2008 is barely a month old (barely four days old if you live in China) and it’s already costing us a great deal of money.

First there were the rats in our attic. Well, more like rat, singular. Still, trapping, sealing off and baiting the place cost us $650. Since I run a business out of my home, I’m at least hoping to write off about 1/5th of that as a business expense.

Next came my bicycle. To replace the bearing and tune it up was about $100. Not too much, but you know how the little stuff adds up.

Then, the doctor’s bills. There are still outstanding lab bills for some doctors’ services we used back in October, because the lab and our insurance company absolutely refuse to communicate properly with each other. Twice now, we’ve been billed for over $400 in lab services, when the insurance company will only allow about $170. The lab claims that the insurance company isn’t responding to their billing requests. “Well, I’ve got their Explanation of Benefits in my hand, do you want to see it?” I remarked. Yes, said the lab, we actually would like to see it. So I sent it to them.

After all of this, I hope the lab doesn’t look at that $170 bottom line and decide to just bill us sideways for the rest of it anyway. And as for that $170 the insurance company wants to cover? We’ve got to pay it out of pocket anyway, since we have a $1,500 deductible. Ah, America: Land of the broke. And oh yes, at some point I’m going to get the bill for the doctor’s appointment I had myself last month — you know, that whole ear thing.

Oh, but I’m not done yet. Next comes Apple’s Mazda. We’ll take it in for some routine maintenance, we decided. It’s our workhorse car, so we need to keep on top of it. I also wanted the dealer to see if they would replace the rotted positive battery lead under warranty. They told us they would, confirmed it with management and kept the car for the entire weekend before calling me today and saying: “Oh, you know how we said that would be under warranty? It won’t be, because we just discovered you put in an aftermarket battery.”

Yeah, I did — because a year ago the factory battery was failing and it needed to be replaced. (Speaking of which, why are factory-installed car batteries such pieces of crap these days?) The positive lead was rotted then, too, and I had a dealer look at it before I changed the battery, but said they wouldn’t warranty it either. WTF? Can you guys be consistent? So because they wanted to charge me an astronomical amount of money to put in a new battery, I said “fuck it,” went to Sears, bought a battery and installed it myself. Now the dealer claims that this is preventing them from warranteeing the rotted lead. Sounds more to me like just another case of an American corporation doing everything it can to weasel out of actually providing a service to the customer. No surprise here.

So our total car maintenance bill just doubled to $342, when our budget was $200. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my years, it’s that you might as well not bother setting a budget for car repairs — because you can’t make it stick. But what am I supposed to do, not fix the battery lead? Sure, I’ll let it just rot away until one night Apple gets stranded at work around midnight and can’t get home. Then we’ll have to pay a towing fee in addition to the repair charge. Sounds like a great plan.

And I haven’t even mentioned my car yet, which needs its tires rotated badly — they’re making a lot of unseemly noise now — but which keeps getting put off because of either time, money or my own pathological fear of having a mechanic touch my car.

Why don’t I do some of this stuff myself, you ask, and save paying someone to do it? God may have gifted me with a great sense of design and an intricate knowledge of how to deal with all things electronic, but as far as practical mechanical knowledge and handyman skill, I ain’t got jack. But at least I know how to put to work the skills I do have — as it happened, opportunity knocked this morning when an old colleague called up with some emergency web design work he needed done, and he offered to pay me $100 an hour. Are you kidding? Of course I took the job.

But please, 2008 — stop the surcharges, hmm?