is to have a tight debt repayment plan and sticking to it. I feel like i'm still on the right path, but I wanted to share with others the real-life difficulties of repaying debt. It's easy to see a budget and trim here and there. It's a bit harder to get some extra income but it's doable. However, when family matters come into play it gets more complicated.

 

I enjoy all of your comments, so please post some more. Actually I not only enjoy then, I benefit from them a lot. All of you want me to be successful in my journey to not owe so much (hopefully not owe anything material). You are like doctors, you want what's best for me even if it involves pain in the process. I appreciate that. I owe you a great deal spiritually.

 

At least this blog is materially free.