Egg and Crow
Do you see the egg on my face? And where’s that crow I’m going to have to eat? There are days when I just think that I shouldn’t bother getting excited about something. It always seems to either be too good to be true or falls apart. Maybe not everything, but it feels that way tonight. *sigh*
Mom (who doesn’t work on Mondays) was doing some research and listening to the news. I had told her about my plan for paying off my debts and she had been doubtful. Isn’t there a clause somewhere that says the truth of the cliche “mother’s always right” runs out? I was not happy, but I had been relieved. I was doing something about my debt and was on my way out of debt in the next 33 months. *sigh* I should have known it was too good to be true.
Mom watched the news and saw a report on debt and the ways out there to settle it. She had me watch the six o’clock news to see if they would re-run the report that they had run during the five o’clock news (they did not) but I did check their web page and found this. The news station is KDKA channel 2 in Pittsburgh, PA, related to the first broadcast radio station KDKA 1020. That was disheartening, but it got worse when I went over to ConsumerReport.org. This article was the most helpful to me.
This quote made me think (once I had read it and not heard just heard it from Mom):
“It’s possible to negotiate down the debt that you owe to a fraction of what it was before. In fact, bank officials that we talked to said they don’t give any better deals to the debt companies than they do to individuals that call them up personally,” said Tiernan.
Grant it I was very upset when Mom called and told me this. I don’t like to be wrong and once I have a plan settled on in my mind, I really like to stick with it. I’m not very fond of change. Crying, yelling, swearing – it wasn’t pretty. I was in my car and alone. That’s probably the only good thing about it. lol I’ve been in a pretty poor mood all evening, truth be told, and I’m hoping blogging it out will help. 
So what am I going to do now? I’m going to call the credit card companies. To be honest, I’m really scared about it. I don’t like confrontation at all and even more so when I’m feeling desperate. I’m not sure how much they are going to be willing to help me, but I am going to give it a shot before I take my next step. I’ll start with Bank of America and go on from there. I may have to do them one at a time. I don’t know. I don’t know how much I can afford to pay. I should figure that though, shouldn’t I?
The moral of the story? Never go against your mother. She almost always ends up being right.
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Before you call them, figure out what you can and cannot afford. Figure out your budget. That’ll give you a platform on what to negotiate for.
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Just so you have it in more than just chat logs
Figure out your most important expenses: rent, electric/heating, groceries, gas, and the ones you can’t get out of without huge fines: cellphone, etc.
Then you go from there with how much you have, hopefully keeping a little for emergencies, like gas prices going up, or electric/whatever going up, etc.
*snort* That’s going to take a bit to figure out. And I suck at saving for anything! I really do. Thanks for the tips. I’ll keep them in mind.
You need to put it into an account that charges you extra if you remove anything, XD. That might help [if they exist]
My dad’s best advice was to budget what I needed for rent/utilities/car payment/food/etc… then add $50 to that which goes into my savings account.
From there, break the rest of the bills (medical bills/credit cards/past due accounts/etc) into what you can afford to pay. Pick the highest interest account and pay the most on that.
Once that major account is paid off, spend the same amount of money on the additional bills, just take what you would pay on the bill you’ve already paid off, and include it in the payment for the next highest interest bill. It snowballs quickly, and before you know it, all your overdues are gone.
Oh I am sorry – that’s bad news. Maybe you could sit down with Tom and work through your budget? I think it’s important to get that sorted out so that you know how much you can afford to pay back. Good luck with it all.
Do not get discouraged – any repayment will be welcomed by those you owe – as long as it is consistent and on time. I would focus on the credit cards and loans first as they are the ones that effect your credit rating. Utilities cannot effect your credit rating. And as others have said, finding a budget that is realistic is your goal – it doesn’t make a lot of sense to agree to repayment plans only to find that your earnings can’t support it and then create others. I wrote down the cost of every little thing that I spent money on over the course of 7 days and tallied it up. Then I figured out which categories could be cut out and took out the full sum all at once the beginning of each week, sorted it out into envelopes for each category and kept them at home, where I also left my ATM card. It really made me think twice before spending and allowed me to repay my debts as planned. It took several years but was very liberating.
That’s a great idea! I’ll definitely do that. Thanks for the idea! And thanks for visiting!