Fabulous but in Debt

Resolutions for 2009

2009-01-04T20:27:00.000-08:00

I celebrated the new year by staying home with my husband and kids. I made bbq ribs, mashed potatoes and salad. Hubby and I drank a couple glasses of champagne and turned in just after midnight. I'm so thankful for 2008 to be over with!

For 2009, I hope that things improve for us. I would like for us to be healthy & be in a better place financially. I hope to accomplish the following:

Get completely caught up on our bills. This means our electric bills and credit card bills.
Track my spending for the month of January.
Balance my checkbook every Friday night.
Have at least one garage sale this year and sell things that are just sitting in the garage.
Find a part time job for the summer.
Keep my grades up.
Plan a garden for less than $200 this summer.

Another positive step

2008-12-14T22:26:00.000-08:00

After I got over the shock I decided the best thing to do is get organized. Today, I spent a couple of hours shredding & organizing all of our paperwork. I also decided that I can't do this all at once or else I will want to stick my head back in the sand. So, my goal for the week are as follows:

Balance my checkbook
Pay utility bills.
Call my utility companies (phone, insurance, cable company, etc) and ask them to lower my bills.
Pull up my last month's bank statement & highlight every single thing I spent that was not bill related or necessary. I guess I would be trimming the fat.

I hope to have the above done by next Saturday. I know that DH & I need to change our mindset & really get focused. We have talked about it and when we file taxes we are going to keep $1,000 and then we are going to tackle the smaller debts (I think the first on the chopping block is going to be the Amex card & then the smaller balances. Originally, we were going to pay off the WaMu card but I think to get us a boost, we need to see results quickly. Paying the smaller balances first will help to achieve that.

*Sigh* I hate that we are in this position, but we don't have to stay here. There's no where to go but up.

In what order to pay off debt?

2008-12-10T00:08:00.000-08:00

I honestly have no idea which way I'm going to tackle the debt, whether it be by smallest to largest balance or lowest to higher interest. I'm tempted to go from smallest balance to largest but it irks me to pay more in interest so I will probably pay the highest interest bearing acct. Which, may just be that damn Amex card. I haven't called them and won't until probably Thursday night as I have a huge final tomorrow.

I'm going to bed after a full 20 hour day of working (9 hrs + 2 hours of finals + 9 hours of studying).

The ugly truth

2008-12-09T00:21:00.000-08:00

I have been dreading this post...the dreaded adding up of your worst mistake = the total debt owed. This is how much we owe to date:

-WaMu - $7,445.10 - 10.99% for 6 months. 1st on the chopping block.
-Amex # 2 - $2,218.80 @ 29%
-Amex # 1 - $7,638.61 @ 29%
-Discover # 2 - $3,714.79 @ 9.99 %
-Citicard # 2 - $5,601.78 @ 0 % for 12 months
-Discover # 1 - $8,726.78 @ 9.99% for 12 months
-Citicard # 1 - $13,910 @ 8.024%

Total: 48,255.86

Sigh...I knew the number was crazy but all added up it's staggering. Excuse me while I go throw up.

One step at a time

2008-12-07T19:07:00.000-08:00

I know I haven't been updating, but I have been insanely busy. We are caught up on the mortgage but still behind in our credit card payments. Bad news is that Amex sent our account to collections but all the other creditors are willing to work with us. After 3 hours of phone calls, I was able to establish the following:

Citicards has agreed to stop all late fees + finance charges for one year, 0 % interest rate and monthly payments of $57.
Discover has agreed to stop all late fees + finance charges for one year, 9.99% interest rate and monthly payments of $135.
WaMu has agreed to stop all late fees + finance charges for 6 months, with interest at 10.99% and monthly payments of $100.

DH and I are determined to pay off WaMu by the end of the six months. Then we will just continue to snowball onto our next card. Since DH is going to be getting a bonus in February, in addition we will have our tax return in mid February, we are hoping to save $1,000 and use the rest to pay off the WaMu account.

The funny thing is that when we were paying on time every month, none of the above creditors would work with us to reduce the interest rate on the cards. It wasn't until we weren't able to pay the cards after I lost my job & we stopped paying in order to keep our house, then they were eager to work with us. It makes me very angry at myself for allowing us to get in this situation but also very angry at the credit card companies who wouldn't lower the interest rates in the first place.

Update

2008-10-27T00:19:00.000-07:00

Hallelujah! I just sent the October payment to be paid! I don't know where we were going to get the money to pay the mortgage had we not cashed out my small 401(k). I know that some of you are not keen on doing this (believe me, I'm NOT either) but we just felt like we had no choice. I'm okay with the decision since it gets us caught up on the mortgage.

I did sign up for my current job's 401(k) plan. I'm only having them deduct 4% at this point until we pay some of our debts off.

Payroll deductions should start next week.

I had a horrible experience with Citicards this weekend. I don't have munch time to into detail now but will try and post about it tomorrow or in the next couple of days.

Oh, and I finally installed Quicken to my laptop. Now, it's just a matter of populating it!

Cashing out my 401(k)

2008-10-12T20:09:00.000-07:00

I really don't want to do this but I feel as if I have no choice. Since it's been about a month since I was terminated from my old job and unemployment has finally paid me... we are running out of money. I don't get paid until this Thursday and it's only for 1 week of pay. I'm panicking a bit...I just checked my 401(k) account and I lost $1500 in the past 2 days alone. I am losing faith in our system and after a lot of thought, I'm going to request a hardship withdrawal from my previous job. There's not much in there but it's enough to pay our mortgage, and get caught up a bit.

Finally, unemployment comes through!

2008-10-05T22:14:00.000-07:00

It's not much, but I was filing my weekly claim for last week and the unemployment department finally processed my claim. They sent a check for $487 and I should (I don't trust the government to do the right thing!) be getting another check for just a little under that amount since I worked on Friday. That should help me get our mortgage paid by the end of the month!

My First Day

2008-10-03T20:58:00.001-07:00

I am still so excited that I am working for the company that I'm working for. Millions of people apply every single year and somehow I got in! Today was my first day and it was filled with the usual new employee orientation - benefits overview, who you report to, who your HR Representative is, when you get paid, etc. The orientation is about 5 hours long and then you report to work. After my first day, I am just so excited about the position, the company and the growth potential here.

My benefits include but aren't limited to the following:

100% of my education is paid for, and it does not have to be work related. The only requirements are that I pass and that it is through an accredited program. They will pay for my bachelors, masters, phd ... whatever I want and if I can dream it, they'll pay for it!
My health care is paid for 100%. I wouldn't pay a dime for medical for myself, DH or our children. This is HUGE. This also includes vision and dental.
Work is now literally 1.5 miles away from my house. No more 2 hour commute each way, no more insane gas prices.
My pay increased by $15K. This will make paying down debt so much easier and faster.
There's an annual bonus that's roughly about 1 month's pay or more depending on how the company performs (e.g. stock prices).
Since I'm already pursuing my bachelors degree, I will no longer have to worry about saving for each quarter's tuition and instead can focus on using that money to pay down debt. I fully plan on getting into grad school - maybe even pursuing that law degree =) I am very grateful for this job and the opportunities presented to me.

This weekend my goal is to try and get a clearer picture of our current financial situation. I'm going to try and do the following:
Get our bills organized and any paperwork filed. Oneof the key things I've learned in the past about successfully paying down debt is that you MUST BE ORGANIZED.
Balance our checkbook. A very scary thought since I haven't done it in months!
Upload Quicken into our laptop and enter all of our information.

Short Term Goals

2008-10-02T22:11:00.000-07:00

I'm becoming very stressed out about not having a paycheck for another few weeks. The only way I can deal with this type of stress is to come up with a plan of action.

In the next month, I would like to accomplish the following:

Pay our mortgage by the end of the month.
Work as much as possible in order to bring in extra income.
Get current on our bills with extra money from #2.
Take time to relax and not worry about money.
Clean my office.

Unemployment Woes

2008-10-01T22:01:00.000-07:00

Since losing my job earlier this month, I have been filing my unemployment claims. The State of Washington thinks that I should get $541 a week based on my last 4 quarters of work. However, because I was terminated it's going to take them up to 4-6 weeks to process my claim. Which means I will be receiving my first check from my new job before I even receive a decision from the State of Washington. That's great! (insert sarcasm here) I'm so glad that a portion of every paycheck I have ever earned went to a "benefit" that I'm NOT enjoying. LOVE IT!

I am thankful that I start my new job shortly. However in the meantime my husband's paycheck is the only money that is coming in right now. We are behind on 2 credit cards and I hate being late. I called our mortgage company to let them know that we will not be making our October payment on time and asked if they have a deferment program where we can just tack on one month to the end of the term. Their answer was a resounding no. We will have to find a way to send in our October payment by the end of October + come up with November as well. I'm extremely frustrated with my last employer + unemployment. I keep thinking to myself - what were to happen to us if I didn't job lined up? My family and I would be completely screwed. Totally and completely screwed. I get goose bumps knowing that our living paycheck to paycheck could make us homeless because that's what would happen if I didn't have a job and couldn't help my DH pay our mortgage. We'd be completely screwed.

One good thing did happen, Citicards, who holds are current largest balance of $14,002.00 is going to lower our interest rate from a staggering rate of 28.99% down to a fixed 9.99%. That's news to shout out about. Now, if I can just manage to get the State of Washington on board, I'd be happy as a clam.

I got the job!

2008-09-30T21:46:00.001-07:00

I can hardly believe it but I finally got the phone call that I got the job! I am so excited about the opportunity to be working for this wonderful company!

Some things that were shared with me: this job will be paid on a bi weekly basis. I've always been paid on the 15th and the last day of the month so this will take some getting used to. I did however find an awesome website to tell help me calculate what I will be getting paid. The website is www.paycheckcity.com (please note I'm not affiliated & I just happened to google it and think it's awesome). It basically allows you to put in your salary and play around with your deductions and it's also state specific. It's pretty easy to use to boot.

I start my wonderful job next week and I can't wait to be earning an income again!

I lost my job...but I'm going to be okay.

2008-09-13T21:55:00.000-07:00

The last few months at my job were HELL. My job was one where I was forced to take when upper management decided that another unit needed me more & that I would benefit from handling more work. Needless to say the position I walked into previously had 3 people in it and now they expected me to do the work of 3 people. Not to mention that the turn over for that position was astronomical.

The day I was let go started out like a normal work day - lots of stress & deadlines but overall just an average day. Around 8:30 my boss calls me down to her office. She tells me that they have to let me go due to my inability to get my job done in an 8 hour day. Talk about a kick to the gut. I was pretty upset because I felt that I was doing all I can given the circumstances. I went back to my desk and packed up my belongings and left the office for the final time. Before this, I had never been fired before and I didn't know how to feel - anger certainly because I felt like it was unjust, sad because I truly cared about the people I worked with, resentment because I was drowning in work & no one cared.

In all honesty, I did not want to continue my employment there and had thought about resigning once I had a job lined up. But since I was working 13 - 14 hour days, I didn't have the time to interview and by the time I came home at night, the last thing I wanted to do was sit in front of the computer to look for another job. As I drove home that day, I kept asking myself why I stayed for so long when I knew my boss didn't have my best interest at hear??

In hindsight, getting fired was probably the best thing to have happened to me. I scored interviews with 3 of the largest companies in the world and received multiple job offers within a week. I accepted a job that is paying me $15K more a year than my previous job, it's up the street from my house & they will pay for me to complete my education and the big one, my health care is completely paid for. As of today, I'm waiting for my background check to clear and my official start date.