Nomorecredit's Personal Finance Blog

Yup, it finally happened. Rock bottom. I thought getting my gas turned off a few weeks ago (can't remember how long it's been. I had the money to turn it back on and then guess what? I had a HUGE filling fall out and it was incredibly painful and absolutely could NOT wait to get fixed. I'd rather take cold showers and not cook and do laundry at other people's houses than deal with the pain of having no filling!) was as low as things could go, but apparently I was wrong.

I realize it's all my fault that the car got repossessed. I knew I was behind on payments and would pay money here and there. I was in contact with the bank and was surprised that they never said "pay us X or we will take your vehicle" Nope, that never came up in all the times I talked to them, no call, no letter, no nothing.

Wednesday I went to the store to get bread. I was literally in the store for 5 minutes tops. Came outside and POOF, my car had vanished. I nearly passed out. I knew what had happened after about 2 seconds and started freaking out because of the stuff I had in there and not the actual vehicle itself being gone. So anyway, my car loan is through some dinky bank that had no 24 hour number to talk to so I had to wait until the next day. I called the police (just on the very small off chance it was stolen) and they said they had a repo thing so yes, it was repossessed. ARGH!! I can't even explain the feelings that were going through my mind.

So i call my friend in hysterics and she came and picked me up. I called my parents (of course I didn't want to let ANYBODY know because I felt like the biggest loser in the world, but I had no choice) and told my dad what happened... my mom brought me her car to use for work the next day, my dad graciously calmed me down and lent me the $$$ to get my vehicle back so I got it back yesterday, which was a big nightmare in and of itself.

Ugh... bad week. My dad wants to pay off my car so that I can then make smaller payments that I can afford to him, so I have to get a payoff quote from the bank. I really, really, really hated borrowing the money from them to even get my car back and really don't want to take one more thing from them (hello, pride...) but we'll see. I don't know what I would do without my family....

Things can only get better, right?? RIGHT?!?

Just a quick update since I haven't updated in forever.

I have multiple bills in collections since work has been disgustingly slow at my primary job. It's a mess. Just trying to keep everyone at bay and give them at least a little bit to keep them at arm's length.

For the past two weeks I've had no gas, which means no hot water for showers, no stove to cook on, no dryer to dry clothes. The gas company will not budge that they need $210 to turn it on, so until I have that I will have no "luxuries" Never thought I would view hot water as a LUXURY.

Hopefully things pick up soon. Life is just really, really sucky and I am sick of everything.

First of all, thanks everyone for your comments on my last blog... I really, really appreciate it.

So as a comment said, hopefully I can FOCUS now. There really is so much going on... bills and otherwise, so focus is important.

My fabulous mother has offered to lend me $1000... very, very awesome of her! Tonight I'm going to go through all the current bills, all the back bills, so I can try and figure out exactly where it should go. This is sort of the situation, as far as I know.

First, my cell phone has been shut off for nonpayment. It's under contract (ugh!) but I still can pay roughly $300 to get it turned back on. If it's not paid soon, then I'll have to pay the ETF. I'm hesitant about it because the other line is my husband's (read my last blog if you want to know about him...) and I feel like why should *I* pay for BOTH our phones to be turned back on?? I can't cancel his line because it was part of the contract, or so I was told. We pay a huge amount monthly for the phones, and I'm trying to figure out if it would be better to pay it, shut them off, pay the EFT and get a pre-paid phone and use Skype... which is what I have been doing recently because I couldn't afford to get the phones back on. So that's one option that the money from my mom could go towards.

Secondly is this stupid furniture payment thing. I owed maybe $300 or so when I missed one payment, and... well, you know how they compound the charges, took away my 0% interest and the charges keep mounting. I'll have to check a current bill to see how much exactly is owed to them. I could get it current and then start paying the minimum until it's paid off.

Third option is get current on the electric bill... not sure how much that one is. They just seem to be happy as long as they're getting SOME money.

Other option is get the stupid leaky faucet in the basement fixed!! ARGh, I noticed it last night and it's dripping a LOT which would def. explain the disgustingly insane water bills I have been getting. Argh. But that seems to pale in comparison to the late bills and such...

I just don't know what to do. I want to use the money in the best way so that it will take even the smallest amount of stress off my shoulders...

Tonight I'm going to do a lot of cleaning, organizing, getting things in order and seeing where I stand... *sigh*

I haven't been here in a while. To say things have been crummy would be the understatement of the century.

On the financial side, my finances are in complete ruins. I'm in such awful shape. I've been a member here for a while now, and things have gotten worse. Work has been painfully slow. I work the second job still, but not as many hours are available as before. Basically work has been so slow my pay checks are HALF of what they used to be. When they were big paychecks I never had money left over, but at least all the bills got paid. I can't even begin to tell you how far behind I am on some bills, how far the interest rates that were already high are jacked up, etc. There's a lot of whining I could do on the subject, but you guys know the gist of it.) I'm just glad I can pay the mortgage, keep the electric and the heat and water on...

This is SO incredibly stressful, just everything right now.

On top of the financial issues, on a more personal note, my husband and I are separated. A few months ago his health issues started to disappear, which I was super excited that we could FINALLY be a 'normal' couple and he could get a job again!!! YAY, right? No. All I will say is "secrets, secrets are no fun. Secrets, secrets hurt someone." After he said he wouldn't go to marriage counseling, I told him I think it would be best if he left, and he happily went. We're just in limbo now... he's still not working and I'm here by myself trying to pick up the pieces... glad I stuck by his side endlessly while he was sick all these years, being the only one working and supporting us!! Nice way to say THANKS. >: (

Think I'm going to go clean, balance my check book and try to figure out how I can pay some freaking BILLS!!

There's a card that was WaMu (forgot what it was before that a loooong time ago) that I never ever paid late ever but they kept hiking up the interest rate like crazy. Sigh. Least year I owed something like $9,000 on and had a minimum payment of $291 a month... ouch. But I've gotten it around to $5,000, a little more than that. Very surprising giving our crappy financial situation as of late.

Annnnnnyway, today I get a statement in the mail for April and it's from Chase and after being confused for a few minutes I realize it's my WaMu account. They dropped the interest rate 10%!! Instead of $170 a month the minimum payment is $113 a month. Wow!!!

So yeah, I hope it's not an April 1 joke on me!!

I'll do a more detailed update later...

So I thought after our GIANT tax refund we got last year that I managed to adjust my withholdings so that I would get just a very small refund (like $200 or something) as like a pillow to make sure I didn't owe.

We went to do our taxes today. Last year we went to stupid H & R Block and paid like $250 or some INSANE amount to get them done. I do NOT trust myself to do my own taxes, NO WAY, so I have to pay someone to do it. Just not that much. My friend referred me to a place and I went there and it was only $60 : ) Plus the tax lady was just awesome.

Well, with state and federal we're getting back like $4100!! AHHHH!! I really thought we'd get like $500 back tops and almost fell out of my chair when she told us how much we were getting back. I would have rather had the money throughout the year and have no idea how we're getting so much back. I asked her if she was sure and she said yes and went over everything with me.

So I guess I'll be able to get current on bills, pay the little piddly cc's off that we owe a few hundred or whatever on, AND once again have the $1000 emergency fund. So yay!

So although I've been trying to get better with debt and up until recently have never paid a bill late, like a lot of people right now there are circumstances that are causing me to miss payments, miss bills, etc. To put it bluntly, it sucks. I've been getting a lot of calls... I got up to date on a few things this week though, so I anticipate a lot less calls. As far as I know these things haven't actually gone to an outside collector, which is good. I have to call later on an account and I'm dreading it... I feel like such a deadbeat : ( I'm especially pissed about this certain account because I only owed like $400 on it but it kept falling behind, compounding late fees, etc., and now I don't even have the $$$ to make the account current. ARGH!

One thing that is VERY VERY annoying is that SOMEONE is calling me and when I pick up it says "blah blah please hold for the next available agent blah blah" HELOOO, you called ME. I'm not waiting on the phone and wasting minutes to wait for YOU when you call me!

I'm so beyond stressed out. My hair is literally falling out : (

So I went outside today to see a handy pink flyer on my door. Yup, water shutoff notice. Saying we owe $600!! WTH, I had no idea we owed so much!! I'm seriously going to start limiting our tenant's water usage or just jack his rent up insanely. (In our area landlords ALWAYS pay for water, btw. I know it doesn't work in most places like that, but here it does.) So I started freaking out, called the water authority and had to pay $200 in order to keep our water turned on. That's a massive $200 that was supposed to go to somewhere else.

UGH. I'm beyond stressed out and want to rip my hair out. Who knows how I'm going to make up that $$$ to pay the other bills....

Hello, fellow Savingadvice bloggers. I'm back. Obviously back blogging, but I mean back in the sense that my "woe is me, I'll never pay this all off!" has changed into "Ok, man up and DO IT!"

I had a few horrible awful months. Seriously... just.. yeah, just bad. Don't want to get into details. Let's just say this month is rough.

I'm even MORE up to my eyeballs in debt without even charging anything more.... Sad to say with our rough few months that a lot more things have wound up being late. Late fees SUCK. I'm getting back on top of things. Sometimes I seriously just DID NOT have the money. No other choice. I hardly answer my phone. I'm getting back on top of things, I promise!!

Still working two jobs. BUT everyone WISH ME LUCK on THURSDAY!! I have an AMAZING opportunity coming up... *crosses fingers*

I eat oatmeal every day for dinner. It's all we can afford : ( Although I must admit that homemade oatmeal with brown sugar and syrup is yummy ; )

So uh... yeah. The husband is feeling better. He's been blanketing everywhere with job applications. He thinks he's going to get a job really soon. I don't have the heart to tell him the state of the job market!! I mean, doesn't he watch the news?! But I'm certainly not going to be the one to burst his bubble when he's so optimistic!

So I'm just trying to get caught up, back on track. *sigh* When I see late fees charged I want to bawl. I always call and ask them to waive it, but apparently things don't work like that anymore. Knock on wood, but I have not paid any bills late in March...

Oh yeah, I started running. I'm getting pretty fat. I take rescue dogs that are cooped up all the time in the shelter with me as running partners, so it looks like we all win : )

Ok, maybe that's being dramatic. ; )

I decided to call Citi about my interest rate jumping from 6% to a whopping 24% on a card I've never payed late ever. I had learned about this a week or two ago (there's a blog entry about it, too lazy to go check out the date) when I logged in to pay the bill that our interest rate went up. We owe thousands and thousands on this card... *sigh* The jump from 6% to 24% was just huge and added over 100$ that we DO NOT have in any way, shape or form. So needless to say, I was upset.

I decided not to call them when I was upset. I was looking at the Door O' Bills and decided I had to call them to see what was up. I warned my husband before the call that things might not work out my way and I'd be in a bad mood the rest of the night.

So I called, asked what was up with the interest rate. I was shaking because I was so nervous and expecting rejection, them telling me that my credit is bad so they're not going to lower the rate, blah, blah, blah. BUT NO! The girl on the phone said something about some letter I was supposed to get in the mail and I could reject the change of terms to the account. Well, I honestly open and read every single piece of mail that we get here. No foolies. I do not remember anything of the sort. I thought that now we were REALLY screwed because I didn't get some letter in time and that we were now doomed with a 24%+ interest rate.

There really was no thinking about it. I know closing (or whatever they did... I think she said I could use the card until it's expired, which I don't use anyway) the account is a hit to the credit report, but my credit probably is crappy now anyway. And 24% vs 6% on a card where we owe so much on, there wasn't much to think about.

So the only caveat is that this month I have to pay the higher minimum payment. I have no clue how that's going to happen... but at least next month it will be back down to the 6% minimum payment. It's a HUGE load off my shoulders.

Phew.

I thought maybe SEEING all my bills in a VERY OBVIOUS spot would help me 1) pay them on time being that I wrote the dates on the outside and 2) be a reminder of what I'm doing, WHY I'm doing it. When I get a bill in the mail, which seems to be ALWAYS, I can tape it up with the rest of the bills and the due date written on it...

So, on a door that goes from the living room to the back of the house, I taped all my bills up there. How depressing. I don't even think these are ALL the bills/statements/late notices, etc

So yeah, here's my door.

Focus, focus, focus.

I think I'm getting an ulcer.

I MUST MUST MUST get current on bills. It's SO DIFFICULT with the last few months we've had and it being so slow at my main job. I got absolutely slammed at work the last week, and this upcoming week will be like that too. At least I have a backlog of work now, which is very, very good. I have a TON of work sitting on my desk right now under my laptop that I've been chipping away at all weekend. I really could use a shower, LOL!

Getting current on the bills is proving to be very hard. It's amazing how you can't pay one bill one month and it turns into an awful reverse Dave Ramsey snowball. So that's my goal this month, to try to get bills current.

I'm still very upset about the credit card interest rate hike (see last blog post) and haven't figured out what to do about that. I've been scared to open ANY bill with the fear they ALL have done that... *crosses fingers* so far, so good.

We're telling our tenant his rent is going up $50/mo. It's time. His rent is WAY too cheap. If he does decide to move, we already have a couple willing to rent the place, so I'm not too worried about that.

I have everything all together for our taxes. I think we might be getting some $$$ back, just a little. I adjusted the taxes this year so we'd take home more and not get a huge refund like we did last year. So I can't wait to get them done... the problem is that I don't have the money to get them done!!! ARGH!

I've just been trying not to think about everything and focus on work. I love being busy at work. Last week my boss asked me if she was giving me too much work and I wanted to laugh at her... I mean, we work on 100% commission, so NO, you probably CAN'T give me too much work!!! You'll never hear me complain about that!! I got some great cases to work on and Monday and Tuesday alone, when they're finished for me to get paid for them, will be in the $2000 range (usually it's not that much, but there were a LOT of lawyers involved which means I get paid a lot more) so that will help for next month.

Here's to better times ahead, my friends. I love this site and the support I get. It's so hard not being able to talk about any of this mess in real life.

Well, I've hit rock bottom. I don't know what to do anymore. I've been working so SO hard at my two jobs, my budget is already bare bones, I HAVE NOTHING, have sold everything but my soul.

A cc that we owe a bajillion dollars on, the interest rate nearly doubled. We're screwed. That's on top of all the other crap we have to pay, of course... I don't HAVE an extra HUNDRED DOLLARS a month. I don't have an extra FIVE dollars a month.

I can't do it anymore. I can't. I have no idea what to do. I hate myself for this mess I've caused and wish I never saw a credit card in my life. How could I be so STUPID??

I have officially hit rock bottom.