Blogging Away Debt

I’m so excited to have been chosen as one of the new BAD bloggers and I think this new format is going to be great! I figure I will start building on my introduction to my debt with some debt details and noticed many of comments liked to have an image of the blogger so I thought I would start out with that….

I am so proud to be a mom and my kids bring me such joy and purpose and are definitely my motivation for putting all this out there. I have to get out of debt and to do so I must be kept accountable. I need all the advice, help and tough love I can get to do it! Here’s the breakdown of my debt and the remaining number of payments/interest to be paid off if I continue on my current path:

Creditors	Amt Owed	Total Interest	Pymts Left	Payoff Date	Interest Rate
Retail Card #1	413.00	–	1	Apr-14	0%
Property Tax	700.00	–	2	May-14	0%
Loan from Dad	3,830.00	–	6	Sep-14	0%
Credit Card	4,974.00	440.68	10	Jan-15	13.9%
Retail Card #2	2,264.80	499.76	12	Mar-15	25.99%
Car Payment	31,138.00	2,800.77	25	Apr-16	6.79%
Line of Credit	1,248.00	58.25	6	Sep-14	15.95%
Student Loan	31,687.00	2,622.91	42	Sep-17	2.88%

Total Debt: $78,518

I have already made March payments (including paying off my highest interest debt – YEAH!) so these numbers will be the same going into April minus interest accrual.

You can see from you my chart that I am not paying off higher interest debts first, but rather focusing on the personal and smallest amounts. After those 3 are done, I will target my highest interest one and move forward from there. I am very open to hearing suggestions on changing strategies.

So where did the debt come from you ask?

Retail Card #1 – is a store card (gives me a 5% discount) linked to my checking account which I used so I wouldn’t incur any debt. Lack of record keeping forced an overdraw of my account and they graciously turned it into a credit situation and I have til next month to pay it off with no penalty.
Property Tax – the car tax bill due every 6 months. This bill kills me every time, but now I’ve put it in my monthly budget and will be prepared the next time around.
Loan from Dad – this was an inadvertent loan when I lost a large client last fall (good testimony for the need of an emergency fund,) that I am very anxious to pay in full due to the personal nature.
Retail Card #2 – for the most part this was unavoidable spending as it is for equipment used in my business. I’m in a really good place right now and anticipate my current tools will last for several years, so getting this paid off will allow me to put some aside for when I do need to replace or upgrade something.
Credit Card – I was in a great place with this card two years ago. Had it mostly paid off and felt good having it for an “emergency.” Unfortunately, I let my desire for experience for my kids out weigh good money sense and used it to take a trip to Floriday – Disney, Universal, etc. It’s a decision I will not repeat. I go back and forth over regretting it as I do believe it probably will be the last time we go since my kids are growing up so fast, but we probably could have lived without it too.
Car Loan – I know I am going to get the most comments for that one. My car has a story all of it’s own that will come another time. But I’ll put this perspective out there now. I drive a 2013 commercial passenger van (the Beast.) I chose a newer car because I am a single mom with no “car support” around (did not want to say male, but that’s what it is in my mind,) and am scared to death of car trouble. I chose this huge, gas guzzling beast because I have 4 children of my own, another 1 whom is with us all the time, and my twins have a biological brother and sister who are with us 1 or 2 weekends a month…that’s 8 people on a pretty normal basis. And oftentimes, I watch other people’s kids, carpool with others and we are certified to foster two more if the need arises. As much as I would like to sell it and go small and old and cheap, I have not been able to wrap my head around that.
Line of Credit – I hope you will agree that this, my newest debt was good choice. When the adoption of the boys started last summer, I knew I was going to have to have a bigger car (I will tell the whole car debacle another time.) At the time, I had a 2012 Honda Crosstour. So I found my Beast but when it came down to trading in the old, well, I just couldn’t take what they were offering so I held on to it and put it up for sale privately. Fast forward, 5 months and I got my best offer, $2K less than what I owed. This line of credit paid the difference for me to get rid of that additional car payment, insurance payment, property tax payment.
Student Loan – this loan is from grad school only. My parents got me through my bachelors degree with new debt. I was SO naive as to what was happening, and now I am so grateful. It was still a horrible decision to take it out in the first place. I was single, working full time and making decent money. I could have paid for it without the loan. But I was not educated, I lived paycheck to paycheck and while I didn’t run up debts, I did spend all my income, thus the student loans.

If you have any questions please ask…I’m just feeling my way on what to put out there.

~hope

Grow Old With Me The Best Is Yet To Come

by Jim

So six years go by, since the humiliating experience of getting arrested for bouncing checks. The only things I put in my name are the stuff that I have to, electric bill, phone/internet, and my cell phone. To be honest I was pleasantly surprised that I didn’t have to pay a security deposit on any of them, even though my credit score was a very low 500. Like I mentioned in my last post, for the majority of this time I didn’t even have a bank account.

During all this time, I sat on the fence with all the personal finance advice I was reading about. I was still living paycheck to paycheck, making very little money… Partially because of the career industry (Restaurant) I chose to go into after the military… Mostly because I was still living above my means, without collecting debt.

I wasn’t out at the bars wasting money like most of the people my age, but I did have a healthy or should I say unhealthy addiction to the latest technology, especially video games. Although I was making decent money by working 60-80 hours a week, I was blowing it by buying at the very least $500 on these video games.

My logic was that I wasn’t blowing my at bars, and these video games gave me hours upon hours of entertainment and I had something to show for it. When I first moved back home in 2009, my dad and I were fixing up the house I grew up in, so I would be able to live there. It was broken into, and all my TVs, DVDs, Computers, and video games were stolen. Over $75,000 (what I paid, not what they were worth) was taken. I soon learned that my logic was flawed.

Very shortly after this I ran into Melissa, a girl I graduated school with. As it turned out she was just getting out of a emotionally abusive relationship, one that also brought a smart and beautiful girl into this world. Now Melissa, suffers from depression and an anxiety disorder… at the end of this relationship, her ex (who I will from now on call Dipshit,) even though they were broken up, he made it appear that she had no money because all of it was tied up into various things, meaning she didn’t have enough money to move out, which I didn’t find out until we started talking again.

He even went so far as contacting me, calling me a home wrecker. Because of this fact I kinda backed away for a few months. During that time time I was offered a great position with Yellowstone National Park. The amount would make was double what I made each year, and it was only for about 6 months. As the time was counting down till I would leave for this opportunity, my best friend decided to open a restaurant, and asked me to help him achieve his dream. I couldn’t turn this down, so I stayed in my hometown.

Almost immediately after, I ran into Melissa again, just recently moved back in with her mother, who tore her from that household. After hearing that he was basically holding all of her money in ransom, I corrected that situation. I also came to find out that he brought her credit score to around the same figure as I was. Difference was is that her score was current debt that could be corrected.

During this time, as I was helping a friend, it started to become something more, and I fell in love. (Little did I know, she had feelings for me the whole time.) I was also able to bring her credit score up to a mid 700. We got her a car, so that she didn’t have to pay for a car that was in Dipshit’s name, so he could hold that against her. We wanted very little to do with him, and we achieved that in just about all aspects of life except two, one being Gianna (my step daughter) and the second being the house that has both of their names on it. (Another story all together) By the beginning of 2010 we decide to move in together, and this is where my debt story begins, which I will save for next week’s post.

Blogging Away Debt Blogging Away Debt follows real people on their journey to debt freedom — with tips on the debt snowball, budgeting, cutting expenses, and staying motivated.

Hump Day is Hope Day!

Grow Old With Me The Best Is Yet To Come