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Feb 25, 2014    |       28 comments

An Introduction to My Debt – Hope

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Note: This is the application post from Hope wanting to be the next blogger for BAD. Feel free to ask any questions, leave your opinion and express your feelings in the comments

I’ve been asked to introduce myself before and that was hard, but introducing my debt as a first assignment is like asking me to appear at an interview in the most horrific outfit I own, unshowered and without doing my hair and make up. Talk about intimidating!

The worst of it is the shame, trying to keep up appearances that everything is fine when I’m really just drowning in debt. Deciding who to pay, how much to pay and when to pay is really stressful. Juggling the payment dates to try to avoid a late penalty, a ding on my credit score and still have enough money to cover groceries and gas for the month. You are probably getting the gist of my overwhelming dilemma.

For the last three years or so, I have been trying to pay off debt. I have had some successes, but also some major backslides. But I am truly and thoroughly sick and tired of being so stressed about my overwhelming debt and I’ve recently added some serious motivation to 1) getting out of debt and on solid financial ground and 2) setting a good example as a steward of my financial well-being.

With that being said, I must tell you a little about myself. I am an entrepreneur, who has successfully run a home based business for the past 8 years. I have a Masters degree and market myself as a high tech virtual assistant which typically translates into either business system consulting jobs or technical customer service and project management for small businesses. I love what I do.

I am also a single mom, who gets sporadic financial support for two of my kids from their dad and an adoption subsidy for my other two. My kids are my joy, my reason for everything I do and the reason that I work from home rather than going out and getting a fabulous corporate job with a six figure income (at least that’s how it would work out in my head.)

This past fall I was blessed to fulfill a lifelong dream of adoption and welcomed twin teenage boys into our home on a permanent basis (they had been placed here two years earlier as foster kids and since going home did not work out…) They are my new motivation. You see, my other two children are younger and I anticipated having at least another 6 years to get right financially before I had to think about cars and college, etc. But now, that run is very short, the twins started high school this year and could possibly drive next year (it’s a privilege, not a right, of course.)

So I’ve GOT to get a handle on this. I’ve got to get on solid financial ground. I’ve got to be a good example. And I’ve GOT to do it now.

So now you’ve heard of my greatest shame and my greatest joy. My income comes solely from my business and some support for my children. Now, a drumroll please, my debt consists of:

– a student loan incurred during grad school
– a car loan (I had to get a bigger car with the addition of children, purchased early last summer)
– three revolving credit lines
– a personal loan from my dad (no interest)
– a maxed credit card
– a tax bill (that was due in Dec, 2013)
– a consumer loan.

The total owed is $77,792.80. Ugh, just makes me sick. But I am ready for a fight. I am ready to tackle this and frankly I can use all the help, advice and nudges to stay on track that I can get.

Feb 22, 2014    |       12 comments

Highlight Reel (Part 2)

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A little more on why we decided to pass on the mantel of Chief Blogger at Blogging Away Debt.

I mentioned previously that we have had a hard time keeping up with the schedule of blogging 3x/week.  I think there are several reasons for this.

First, I’ve just found that I struggled more and more with having anything interesting to say.  There were big changes we needed to make when we started this blog.  Our spending was way outpacing our income. We weren’t making our snowball payments.  We had to deal with our spending habits and understanding how far our income went with a new job and new house, etc.  In many ways, we’ve worked through the big problems.  We now are keeping spending in line roughly with our income. We have stocked our emergency fund with $5000. We’ve put our huge snowball payments ($3500/month) on auto-pilot.  We are also saving toward our $15k large payment and contributing to my 401k.

Sure, we haven’t posted a full budget yet. I promise, we intended to. We just never got around to it.  But we’ve spent the last few months focusing on the small problems.  Gym memberships, eating lunch at work, which cell phone plan is most cost effective.  These things are still important, but it’s just felt like I haven’t had anything interesting to say about it. Yay, I packed my lunch today.

Someone once commented that if we would just open up more, we’d probably have a lot to talk about.  I think this was true at the time it was said. But not so much now. We could have posted a full budget, and tracked every dollar against it, week in and week out. But again, we’ve been more open in the last 3-4 months about the big decisions and financial events we’ve been going through and we’re getting down to the small details.

This is not a victory lap.  As a couple, we have much more to do with our family budget. We have 22 more months of paying off debt and I hope we can stay on track.  There are some desperate home maintenance needs and many other things we’d love to have money for.  I haven’t met my newest niece yet and I’m missing a friend’s wedding next month because of finances. We aren’t finished by any means.  But as I’ve said twice already – just not that much interesting to say about it.  And if someone else finds these minutiae interesting, then by all means I hope Jeffrey picks you to be the next blogger here.

And so, we got to a point where we spent a lot of time stressing out about posting something new, and almost no time benefitting from the community here due to our infrequent posting and not-so-awesome topics.  The cost/benefit got out of balance for us.

We also know that this site is part of Jeffrey’s and Nate’s livelihood. Honestly, what we’ve posted and when has been completely up to us, and Jeffrey and Nate have offered great support for our questions.  It’s not fair for us to let this site wither on the vine and subsequently affect their personal income.

It’s not just the blog, by the way. I’ve had a hard time keeping up with stupid household tasks like paying bills, opening mail, and getting car inspections done.  I currently need to update my drivers license with our new address, so my license can be used as proof of occupancy in our new house, so I can get our homestead tax exemption applied. To get a new DL, I will have to get my eyes checked and get new glasses, because my vision has deteriorated significantly in the last year or so. What a pain.  I haven’t called my mother in like 2 weeks!  What kind of son am I!  Sheesh.  I have some catching up to do on personal stuff.

Also, my new job.  I am so thankful for it. I enjoy it. I get paid more and I love the people.  But I am BURIED. I’ve been going to California every few weeks and my work days out there average 14 hours. Even home base work days are longer, and busier, than my last job, when I was keeping up with the blog better (while I was getting fired).   And even though there’s a bit of income on the blog, I’ll obviously be better off to make sure I do a good job at my real job than make a few bucks a week posting.

Thank you for reading this novella.  I wanted to explain a little about our decision to move on from the site.  I am so thankful for what we’ve learned here but we weren’t really doing the site, the readers, or the owners justice with our posting.  Here’s hoping that the next bloggers will be much better at it than we were!

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