External Turmoil waiting to fly out

We are 2 weeks out from flying to Austria and there are so many external circumstances that have put us on edge. Last week flights were cancelled and re directed from the Middle East due to the conflict. Donald Trump bombed Iran and the world waited with baited breath to see what the ramifications would be. Meanwhile many flights were in disarray and cancelled and redirected away from the Middle East with a major stop of Dubai being closed. This is where we are stopping and then changing flights to fly to Salzburg.

There is now a ceasefire in the Middle East but it feels like there is still something brewing in the background. It has been a week and there has been no more bombing or anything we have heard about on the news so the ceasefire seems to be holding for now.

Just when we prepare ourselves for this news on the 1st July we receive weather warnings that there is likely to be a downfall of rain (a months worth of rain) to hit the Eastern Coast of Australia in one to two days.

We just had the flooding in the Hunter Valley on the 16th May this year where we had to organise new gravel for our driveway due to the damage from the floods and now the unpredictability of the weather from this storm is about to hit. Several flights out of Sydney have been shut down and cancelled as the weather conditions are too dangerous to fly out.

It’s hard to navigate through all the weather warning and world news if we will be able to resume our plans to fly out of Sydney on Monday 14th July. I am sure we will but it does make me nervous and unsure when the cease fire is so new and the weather so unpredictable.

We have also had to contend with other hiccups along the way when planning this trip.

Once we moved out of our place and found a tenant for our house, our tenant for the cabin moved out so we needed to find a new tenant. The tenant broke his lease and there was a gap before we found a new tenant and we didn’t receive the income from the rent for over a month. Then we noticed that our pool chlorinator wasn’t working so w had to replace that. Then the electric gate decided not to work so we had to order a whole new motor and Ben installed it. The floods in May caused a hole in our patio roof which Ben needed to repair.

We thought that surely must be all but we were wrong. We needed to get the plumber out as there was a body of water running from the carport and down the driveway where we discovered the pipe was broken.

Then the tenants advised we had termites in the bathroom wall of the studio. Ben had to take the wall off and we needed to organise a termite contractor to check the house. They advised there was no evidence of termites anywhere else in the house but only in the wall of the bathroom, luckily they had not done too much damage and had left. We are still contemplating our best next move, to arrange baits for the termites or return in 3 months and check and then arrange baits.

All of these situations have caused undue stress and additional expenditure I would have rather been using for savings for our trip but instead we have had to cover these costs.

Just when I think we can relax we were called by our estate agent again explaining that the studio toilet was backing up and the drain was also backing up. So once again we needed to call the plumber out and he had to dig up the pipe in the backyard which Ben assisted with and then the pipe needed to be unblocked and rectified (more. money!)..

I just need to get my head around the fact that a property always needs to have a contingency fund for repairs and maintenance so then when the surprise of yet another issue arises it won’t be so frustrating and annoying having to pay the expenses. But all in all with all these costs including fence repairs, plumbing repairs, pool repairs, gate maintenance, gravel for the driveway, termite costs we could have saved an additional 5k.