Did a lot of thinking (and self-chastising) about the checking account and how it almost got out of control. So this morning I went straight to the bank and had my mom's IRA 2006 distribution allocated to the checking. Normally, I would put off taking the distribution as long as possible, but this time I had to give ourselves some breathing room. Then I went to our State Farm agent and paid the flood policy with the cc ($656) and discussed the homeowner policy renewal. Right before the gal processed the flood policy payment, she asked, "you didn't have any loss in the last few days did you?" I actually laughed! Can't blame her, though. The payment was lapsed by a week and anything could have happened in that time. She was just being a good agent and looking out for her employer.

The HO renewal went up by $110 for a grand total of $872! As I thought, I had increased the deductible to $1000 last year. The options I was now given was to increase the ded. to $2000, so the new premium would be $782/yr. -OR- further increase it to 1% of the dwelling limit of liability which would equal a $4130 ded. for a premium of $723/yr. I went with the $782/$2000 ded. This is an increase of only $20 from last year. I can live with that.

The thing that bugs me is the policy increase in the first place. We put the home remodeling costs on a MBNA card (16K) @ 5.9% and this has to be the reason. The next thing I'm going to do is find a credit monitoring service and sign up myself and my mother. I hate being unprepared for surprises like this and knowing just where we fall credit wise will help determine my course of action rather than reaction.