Saving the Pennys

Greetings from our family of 4!

2011-08-04T11:11:00.000-07:00

Hi everybody - sorry for the long hiatus. Our little newbie has arrived - he's beautiful and things went great w/ the birth and what-not. James actually was allowed the 4 days I was in the hospital as personal time so Nicky had daddy at home (as well as the grandmas and a grandpa too) and the little one had daddy present at his birth and throughout the stay at the hospital. We're all exhausted but doing well.

James is working a lot with paychecks varying - but a salary that will likely average out to about 65k a year. Amazing for us, right? Compared to the last few years, we feel rich. If "rich" meant you could pay all your bills, eat, have health insurance and afford the occasional dinner out or pizza delivery. It's amazing how this journey has changed our view of what is "necessary" and what is a luxury. I've even socked a little more away into our savings account ($1450 and counting....) hoping that I can squirrel away a few thousand more to get us squarely on the road to a down payment on this house we're currently squatting in. haha. James' truck will be paid off next month which is awesome but it would be more awesome if we had any confidence at all that the thing would run for a few more years. He'll drive it into the ground and then the plan is to .... wait for it...... buy a cheap honda accord w/ cash! I'm so proud of my hubby for having this economical, smart, within our budget/goals idea all on his own. Hopefully we don't have to worry about it for a couple years though. Everyone collectively cross your fingers, ok? Thanks.

The debt is still huge but doesn't feel like such an immense burden right now. We made about $900 in payments last month and it just feels good to throw all the cash we can at it. The current total is $21,225. So, off the top of my head we've paid off...what, like almost 5 thousand bucks? Since Christmas? Proud of us. We haven't charged a single thing on a card since then. We are doing things like dogsitting for the neighbor (at $20 a day) when they go on vacation. I am starting up classes again with what will be a 10 week old baby in order to push forward on the goal of getting back to 2 working parents. It's a long road, but we're on it and we're on it together. I continue to use coupons - James continues to push for long shifts at work in order to get the overtime every day. We are tired, worn out and overwhelmed sometimes, but we are happy and working towards a better life. That's better than any i-phone, right?

Penny

Hey guys!

2011-05-24T20:08:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody! Hope you're all doing well, hanging in there, and plugging away at your debts. James has officially graduated (?) from a trainee to a marked-up member of the railroad. 6 months of crazy shifts, long hours and even longer weeks and he has full union protection, great benefits and a host of other things headed his way. Which leads me to my first official gripe (I'll get to the good stuff soon, I promise). CELL PHONE CONTRACTS EFFING SUCK. Sigh. I've been a Sprint customer for 12 years. TWELVE. With the same phone number. Who even does that? ME. Anyway - our plan pricing sucks. And it's not even a good one. We have 2 pretty ghetto phones (no smartphones, here, people) and a family plan that has 1500 minutes and unlimited text messaging. The cost? $99.99 a month. Only it REALLY costs $135 a month. Every month. WHY THE EFF is the bill 30% more than the plan says it costs? So I talk to Sprint today and their answer? "You are on the $99.99 a month plan". Yes, I know....so WHY DOESN'T IT COST 99.99 A MONTH!?!?!? Ugh. I would love to cancel but the astronomical fees of terminating your contract make it not doable. So, there. I guess we lower our plan down to something resembling 1980 phone conversation standards and leave it at that. And I'll just keep dreaming about an i-Phone w/ Skype so daddy can talk to his babies while out riding the rails..... (well, you know, from the hotel - they don't talk on the phone ON the train, that would be crazy...). My point was this - the railroad offers employee discounts for all kinds of things. Cell phones, computers, CARS. So, i was all "yay, we can switch to Verizon and get cool phones in a few years when our shiz is paid off and mama's working again....... Lame. No switching any time soon.

Ok, next up - Yes, yes, yes. We are finally going to cancel our cable. We did it before, you know? But we really like it. It's like smoking. Once you quit you really shouldn't start again because it just gets harder every time you try to give it up. Our promotional period ended and the bill went up to $175 a month (w/ internet). That's a freaking car payment and totally ridic. Done. So, with internet only it should be about $60. Fine. I'm happy w/ my Netflix and Grey's Anatomy on abc.com. Plus I'm going to be birthing a little one and chasing a toddler. When the hell am I going to be watching TV? So that's gone....once the Stanley Cup Finals are over. You understand, no?

The good news is - our in laws have the same coffee maker we had and their's ALSO started to leak all over the place. Being way more patient than me, they did a lot of research and discovered you could replace the inner canister for about $30. Apparently some valve wears out after a few years. Done and done. We're back to using our $80 coffee machine :D) Woot! Woot! And just in time too b/c although we were downing the frenchies, James was also filling his thermos EVERY DAY on his way to work for about $3. It adds up, no? I didn't want to scold the man, but I was about to. Seriously. So....now we're back to cheap great coffee, in huge quantities (yes, I know I'm pregnant, sssshhhhhhh......). The other good news? I just pulled up all of our credit card statements from December/January - you know, the height of the disaster, right before James' paychecks started coming in? Anyway, the debt had gotten up to (rounded) $26,500. Cough. Sputter. Choke. Seriously. The good news? In 5 months it has gone down to $22,871. AND we have $1,000 in our emergency fund. AND, we have what we need for this baby (thank you grandmas for the new car seat and a sweet double stroller). 1 gallon of paint has been purchased $25 with a $5 mail in refund (hehe) and the rest of the supplies for fixing up the nursery have been pulled from the leftover materials in the basement (primer, painting supplies, trim and door paint....). I'll probably pick up another $30 rug from Ikea, and my MIL is making, yes MAKING, a little ottoman for the rocking chair. An easy off-cut of plywood and a small swatch of fabric and a piece of foam are all that's required. Yay! Thank god it's a boy, right? Clothing handled.

Anyway. It's not like 22,871 in credit card debt is something to celebrate. It makes me shudder just thinking about it. But then I remember that paying off $3500 of credit card debt in 5 months isn't too shabby. And I get out my coupon clipping scissors, drive a little out of my way for the gasoline discount, and happily wear all my old ridiculous maternity clothes that I wasn't that fond of the first time around. Meh. The heartburn and lack of a shower make my clothing less noticeable, right? Baby comes in 3 weeks. Wish us luck!

Scores:

2011-04-21T08:08:00.000-07:00

I feel like I'm getting a lot better at this couponing thing. This week I saved $40 off of our $175 worth of groceries/cleaning/household supplies, also earning a $5 gift card to Target and signed up for the Sunday paper only (for the coupons) for $1.25 per week. Oh, and earned another .15 off per gallon of gas. LOVING this! Not bad for 15 minutes worth of coupon clipping and another 10 or so of checking the circulars and writing shopping lists.

In response to a post online about where I went.....

2011-04-14T10:29:00.000-07:00

"I still lurk now and again but yeah, basically GBCMM after the super-flaming I got about being pregnant. Between the money stress, being pregnant and exhausted and going to school I just didn't have the emotional energy nor the inclination to defend my life to internet strangers and the blog has kind of fallen by the wayside for the same reasons. We're doing our best and adjusting as we go - on Saturday I saved $40 at the grocery store using coupons and buying sale items, which was a nice little mini-victory. With the blog it was like inviting people to kick us while we're down and was just making me more depressed over our situation rather than helping me stay positive. Thanks for thinking of us, though. We actually have $1000 in our savings now and have paid off about $2000 in debt in the last 2.5 months. It still seems impossible, but we plug away at it and have gotten into a bill-paying routine w/ the uncertain paychecks that is really working. I may update the blog again, I might just let it die. I used to find inspiration and motivation to reach our goals out of writing the blog but lately it just seemed to be another source of stress and was getting to be emotionally draining."

So, that's basically how I feel these days about the blog and what-not. But today I felt like I should share a few victories with all of you who are still out there wondering how it's going. We've made some big credit card payments over the last few months and although it doesn't undo the damage of the unemployment stints quite yet - the balance is back down to $24k. So, We've paid off about $2500 since James started getting his regular paychecks in January - AND...drumrolll...yes, we have $1000 in savings now. We haven't used the cards since his paychecks started coming in at the end of December - they've all been cut up except for 1 just in case of an uber crazy emergency. I've been using coupons for groceries and getting better at it - so far I'm saving about 20% off our bill every week AND discovered the fuel perks thingy at our grocery store that saved me 33 cents a gallon on my full tank of gas last weekend - which was awesome. So, just plugging away. Things are good - family is happy and we're trying to figure out the earliest point at which I can / should return to work. It's looking like it will be earlier than we had planned originally which is a good thing in a million ways and sad in only 1 in that this next baby won't get the same mom time that our fist one did. In the end, though - I know that a happy, healthy, stable home life is the most important thing. And financial security for us will come in the form of 2 incomes.

No New Coffee Maker

2011-02-21T10:23:00.000-08:00

Ok, ok. You guys were right. And I came to my senses. 2 Frenchies a day and buying the coffee beans on sale for $5.99 / lb = we'll see how long this seems like a good idea. :D)

Don't tell anyone, but I just sent my resume out for a work-from-home bookkeeping position that pays $19/hour. I didn't even tell James. I have no idea if I'll get a hit on it, but it was too good a position to pass up at least throwing the hook out there to see if anything comes back. 20-30 hours a week and able to stay home w/ the babies or get a babysitter for a few hours while I'm here and working if needed.

P.S. I have a 96% and a 98% in my 2 classes right now.

Penny

2011-02-07T11:12:00.000-08:00

I'm not trying to make excuses for anything. In fact, I don't feel the need to justify any of our decisions here. I merely explain where we are coming from, what is happeneing and why. Otherwise, why would anyone be interested in reading this? But you should know, I take your comments to heart. They stay with me. I ask myself if what we are doing is stupid. Are we really not making any progress? That's the one that bothers me. Has the number on the credit cards gone down in the last year? Yes. And then it came back up during the last 3 months before James' job started and the paychecks kicked in. It went up to pay for our move. The "emergencies" have finally subsided. Are we set to handle another one? No. Not yet. But we are getting there. The balance we owe James' parents went down by nearly 10 thousand dollars. So, the idea that we've made zero progress in a year is an opinion, but one I take issue with. We are paying all our bills in cash again. Buying all our groceries in cash again. We have outstanding medical insurance that we are paying far less out of pocket for with pre-tax $. So, is the debt rocketing down? No. But we stopped digging. That's a victory that doesn't deserve to be discounted. I often get comments from people saying they paid of some insane amount of debt in 1 year. I am in complete admiration of that. But I wonder if you did it amidst unemployment and relocation. Not excuses, just....the circumstances do matter. Talk to me in 6 months. If nothing's budged after 6 months of steady paychecks, THEN you can kick my ass.

I started this blog because I know there are others who are struggling. Struggling with balance, with debt, with how to get ahead while not just suffering every day for years. Without letting the stress tear your marriage apart. Without stagnating. Am I going to school now? Yes. Am I proud of myself? You bet. I'm also waiting on my FAFSA loan, which may be one good side effect of our practically non-existent income during 2009. Are these all excuses? I don't know. You tell me. I'm getting tired of writing honestly only to have to defend everything I say. I know there are people pulling for us. I also know there are people who read this just to feel superior or watch the "train wreck". I also know that everything here appears black and white and not everything we do IS black and white. I know we continue to make some mistakes. I know we are trying to learn and it's a process. I know this would be different if I were one person but this is a marriage, and everyone doesn't always see eye to eye. We do our best to work things out and move forward.

Someone actually said to me "ooooh, I'm sooooo jealous of your 30k in debt" as a way to "win" a disagreement. I was teleported back to the 5th grade and a very specific incident involving a leather skirt and being ostracised. ;) We aren't defined by this number. It's just something we are dealing with. We have made a lot of headway in securing a better future over the last year. We have made sweeping and drastic changes. Some of those have set us back. I believe our progress just hasn't shown up in the details, yet. But it will. Like paying off that card last week. And adjusting and learning how to budget unpredictable paychecks (he's only gotten 2, y'all....cut me some slack).

Anyway, my intention is not one big long page of excuses. It's to explain. Cause people ask. And the point of this is to write out the process we go through. Maybe it's kind of pointless to do it. I don't know.

Penny

Budgeting for Random Paychecks

2011-02-04T10:10:00.000-08:00

So in my last post I was all "yippee! James got a big paycheck! Let's pay off an $800 credit card balance! Woot!". Yeah, well..... this time around (the paycheck on the 30th) was the OPPOSITE story. Um.... the check was small due to a scheduling error where the callers forgot to call him out on a road trip so he went the next day. Only the next day was a new pay period. So he had less than 80 hours on his check meaning.... we were really low on cash after our bills were all paid. I did some juggling, I'm not going to lie. I transferred $4k of a balance from one credit card with 13.99% interest, to one with a 0% balance transfer offer for 18 months. 5% transfer fee as usual. That saved us from having to make the $225 minimum payment on that one card....freeing up some cash for groceries to last us until the next paycheck. The moral of the story is....when you get a big check, assume you'll need to carry over the "extra" to account for a small check later.... right? We'll see, but I'm sure I'll get the hang of it. I did put another $50 into the emergency fund. BABY steps. And I do like having one less credit card payment to make. James has been working insane shifts - 12 and 13 hours every night - so fingers crossed the next check is another big one and I can do a better job of rationing. We need to buy a new coffee maker as ours crapped out entirely, leaking the whole pot of coffee onto the counter top while I was busy chasing Nicky around the house one morning. Macy's is having a huge sale right now, and I found a $120 machine for $80. Hoping to be able to buy it at that price next week. With the amount of coffee we drink, we'll make up for the price of a new machine in about 2 months. Our last one only made it 4 years which I find a bit strange..... it was a $100 coffee maker. But we DOOOOOO beat the crap out of it. So, I guess that's good enough. I don't know. We're not going to buy the same model again as it kind of always had leaking issues anyway (usually just water, though, the coffee mess was the last straw). We also averted another financial disaster as James' truck started dying and then was lunging and making strange noises (the down side of being financially strapped is you tend to forgo things like regular maintenance on your vehicles and then....disaster). Luckily his brother is a motorhead so James could borrow the same tool that mechanics use to tell you what's wrong with your engine without having to pay someone to figure it out. Then he just started w/ the cheapest options and turns out he just replaced the spark plugs and we were good to go. $50. PHEW.

I cannot WAIT until this emergency fund is high enough to handle things like broken cars. I'm also stressing a little about baby #2. We just found out it's another little boy which, aside from loving being the mommy of a little dude, and having 2 of them so close in age, is also awesome b/c it means we already have all the clothing we need to survive. Seasonally we might have to supplement w/ a few things as they are going to be born at completely different times of year but other than that we are golden. However, we do need a new car seat for the little one. Why you ask? Well, the infant seat we used for Nicky was 2nd hand off of craigslist.

Ugh, I just wrote 3 paragraphs that were deleted by this stupid laptop. Insert irritated tired mom face.

Anyway, we got rid of Nicky's car seat b/c it was 5 years and they "expire" at that date.

I've been clipping coupons and trying to figure that whole game out, too. Shopping at 2-3 grocery stores looking for the best meat, cheapest canned/boxed goods, another store for diapers, cat food, etc.
Hoping to figure it out and get a system down, but it certainly feels good to find your Cheerios for $2 less a box.....

Penny

Woot! Woot!

2011-01-14T09:58:00.000-08:00

James worked a bunch of overtime at the end of December, making his paycheck $800 more than his last paycheck where he was sitting in class. Woot! Woot! Sooooooo......I upped our grocery and gas budget to $500 for the next two weeks, put $100 in our Emergency Fund, paid all the bills that are due between now and the next pay period AND......PAID OFF A CREDIT CARD!!!!! It was the smallest balance card, but it felt DAMN good to make a $792 payment and clear that thing down to 0! I also paid a minimum on our CitiBank card which was $185. SO, almost $1k in credit card payments out of one paycheck, and feeling amazing about it. haha. It's a good day, everyone. It's a good day.

How the budget is going.....

2011-01-09T09:22:00.000-08:00

James and I went grocery shopping on Thursday and spent $87. That left us with 8 bucks. We've been eating at home every night and James travelled for work for the first time this weekend and packed up food to take with him so he wouldn't have to eat at restaurants on the road. So far, so good. He gets paid again on the 15th so we should be fine, minus the need to replenish milk around here. I need to learn how to grocery shop, though. I went to the store the week before that and spent $111. Within 2 days I was wandering the kitchen asking why we didn't have any FOOD. What the hell did I BUY?! I have never been a good cook. My mom sucked at it, and I swear she only eats because if she doesn't she;ll die. She doesn't even like food, I swear. She would live on freaking burgers if it was up to her. Anyway, it's not like I couldn't have taught myself to cook as an adult but for whatever reason, it's just not in me. I never grew up around it and I'm basically intimidated. James makes homemade butternut squash ravioli and amazing chillis and braised pork tacos with homemade tortillas and all kinds of ambitious yumminess. He compares cooking to carpentry and building things. You have all the right tools and you create something great. I look at it like...uh..... how do I chop this onion again? So, I'm about to eat Top Ramen for lunch. Seriously. Which is apparently what I bought at the store: Ramen, Mac n Cheese, Frozen Pizza, salad mix, string cheese....you get the idea. Anyway, I need to figure out a way to SHOP for ingredients even though I don't see a kitchen/refrigerator that way. Maybe I can get James to make me some lists and we can plan some dinners ahead of time and I can shop for deals that way. I don't know. But I'm clear that buying mostly packaged/boxed/bagged food is more expensive and leaves you with not a lot to eat. Plus I feel yucky and unhealthy even though my lunches are pretty good: fruit, cottage cheese, sandwich on whole wheat bread or what have you. Breakfasts too - oatmeal and fruit or a bowl of cereal (not too bad, right?). Then I eat a box of Kraft for dinner and feel guilty for the rest of the night. Yikes. I need the hubby to come back and make me some salmon or a nice chicken breast with brussels sprouts! Gawd, I love that man.

He's started travelling and getting overtime, so the next paycheck should be higher. Insurance benefits are all squared away, life insurance policy through the railroad set up. Did you know that I get a pension through the railroad just for being his wife? Half the amount he gets, but still. I guess there are benefits to working in an industry that's been around for 100 years. :) School starts tomorrow. My dad bought my textbooks for me as a Christmas present. How xmas has changed, huh? It was my idea. Nervous and excited. I applied for FAFSA aid, by the way. I don't think I talked about that. So, I'm hoping that since our incomes SUCKED for 2009 which is the year they look at - we may get some free aid on the tuition. After that we are going to have to take out a loan, I guess. I know, more debt. But I feel a small community college student loan is different than credit cards and consumer debt. It's FOR something that will make us money down the road. And I don't have any loans from my first trip to college - a BA with no debt. So in that way, at least we aren't piling it on.

More soon,
Penny

Maybe a little overly ambitious.

2011-01-05T07:23:00.000-08:00

I think I didn't leave us enough cash to live on for the pay period. It may have been overly ambitious to think we could pay for food, gas, and anything else not covered by a recurring bill - with $300. It's supposed to last us from 12/30-1/15. We are down to $95 and haven't done any shopping outside of groceries. I may have been a little ambitious. I'm going back through my spreadsheet and adjusting our credit card payments and savings deposits to make sure we'll have closer to $400 to last each pay period. We'll see if that works out and go from there. I mean, we CAN do it - I had mac n cheese for dinner last night and I don't even suffer over that (I freakin' love boxed mac n cheese, especially while pregnant - thanks mom and dad for making this a childhood staple....). So, between me and Nicky dinner cost about $1. Which is cool. But I don't want to eat like that every night. I'll admit it's easier to eat cheaply when James is working the late shift and not cooking. Honestly sometimes I'm happy w/ a bowl of cheerios for dinner. haha. I grew up in a funny household. I much prefer James' healthy and delicious cooking, but left to my own devices I'm cool with whatever is around. Thank gawd, right?

Penny

I guess it's time to address the issue.

2011-01-01T12:17:00.000-08:00

Well, since I left the message board that was upsetting me it seems the questions have started over here. And that's ok. I guess it's time to just answer them? First off, I will say I'm not "sensitive" to the issue of our 2nd pregnancy. I'm not upset when someone asks me about it - I've just been reluctant to respond to those questions because, well, it's my child's life and I guess it seems like an odd thing to have to "defend". This baby is coming, whether we planned it or not. Talking about it being a dumb idea is just hurtful as you can't un-impregnate yourself - well, technically you can, but for us, at this point in our lives, that was not an option. SO......the first thing I want to say is that the idea that we are "hanging on by a thread" is totally inaccurate. I know I may have given that impression, or that impression more accurately is a holdover from when we WERE hanging on by a thread. That reality is not the case anymore, today. Are we still hurting? Yes, in some ways. But I can tell you that there is a world of difference between hoping the hubs will get another construction job that will pay a variable amount, take a variable amount of time, and cost a variable amount of money to produce, while living with the in-laws after relocating across the country and having no health insurance and where we are today, 6 short months later. 7 months, sorry.

I feel the need to say that mostly I haven't been addressing these questions because whenever I attempt to, I just get called whiny and defensive. I am neither, I assure you. I am just someone who is attempting to answer the accusations (mostly thrown out as accusations, not curiosities, and I mean, who DOESN'T sound defensive when put in the position of defending themselves?).

I've said most of this, so I'm guessing a lot of the questions are coming from 2 kinds of people. 1) People who don't read this blog, but are coming over here to throw these things around based on whatever incomplete information they gleaned from my posts on The Nest and 2) People who are curious and under the impression that in our current financial situation we threw caution to the wind and just decided to have another baby. That's not the case but here we are, baby #2 on the way.

Anyway, today my husband has an excellent full time job that pays well, will pay better next year and allows him great overtime for as much as he is willing to work it. Which he is. Our health benefits are ridiculous compared to anything we've had in the last 3 years. My son, Nicky is not wanting for awesome hand-me-downs or the occasional cool outfit from grandma, diapers, food, love or shelter or any other kind of care. This new baby will know only the same. We live rent-free for now, in a paid for home which means our living situation is 100% stable and will remain that way for 2 years at minimum. We can eat, we pay all of our bills on time and we are happily married. The downside? WE HAVE DEBT. A LOT OF IT. I personally don't think that having debt means you can't or shouldn't have children. It's not the ideal situation in which to have children. An emergency fund would be nice. We're getting there. We are paying our debts off - slowly due to the setbacks, but I assure you we are back on track. My husband's salary minus a mortgage payment means we have plenty of money to support our family on and still pay those debts down, not just survive. We continue to live very frugally (minus that big ol' splurge on cable) in order to put every available dollar towards getting rid of that debt. If I worked a full time job could we pay the debt off faster? Certainly. Is being out of debt in 1 or 2 years vs. 2 or 3 years worth it to US? No. Is it worth it to other people? Yes. I understand that. I just don't feel the need to constantly explain why my being home w/ our kids is worth the sacrifice. It is. For a million reasons. If you don't understand that, and I drive you crazy because you think I should just go get a job, you should probably stop reading my blog. End of story.

So that's my answer. With regard to my going back to school - education is the path out of poverty is it not? I want to be a working contributing member to my family's financial success. I don't want to do that at a rate of $10 an hour. I want to do that at a rate of $50 an hour or more. As a professional, not a waitress. We're making the sacrifice now - so I go to school during the years I'm home with the babies - kill 2 birds with one stone, and get back into the workforce with a whole new career a few years down the road. The investment is a plotted one, not a "I don't have anything to do so I'll go back to school" one. It's part of our long term financial success - rather than plugging the hole with fast cash that keeps us in the same financial place we've been living in for the last 3 years. Multiple people have suggested that I'm naive for thinking I can take a few years off and go back to work. Tell that to my mother in law who did just that and is in a completely different field, and very successful. Or her husband who did the same thing. Or my father who also changed careers late in life. There are plenty of people over 30, over 40 who work hard and succeed in a new path. Life doesn't end at 25, ladies. I choose not to live my life by focusing on the negative 24 hours a day. I am not defeated before I begin. I still need a couple things that are mine and decisions that are made out of something other than desperation. My son has brought us more joy in the last 2 years than anything has in our entire lives. I can't imagine him not being born because we thought it would be too hard to raise him right now. It isn't. It's the easiest thing we do. He makes it all worth it.

That's all I've got. Like I said, if you aren't satisfied with my answer, I understand why. I just don't care.

Penny

So no, really, I'm a big fat whiner.

2010-12-30T07:21:00.000-08:00

Apparently. Because that was a straight up temper tantrum I threw last week. Maybe those ladies who told me we were ridiculous for spending $60 a month on cable in our particular situation were right. Maybe not. In the end, our belief is this: we've cut our monthly expenses down to practically nothing. We don't take vacations or go to movies. We don't shop for clothes. Do I expect a medal for these things? No. We racked up debt, now we have to limit everything outside of paying for that debt. In my humble (but experienced!) view, suffering does not help you stick to your goals. Suffering causes "frugality fatigue". Suffering leads to bingeing. Bingeing = walking around the mall looking for things to buy. Or charging an expensive day at the salon to make myself feel better. I have to manage the equilibreum a bit. We do that by "splurging" on cable w/ the DVR. The hubby gets to watch hockey games, I get an endless stream of Law & Order SVU when it's late and I'm home alone and Nicky is sleeping. We don't feel ripped off by life every day if we have that one little thing that makes us feel better. That's all. It helps us stick to our goals in every other way. It makes life not totally suck. What are some things you do to keep yourself going? The occasional pedicure? Date night? I'd love to hear.

Other than that I just wanted to update and say James officially, FINALLY, got his first paycheck from the new job. We signed up for our health benefits (which are amaze-balls, btw, and kicked in 2 days after he started). We are loving that the monthly premium is deducted from his check pre-tax, a luxury we haven't been afforded in, oh, 3 full years. I am anxiously awaiting nap time today so I can sit down and pay ALL of our bills that are due between now and the 15th, with some money left over. We have $50 in our emergency fund which isn't a lot, but it's no longer a big fat goose-egg. I start school in a few short weeks and I'm taking regular calls with my clients which is projected to bring in about $150-$200 a month - not a ton, but a good, solid, extra credit card payment guaranteed. I cut up the credit cards we'd been living on. Happily. I didn't realize until this week when I bought groceries with the debit card again, how much handing over that credit card every time I went shopping food was making me feel terrible and guilty and ashamed. I'm glad that's over.

I set up a new spreadsheet that tracks each paycheck and where the money should go. It's based on James' base salary minus overtime - but it sounds like he'll be working plenty of overtime if this week is any indicator. It's good for us. I miss him, and he misses Nicky on the days he's gone from 8am to 8pm. But it's worth the sacrifice. We can do this. We've made much harder sacrifices over the last few years: Security, Peace of Mind, Financial Stability, having a savings cushion....... I miss those things and so does James. We can do this. We will do this.

Penny

2010-12-22T13:54:00.000-08:00

Apparently I'm a big fat whiner. That was never my intention. This situation does feel out of my control sometimes. I guess when I feel down is when I blog and when I feel down, I'm kind of whiny. Taking a break from the blogosphere for now. If you are ever interested in how our situation is going please feel free to contact me via email. My intention was always to be honest and not pretend that this is easy. I hope that some of you found some cameraderie with us and were maybe inspired to think it's possible to work it all out yourselves without filing for bankruptcy. I still have hope and determination that we will make it out of this hole - strong, together, and powerfully.

Penny

I'm the worst blogger ever.

2010-12-14T07:17:00.000-08:00

I know it's been a while...again. I'm the world's worst blogger. A lot has happened. James started his new job - he is LOVING it and doing really well so far. A HUGE plus. It snowed about a million and 3 inches this weekend (ok, 17 but seriously, to this west coaster it may as well have been 10 feet. Other than that we're still on edge. I can't and won't be able to relax until James receives his first real paycheck which won't be happening until the 30th of December. Suck-tastic. The credit card living is making me physically, actually, totally depressed. To add insult to injury I've been getting updates on the stock I used to own. It's been climbing up through the roof. Too bad I sold off my Roth IRA to pay down credit cards and we did the classic thing of having to spend on the cards again. The only consolation I have is that the debt would be 4k HIGHER if I hadn't paid it down some before this awful little in-between time.

On a little high note - my on the side consulting I've been doing (which, yes I know, seems crazy considering our current situation - but considering everything we've dealth with I guess I am semi-qualified to discuss any kind of financial disaster these people can throw at me - with some compassion and been-there-done-that to boot) has been going great. I actually just got my 3rd payment made to me this month which means I have earned enough money to make the last credit card payment that is due before James' paychecks begin which means throughout all of this we didn't miss a single payment on the cards, which in itself is a victory. I promised you'd get the good the bad and the ugly - so I"m not trying to sugar coat any of this. I guess my point is that although things are looking up, they sure had to go down into a crappy, icky, uncomfortable hole first. Charging 2 months worth of expenses onto credit cards you've worked 18 months to pay down only to end up right back where you started feels like a solid kick to the baby-makers. I won't lie. It sucks. So for now, I've just been reworking our budget and keeping on top of everything so that when the money starts coming in, we're ready to hit the ground running.

The Credit Cards: $24,824.36 (someone shoot me in the face, please)
The Parent Debt:    $ 6,039.00   (Yes, we borrowed $1100 to pay for our health insurance and a
                                                     truck payment)
The Ugly Truth:     $30,863.36

The only consolation right now is that we are still down about eight thousand dollars thanks to James working off some debt to his parents last summer working on their house and building their new deck.

It's not a lot, but it's something.

Oh - and our awesome insurance benefits through the railroad kicked in the day he started working - so that's one more expense that will go down in cost and be off our plates as far as out of pocket bills to pay. You have to find the bright spots, right? Ok, while we're looking for bright spots........we're all healthy and have a roof over our heads rent-free right now. I can't forget the thousands of dollars we're saving by not paying for our home as of now. Thank you money gods, for that little bit of sunshine.

Till next time,
Penny

I have some good news, and of course, some bad news.

2010-11-17T11:04:00.000-08:00

The good news first, because...it's more fun. James got the job with the railroad!! It took about 3 weeks to finally hear back and we were desperate and flipping out the entire time - but when he finally got the call we jumped up and down and hugged and knew things were finally going to change around here. He starts in about a week and a half, which is great. The bad news? He doesn't get a paycheck until the end of DECEMBER. So....yeah. The ugly ugly truth is that we have been paying bills and buying groceries with a credit card. Everything we can pay for with them, we do. We had to borrow $1000 from the in-laws to pay for our health insurance premium and a few other bills that make you use, you know, real money. I'm depressed over it, but at the same time I know that we are briding the gap until we have cash flow again and once we do - and REGULAR cash flow at that - we'll hammer away at those cards like nobody's business. We've been living so lean for the last 2 years that we won't even notice that huge chunks of income are going to the debt. We'll feel like millionaires just to have regular checks, the ability to pay bills when they arrive, the ability to buy groceries and clothes and a xmas present or 2 with some cash will be more than enough to make us feel like the luckiest people alive. It still sucks, though. I stopped looking at the credit card statement....the cardinal death rule for people managing debt. We haven't missed any payments on credit cards, minimums only of course...but if we can stretch out the survival mode a little bit longer, we're home free. We may have to borrow a little more cash and charge a few more things - but the end is in sight once more. The days of huge credit card payments and room to breathe are on their way back. We just need to hang on a little longer...... and I should probably go look at all the statements. Just so I can mentally flog myself. 2 months worth of bills on credit along with some household necessities like a shower curtain and all those weird things you forget you have to buy when you move. It's not a perfect plan, but it's a plan. There are always back slides, I suppose. The other good news? I now have THREE clients I'm doing financial coaching calls with - people just like us, in debt hell or who live in denial of how much they are spending. I'm making spreadsheets and asking tough questions and they are paying me for that. I also applied to the community college and sent off to have my transcripts mailed over. I hope to be able to register for classes soon - 1 or 2 beginning accounting classes online for January.

I cannot wait. We just need to hold on a little bit longer....... and somewhere in the background Wilson Phillips plays through my consciousness......

Penny

Tink. Tink. Is this thing on??

2010-10-20T11:09:00.000-07:00

Just wondering. If you've stuck by me through all these long stretches than I appreciate it. I know I haven't been the best blogger lately. Hell, I haven't been the best ANYTHING lately. I'm tired (my kid is almost 1 and you guys...he hasn't slept through the night EVEN ONCE. Not even a fluke night.) And I'm the idiot who never goes to bed at 7pm hoping to get that 4 hour stretch. Noooooo...... I stay up till 11 or 12 and then get up every 2 or 3 hours till I drag my arse out of bed at 7am and start pounding the French Roast. Anyway, couple that with the remodel - which is still going on - and you have one frazzled Penny. We also ran out of money. And we're in limbo. James is completing a construction job that'll give him $1000 to pay bills with - but in the mean time he's been in a holding pattern on accepting new work (which as fate would always do to us is coming at him from every angle) due to the Railroad's wacky job offer. James had to send them a bunch of info on his business, presumably because unemployed people lie about owning a business to fill holes in their resumes? Anyway, he also had to go to a doctor for a physical, the routine drug tests and all that jazz - and then go to some facility yesterday for a physical abilities test which apparently consisted of proving his manhood to a machine resembling the SoloFlex. Go James. He showed it who was boss, by the way.

So, we sit anxiously by the phone today and tomorrow and as long as it takes to hear back from the Railway company. It's been 10 days of this "You got the job! Maybe!!!" madness and we're both going a little crazy. And unfortunately we've had to start paying some bills with our credit card. SUCK-TASTIC. I know, I know. But look - the pull on this blog is soooo to sugar coat things..."Hey we're paying stuff off, it's gonna take a while, but it's all so wonderful!" Not the case. So, we tentatively pay for our car insurance with our credit card, and hope that this job comes through - and with it the ability to really, really knock this debt back. James scraped together the cash to make his truck payment (late, but with a phone call BEFORE it was late to good ol' Wells Fargo to ask for an extra week..... VICTORY for James, who has never, ever done this in his life). We haven't missed a credit card payment which is ABSOLUTELY VITAL and I'm proud of us for that even if it seems like we're shooting ourselves in the foot.

In the end I hope that this job comes through, and it will be the product of our relocation and the extra expenses will all be worth it. The move will have been worth it. The ups and downs will have been worth it. I'm proud of my hubby. Even if it doesn't work out for some god-awful reason. He's grinding it out for us. And someday I vow to return the favor - to ease the financial pressure on him. To contribute my share in the money department. And for now - me and Nicky take him thermoses of home-brewed coffee while he rebuilds our house. And we thank him. And we cross our fingers.

Penny

Some Fantastic (Tentative!) News...

2010-10-11T09:09:00.000-07:00

Well, James was offered a position w/ the railroad! I told you, he kills it in interviews! Now he has to pass a physical, a physical abilities test (no problem) a background check, and provide all kinds of paperwork from the business and other verification. They are thorough, I tell you. So, we're tentatively celebrating though I suppose there is a lot of stuff that could go wrong. Just because it's James. Nothing foreseeable but you never know. The job doesn't start until the end of November with a paycheck withheld until the end of...December (!) so we still have some planning to do to make it until then. Fortunately the phone's been ringing for construction work, and we should have enough to squeak by. The other good thing? Benefits. That'll save us a good $300 a month.

The house is coming right along, too. It's beautiful, actually - but we haven't moved in yet. Probably a couple more weeks to go.

The numbers:
Credit Cards: $20,084.60
The InLaws: $ 4,939.00
The Total: $25,023.60

I cannot WAIT for this to start plummetting again..... fingers crossed for regular paychecks, ok everybody?!

Penny

Sometimes this is just really boring

2010-09-29T08:32:00.000-07:00

I mean really really really boring. No commas there, see - because it's more BORING that way. To prove a point. Or something. Sometimes the nose to the grindstone, not having any money, paying your bills on time no matter what thing. It's LAME and BORING. I mean it's good, yes. I feel some sense of accomplishment but man, sometimes we go months without anything changing....just paying bills, scraping together money, paying more bills.....

We are still living with the in-laws for the next few weeks. We are hoping to be ready to move into our house the 2nd week of October. Nicky will be 1 at the beginning of November and I'm so happy he'll finally have his own room. I guess we have a tentative amount of exciting news...James got called in for a first round interview with the Railroad company here. He's been sending them resumes and applying for this job for about 18 months - long before we moved here and back since he got laid off at the Construction firm in Seattle. In the mean time the Construction thing goes on - but he's still looking for solid full time work with benefits. I have my fingers crossed - James working full time would definitely give me some breathing room to go to school. It would also make securing the loan for our house easier to do by the 2 year deadline. I feel like things are finally going to start turning around for us, but of course, you can't live on a "feeling".

We shall see. And I'll keep you all posted on the interviews. James sometimes has a hard time getting in the door but once he does, he's the king of the personal interaction. Mostly I think - because he's pretty honest and straightforward. Send good vibes our way!

Penny

2010-09-14T20:47:00.000-07:00

I'm starting to get really excited about school. Actually "starting" is the wrong word, I've been excited for a while now :) Excited in that way you get when you FINALLY settle on the right thing and you know it's right. I want to start yesterday. Tomorrow I'll be receiving my first "paycheck" from consulting - $94.50. It feels good, I'm not going to lie. I'm proud of myself. It's a small step, and in the short term it makes no real difference in our financial situation. But for the first time it feels like I might be able to actually make a good living one day. I know that sound stupid. Most people - grown women, otherwise confident and outgoing women - don't question their ability to do a good job. But that dragon lady boss of 5 years ago really damaged my view of myself. It's taken me a long time to let go of her voice in my head - calling me stupid. Telling me I was horrible at my job and incompetent. Calling me a failure. Daily. For 9 months. It's taken 5 years for me to have hope again. To feel that something else was possible. To dare to stop hiding. To step outside of my comfort zone, and dare to go for something I want, unapologetically. I want to be successful. I want to be a successful career woman. There. I said it.

Penny

Not much new to report

2010-09-02T08:43:00.000-07:00

Just slogging away over here. We've been kinda busy closing on the house and handling a teething 10 month old little dude. We're demo-ing the kitchen today and selling off the cabinets and appliances if we're lucky. Hopefully we'll make enough money to buy ourselves a couch :) For the 2nd straight month the ENTIRE family has health insurance. James did a couple little projects around the folks' house and knocked a teeny bit more $ off the debt we owe them. I dug into 2 garbage bags full of hand me downs for little Nicky - I LOVE free baby clothes, btw. If you are squeamish or snooty about them, you should really reconsider. BEST. THING. EVER. Kids outgrow stuff in about 2 months - It's been amazing to open up a new bag or 2 of clothes every so often and have an entire wardrobe for him ready to go. Then I just buy a couple things to fill in the holes (or not) and we're all set! James is suspending the back up EMT plan indefinitely. I know what some of you will say. But he's got 12 years of time into being a carpenter, and business is actually picking up around here. He is doing a GREAT job of bidding jobs more accurately, and aside from that he has gotten better about refusing to do "extra" work people don't want to pay for. i.e. someone decides they will buy some materials themselves to save $ and then he gets a frantic call from Home Depot asking him to walk them through the purchases. He's been very nicely letting them (ok, the one client) know that "ordinarily this is what is included in the cost of materials with me". It's been amazing to watch him grow, fueled by his own desire to do better and provide more for his family. We're still living with the in-laws and it's going well - everyone seems to have found a groove. Still making enough money to pay all of our bills on time which never ceases to be an amazing feeling. OH! And I have a friend who, inspired by what we are doing - admitted she's been having serious money issues and asked me to be her Financial Organizer/Advisor and help her get everything organized, manage her bills, etc. And she's paying me to do it. Not a ton, but it's extra $ and it's been pretty great!

I'm hoping to start school in January in place of James. I want to go back and get an accounting degree. Don't laugh. I think all this penny pinching has brought me to my calling. Number crunching. hahahaha. I don't know how the whole stay-at-home-mom and student thing will go, but I'm ready to start going for it in the new year. Nicky will already be a year old and it's time I start forging ahead - and possibly finding a lucritive and stable career to balance James' hectic and unpredictable one.

More to come.
Penny

Greetings!

2010-08-09T12:49:00.000-07:00

Well, well, well. Here I am, crawling out from under my rock with some big updates.

Remember the house deal set up between James and I and some generous family members willing to finance our home until 2 years from now so we have time to build our wealth back up and purchase it back from them? We found a great house for $188k. I LOVE the midwest, people! Seriously, the prices of homes out here are unbelievable to this west coast gal. The original loan offer was 330k so James and I are feeling very satisfied that we found a home we loved for about half the "available" money. Our intention of course, is to secure a mortgage on our own for the house in August 2012. In order to have the best shot at it we wanted something that was very, very affordable.  Our offer was accepted, and the inspection has been passed. We are asking for a couple of concessions and should close on September 1st. The enormity of the situation hasn't really sunk in - but we couldn't feel more blessed right now. And we feel proud, too. I know we aren't the ones technically buying the house, but we are paying a percentage on the loan back to my family when we buy it from them, so in actuality we are just delaying the cost until we are back on our feet. If everything goes to hell for whatever reason - we will be able to sell the house in 2 years and walk away, possibly with some profit. If the market is stagnant and the house has lost value, we will renegotiate how to proceed at that time. It's a win/win and we couldn't be happier.

The OTHER thing that went down is a very controversial move on my part but I found peace with it before I made the decision and it really felt like the right thing to do. I cashed out my Roth IRA y'all. I know, I know - any financial planner with 5 minutes of experience will tell you that is a really stupid thing to do. But my Roth IRA had $6000.00 in it that I could remove without penalty (i.e. my own after-tax contributions). In measuring all the consequences and the reality of the last 2 years, I decided that taking that cash out to pay down credit cards charging between 8 and 19.99% interest was worth it to me. I kept $2000 in cash to pay all of our bills for the month of August, including $800 set aside to go toward some of next month's expenses and to buy James some breathing room. If we don't need to tap into that money, it will go towards another credit card payment. So the other day I sent a $4k payment to CitiBank. And my GAWD did it feel good. It basically paid off our move, and then some. James finished the deck he was building for his parents and the entirety of that money went to pay them back for the credit card settlement payments they made for us. So flame away, readers - but my commitment is to get rid of this debt as quickly as possible. And in 2 years, when we have purchased the house (hopefully) and things are moving right along - then we start aggressively contributing to retirement accounts.

One more thing on the home front, we are shy 1 couch and a lot of other furniture needed for an entire house, but we will NOT be buying a single thing with a credit card. We will wait and live with no couch until we can buy one with cash. Because that's what you do when you've learned your lesson...... or maybe we'll find a freebie on craigslist? Ew, no. Ok a cheapie perhaps.

The best part of my day? When James suggested we write our credit card companies "thank you" letters for "inspiring" us to live within our means and never use credit cards again, rendering themselves obsolete in our lives.

Cute, no?

And....here they are:

The Numbers
Credit Cards: $20,166.16
The In-laws:      $4,989.00
Total:               $25,155.16

WOO HOO!!!!!

Penny

The numbers. It's been a while.

2010-07-15T08:22:00.000-07:00

Owed to InLaws: $4,989.00
Credit Cards:      $24,206.29*
Total:                  $29,195.29

Starting Total as of 7/09: $38,620.16
Paid Off as of 7/10:          $ 9,424.87

*Unfortunately the credit card balance has gone up again due to making only the minimum payments for the last 2 months (with interest charges).  We are also charging the fee for our storage unit ($68 per month) onto James' active card, in order to keep it in use every month to build his score back up.

I know, it's a miracle - 2 posts in 2 days....

2010-07-13T07:47:00.000-07:00

I just keep turning all this stuff over in my mind. I just wanted to be clear, we absolutely love the in-laws (for James, parents, obviously) and appreciate everything they have done and are doing for us. I just want to be honest. And sometimes being honest isn't very pretty. In all honesty - moving back into the parents' house is not always bbqs and cute baby stuff. Sometimes it sucks. Sometimes you feel out of place or unwelcome even though you know that's not true. Sometimes you feel like you are in the way. Or wonder if the fact that you left a glass on the counter is being added to a laundry list of things irking everyone. "Don't leave glasses on the counter!" you say? Ok, sure. But in reality, sometimes you leave stuff out. Especially when your 8 month old starts screaming and you have to whisk him off for a nap or whatever. Anyway, I'm not defending myself if I came off sounding like a spoiled brat yesterday. And I often ask myself "Are we too sensitive?" The answer is probably "yes" in a lot of ways. We are exposed. Raw. Do we deserve to be treated with caution around money things? I guess so. I suppose I have a hard time being treated that way because I still cling to the notion that I am not the one who did this. Maybe I should let that last part go. The last separation / keeping score. I am just as responsible as James even if I'm not the one who set off the atom bomb in our bank accounts.

A lot of people have tens of thousands of dollars of debt and they don't tell anyone. Or they declare bankruptcy. Or they buy fancy cars they can't afford and attempt to look "successful". They garner treatment from others that they don't necessarily deserve by keeping their business their business. I wish I could do that. But I can't. I'm a talker. I need to work things out for myself. Out loud (or apparently, online). I'm working on this. But I just wanted to be honest. It's not all puppies and rainbows when you accept help from people. There is always a price higher than the monetary one. There is a price to telling the truth. Because even though you feel liberated, others immediately have judgements. Or knock you down a scale on their respect chart. Or just feel a sense of superiority. Do we deserve that? I don't think so, but I accept it as part of the deal.

I should mention that I've been pounding the pavement looking for waitressing jobs. Dropping off resumes and following leads. Nothing so far, but I'm not discouraged yet. I've also found an insurance plan that we can actually afford, and made Nicky's doctor's appointment for next month. So we are ALMOST officially off the government teet on the insurance front. That's not nothing, right?

More to come.
Penny

I Feel Bi-Polar

2010-07-12T14:23:00.000-07:00

It's up and it's down. It's UP and it's ..... DOWN.

I really don't know where to begin. An apology? For the lack of posts? I haven't felt much like writing lately. It feels like everyone kicks us when we are down. Or perhaps we have just been so down, for so long, that everything feels like a kick. I don't know. Spending is going well - as in, we aren't doing any of it. I noticed the other day while checking our Wells Fargo account that we had "rewards" available. Presto! And we got two $50 gift cards in the mail - ITunes for James, and Babies R Us for me and little Nicky. So that's a plus. James got his final payment for the desks he made, but the check thing has been a debacle - how hard is it to write a check correctly? Seriously? Misspellings and what-not. Delays. It took 3 weeks to get paid. And then because we have a brand new checking account they put a SEVEN DAY HOLD on our money. Which they hadn't done with any of the other checks - so I paid bills for 2 days out thinking the check would clear by then. It didn't. Thankfully after some time on the phone w/ a teller at our personal branch, the guy at US Bank reversed the hold and all the fees. I was actually kind of surprised. I apologized for being so rude to him. I think I actually hurt his feelings. I quietly explained that in the last 2 years I've dealt w/ a lot of banks, and bankers and that he was the first one who gave a crap about us as people. I told him I hadn't expected it and was sorry for assuming he was a jerk like all the other jerks. He was nice about it. We made up. I still feel like a jerk though. Because I did to him what I hate people doing to me. Treated him like he wasn't human.

Anyway, Score 1 for US Bank. I'm actually impressed w/ the customer service. And glad to have access to our money, again. I was losing my mind thinking our credit card payment was going to bounce, and be late, and you know - Citi Bank. They'd be Citi Bank. I just can't deal w/ that right now.

On another front, the in-laws are asking James to write up contracts for the work he's doing on their house which wouldn't be an issue (and really isn't one) except it seems more out of some misguided attempt to control how he works than because they want a contract in place in case something goes wrong. Has he made mistakes in the past? Yes. Is he learning from them and doing things differently? Yes. Does it still make you want to punch through a wall to have your parents try to manipulate you into doing things the way they think you should do them? Absolutely. It'd be no biggie except there was some issue where they didn't want to write him the check for the entire amount of the materials. Not because they don't think they should give him the money, not because the bid was unreasonable.....but I think - because they wanted to control how he managed it. That's the whole "kicking you when you're down" thing. Treating him like a failure based on the fact that he's divulged recent his struggles to them in a parent/son relationship. They're now dragging that into their professional relationship. Which seems unfair given the whole "treat us like you would any other client"....doesn't that require them to "treat him like they would any other contractor"? I can't imagine they ask John Q Contractor whether he is depositing or cashing their check.

I know, it sounds petty and like I'm bitching, and maybe there is a kernel of truth in their concern. Right? I guess so. On paper. But it just feels....manipulative. I don't know. I'm irritated for my own reasons, I suppose. I didn't realize, perhaps naively, that living here meant they would feel they had a right to comment on our every move. Our plans. To ask us outright if we have enough money to pay our bills. It seems that our living here and the money we owe them for what we borrowed are about the limit of what is their business. Being adults and all. And I'm NOT their child, so asking me if I pay my bills seemed not only insulting but WAY out of the scope of what they need to know. I haven't missed a payment for a bill in as long as I can remember. Please kindly back the eff out of my personal life, ok? And if you tell me one more time how I should parent my child I am eventuallly going to stop being so polite and tell you to shove your parenting ideas where the sun don't shine.

See. I told you I was down. Or maybe today I'm just angry. Angry at us, angry at the economy, angry at our situation. Angry that we needed help. Angry that getting help means people treat you like you're an idiot. Angry at myself for sharing personal details that get thrown back in our faces.

I'm thankful for the help. I just don't like the strings very much. And in the end I just have to sit here and dwell on the fact that we did this to ourselves - by failing to recognize the severity of the situation in time to correct it. By not working as a team earlier in our marriage with regard to finances. By not cherishing the good when we had it. By assuming there would always be more work, another job, upward momentum. By being young and stupid and failing to plan.
We know all these things. Nobody can tell us any of this without it being something we've each contemplated quietly for the last 18 months. Why do people feel the need to drill it into us? Are we supposed to appear downtrodden and miserable at every moment so that OTHERS can feel secure in the fact that we REALIZE how bad things are? We realize it, ok? We also have a little boy who doesn't need angry parents. He needs hopeful ones, who are willing to take risks and work hard, and try again - so that he doesn't remember any of this life. So he only remembers how happy we were to have him, and how much he was loved. He doesn't ever need to feel like his arrival was dampened by finances. Because as hard as it is to be in the unknown with this little life depending on us, he sure gives us a better reason than any naysayer to make it work this time. We don't need anyone to point that out to us. Ok, mother in law? Thanks.

Penny

2010-06-29T07:04:00.000-07:00

Do you hear that?! THAT is the sound of a HUGE breakthrough!

James bid on a job yesterday. A fairly large job for a one-man operation - finishing an unfinished basement (well, half the basement) and adding a bathroom. Before he sent out a bid he borrowed (borrowed! for free!) a set of estimating books that are published every quarter and are State specific. SOOOO......you get the actual, current pricing for materials and what to charge by sq. ft. on any and every job you can imagine. Framing a basement bedroom? It's in there. Egress windows? Yep. James spent a good 3 hours on the bid. At the end he even - wait for it - ADDED THE MARKUP. See James' problem has never ever been his ability to build things. His work is amazing (and I'm not just saying that because I'm his wife...sometimes I'm even surprised at what he can do!). Anyway - his biggest problem is and always has been recognizing his own value. So, we've done a lot of talking. We evaluated the few jobs he's done here. We read. We researched (did you know the typical mark up on furniture is 100%? Yeah, we didn't either). We talked about our goals and why it's so important to be successful at this again. He signed up for his school orientation for Fall - keeping the options open. And did I mention he ADDED A MARKUP??? Sorry, I know this is basic business practice 101. But for James - it proves a pivotal corner has been turned. He thinks he deserves to be paid for his work. It sounds stupid when you write it down, but I swear the man was just happy somebody wanted to hire him - which is ridiculous when you realize what these people were getting. I kept telling him the fact that he was meticulously clean and always reliable was enough to warrant a price hike - I mean how many people out there complain about their Contractor disappearing or making a huge mess? Plus he's nice to look at while he works on your house....but maybe people shouldn't have to pay for that part......

So he sent out a bid. Then he admitted the price he quoted was 3 times higher than what he would have done before (and before was when we were going into debt trying to keep a business afloat...). And at the end of the night he went to a site meeting for another possible project. And then got another call. Can you tell I'm beaming with pride? It's the little things - and the big things. It might seem small, sending out an accurate bid...but as I went for my evening run last night, I finally felt the pressure release. I FINALLY had the feeling it would all be ok. Because now he KNOWS what he has to do to make things work, and by gawd he is getting waaaaay outside his comfort zone in order to make it happen. Plus, my charming and chiseled husband has that gleam in his eye again. Sexy.

The Envelope, Please!

2010-06-18T08:52:00.000-07:00

So James and I have switched banks as our favorite hometown conglomorate doesn't have branches here in the tornado (TORNADO!) happy midwest. It was a big step. After an entire year of his bills being paid on time, I decided James was ready to be included on the account. So, joint checking. I quickly confiscated his debit card - we aren't quite there yet, folks - and he happily handed it over complete with a few jokes about how he had an extra $10 to burn through. Apparently our account allows for $10 in overdraft without charging fees. You have to know James perhaps, but this was a hilarious moment of brevity that we both needed. Perfectly timed comedy. So - he's a big boy again, kind of. I think it will help to know that I also took away my OWN debit card. Not that I've been abusing it, but in further inspection of how things are going I decided that we need an even tighter way to stick to our budget.

Hello envolopes full of cash on Monday morning. I've started an allowance. For both of us. Mine is small - $25 a week for incidental groceries, parking, etc. Once a month my envelope has $65 dollars in it - $40 for gas. Since the recession began I've tried very hard to cut WAY down on unnecessary trips in the car and have found over time that I only fill my tank about once a month. Score! James, due to work - needs to put gas in his truck weekly. For now we are limiting him to $40 a week for gas and $25 for incidentals: parking, groceries, the occasional emergency iced coffee/CD download on Itunes. Aside from this little burst of cash each week neither of us has access to the bank account. I just started this last week so we'll see how it goes.

I also set up an automatic transfer of $60 a month from checking to savings. I know it's not much, but it's a tiny bit that we can afford to help us get our emergency fund started up again. Our goal is to save $5,000.00 in an emergency fund for now. It's not ENOUGH, but it's a LOT given our situation. I recently switched James' cell phone number to a local area code - we were paying about $18 a month in city and state taxes for him to continue with his San Francisco phone number. Stupid. Not sure if I mentioned but I also combined our lines and plans - combined with the # change we come out with a savings of about $30 a month. Cool.

Next I called and changed our car insurance to Minnesota. Savings = $17 a month for now, and after this policy cycle the savings will go up to $35 a month. I should add I contacted my credit card companies asking for lower interest rates once I learned that my FICO score was ridiculously high - read: 766. NO DICE. Apparently all the new credit card laws have just given the companies a reason to get their collective panties in a bunch and they are looking for any means possible to stick it to Jane Q Consumer. That's us. All the more motivation to aggressively pay this crap off and NEVER do it again.

James also had his one open credit card raise his limit by $100. Not a giant thing, but for him - a giant thing. He's started receiving credit card offers in the mail again. We shred them immediately, but smile knowing it's a tiny sign that his credit score is slowly seeing improvements.

Stay tuned!
Penny

How to feel uncomfortable in your in-laws' house 101.

2010-06-10T20:39:00.000-07:00

1. Have in laws who have a nice home, and no pets in order to preserve said house.
2. Graciously accept their offer to live with them and thank them profusely for allowing you to bring your 10 year old cat along for the ride.
3. Cringe as your cat walks in the door, opens his mouth and drops a live mouse onto the floor.
4. Fall all over yourself with embarrassment as the mouse vanishes into the basement.

GAH. These are the moments you miss your own home.

FLUCK FLUCK FRICK FRACK.

2010-06-08T14:52:00.000-07:00

And every other horrible word minus the editing I just did to make it blog-friendly for those of you out there who DON'T swear like a truck driver when it comes to money (or stubbing your toe, or you know, whatever else).

It seems in reorganizing my excel spreadsheet I effed up the handy-dandy feature that totals up columns for you. Not so handy if you act like an idiot, and don't include an entire cell (er, debt) in your totals.

So grrrreeeeaaaaattttt..... I was talking to James, all "hey we only owe your parents 5 thousand bucks!" and he was all "that's not even possible....". As I was in the middle of telling him, no no it's totally possible, I realized....no, it's not possible. Cause we borrowed more than that just to pay off the 2 credit card charge-offs.

I feel like someone punched me in the stomach. And I feel stupid. Sigh.

When I realized the error of my Excel ways, and included the final "cell" into the total - it turns out we owe the in-laws $8600. FUUUUUUUUUUU****K. Close enough to make me feel better on that swear. Sort of.

The good news is, James is working on the first project for them - not the deck, as it turns out (they still haven't finalized the design, a case of too many cooks in the kitchen if you ask me...but no one is asking me). Anyway, he's turning their bare bones laundry room into a finished space, with, you know, drywall. Ok, other things too - polished concrete floors and other fancy things. That will knock $1000.00 off the debt to them as of the end of next week.

In the mean time they've paid us a deposit so we have some $ to pay bills with, etc. James also got repeat business from a design company he did work for in Seattle - he built them some very cool round desk pods. Hard to explain, but 3 desks to a "pod" and they form a perfect circle when you put them together. Anyway, they loved them so much, the CEO of their main office in California ordered up 6 more. To be shipped. From Minnesota. A beautiful thing - so that will be another $1000 in profit for a few days' work and will handily pay the rest of our bills for the month with (hopefully!) some extra to buy our health insurance plan soon and will certainly cover our debt payments.

I'm guessing the deck work will start up in a couple weeks. In the mean time, James just passed all his tests to become a licensed remodeller here in MN. Getting the business back up and running on a limited basis while we are living here and he is going to school. Gotta keep it all legit!

I'm also starting to consider some career plans of my own that will involve more school. However, after the stupid Excel sheet debacle you may all laugh at me. I'm actually pretty embarrassed about it.

I'm going to wait for this to fade in your minds before I spill the beans. hahaha.

Credit Cards: $23,370.01
Owed to In-Laws: $7600.00
Total Debt: $30,970.01*

*OMG. Seriously you guys, you aren't supposed to move across the country into your in-law's home to save money and have your debt go UP. I know it's a minor glitch - between the math and also the money we spent on the move in the short term to make a difference in the long term - but if any of you think this isn't making me crazy, let me just assure you. It IS.

**And for everyone who has commented with encouraging words and/or giving me the honor of letting me know I've inspired you - thank you, and hang in there. Every little choice makes a difference. Eating lunch at home? Pat yourself on the back. Brewed your own coffee? High five! Picked up some clothes at a clothing swap or some toys at a garage sale? YESSSSS! One day at a time!

Penny

The Math

2010-05-30T07:41:00.000-07:00

As previously mentioned, I hate the ticker at the bottom of the blog here - it doesn't do much to "keep me honest" i.e. force me to update in real time. It's also confusing in the way I have to remake it every time and I just don't think it's going to show an accurate picture. SOOOOO....I'm starting this new method and I hope it's easier for you to follow along and also keeps me updating the blog regularly (I keep a detailed excel spreadsheet for our own tracking purposes...).

So, a couple things. I know I mentioned that for the 2 business debt credit cards that had been charged off (CitiBank and Home Depot), James made arrangements with his parents. We borrowed the cash to hire a lawyer, settle those debts, and keep James out of court. In return he is going to do some projects they've been holding off on around their home - even more convenient now that we live here, no?

SO. The first project starts next week - he's rebuilding their deck. The best way to do this, in everyone's estimation, is to bid the job just as he would for any other client. They'll come to an agreement on price and then 2/3's of that money will go toward paying down the money we borrowed. The other 1/3 will go into our pockets as we just moved across the country and still have bills to pay, know what I mean? Anyway, in order to keep this stuff straight and clear, I think it's silly to count the debt to the in-laws as already paid off. It ISN'T. James is just going to have to work it off rather than pay it out of pocket - easier, but alas, still paying it down...still owed as of today. I'm going to list our balance like this:
Credit Cards:
Owed to In-Laws:
Total:
Because the In-Law debt is still, in reality, credit card debt and it needs to be included in this number (hey, it was included in the 40k we started out with, right?)

On the whole building a new future front - James cleared up the paperwork and roadblocks he needed to get done in order to start school in the fall and was just accepted to the community college here where he will begin the EMT courses in August. He is also taking the test this week to get his Residential Remodeler's license, and starting the necessary business items back up in order to legally do construction work all summer and then simultaneously with going to school.

Next up: ME. School? Waitressing? I'm working on it.

The balance as of 5/30/10
Credit Cards: 23,045.01
The In-Laws: 5,100.00
Total Consumer Debt Remaining: $28,145.01*

*I printed out all the bank statements in order to add up what we spent on the move.....but they somehow vanished into baby gear and did I mention how much harder it is to keep track of your stuff in a big house vs. a 1 bedroom apartment?? Anyway, my excessive Excel spreadsheet shows that at the end of March our balance was $20,022.15 (not including the in-law debt) so doing the math that way, we spent $3022.86. Between a couple of payments and then some interest charged I'm sure this is off by a few hundred dollars, but we basically stayed right on in the budget for the move - right around 3k. (I used the March balance rather than the end of April balance because James made a solo drive in April across the country with 1 truck load full of stuff, so the move really started 2-3 weeks before we actually left).

Just for kicks (and to make myself feel better, because let's face it, 28k bucks is still a lot of frickin' debt) the beginning balance as of last July (09) when I took the reigns, James fessed up, and we started tackling this monster was $38,620.16. See how much more positive it sounds to say "Hey! We've paid off $10.5 THOUSAND dollars in less than a year, in a recession, on mostly one income at a time, with a BABY?

Sometimes you have to think that way instead of "OMG. We've only paid off 1/4 of the debt. How are we going to do this? WE'RE NEVER GOING TO SUCCEED". Cause it's easy to go THERE. But THERE does you no good.

OMG! We've already paid off more than TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS!!!!!!!!!!

Penny

What would you consider too big to talk about?

2010-05-24T18:49:00.000-07:00

I have something to tell you. But it's so big and so crazy and so massive and so....... out of this world amazing it really seems unfair. And so, I've kept it to myself for the last month. Because I wasn't sure how to break it to you all. Because miracles sometimes happen - and as much as I cannot believe this miracle has happened - I also don't know how to share about it as it relates to everything we've been dealing with financially and the fact that it changes everything while changing nothing at the same time.

I'm one of those people who believes that when you start telling the truth about yourself, your life, your circumstances....miracles happen. Only I've never had a miracle like this before. Ok, well metting James was the miracle that I say came out of telling the truth about my drinking. He was my cosmic reward for having no shame, for picking myself up, dusting myself off and creating myself as a whole new person. And I guess this is like that. But.... I guess I'm having a hard time feeling like we deserve it so I've been...hiding it. From everyone.

Some months back when we started getting really, really straight about our circumstances - you know - we aren't in "debt paydown" mode, we're in "holy shit we're going to bottom out and be homeless mode". That time? When we made the final choice to move to the midwest and move in with the in-laws and do whatever we needed to do in order to right this ship? Remember that? Yeah well - in the stopping of lying to ourselves and in the telling the truth about how bad things were and in the chin up and do what is best for the little boy and best for our marriage mode....something happened. A chain of events, if you will. And one night we had my aunt and uncle over for dinner. They've been married for 30+ years and started out during a really bad financial time with no money and a lot of struggle. What they did have was each other - and they've told me often that James and I remind them of themselves as newlyweds. Stuggling, but full of love. They have no kids, they've spent the years making and investing money and travelling and loving life. They've always owned a second home as long as I can remember - first in London, then Paris, then Montreal. They recently placed their townhouse in Canada on the market. Anyway so we had them over for dinner, you know - to tell them we were leaving and thank them for everything (they always take us out and foot the bill when we spend time together...we really wanted to return the favor, but restaurants are out so...home cooking!).

So very casually during dinner they tell us they have something they'd like to talk to us about. Then they tell us they are selling their townhouse and have grown tired of maintaining a second home - however, they would like to reinvest their money in another home - they tell us that they have been thinking about us for a while, and they want to buy the home in the Twin Cities so we can live in it rent free while we get on our feet. I suspect there are also tax implications to us paying rent which would make them landlords and us renters rather than caretakers. So back to dinner. I was speechless. So speechless in fact, I barely even acknowledged what had just happened. I had to email them the next day to say thank you and apologize for my blank stare. James almost cried. It's a business deal for them, with a little bit of taking care of family thrown in. They told us they'd been wanting to offer it for a while, but didn't want to force our hand with regards to moving.

So. Yes. I'm feeling a little vulnerable. And undeserving. And even kind of guilty. But I'm also feeling a bit like a lottery winner. And thankful. And overwhelmed by the generosity. This kind of thing does not happen to me. It never has - quite the opposite, usually. And so...I hid it. For a while. Until I could figure out what to say.

The meat and potatoes will be worked out like a business deal, complete w/ contracts and buy out clauses for both parties. And for now - we are overwhelmed with the opportunity to continue to live rent free for a couple more years. The possibilities are amazing - an emergency fund, insurance, paying off debt, saving up a down payment to buy the house from them ..... for the first time in a very long time - I can breathe again. And I'm even starting to daydream about what I want. I've never been able to do that before - think about what I want. Like I said, it's making me feel guilty.

I have no explanation for this miracle. We don't do this in my family. No one has ever done anything like this for me before. I had no intention of doing anything but live with my in-laws and aggressively pay down our debt and take the time here to get our finances in order - it seems wrong that the reward should come before the work is done. I'm calling it grace. And leaving it at that.

Penny

Some big changes and more to come.

2010-05-12T10:23:00.000-07:00

We are getting settled in at the in-laws' place. I LOVE having the ability to do laundry on a whim - TMI alert: especially since we've started feeding lil' Nicky some "solid" baby food (i.e. sweet potato puree) and his little digestive system is just kind of getting the hang of it - making for some interesting laundry.

The drive ended up taking us almost an entire week - delayed by a snowstorm in Billings, Montana and our daily mileage capped at around 350 per the little dude. So - 1660 miles later, we arrived, Mother's Day afternoon. We've been kind of getting our bearings and dealing with a baby who is still on West Coast time and staying up till all hours of the night - giving mommy and daddy little to no time to organize and settle in. It's nice though - for a lot of reasons. We are already enjoying the mental peace that comes from not shelling out the rent for May, and in turn hubs cooked a yummy dinner for us all last night. The in-laws are sneaking home on their lunch hours for "errands" but we all know they are really coming home to cuddle the baby for a few extra minutes and I am already so happy for him that he is surrounded by so much love (and I'm honestly appreciative of the extra help). Showering without a baby in the bathroom! Yay!

We're having some issues with the delivery of our belongings so right now we're still living out of suitcases and James is so restless he's currently outside shop-vac-ing my car and washing his truck and doing all the "fiddly" things men do when they have work to be done that's being held up by someone else. I'm finally online here at the in-laws' place and will soon be sitting down to tabulate exactly how much money we spent on the move and anxiously awaiting our deposit money from the apartment. James' school hit some red tape so he has some paperwork to finish and it looks like it's pushed back to the Fall. Which is ok by us. He's going to hit the ground looking for construction work asap and we have to admit we've already driven around looking at houses just to get a sense of what we need to do to get into one. We will easily be able to find something in the $150-200k range - numbers that had me practically falling out of the car as that wouldn't buy you a parking spot in the city of Seattle. Oh, life is looking up dear friends.

Oh, but back to the numbers - I'm going to sit down and calculate it and I'll let you know how close we stayed to our budget. Then I'm going to either update the ticker or figure out a better way to keep the tally running at the bottom of the page here - to keep me / us honest. The way this ticker works kind of sucks so my non-computer savvy self is going to look into a better way to do it. Maybe just post our numbers at the beginning of each entry.

The best part of the move so far? Without the rent thing our first item to attack is health insurance for the whole family, on a private plan...that includes dental.

Penny

What I've learned so far.....

2010-05-06T11:05:00.003-07:00

Montana is freaking gigantic. And babies hate being in carseats for 5+ hours.

2010-05-01T17:06:00.000-07:00

I am writing to you from my father's couch. We are OUT of our apartment - all packed, scrubbed top to bottom to ensure prompt return of entire security deposit ($1550!) and moved out. Our belongings are on their way to the midwest while we hang out in my home town for a few days, shoe-horned into my dad's crowded townhouse....we've come full circle. If you remember, this is where we landed when we first moved to town 2 and a half years ago. Only now my baby is sleeping upstairs. It's been a lot of work, we had to unexpectedly donate our couch to the roadside goodwill (aka leave it on the sidewalk and applaud as 2 college kids called their buddy who promptly showed up with a truck and took it). It wouldn't fit into the moving unit and unfortunately, although we paid a good amount for it only 3 years ago, our cat shredded the arm and 2 springs broke. Perhaps from my 9 and a half months pregnant self camping on that half of the couch for a month. But I have no comment on that. I tried selling the thing, but it was essentially ruined, you know? Couldn't even get $200 for it. Oh well. At least it will fulfill some kid's beer drinking and video game playing needs by giving him a good place to sit. Well, you know - on the one half.

James was amazing, and basically single-handedly packed everything. My contribution came in the form of scrubbing. Everything. Sorry for the lack of posts - things are hectic - but I fully intend to update you all on how the whole move goes. As of now we are getting in Nicky's grandpa time, and hanging out around the house w/ the family. We're eating at the restaurants we'll miss (thanks dad!) and fitting in last visits to good friends. I will miss this place - it will always be home - but we are all optimistic about what is possible in Minnesota. I find myself panic-stricken as we charge things on credit cards but we MUST preserve our cash to pay our bills for the next month and for food and things on the road. I have to keep reminding myself that that fat security deposit and the first few months of rent-free living will get us right back on track. James and I are discussing how to move forward with a VERY aggressive debt payoff plan - of course some of it is hinging on exactly how his work situation pans out and what-not. But even if I just pick up a few waitressing shifts we should be able to pay our drastically reduced bills and some big debt payments each month. Best case scenario we want to have it all paid for in 6 months. That includes all the debt on credit cards and James working off the debt to his parents for paying the settlement and a couple other small loans over the last 3 years.

We feel good. We are ready. We are nervous and scared, too. We are cautious. We know it's going to be hard at first...and for a while. We no longer have the rose-colored glasses telling us that relocation is fun! and easy! But we're optimisic and quietly excited. And we'll get there just in time for Mother's Day.

Penny

Getting creative

2010-04-22T15:13:00.000-07:00

Ikea Desk (disassembled and collecting dust in our storage unit) - $50
Baby carrier - $100
2 Ikea end tables - $50
Used books - $30

$230 added to the moving pot. And a bunch of stuff we don't have to pack up and pay to move.

I ♥ selling things on Craigslist. It makes my heart happy.

The Countdown Begins

2010-04-17T09:58:00.000-07:00

Moving across the country is not cheap. Even when you do it on the cheap. All in all this relocation is going to cost us about $3,000.00. We've given notice at our apartment - and after some jerking around - it's been determined that we'll have to be out of here before May 1st. That means two weeks from YESTERDAY is the last day in our apartment. The logistical plans have changed more than a few times as we try to work the least expensive/least emotionally terrible/easiest way to move 2 adults, a baby, a cat and an apartment full of stuff across the country. We finally decided to ship our belongings in a Door To Door Storage unit. These things are great because the difference in cost between that and a U-Haul is negligable and you don't have to worry about driving a giant rig / towing your cars , etc. Plus they store your stuff on the other end until you want it unloaded - a great deal considering we will be staying with the in-laws and don't need all our belongings piled in their basement or garage. Total cost? $1275. So that takes care of the "stuff". But what about us?

Well - after a lot of hemming and hawing - we've decided that James will drive his truck with the cat and I'll follow behind in my car w/ the baby. We're going to have to split the drive into 4-5 hour days to avoid total baby meltdowns after too long in the car seat. This turns a 24 hour drive into a 5 day trip - but it saves the cost of my plane ticket (the 2 extra nights in roadside hotels are still about 1/2 the price of a flight). Our vehicles will be loaded with most of the stuff we will need at the in-laws - baby clothes, our clothes, toys, kid gear.... espresso machine. What? I still haven't slept longer than a 4 hour stretch (mostly 2-3 hours) since the little one was born. FIVE and a HALF MONTHS AGO. Oh, sorry - I got sidetracked. So...right. The drive. It will also keep us from being apart for 3 weeks which was our original plan. A plan we started dreading more and more as we got closer to go-time.

So in the end, this is not an ideal situation because obviously we don't have $3k saved up to pay for this move. What we DO have is enough money to pay all our bills, enough to pay for the road trip with cash (James is working between now and when we leave), and a credit card with a 0 balance in James' name we are going to use and then pay off with the deposits from our apartment as soon as we receive the check. This will help his credit a little to actually use and payoff a card again. And we will recoup the 3k in expenses in 3 months of not paying rent here. Do I sound like I'm trying to convince myself this will work out? I am in a way - it's scary and it's a big leap of faith, and it's hard to make a huge move like this hoping things will be better. But it's the best thing we can do, and we've calculated all the risk - and we are both committed to recovering from the cost of the move as soon as possible. I'm going to go back to working a couple nights a week at a restaurant for extra money and to take the pressure off James while he goes to school. He is going to pick up as much construction work as he can find this summer. And our goal is to have all our debt paid off by January 2011. Is it realistic? I don't know. But if we aim for something that aggressive and make it only 3/4 of the way, it will be a victory.

Deep breath. Here we go....

There are always naysayers

2010-04-11T09:42:00.000-07:00

This is what I've realized. If not the only thing I've realized - in my 32 years. No matter WHAT you are up to in life, there are ALWAYS people who think it's a bad idea. In this particular case - thankfully - most of the people who know us, and know us well - think it's a great idea. My family is sad to see us go, but understanding. My in-laws are excited for us to arrive - talking about erecting swing sets in the yard for the little guy. James' much more extensive network of lifelong friends and family are already presenting him with work opportunities (in construction) that will keep him busy on weekends and during breaks from school. Most of the people who really know James understand that being a paramedic is a fantastic fit for his personality and demeanor (and I'm thankful he's found an alternative to joining the National Guard...for selfish reasons of course). Things are starting to feel....better. I'm still a little nervous - but there is a difference in this move than the last one and I feel like being nervous is a sign that we are fully comprehending what we are doing here. Moving across the country is no small thing. Relocating takes a lot longer than the time it takes to move your stuff. It takes a while to make friends, find your new hair salon, your running trails.... it takes a while to feel like a citizen of your new home and stop mentioning to strangers that you are from somewhere else. It takes a while to adjust to the weather, and the culture, and the geography.

There are, of course, the detractors. Mostly people who (I think) have somehow taken offense to the fact that we've deemed THEIR city not good enough for us. Maybe there is jealousy that they are struggling here too and we have the option to try someplace else? I don't really know. And I have to say I don't really care. This is not a decision made by young people with unrealistic expectations. This is a choice made by 2 people committed to bettering their lives and the lives of their son (and future children) by struggling now in hopes of success later. And in a way - I feel lucky. We both feel lucky. Because we know that when that day comes - when they hand us the keys to our own home - there won't be a day that goes by that we don't appreciate what it means to have gotten there. From here.

Penny

Pulling the Proverbial Trigger.

2010-04-02T11:26:00.000-07:00

The last few weeks have been a wake up call of momentous proportions. Not in the "we previously had our heads buried in the sand but now we realize we are poor" kind of way....but in a more subtle way. I actually would like to thank the reader who commented "you are not in debt payoff mode, you are in crisis mode" or something to that affect. This rang in my ears for days after reading it. I combined this with the talk w/ my mother in law (which made me angry and stuck with me - a tell tale sign that there are kernels of truth in there I cannot ignore). All I kept thinking was $9 is not going to keep us from financial ruin. Cancelling $30 cable is not going to be enough. We cannot take the RISK that James won't get more work - the jobs keep trickling in, btw but it's not enough to count on and we simply cannot live like this. "You are in crisis mode". I was fooling myself that we were still in the position to be paying off debt. I had gotten so committed to this goal, erasing that dreaded number - eliminating that heavy weight from our shoulders - that I neglected to look at the REALITY of the situation, minus the "hopeful thinking". Why OH WHY did I pay $1000.00 to our credit card debt last month when we had NO EMERGENCY savings? Seriously? WHO DOES THAT?! Somebody who has committed to a goal whole-heartedly and then refused to see that that goal needed to be set aside for a while. Right now we should be making the minimum payments and keeping as much cash on hand as humanly possible. I didn't do that. I'm Penny and I'm a debt-oholic.

For months James and I have told each other and ourselves that we would give this Pacific Northwest home of mine one last, real, final, good shot. We would shake things up, talk to people, do our best to illicit new opportunities. We spoke at length about me going back to work. We sent out countless resumes and hit up everyone who ever mentioned they had work they wanted him to do "at some point". But we also....quietly....started talking to people in MN. His contacts - his years and years of contacts - family members, friends..... James has had an epiphany over the last 2 years and that is the realization that a career that worked well for a 19 year old with too much energy and a bit of an authority complex didn't work well for a 31 year old husband and father who needed stability. He has been quietly looking into other options. We've talked extensively about him (and me...) going back to school for a very targeted new career. How we could do it with a baby at home. What kind of sacrifices we can make right now so our little boy will never know that we were broke. Will never experience his parents as stressed out crazy people who worry about money 24 hours a day. How can we lay the foundation for a good life down the road....?

Something finally broke. James' uncle is a medi-vac pilot in the Twin Cities. James has been interested in becoming a paramedic for years, but due to circumstances and some other issues was discouraged from starting down the path to this new career. Well this week his uncle made some calls, asked some questions, and they had a very long conversation about new possibilities. We talked at length about what it all meant. And we are moving across the country.

We are moving in with my in-laws in order to allow us the opportunity to pay off our debt as quickly as possible - James can start school. I can pick up some waitressing shifts to bring us some steady income. James can do construction projects on the weekends/on the side. All while we are working towards rebuilding our future. At some point I will stop waitressing and either 1) go back to school or 2) find a job I can do with my current experience. When Nicky is just a little older. James can work off some of the loans from his parents by doing the projects around their house they were going to pay someone else to do. We are doing what there is to do when you are in our situation = STOP PRETENDING YOU ARE MAKING IT. We aren't making it. We need to make some drastic changes, and those will include some sacrifices (hello moving in with your parents/in-laws in your 30s!). We are hopeful. We want to stop living inside a world of "what we don't have" and "what is not possible". We want to enjoy our lives and our son, and focus on what is good. Cherish the fact that we have family who love us, support us, and are willing to help us get to where we want to be. Cherish the fact that we have each other, and we have a healthy and beautiful little boy. Cherish the fact that we are healthy, and strong, and willing to work. We can do this - together. We are pulling the trigger.

2010-03-28T11:36:00.000-07:00

Saving some cash and cutting our bills has proved an arduous process. First I called Progressive to find out if we could lower our car insurance premiums. No dice. Interesting. SO I went on over to Geico.com for a quote - they quoted me HALF the price we are paying at Progressive. Seems like a no-brainer, right? Well...kind of. The hubs and I are both a little weary about switching insurance providers. I'm not sure why I have this feeling but I do. Tomorrow I'm going to call Progressive back and ask why Geico is so much cheaper and see if they can "magically" find us a discount.

I already lowered the Netflix to 1 at a time. Which honestly feels like the best "win" of the week even though it only saves $9 - but it's HALF what we were paying. Which just sounds better.

Both James and I still have quite a bit of time on our Sprint contracts. However, I'm not opposed to breaking them if we would make up the cost of breaking the contract with savings on our phone bills over - say - 3 months. But first I started with Sprint. I am at a total loss for lowering our bills with them. The only thing I've actually configured is if we switch to a family plan they've assured me we only pay the local and state taxes on the PLAN, not per phone - so right now we're paying that twice, it would reduce to once - we could have double the minutes and both of us could have unlimited texting (instead of just me) for a savings of about $15. I really hoped we'd save more than that - but right now I think that's what we will do. I'm slightly irritated. $15 doesn't feel like much of a victory here even though it's more than the Netflix $9. We also have to go to a Sprint store together and show ID in order to combine our separate accounts. What a pain in the ass.

I spoke to Comcast and because we are receiving a "multi-service discount" and I worked a good deal with the internet upgrade - we actually are only spending $30 a month on digital cable with DVR service and HD channels. If we get rid of the cable the internet price goes up (losing the multi-service thing). I looked into other internet providers in our area and the difference in price is negligable. Like $5-10 a month. I suppose if I dropped the cable and changed providers that would be a savings of about $40 a month....not for nothing, but it's really almost worth it to have cable for such a low price. That's a lot of service for not much extra cost.

So, I look to other areas - groceries, eating out, home and cleaning products. Utilities. Turning the heat down more often - unplugging appliances that aren't in use, etc. We've already been doing this to some degree but we've agreed to focus on making it a regular habit. A reader suggested a website to me that finds you the best prices on stuff for your home at great prices and they ship to you for free. We are most definitely going to give this a shot and start shaving $ off of our grocery bill. Too often we buy shampoo or razors at the grocery store and I KNOW they are expensive there. We just do it out of convenience. So there's one place we're going to save. I think our compromise on keeping the cable will be to switch to Geico if Progressive won't play ball.

It's days like this that make me miss my weekly mani/pedis. I never did get my massage, either - my car repair ate up my birthday money and I just can't justify it right now. My mother in law gave me an earful of worry the other day - I know she means well but by the end of our conversation I was convinced the end of the world was coming. James is finishing up a small little job tomorrow that will make him $500. We have $2018 in our checking account and $382 in savings. That leaves us $71 over our budget for exactly 1 month of expenses. PANIC TIME!

I am looking into ways I can make money from home or part time (I used to do some light bookkeeping for a Contractor who paid well but turns out he didn't actually show up for work a lot of the time...). My point is that there are things I can do that won't force the baby into daycare we can't afford or make me the primary breadwinner right now while Nicky is so small. My head is spinning - and the pressure of the last 2 years is starting to wear on us. James and I have been pretty testy lately - sometimes with each other, mostly at the world. It's no way to live. He just found out he was rejected from the job in Minnesota he applied for. It took thema month to send him the letter where before he got them almost immediately. We are telling ourselves that it means he's getting farther along in the process than he was before. But it was a big disappointment. To be honest we just don't know what to do. We have our fingers crossed that another job comes his way - he does have a few bids out there.....but they are long shots most likely.

I'm feeling pretty discouraged right now - I'm not sure how much $9 here and $15 there is going to help us right now. Thank gawd we don't have to buy health insurance until 2014. If we're still in this predicament when that rolls around, we have failed miserably.

Penny

Gourmet Food, Subway Budget

2010-03-24T15:29:00.000-07:00

My uncle grows hot red peppers on his deck and gave us a handful. We picked up some red chard last week along with some romaine lettuce, a couple grapefruit(s?) and some blueberries. Throw in a baguette and some deli meat. Random cart full of stuff, right? Pretty inexpensive. Then the hubs brought home a huge butternut squash. Last week he made the squash into a fantastic soup he does every so often and we had it for dinner. Add the romaine and some homemade Caesar dressing (made with ingredients from the pantry!). Repeat w/ leftovers for lunch the next day. Last night he turned the leftover squash and some garlic into stuffing for homemade ravioli (pasta = eggs, flour, salt and olive oil). Throw in a stick of butter, sage and some shallots for a browned butter sage sauce. Sautee the chard for a side of wilted greens. Sleep. Wake up. Throw blueberries, corn starch, sugar and water into a sauce pan and heat = super yummy blueberry sauce for french toast made from the remaining baguette from soup night. Side of grapefruit. Use the last slices of baguette for turkey sandwiches for lunch.

I am proud of us. No food waste!!! And YUM!

Every so often I get a wake up call.

2010-03-22T09:52:00.000-07:00

I'm really glad I posted my budget this weekend. I'd been putting it off out of fear, I guess. And given the discussion happening in this country, I was particularly afraid to admit we aren't paying for health insurance right now. Someone asked me how I feel about the new bill which will essentially force us to buy it. I feel a couple of things. I am worried. Obviously another thing we HAVE to pay for is scary. But - I guess I'm one of the weirdos that doesn't think this is a bad thing. We SHOULD have it. We don't because we have the option not to. If they can provide us an option that is affordable, I have no problem being told we have to buy it, much like our car insurance. It's one of those things nobody thinks about any more. You just have to have it. And for good reason. I think health insurance is the same. We'll work it out. We should have worked it out months (if not years!) ago. (FYI James and I both had insurance up until we relocated up north and our jobs changed....).

Anyway - about once a year (if not more often than that) I go through all of our accounts and ask how we can save money. Do we need all the cell minutes we are paying for? Is our car insurance the cheapest we can get? Can we lower the interest rates on our credit cards (this doesn't really happen anymore, but prior to the economic meltdown was completely possible).

I received several comments about the fact that our cell phone plans are outrageously expensive. This surprised me because I spoke to Sprint about 8 months ago and was basically told we had the cheapest plans available for what we were using. James and I both have 450 minutes. James pays for 300 text messages and rarely (i.e. once) goes over the limit. I have unlimited text messaging which single handedly allows me to stay under 450 minutes. We each have the $7 a month equipment protection because we cannot afford to spend $250 on a new phone if ours break (or are stolen.....which has happened to me). So you have 450 minutes for $39.99; texting for $5 and $10 respectively; $7 for phone insurance and about $15 each per month on local and state taxes (HOLY SHIZ, really Seattle?).

This adds up to about $67 each on cell phones every month. I was thinking this was a fairly reasonable option. Then I got the wake up call from all of you. THEN I did a bunch of research online at Sprint.com and realized it IS the cheapest option....through Sprint. Even the family plans cost the same or more unless we only want voice service. This won't work. I'm going to be calling them today to find out if they can work something out cheaper for us. I've had a Sprint account since 1999. They should be willing to work with me. Otherwise I'm taking our business elsewhere if other companies are offering better plans. I guess I had been feeling like being with them for so long "bought" me something as far as leverage as a customer. Clearly it is not helping us at all. Done and done. Loyalty only goes so far. I'll keep you guys posted.

Second. The cable is being cancelled. This is a no-brainer and we'd already talked about it, and I was just....dragging my feet. I'm also calling them this week. FURTHER, I'll be talking to Comcast about the fact that we were paying $62 a month for internet service and whether they can give it to us cheaper. I should note - similar to the cell phones, the greater Seattle area seems to tax the S out of everything which raises the price AFTER the quoted plan prices by a significant amount. Irritating, but needs to be accounted for.

THIRD. I was so defensive of our Netflix, and then I looked at James, looked at the table next to the TV and said "those movies have been sitting there for 2 weeks, haven't they?". DOH! I guess having a baby changed our available movie viewing time - and we failed to notice. We USED to watch movies almost every night (no cable, no baby...). We don't anymore. Changed the plan to 1 at a time unlimited, for $8.99 a month. $10 bucks here, $30 bucks there......

Ok so...eating out. I guess I should clarify our eating out budget is almost always just added to our grocery budget. $400 for 2 adults (one who happens to be a black hole of a construction worker who can eat 3 times as much food as his wife) is lowballing it. Groceries here can be expensive but we can also probably look for ways to save a little more. I'll be doing that for sure (coupons? menus planned around what is on sale?). We'll be discussing ways to save here. Oh, and the cash incidentals aren't usually toothpaste, per se. But we don't budget for ANY household items that come up. Like a new laundry basket or hangars for the closet. Whatever you can dream up that comes up randomly. This $100 covers ALL of that stuff. And the occasional lunch James buys while working if we're low on groceries or once in a blue moon latte I buy at a playdate with friends - I figure $4 at a coffee shop is cheaper than "hosting" and providing food, and really - this is rare but you get my point. Sometimes you just have to spend a little cash you didn't plan for. Only we plan for that.

I don't think our car insurance is outrageous, but I'm going to see if they will lower my premium due to the fact that I hardly drive anywhere. Seriously. My car is almost 6 years old and has 32k miles on it. I like to walk with the baby if I can, and don't commute for a job or anything. I vaguely remember them telling me they didn't care that the car mostly sat in the driveway, but it's worth a shot - and perhaps a rate quote at another company.

So there you have it dear readers - just when you thought you were paying the bare bones minimums, you realize there is ALWAYS room to tighten the belt. Consider the belt tightening - and your advice taken....and no, we aren't going to get rid of the storage unit, unfortunately. Silly baby. He comes with a lot of stuff (and you have to keep it for the next time around). And this apartment's closets are stocked to the gills! And I've already sold anything we could get $ for, hahahaha.

I'll keep you posted on how my negotiations go!

Penny

2010-03-20T09:49:00.000-07:00

Things were trucking along, feeling ok, we had that little scary period where James was laid off and our small emergency savings was depleted - but we recovered fairly quickly - got the savings back up to $1100 - made $1142 in credit card payments THIS MONTH (remember the tax refund and James' first solo job). Boy we were feeling good.

Now I'm starting to panic. James gets a check on Monday for his final job which will net about $2500. We have $214 in our checking account. So - between the 2 that's enough to get us through April (probably). I told you guys - we live CHEAP! Our monthly budget is dollars under $3,000 bucks. For 2 adults and a baby. To be fair, the baby doesn't really cost anything yet. I am breastfeeding him, and my mother in law gifted us with a cloth diaper delivery service for a year when he was born. We have a lot of hand me down clothes and a friend who buys our baby wipes at costco by the case and passes them along.

However little Nicky is going to need a high chair soon - and we want to get one that will last until he is big enough to sit at the table with us rather than buy multiple chairs and boosters. The convertible chairs are a little more expensive. We plan to make baby food so that should save us some money as well (and be healthier for the little guy - is anybody else SO excited to watch Jaime Oliver's show on food in America?).

There are always new expenses and unforeseen incidents. Hello car repair and tooth repair......James' check on Monday is the last one we are assured is coming. We are probably going to cancel our cable again...maybe in a month when the weather outside is nicer?

For those of you who are interested - here is our budget. When I started this process it was $4200 a month and we have whittled our expenses down to this over the last 6 or 7 months. We also live on James' income alone. We have health insurance for little Nicky only - yes, we are those people. The Americans everyone is talking about.

Rent $945.00 1st of Month Includes w/s/g
Storage Unit $29.00 1st of Month
Truck Payment $200.00 7th of Month
Groceries $400.00 Per Month
Eating Out $160.00 Per Month = Once per week or add to grocery budget
Netflix $19.00 Per Month 3 at a time unlimited
Auto Insurance $147.00 = 15th of Month; Joint Coverage for both vehicles
Gas $200.00 Per Month
Comcast $92.12 18th of Month = Internet $62 a month, Cable added $31 per mo.
City Light - Utilities $40.00 23rd of Month Bi-Monthly Payments; Average cost per month
James' Cell: $56.00 26th of Month
Penny's Cell: $68.00 29th of Month
Credit Card Min Payments $389.00 = Various due Dates Minimum Payments only (Pay any extra $ to pay down debts)
Cash $100.00 = both James and Penny for incidentals
Total: $2,925.12

Ok so - there it is. Is this a great budget? NO. Only the baby has health insurance and it is through the State. Because of our income level we do not pay for it. We do not claim that for ourselves, just the baby. Our goal is to buy the insurance for the entire family by Nicky's first birthday. Right now we are gambling with our health in order to become financially stable. The cheapest insurance I could find for us was $400 a month and didn't include the baby. We can't do that right now if we ever want to stop the money hemorrage that has been going on. This is hard to write because I know how polarizing this health care thing is right now and I don't want to perpetuate some stereotype about people just not "wanting" to pay for it. However, I am sure there are people who will look at our budget and recommend 5 ways to cut $400 out. If you can see ways to realistically do that, please share. Please don't recommend selling a vehicle or not having cell phones, though. We need those things - James can't work without a truck. My car is paid off and only has 32k miles on it.

Ok, I think I'm already getting defensive! hahaha. It's HARD to put all your skeletons out there! I am not ashamed of our choices, but they are very personal. We are doing everything - EVERYTHING - we can to get out of debt quickly for ourselves, our son, and our family's future. I cannot WAIT until the day our budget includes things like "Roth IRA", "Emergency fund", and "Vacation money!" but until that day comes, we live on what we can. We choose to pay for cable and netflix because we NEVER go anywhere! I haven't been to a movie theater in almost a year. We don't go out w/ friends on weekends (we have people over for dinner about once a month and they usually return the favor). We dont' go out to lunch, we don't wander the mall and pick out cute baby clothes. We watch Netflix. So - that stays, too. But there you have it. A family - on 3k a month. Or less depending on how James' work is going.

Penny

The hits just keep on coming.

2010-03-18T23:24:00.000-07:00

James needs a root canal. We don't have dental insurance. Before I get lambasted for paying off debt and not paying for insurance - it's a calculated risk. We lost the gamble. We get it. And it figures that we'd get hit with something like this right after my car repairs and just as his last job is about to wrap up. Luckily we have a friend of a friend who is a dentist - he referred James to a clinic so I'm taking him in tomorrow @ 9am. Cross your fingers for us. We can't spend more than $1000 (that would be tragic, but doable in cash). I REALLLLLLLY hope this clinic at the University is more in the half-that range. Oh Gawd. My heart rate is climbing.

I also wanted to just do a quick check in with the crowd here. With the little guy growing so quickly and all of a sudden becoming "mobile" it's getting harder to update. Are you guys still interested in our story? I know the excitement of the tale has kind of warn off and we're at the nuts and bolts here. I DO want to go into some of the methods we've used to attack this debt/deal with creditors, etc. If you're all interested, I could use the blog-therapy. I'll keep going unless you tell me you're all totally bored stiff.

Penny

One step forward, two steps back.

2010-03-12T15:38:00.000-08:00

UGH! The "check engine" light in my car came on about a week ago. Today I took it in figuring they'd check some sensor and everything would be taken care of under warranty. (That's what happened last time). Turns out there was an ignition part that needed to be replaced. $270 later...... Thankfully, we HAD $270 that we technically COULD spend on it. There was some hemming and hawing - James wanted to put the car repair on a credit card (see, you see how his brain works?!). I basically told him we could afford to pay for it so we were going to pay for it. We'll cinch the belt up a little tighter and suck it up and pay for it in cash. So we did. Which sucks because my birthday is this weekend and I essentially traded any birthday gift for a car repair. But it's worth it. Totally worth it. Financial freedom, lowering that debt. THE LONG TERM. All better than a birthday present. Plus James always bakes me yummy cakes. :D) I ♥ cake. And I'm pretty sure home made cake from your hubs says I love you like nothing else can.

Ok...my bad.

2010-03-10T10:28:00.000-08:00

It's a tax REFUND not a tax RETURN. For all you financial/grammar purists out there. Hey, I get it. It's just as irritating to me when someone misuses there/their/they're.

Anyway - today the hubs told me he LOVES that we only have one checking account (and debit card) because it prevents us from getting a whole bunch of bank fees (you should really read that as overdraft charges, haha) and it is a really good structure to prevent us from overspending since we legitimately have to run things by each other to get the card for use.

I have been using Mint for some time to track my finances and last July I added James' accounts into the mix. It threw things off for a while because originally my budgets and everything else were based on only 1 person, now they are based on our family's finances. However, I realized today that compared to February of last year - our expenses are almost exactly the same. Why is this a victory? Because, as I said - last year it was only tracking MY expenses and this year it is tracking ALL of our expenses. We've lowered our monthly expenditures by about $1000 per month, and we haven't missed a payment....for anything.... since July.

There have been some unexpected side effects to living within our means. One is that I've dropped almost 40lbs of pregnancy weight in 4 months. I still have about 10lbs to go - but eating at home has made the first 40 vanish with little to no effort (well, eating at home and breastfeeding...). Last night we had two pieces of filet, mixed greens with a homemade balsamic vinaigrette, brussels sprouts and homemade hummus w/ veggies. The dressing and the hummus were homemade with stuff we already had in the pantry. The filet were 2 for $13. In a restaurant this meal would have easily cost us $60 and been loaded with butter. We've noticed the last few times we've gone out to eat that we are almost always disappointed with our meal for the price we have to pay to get it - and our homemade ones are much more satisfying because we make them ourselves and they cost so much less. A welcome surprise after 8 months of restaurant discipline. Cooking at home is getting easier, becoming a habit, and the meals are getting better and better - James is the cook around here, I can't take any credit! Ok, I can take SOME credit as I've been getting into the money saving benefits of home cooking, too. I made the hummus with a 99 cent can of garbanzo beans and we get 2 batches of it - instead of paying $5.00 for a tiny little tub at the grocery store. I find myself breaking meals down to $$ now, too which is funny. For example if we spend $20 on items for a meal but the two of us each eat it twice (i.e. we get lunch the next day out of it) I'm already calculating how it cost $5.00 instead of the $15 or $20 it would cost for each "plate" at a restaurant. It's pretty rewarding when you do it that way!

What accomplishments are you experiencing with any habits you've changed around money? I'm interested to know!

Penny

2010-03-08T12:27:00.000-08:00

Buying things in cash is a million times better than putting them on credit.

I feel high right now.

My tax return came. I made a $500 payment to our credit card (the 2nd such payment in as many weeks), bought our wedding photos on CD (with a photographer special 20% discount that saved me $80 and made the full rights purchase a total of $322; We can print them ourselves for cheap to frame/make a book as time passes). We are ahead on our monthly bills - $500 more went to savings, I bought a baby book for my son (finally) and finally....a new pair of jeans for my post pregnancy self - which I might add were only $59.99 regular price, which I got for $45 with a discount - a whopping $150 saved off my usual $200 jeans I buy (note, I did not get the expensive jeans for cheap, rather I found cheap good jeans I liked....hmmmmm).

So I know it sounds like a kind of out of control spending spree - but all of these purchases were needed or saved for or contemplated and held off on until there was cash and a responsible time to buy them. I really, really, really feel deep in my bones FEEL the difference between paying for something after deciding you can afford it and buying it on credit because you "deserve" it and paying 3 times as much for it.

Big. Deep. Breath. Delayed gratification is intensely gratifying.

Penny

Hello there loyal blog followers!

2010-03-04T10:19:00.000-08:00

Are you still here?! THANK you for continuing to check on me. It was a depressing few days after the US lost the gold medal hockey game to the Canadians :) I do have one hell of a faux crush on half the American team, though.

Back to the money matters at hand. I made a $500 payment to our highest rate credit card this week. This is an extra payment - I'll still be making the minimum payment separately this month. We are starting, finally, to feel some momentum with this debt. The cards feel like they're getting into a "normal" range. And by normal, I mean normal for people who are in debt - i.e. average. $20,200 - approx. 10k each if you split it between us. That is a gosh darn MIRACLE after where we started. The discrepancy in the ticker accounts for money we owe James' parents from the settlement loans.

I'm still waiting on my tax return - anxiously! I can't WAIT. I decided to forego the massage because our wedding photos still have not been purchased nearly 2 years later - and the photographer is giving a big discount in honor of some new website they are using. SO.... I'm going to bite the bullet and finally buy our pictures. We spent the money to have them taken and we don't even OWN them! LOL. Anyway, a couple odds and ends and the rest will be split between a cc payment and our savings account. We pretty well drained the savings while James was unemployed. He has stopped claiming unemployment now since he seems to have a steady stream of full time work coming in - for now. And we are still contemplating a move to MN, probably in the fall.

More to come....sooner.

Penny

USA! USA! USA!

2010-02-26T16:23:00.000-08:00

Ok, sorry - I HAD to do that. 6-1! Against Finland?! SWEEEEEET!

Ok, really. I'm done, now.

Today I decided it was time to run my free annual credit reports. The last time I did this my credit was squeaky - aside from 1 account listed that wasn't mine (weird) and another handful of accounts from about 6-7 years ago that I opened in conjunction w/ the d-bag of an ex-boyfriend I had in my very early 20's with a propensity towards buying things and not paying for them. So I had about 4 late payments from many, many years ago still lingering in the background, but a good 7 years of spotless credit history.

Anyway - today's reports are IMMACULATE. This is something I am very proud of. And I'm so glad the d-bag's dings to my credit score are finally gone. He is absolutely 100% non-existent in my life now. That feels almost as good as the credit reports.

So - onto the hubby's reports. I'm going to wait to run them until after the two debt settlements have had time to go through and be reported and we pay off a small outstanding medical bill. Maybe I'll wait until the beginning of August - when it will have been an entire year of making his payments on time again. I know it won't be great - but it will be better than the last time we looked at all of his info.

For anybody who doesn't take advantage of the free credit report once a year, you definitely should. Like I said, I found an account listed last time that wasn't mine - and it was very easy to correct it.

Go HERE for your free reports!

James is getting paid tomorrow for a big job he's been working on - our budget allows for a $500 extra payment to the debts. I start getting sooo excited when I get to make these payments. I'm a debt-reducing NERD, you guys. Other than that I'm just anxiously awaiting my tax refund.

Happy Penny Pinching, my friends! GO USA!

Well THAT was worth it.

2010-02-22T12:22:00.000-08:00

Watching the US defeat Canada in Olympic hockey was totally worth the cost of the cable. I just had to get that out to start with.

Second - I feel I've been being dishonest with you. You know that feeling when you catch yourself trying to be something you aren't? That's how I feel I've been blogging. Which is silly considering this blog is anonymous. And the whole point of maintaining that anonymity was so I didn't feel the need to sugar coat things or cover things up. I haven't been lying, per se - but my last few posts feel a little bit forced. And to be honest, the cheesy "yay, it will all work out in the end!" endings are killing me. Cause I really don't feel that way right now. I think that is how I SHOULD feel. I'm not totally defeated, either. I don't feel like we are doomed. But I'm just not PRESENT to the victory that will come some day. Right now I'm present to the work, and the grind of it all, the day to day choosing to pay off bills. The stress, the worry, the jealousy that comes when I put my son to sleep in the corner of our bedroom instead of his own little nursery. Especially as he gets older. So, sorry for the cheesiness. It's not UNTRUE, it's just not quite accurate.

James keeps applying to a company in his home state - which a very astute reader very rightly guessed is Minnesota. I guess the hockey talk gave us up. (Wait, so not everyone's hubby talks about putting their little boy in hockey skates by age 3?) Anyway - there is a company that a family friend has insisted he would be perfect for and he has been applying to open positions for about 6 months now. We are getting a good feeling that he may actually get an interview soon (apparently there are about 600 applications for every job opening...can you believe that?!). So I've naturally been wondering about living in the Twin Cities (which I happen to love, but I've never spent longer than 2 weeks there at one time). I catch myself using our nice dishes (wedding gift) and watching our TV and thinking about a life where all of the little things that make up our "life" are packed away in boxes for 6 months to a year while we pay off debts. I know it's not a huge thing, but living out of boxes can get pretty tough. We did it for just a month when we moved here and stayed w/ my dad in that tiny little townhouse, and even that was hard. And then I think about the handful of good mommy friends I've made here, and the mild weather that allows me to run outside all year long.... and I realize that no matter if it's the best decision for us, it will still be an adjustment and parts of it will be very difficult (like the cold, for me).

James came home from work last week so frustrated and sad - and he finally, after 2+ years, admitted he is ready to go home. We will likely be making the move in late summer or early fall - it does hinge on how the job hunt goes for dear James - whether he gets this job with the new company OR can just jump into some construction work with his old coworkers, etc. I will say this - he has never fully believed me, but I DO think that us living there is the best place for US to raise our family. I don't dread it at all, in fact I have kind of been looking forward to the day we pull the trigger on the move. But I'm scared. I'm scared that living in a place where all of James old friends are will turn my homebody husband back into someone who goes out all the time (not likely, but who says our fears are rational?). I'm scared I won't make any friends and will be lonely. I'm scared it will upset the dynamic of our marriage in some unforeseen way. I'm scared that even though I'm usually just disappointed in my family I will still miss them more than I can anticipate. I'm scared that we will do all this, and nothing will change. That work will still be hard to come by. That we will always be poor.

No sunny happy ending there.

Sometimes you just have to ease up a little.

2010-02-17T11:43:00.000-08:00

I forgot what it was like to wait on James to finish a job, then wait for the client to write the check, THEN get to pay the bills. SO - right now everything is current, we haven't missed any payments, I'm awaiting my tax refund which will probably take eons, and James is wrapping up a job - the 3rd installment payment of which is about $3500. So - yes, we'll be able to replenish the savings a little, pay the rest of the month's bills and I can relax.....but I just want to write checks NOW. This is why I'm in charge of the bills - I actually like paying them. But I can get a little obnoxious when it comes to the end of his jobs...a little "show me the money" if you will.

James continues to apply for full time work back in his home state, and I am honestly hoping one of those jobs comes through. It would be such a change in lifestyle to have him start a new career, with great benefits - in a MUCH lower cost of living area. We have a plan to live with the in-laws for the first 3-6 months after we relocate (whenever that move actually happens) and I find myself constantly drooling over the idea of 6 months rent - free in which we could just attack our debts. So much so that I'm probably glossing over the fact that living with your in-laws or parents at this age is probably going to be a little obnoxious no matter HOW cool they are. Whatever, though - we are very serious about this debt issue and I think both of us would have an easy(ish) time of it for such a short/finite period. Plus, we'd have built in babysitters - something we don't have here - built-in or otherwise.

We did have a tiny (big?) backslide money-wise that I'm going to just go ahead and confess to. The hubs - being from that cold, midwestern place I keep alluding to - is a huge hockey fan. A huge hockey fan who has waited 4 years for the Winter Olympics to come back around because apparently "Olympic hockey is the purest form of the game". Um.... so we signed up to have our cable re-installed. I know, I know. We've come so far. The thing is, they had a $29 a month promo for 6 months, with the digital box and the DVR - which means the hubs can record his hockey games while he's at work, etc. Some of you are probably shaking your fist at me right now but listen - James has had a rough go of it the last year and a half. And he loves his hockey. And I figured he's doing all the work outside the home and we can probably actually afford 29$ a month right now. And we made a deal - it either gets cancelled after the promotional period runs out... OR we can keep it IF we continue to make larger payments on the credit cards and don't have ANY issues paying the bill. If it becomes a problem, or our other goals begin to suffer because of it...bye bye cable. You should have seen his face - he looked like a little kid on Christmas morning. Oh, I love my husband. I get a massage, he gets a little hockey to reward his hard work over the last 8 months. EIGHT months of buckled down, belt tightening, bill paying, debt reducing, dedication. So for James - Olympic hockey. Oh, and the US beat Switzerland 3 to 1 yesterday.

Perhaps to even things out a little, I picked up 4 bags of little boy clothes from some new friends who just had a baby girl and couldn't reuse their little dude stuff. I ♥ me some freebies! Four bags of 3 to 18 month sized clothing. I sorted, washed and stored away all the stuff we are keeping, and the rest I'm giving to a friend/donating to a shelter. It's funny that where before I was kind of snobby about the idea of "used" clothes - now I welcome them with a huge smile and lots of thank yous. It's so wonderful to save money on this stuff - because I know how much more important it is for my son that we have a stable financial life than he has a lot of new clothes he won't remember owning.

Until next time!
Penny

The little things.

2010-02-15T13:30:00.000-08:00

The unemployment checks have started coming in - a great thing since we had no money for groceries 2 days ago. There is a modified plan you can get on when you have SOME work/self-employment happening but no guarantee of a full time job or hours. We feel really good about it, and James is working very hard to build back up to being his own boss. He seems to be taking our agreement very seriously, and has been handling the money situation/conversations with clients extremely well. I guess what they say is true - that once the cost outweighs the benefits you really get your butt in gear. So for now, we are doing ok - and I'm patiently awaiting my tax return so I can make that monster payment to the credit cards. I think I'm going to pay it to the 0% interest card since it will be going up in 2 months. We've mostly depleted our savings living on it for the last 3 weeks or so - but with this job James is about to finish I'm thinking we'll be able to put about $1000 back into it. We've gotten used to having the cushion of a savings account - a good thing. A very good thing to get used to when your income is varied - this is how this SHOULD be done - when times are good you sock away extra cash to cover the times when they are bad. If we had done that before we wouldn't be in the mess we're in. We have most certainly learned that lesson.

I've started a post-pardum running regime (I have been a huge runner since I was about 15 years old) and I am already noticing the impact that exercising is having on my overall well-being and outlook. Where before I was always stressed out, now I feel like I'm more able to manage what is happening and go with the flow where I can't control it. It makes for a happier hubby and baby...and not to forget, mama too. All I've been thinking about lately is how much your outlook impacts what is going on in reality. Not like some mind-control craziness, but just how much a shift in perspective impacts the actions you are taking, and your overall experience of your life and your goals. Our biggest financial goal is to own our own home - not as an investment but as a home. A place we can tear down and build back up - make it our own over time, raise our kids there. I've mentioned before that we have good days and bad days with regard to whether we think this is possible for us. Today is a good day. James got up and ate breakfast w/ me and Nicky (the new name for our little dude, thanks to a nickname savvy reader!). We played a little, enjoyed some coffee and saw James off to work. Nicky and I will head out for a run later and we'll try to catch what little showing of the Olympics are on broadcast TV tonight. Through all of this I just keep seeing how it is the little things in life that bring you joy - not all the stuff you acquire. Would I take some more security? Absolutely. Do I want my son to have his own room and a yard? Most definitely. But our needs are not grandiose - and I look forward to the day we open the door to our own home, and know what a huge deal it is. I know we will appreciate it all that much more because of where we are today.

Penny

You should know...

2010-02-09T10:49:00.001-08:00

....that the Debbie Downer who wrote that last post has been replaced with my usual, upbeat, positive self. There's something about 5 days with my mother that really takes it out of me. haha. Stay tuned for more Penny posts on killing off debt!

I Get It, OK, Universe? I GET IT.

2010-02-08T21:16:00.000-08:00

I'm getting a pretty big tax return. Apparently not working through a long maternity leave and having a baby = big tax return. Well, big for me. I'm sure it's nothing for a lot of you. Most of it will be going toward the debt, which makes me very happy. I am, however, going to take a little bit and do a couple things with it. ONE - I'm getting a freaking massage. Because I need one. And I want one. And I can. TWO - I'm going to register for a 1/2 marathon I'm using as my inspiration to get back into my pre-pregnancy shape. That's enough pampering for me. The rest of the return is going to make a nice little dent in our remaining credit cards. I haven't decided if I'm going to post it to the account w/ the highest interest rate (13.99%) OR the card that is currently at 0% interest, because in May, that one is going to go up and I think it would be good to knock the balance down before that happens. Decisions, decisions.

I was on a short "vacation" visiting my mom and her family with the little one this week - I apologize for the total lack of updates or warning. It's funny how you realize that having "money issues" translates to all kinds of things. I got "flamed" on the Bump website where I sometimes post things. For any of you who "may" not know - getting flamed is basically when you post on a message board and a whole bunch of strangers say things that make you want to cry/hurt your feelings/piss you off/make you want to throw your computer out a window (see comments on my last post...below... hehe). Anyway - the hubs and I went out of our way to spend very little money on this trip - we wanted to introduce our little guy to my family, especially my sick grandma. We used a voucher, airline miles, and $120 and got all 3 of us half way across the country. It was a real money "win". In my quest to save money, I asked my mom if she would find out from my uncle (who has 4 kids) if he had a car seat we could borrow while we were down there. My uncle is wealthy, and I stupidly assumed they would have a fancy car seat from when their youngest was a baby. He's 5 now - so, a little old for a car seat, but from my own family - so I know it wasn't in an accident, etc. Anyway, long story short - I got off the plane and into the car only to realize that the seat my mom borrowed was from their oldest child who is TWELVE. The thing was installed improperly - another whole long dramatic story I can't bear to tell again ( sorry, but I can't take the flames right now ). In the end, I realized a very important lesson - and it's something that happens a LOT in my life. I make a BAD decision in order to save a SMALL amount of money. It would have cost $20 to ship the base of my car seat there ahead of time so we could bring our own car seat. But the base only cost $40 to begin with - I thought it was a bad deal. I assumed my mom would know about car seats - another bad decision. I also ignored the concerns of my husband because I was filtering him through the voice that says "James sometimes wastes money on things because it's inconvenient". Once I realized that I basically risked my son's life for $20 I wanted to throw up. I cried - apologized to my husband and yelled at my mom. And I probably shouldn't blame my mother - she's a whole other can of worms and I know she sounds sympathetic in this story, but she isn't...I assure you. But it still wasn't her responsibility to care for my child the way I would. I thought she would - that was a mistake. However, the real lesson is that sometimes saving money is NOT the end all/be all. It is not always the right way to do something - the cheapest way. I feel depressed over this whole thing - and I'm still really upset about it, even now - and we are safely home, with baby snoozing away in the other room. So please - no more flames about used car seats or how I'm a bitch to my mother. I've learned my lesson, I assure you - as evidenced by the deconstruction of what CAUSED the ridiculously STUPID decision to trust the welfare of my baby to somebody else and not even check on everything to make sure it was handled. New mom fail.

I'll get to the law school flames another time - I really can't take another interwebs beat down right now. And to boost my spirits, I'll go to bed dreaming of my tax return and that impending massage.......

Penny

The settlement is in.

2010-02-03T09:54:00.000-08:00

The final offer has been made and accepted on that CitiBank card James had. The lawyers are hashing out the final documents, but I can't lie. It feels good. James - our little credit risk as of late - now has 2 settled credit accounts, 2 fully paid off accounts, 1 transferred balance (showed as Paid In Full, obviously) and that is IT!!! I know some of you are probably wondering why I'm ok - after all these years - with carrying the remaining 20k on credit cards in my name. Well for 1 it's easy because James goes to work, so he's the one paying it all off. Second, I make sure the bills are paid on time as I'm the one with the bank account, remember? Third - my debt to credit ratio still allows for my score to be high. Through all this, you'll remember - I have great credit. So - James' score is going to start going up, up, up starting NOW even though we will be paying his debt off for another couple years. Strategery as GW Bush would say. Hopefully by the time we've got this stuff paid off, and it's time to move forward, and the day comes (please, GAWD, let the day come) when we are shopping for houses - James will have a couple years of good credit under his belt already. Muahahahahahaha.

I can't say I'm not proud of him and us. I'm having a day of feeling very, very proud. Because although there's a long way to go - we'll take the mini-victories any day. For the first time we paid our rent with our savings account this month - the unemployment checks haven't started rolling in yet (and believe me, they aren't much to write home about, but at least we'll be able to eat). James has a big job he's working on that will likely go towards paying the rest of the month's bills/budget items and replenishing the savings that we used. Good fortune mostly, because for whatever reason, the phone keeps ringing. He's got two more jobs lined up. Meaning he's got a good 2-3 more months of work. In the mean time we are going to keep our eyes and ears open hoping for something permanent. And apparently his former employers just let him know that they *might* hire everyone back in March or April. Not counting on it, but it would be a good opportunity to ask for a little raise and to get back in the saddle w/ regards to those regular paychecks.

In the long term - you may have noticed a little link on the right hand side of this page referencing law school admissions. I have wanted to be a lawyer since I was about 24 years old. I'm one of those late bloomers - it took me a long time to figure out "what I wanted to be when I grew up" and then of course - here we are 8 years down the road and I still haven't done it. Why? A million reasons. But honestly it took me this long to sort some things out - to get to a place where I have the confidence and the courage to try it. To not worry I might fail. And as cliche as it sounds, looking at my little boy makes me want to do better. I have an extremely supportive husband behind me - and the maturity to do what it takes. Am I scared to death? Yes. Absolutely. But I'm also tired of playing it safe - doing the things I already know how to do. Being totally dissatisfied with my life in order to remain hidden and avoid criticism.

My parents went through a nasty divorce when I was in Jr. High. Nothing special, right? But I do feel that it offers me a particularly unique viewpoint when it comes to Family Law. A judge found it fit to award my dad custody of me at 13 - not the predictable decision, to give a 13 year old girl to her father instead of her mother. But that judge - and those lawyers - absolutely made the right decision. Somebody in that courtroom had the guts to go against what was popular and what was "normal" and do what was best for me when I wasn't allowed to stand up for myself. I want to pass that favor on to other kids. My hope is that I can find my stride - make a difference for people and make a good living. James has already offered to be a stay at home dad (hehe). Perhaps we'll just buy a great house and let him gut it and fix it up. A girl can dream, right?

So - baby steps. Because as much as people can say that law school isn't worth the debt or it's impossible to find a job, etc. I have to believe that going after my dream and being passionate, and the experience I bring both personally and professionally - will be recognized and the universe will open up and something will happen. Because it has to - we cannot live like this forever!

Penny

My Friend Cuts My Hair and Other Ways to Save

2010-01-30T16:01:00.000-08:00

I used to spend $250 on my hair. Every time I got it done. To be fair, I waited 12 weeks instead of 6, but that's still $1000 a year on my hair do. It looked good, though. It snagged me a hubby who saw me walk into a restaurant alone and thought "Wow, California sure has some beautiful women!" Ok, it probably wasn't the hair that did it, but it sure didn't hurt. Plus I felt so pampered going to a salon that was regularly featured in fashion magazines - my colorist usually by name. I had long, flowing, highlighted locks - that looked so good people actually referred to my naturally brunette self as "the blonde" rather than the "brunette w/ highlights". That's how you know your hair looks GOOD. Oh well. Dropping $250 on a trip to the salon has become a thing of the past. Along with $40 face wash, weekly mani/pedis, $200 jeans and a lot of other fancy things I used to consider necessary. I haven't gotten a massage in a LONG time. I miss them. I miss a lot of these things that made me feel good. But I've come to realize that feeling good in the short term at the expense of the long term is a young person's game. It's the worst form of lying to yourself. It's pretending you have attained something you haven't. And the sad thing is, if you budget and plan you can still splurge now and again - without charging anything on your credit card.

I still own expensive jeans because I have some junk in the so-called trunk, and it happens to be worth it to me to pay a little extra to not feel like shiz every single time I get dressed. Only now I just own a couple pairs that I replace with CASH when they WEAR OUT, not when I just feel like buying another pair of jeans. A friend of mine cuts my hair for me now - and colors it. She doesn't come close to the skill or luxury I got before - but she does a good job, and cuts me a fantastic deal. I buy my face wash at Walgreen's and my t-shirts at Old Navy. No more shopping at Nordstroms for this girl. Oh, how I miss shopping... in fact I rarely even buy myself clothes anymore - when I do it's usually new workout gear from Target. At first I suffered immensely over this. It wasn't fair! I'd worked so hard...I DESERVED nice things, didn't I?! Oh, the evil seductive nature of convincing yourself you "deserve" stuff. Money is not about emotions - it's black and white. Only most of us are ruled by emotion when it comes to money. It's all about what kind of person we are - how "successful" we are as human beings. We become how much money we have in the bank. Or....we just try to make it look like we have money in the bank. And even when we come to some sort of powerful place within ourselves about not buying things to feel better - we feel the pressure around us. We get jealous when our friends buy new I-Phones with $100 a month cell plans; We pine after our friend's beautifully painted baby nursery; We lust after our friend's BMW or Hawaiian vacation. If you're me - you get jealous every time another one of your friends buys a home.

When James and I sat down over the holidays - we started to discuss our plan to pay off our debt with some hope. It had been 6 months of working our plan, and we'd covered some serious ground and made some really good progress. We started to be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel. To realize that although daunting, it IS possible that we will get out of this hole. We decided to set some goals in reality about timing. Our goal is to payoff our debt to creditors in 2 years and pay off what we owe our parents in the 1 year after that. 48k in 3.5 years. If you do the math (one of my favorite phrases...it seems) that's about $1300 per MONTH. That's an average of course - we expect that some months will bring windfalls, our income will increase over those 3 years, etc. It doesn't seem plausible, does it? But.... it inspires us. What would be possible if we were the kind of people who paid off that kind of debt in that time? Who would we know ourselves to be that we didn't before? Responsible? Hard working? Dedicated? It will completely transform our marriage to work this out together. Not like there's anything wrong, but just ..... to conquer this. Together. We will be unrecognizable to ourselves. And that's what keeps us going on the days when it's hard.

Penny

A Family - During a Disaster.

2010-01-28T12:22:00.000-08:00

I sold my old video camera yesterday - for $50. I know, $50 seems like nothing, but given that that camera has been moved to 4 different apartments/homes, and has really never been used $50 is much better than the nothing I was getting for it as I moved it from closet to closet. I immediately came home and made a $50 payment to my credit card with the highest interest rate. This is the part that takes the most discipline - not taking that fifty bucks in cash in my pocket and spending it on something else. If I'm going to sell something to make more debt payments, I have to come right home and make the debt payment. Add to that the extra $50 from James' cell phone rebate, and that's $100 in extra payments made. This stuff starts to add up, this is what makes the balance go down. Little bits here and there, over and above the minimum payments - always made to the same card (the one with the highest balance). I will say that at first, we paid off 2 cards w/ smaller balances, just to feel like we were making some progress. It gave us a much needed boost. We're currently working on my long-held card with the balance that started out close to 10k. I think for me, this one will be the biggest victory - I've carried a balance on this card for almost 5 years. I cannot WAIT for it to be paid off. So while I may not be working right now, I do things like sell my old stuff to contribute to the debt payoff. It feels good, I'm not going to lie. And right now I'm borrowing my dad's mini Flip video camera to take the requisite cute baby videos - those things only cost like $200 and they are AMAZING. Even better if you can BORROW one! :D)

Speaking of babies - more specifically something they call "baby rabies" - I want to tell you a short story. When James and I got married we were 30 and 29 (I'm a year older than the hubs). We have both wanted children our entire lives - we're just those people - who knew we wanted to be parents from the time we were kids. We discussed this during our long-distance relationship, very early on - as in weeks in. As in "if you don't want kids, we shouldn't bother trying to figure out how to make this long-distance thing work". My mom had multiple 2nd term miscarriages, and after me and my brother both survived - she gave up and had a hysterectomy at the age of 32. So you see - I felt the pressure of not knowing whether I would have problems having kids. And it's not like I gave myself 15 years to figure it out. At 30, I figured we'd want to try to have all our kids (2 or 3.... depending on whether our financial situation improves...) by the time I'm 36 or so. To be safe. So you see - we didn't have a lot of time to Eff around.

I went off the pill prior to our wedding in August of 08. I hate taking the pill and honestly, it makes me retain about 10 extra pounds, which I was hoping to shed prior to said wedding. I know, I know - cliche but whatever. I look HOT in our wedding pics, I'm not gonna lie. And it was hard work. So we used other methods to make sure we didn't get all the way to 30 years old and engaged only to get knocked up prior to being married. By January of 09 James had been running his construction company for 9 months, business was continuing to roll in - and though the holidays were slow, we figured everything would pick back up in February and we'd roll with things like we had the year before. Only nothing picked up. And as it turns out, there's no such thing as "trying" to get pregnant in this house. "One and Done" as James likes to say. It's funny - but it was also surprising. Nobody expects to get pregnant the first month they start trying. Only we did - and James started to panic. The phone wasn't ringing. And he was going to be a dad. He posted ads on craigslist - answered job postings from clients looking for a contractor or carpenter; He got a couple small things here and there, but for the most part no one was doing any work on their homes - and even if they wanted to, no one could get a loan to do it. 2 months went by, then 3. Then 6. James was depressed, I'm not gonna lie. Sometimes I wanted to throttle him and say "you don't find work by sitting on the COUCH!!!". Then one day he asked me to help him with his resume. Within a week he got a call about an interview - he nailed the interview and got the job, beating out 220 other applicants. No joke. King of the interview. That was the 4th of July. I was 6 months pregnant - and James was sad to be giving up his dream of running his own business, but I think the hard to deny size of my belly made him feel like crap as he said goodbye to me everynight as I left for the restaurant and 6-7 hours on my feet.

I know, I'm kind of repeating myself - but the point is this: Have you ever thought about how you'd like to bring a baby into the world? All the cool STUFF you'd buy? The Glider rocking chairs, the swings, cribs, toys, clothes..... how you'd be the stylish pregnant woman with maternity 7 For All Mankind jeans and you'd stay thin and paint a nursery and fill a bookcase? I wasn't really that woman until I was actually pregnant. And then I wanted all those things...NEEDED them. The nesting instinct is NO JOKE. And it's even harder when you have a friend who is pregnant too - who is buying and doing all the things you can't. We tried to move, but it fell through. I wanted so badly to paint a room for our little boy. I don't know why, but for some reason the painting was the thing I felt most deprived by. I don't know when it happened but I started to get very calm. I realized that my baby needed a mom and dad who were a team, who love each other, who provide a safe and calm household. He did not need a $100 white noise machine (hello, we have a cheap oscillating fan in our bedroom...) or a color video baby monitor. We had everything he needed. It was ME who wanted all that gear. Who wanted to decorate.

In the end the thing that happened was very surprising. James and I disassembled our desk and office space in the apartment and started to turn it into the "baby corner". It's in our living room but separated as it's own little space. I bought a $15 throw rug, and a changing table/cabinet from Ikea. I asked my dad for my favorite grandma's old rocking chair and asked my Mother in Law to sew me some new cushions for it. My mom bought us a little cradle for the bedroom and we put the baby's bed in with us. We hung a couple of pictures over it - that used to hang in James' nursery when he was a baby. We started to do MEANINGFUL things instead of expensive ones. We had to think about what was important and what wasn't. What we actually needed and what we didn't. James constructed some wood frames and we covered them in some cute fabric we picked up - instant wall decorations for the baby nook. I had a small baby shower and asked for necessities only: diapers, wipes, bath towels and soap, diaper creams and bottles. As the little dude gets older, we've borrowed playmats and other toys that he will only use for a short time. Saved $70 here and $40 there. Some friends got me a used jogging stroller off craigslist. We don't actually "want" for anything and we've spent VERY little money on having a baby. Babies need love, they don't need STUFF. And in the end - they need stability and parents who teach them about life - including how to handle their money. We are already learning so much by becoming parents - including what is really important in life. And it's not "stuff".

Penny

2010-01-26T21:38:00.000-08:00

I hit a wall I think. I'm not sure what I want to say, now. I kind of have that feeling you get right after you throw up. You're kind of disgusted with yourself, but you feel better. I'm not really sure what to do with my internet confessions here - other than, I suppose - keep on slogging along. This is kind of what paying of 48k in debt feels like. You have ups and downs - near manic episodes where you are all gung-ho and putting every dollar you have toward paying things off. Then you swing back to the hangover feeling where you want to crawl in bed, stay in your pajamas and not do anything - and you turn off the ringer on your phone and ignore everyone. Even your mother.

We have money in our bank account right now - and a lot of that money was supposed to be on top of the hubby's regular paycheck - and therefore - to be put towards the debt. Instead, the meager little amount is being put into savings and probably going to have to cover our rent for February depending on when the unemployment checks start to roll in. Yes, James filed for unemployment. I guess being a husband and more importantly a dad - changed his mind on that one. Hopefully the checks start coming in soon, and we will have a few months of grace to figure out what to do. The move to the midwest is still on the back burner. We talked it over and realized that barring some full time job that is guaranteed before we get there - it's too risky to up and move just "hoping" things are better there than here. We have hope right now, and for the first time - we have some emergency money in savings. Not 8 months like Suze Orman suggests - not even 3 months - but it's something, a small victory in all of this - proof, on paper, that we've changed our behaviors and the tides are turning.

On another note - Frontline on PBS is running a whole segment on credit card debt in this economy and the way the companies and banks are treating customers. The show includes issues facing small business owners when credit lines are slashed and interest rates/minimum payments skyrocket. This is essentially what happened to dear James - as his business slowed and he missed a couple payments - the interest rates shot up to 30% and the minimum payments were all of a sudden $1k. Personal debt and debit cards/free checking are also covered. Anyway - a great segment if you can find it on their website, I'd recommend giving it a watch.

I hope to be back to my normal self here in the next few days - the cathartic nature of sharing our story is both freeing and encouraging as we struggle with our goals of debt repayment amidst the trouble we're experiencing with income.

Thanks for reading!
Penny

Every which way you slice it.

2010-01-23T10:35:00.000-08:00

So I know I skipped some very important details. Like how we got from that first month of moving into our apartment and James starting work with that barfly er... you know, the General Contractor - to now. Bear with me (Bare? I hate bad grammar...sorry). I mentioned that James is a third generation carpenter, right? Well after 3 months or so with that GC he was at a crossroads. See, the hubs is used to getting up early, hitting the road, working hard all day, and coming home hungry and physically tired. He's used to getting a full 8 hours in. Or more. You have to remember this was the beginning of 2008 - long before the newsmedia had officially told us we were in a recession. We felt the squeeze, but we hadn't realized what was going on yet. James was miserable doing what was essentially handyman type work - patching drywall and what have you - on a totally sporadic schedule. While this guy had promised he had work scheduled 6 months out, all of a sudden Mondays were rolling around without a call until 1pm about where to head out for work that day. Most professionals don't wake up at 7am and then wait around for 6 hours to go to work. Because your boss just doesn't call you. Aside from the total obnoxiousness of the situation, it was impacting James' pocketbook (we still had separate accounts, remember?). He was having a hard time wtih the unpredictability of the paychecks along with the hours and by April had had enough.

James always wanted to start his own company - get his Contractors' license and be his own boss. Unfortunately we would find that doing it out of necessity is not the same as doing it because you are ready, and have a plan, and some seed money. We had none of those things, but we had hope and he had the technical and people skills to succeed. In theory. He picked up some small jobs quickly that led to bigger jobs. Soon he was engaged in a full scale kitchen remodel, followed by a bathroom and then a fateful job for my best friend's mother. Oh, working for friends...... The first 5 months were great - work was steady, James was able to take time off for our wedding and honeymoon that summer without negotiating with a boss. He had plenty of cashflow at first. The problems started when he tried to bill clients a multiplier on top of the materials he was purchasing for them, etc. See for whatever reason, he has a hard time puting his foot down with clients. Even more so when he NEEDS the job and more still when it's someone we know. James claims he never had this problem back home - that people just work differently back there. The social interactions are.....more polite. He quickly discovered that friends would agree to a bid and then try to add on a bunch of work for the same price as the bid. He was then put in the awkward position of either risking a friendship or losing money. I told him to risk away - if my friends were going to take advantage of my husband's demeanor, they were no friends of mine. He still struggled. And in the meantime all those materials were going on credit cards and he wasn't getting enough money from clients to pay off the cards, pay for the gas it took to pick up the materials, pay for business insurance and expenses..... at the end of the day he never paid himself. Oh sure, he had cash sometimes, but in truth more charges were made on the credit cards to cover living expenses and work expenses than any cash he ever had around.

The deficit grew, and the debt piled up. We are paying off someone else's kitchen, essentially. I get angry at my friends (and my best friend's mom) from time to time - but mostly I know that it happened often enough that perhaps my great builder husband is not such a businessman. I do think he could have learned - in fact he is still learning - but unfortunately as December 2008 rolled around, and the recession became a real issue - and everyone was losing jobs and holding onto their money, the work just came to a stand-still. James had sporadic small little jobs he did, but for the most part had no consistent work between January and June of 2009. I got pregnant in January. Talk about bad timing.

As he frantically searched, the bills fell behind. The credit cards went unapaid. He used the cards to stay afloat. He missed 3 payments and the minimum payments were up to $1,000. He gave up and the cards went to collections. Then we sat down that day in July and told the truth about everything. July 4 he got his new job. He beat out 300 other applicants. I told you, "King of the Living Room" or in this case, Interview. His bosses loved him, we'd have health insurance for the new baby.... We all know how that turned out (see yesterday's post). But - for the last 7 months we have been able to turn the ship around and his job let us do that. My last month of waitressing I actually made really good money. We made huge minimum payments on all the credit cards except for those 2 pesky CitiBank/Home Depot cards. We got our credit reports and made sure everything was right, and then we went to work on fixing his stuff. One thing at a time. He now has 2 cards in his name that are paid off. Everything is current and has been since September/October. Our little boy came along, and things are going well. Not perfect, but we have everything under control. We settled those 2 accounts in collections - we've made huge payments on the debt up to now.

I forgot to mention my own role in all of this. Funny how that happens huh? Remember my $4500 had turned into close to 10k? A reminder - that included our wedding bands, some cost overruns on the wedding (our parents paid for most of it, and we kept costs under control, I swear) and honeymoon (stupid, I know, moneywise, but it was the best thing we've ever done together and these 2 purchases are the ONLY things we don't regret having to pay off...still. No regret).

So here we are. We're paying off our wedding, we're paying off a business that failed - the American Dream doesn't always work out like it's supposed to...... and we're paying off a lot of materials purchased and put into other peoples' houses. Sigh. The hard part is not getting bitter about that last part. Now that James is laid off, he's reminiscing about the days of being his own boss. We made a deal - he will file for unemployment. He will do his best to find another full-time job. And - as he does these little side jobs, he will prove - over time - that he can handle the money part, make them profitible, deal with the clients and be strong when it comes to negotiations. He will turn down work if people aren't willing to pay for it. If he can prove that he can do that, and sustain it, then we'll talk. Down the road. WAY down the road.

I have a feeling that sometime this weekend we'll be discussing the big move to the midwest. It won't happen quickly, but my gut says it will happen. I'm not unhappy about that - in fact I'm hopeful. Cautiously hopeful. And James will begin to make the calls back home, to friends and old coworkers...to find out if there is work there, and if they have a place for him.

To be continued.

Feeling....Exposed.

2010-01-22T12:04:00.000-08:00

So here we are - a week into blogging. In light of a few things that went down yesterday I feel very......exposed. I'm not a robot. I feel vulnerable and freaked out at telling you all of our deep, dark secrets - and I've never, ever been ashamed of myself for things that happened in my past. I'm not embarrassed by our current debt situation. I now understand that this is truly something that can happen to anyone in this economy.  However, yesterday I got the sense that there are things about me and about James that people will judge us for. Without knowing us. That is their right, of course. You don't have to give us the benefit of the doubt, or believe we are good people or any of that.  My dad always said "you don't have a drinking problem until you quit" and I never quite knew what he meant. Except now I do. Because somehow it is in the truth-telling, that the judgements begin.  I went to a wedding last year that was some distance out of town - required some driving to get home, you know? The family of the bride were all wasted drunk, parents included, and thought nothing of getting in their cars to drive back to the city. It made me very uncomfortable - but somehow, that doesn't invite public opinons about your lifestyle choices. On the other hand, I've had to take a coworker aside to tell her in no uncertain terms, that I was perfectly capable of declining a drink without her interrupting to tell everyone within earshot that I "don't drink at all ANYMORE".  I think it's the same w/ debt. You can have a huge house, 2 expensive cars, take vacations, be up to your ears in credit card bills spent on TVs and I-phones and no one will ever think anything of your lifestyle. But admit that you are hoping to live a life within your means, pay all your bills in full, only buy what you can afford....and all of a sudden it's this "gasp! The Pennys are pooooor?!" "How do you SURVIVE? OMG, I couldn't DO IT". Blah, blah, blah.

I say this because I know there are people reading who think I'm somehow different. I'm not - we are not. I have down days where I don't think this is ever going to end. Yesterday was one of those. I get embarrassed that I can't invite people over for dinner because our place is too small for more than 4 people to sit in. I get angry that I'm washing my baby's laundry at my dad's house because it's free. But I can't allow myself to wallow there for too long. It's not productive, it is a cop-out. But it's human - it's a normal, human, emotional reaction to feel hopeless about money when you're buried in debt.

James got laid off yesterday. Everyone in his company did - bosses, people who had been there for 12 years, everybody on the construction side was let go. Without warning. Just "hey, here's your paycheck - you should start filing for unemployment". Wow. Thanks.

I know, right? When there's an up, there's a down. Or so it seems. We have to look for the silver lining. He has side-jobs (now, just "jobs") lined up for the next 2 months or so...coincidentally. He can collect unemployment - although he is hesitant. He's just that guy - he's never collected it, he always thinks there are people who need it more than he does. He is strong and able to work. He got up with us this morning, smiling away at his little boy, playing with him, changing his diaper and getting him dressed for the day (swoon - seriously, there is nothing like watching the man you love act goofy and pick out baby clothes). We had our morning coffee together.  We got to spend some family time together before he headed off to the side job he's been working on for the last few days - the kind we haven't been able to have since James closed his business.

I am nervous. I couldn't sleep last night. I immediately saw all our hard work and plans and everything we've worked for go down the toilet. I started wondering if I'd have to leave my little boy at night and go back to waitressing. All of this in the span of 4 hours.  I'm going to let that all go, trust that I don't know what the future holds, and we are going to do everything we can to correct this before the next 2 months are up. In the mean time, we're socking away all the cash we can into our emergency fund. We have one of those now. It's small....but it's there. And every night on the news they say the state lost x amount of jobs this month - and most of them are in construction.

We've been contemplating something for quite some time.  Going back and forth on whether we should move in with the hubby's parents. At this age - with our son. It sucks so much. It's embarrassing. It's tough to live with your in-laws - ESPECIALLY with a baby. Try being a brand new mom with the grandma around. Ugh. So. much. advice. But at least they are great in-laws - really, we get along great. It seems like a situation that is impossible to pass up -the head start that 6 months without rent would give us on knocking that debt way back.  They live in the midwest, though. It's not like we can just move in there. We'd have to pick up and relocate. Again. My dad lives here, where we are - but remember, the Hoarding? The girlfriend? The tiny townhouse? Nowhere to live in that place. You should know we plan to move to that midwestern city eventually. We want to raise our kids there. We just don't want to jump into another move uneducated about the conditions, unprepared....unemployed.  Though James does have 10 years worth of construction contacts back there that he doesn't have here. This current job loss might be the nail in the coffin. But we aren't giving up hope just yet. We have some time to gather our wits and decide what to do. I'm scared, but I'm not alone. I have James. And our little boy. And the strongest, most astounding determination to get out of this damn hole.

To be continued.

A 2 for 1 Day - with some Nuts and Bolts.

2010-01-21T16:41:00.000-08:00

I know, I know. I already blogged today.... but the little guy is taking a ridiculously long nap. And since multiple people are wondering about the ticker, I thought I'd update a little bit.

So, as you'll notice - the debt started out over 48k. When I started blogging, it was down to 42-something...... and now it shows up as 29+. How did we do it? Well, over the last 6-7 months we've paid off the 6+ thousand through hard effing work. Cold hard cash. Setting up a system of paying off the highest interest rate cards first. We make as big a payment as we can to the highest rate card, and then minimum payments on the rest. I sold a bunch of books and CDs and put the cash toward the debt. We bought James a new cell phone with a full mail-in rebate (making the phone free) and instead of pocketing the $50 we put it toward the debt. We stopped eating out except for once a week, if that (we used to eat out almost every day, usually more than once. We cancelled our land line and our cable. We bought used baby gear and not much of it. We took birthday money, tax returns, Christmas cash - and put it all towards the debt. My aunt and uncle gave us $400 when the baby was born. We put it all towards the debt instead of buying the latest "must-have" baby stuff. We cut up all of our credit cards (except for one, single, emergency card that is literally frozen in a block of ice). We stopped shopping. I borrowed almost ALL of my maternity clothes from friends. I sold my snowboard and all the gear that goes with it. I stopped using fancy makeup and facewash and shop for deals at Walgreen's. Every single spare dollar goes to the debt - and we live within our means. And we are still in this 1-bedroom apartment with the hollow Home Depot doors. And some nights we sit around and stare at each other because we are so damn BORED. But other nights we talk, and talk, and talk about how good it will feel when the day comes. The day when this is all "the past".

I heard back from the lawyer - we were able to settle the 2nd credit card that was in collections - the CitiBank Mastercard James opened when he moved to CA. The one with the balance of $6029. Settled for $3500. CitiBank is agreeing to reverse the default judgement they filed against James in court. They will not proceed w/ the wage garnishment they had been threatening us with for three months. The Home Depot card, as I said - $5808 settled for $3200. If you're keeping track, that means we took $11,837 and turned it into $6700. That's FIVE THOUSAND dollars we just saved - I call that PAID OFF and put it in the DONE category. Do your research if you are considering settling your debts. It was right for us on those 2 accounts. But it's not right for everyone. The rest we are paying with cold hard cash.

Ok - so, Penny - that's close to 12k - how'd your ticker drop by by another 8k? Well, Ms. Money Penny started making requests. I spoke to my dad - who I borrowed that security deposit from...and the down payment on my car....and a couple other things. We struck a deal. When I sell my car, I will pay him back the down payment out of the money I make on the sale. (My car is paid off as of this summer). I don't plan to sell it anytime soon. With regard to the rest of the cash - he told me that in 2 years, he expects me to take the $ I owe him and invest it into my Roth IRA. He expects the receipts to prove I've done it. Ok, Penny - you're thinking... this is cheating, isn't it? Maybe it is. Only, I know that days ago there was a column in my spread sheet marked $5700 that was cash we needed to come up with to give to my dad. Now that column reads ZERO. And when we pay this debt off, by gawd we are investing in our retirement and my dad will get those receipts he asked for. Done. And Done. I know, it seems lame - only for 5 years I've walked around with this money I owed my dad hanging over my head. He has seen what we've done so far and decided we were serious - and he could trust us to actually invest the money. I'm going to email him a promise to do it - in writing.

James was inspired and decided to talk to his parents as well. He has made an arrangement to do some work on their house which knocked another $2300 (approximately) off the total cash out of pocket. Labor trades = Happy Husband. We started this karma train in the right direction and it just keeps on moving. You never know where these companies/people/debts are willing to work with you unless you bother to ask the questions. You have to get creative. I even offered to clean out my dad's garage for money. I babysat my friend's 4 year old for $10 an hour a day a week for 3 months - straight to the debt. You have to be willing to grind. it. out. To do anything and everything. To part with items you never use.

I'm going to keep selling things on craigslist and puting the cash towards our debts. I'm going to keep breastfeeding my little boy because it's good for him, yes - but it's also FREE. I'm going to continue to walk everywhere I can to spare gas. Continue to watch Netflix instead of going to movies. We're going to continue to live in this damn stupid apartment. Because we can afford it even when only one of us is working (as is the case right now). We've had so many urges to move into a nicer, newer, bigger place....with a dishwasher. But it always comes back to the true cost - if we pay more in rent, we lose the ability to pay off our cards faster. No dice.

Are you a coffee drinker? Hubs and I drink a LOT of coffee - we used to spend, between the 2 of us, $400 a month on coffee. I'm not kidding. 2 drip coffees in the morning ($2 each); 2 lattes / espressos in the afternoon ($5 each w/ tip) = $14 per day. Times 30 days a month. Seriously. Now we buy a lb. a week at the store (whatever is on sale) usually around $9.99 a pound. We bought a good espresso machine on Ebay for 1/3 of the price and make our own lattes. Espresso costs $12 per pound and we use about 1lb. a month. That's a savings of nearly $350. And we don't feel deprived, and we don't suffer, and we didn't have to give up our beloved java. We just make it ourselves.

My little boy is waking up. It's a great thing - to look at him, and know - it won't be like this forever. He probably won't even remember it.

Once you start telling the truth about one thing, you can't help but tell it about other things.

2010-01-21T10:06:00.000-08:00

I'm sober. I know I haven't mentioned that before. I'm about to turn 32 years old and I haven't had a sip of alcohol in close to 4 and a half years. Which if you're counting backwards, means I was 27 years old when I quit drinking. I guess I just want to blow the doors of ALL KINDS of misconceptions! That 62 hour a week job with the abusive boss was the thing that made me realize alcohol was not my friend. Because I was miserable, sad, lonely and poor - and instead of dealing with my life, my choices, the reality of that job - I went to the bar after work to "unwind". I hid all the feelings under care-free happy hours and woke up the next day and went back to my life of misery. But boy, those 4 or 5 hours of freedom sure were nice. It was just that I had to get up and look at myself in the mirror every morning.

I tell you this, not as some pitch for sobriety - we all have our own demons. I tell you this because my sobriety was not about alcohol. It was about all the things in my life that added up to an angry, scared, confused young woman who was too afraid to pick apart her life and start over. So I did. One day I walked home from work (I always walked to save the bus fare) - it was a Friday night around 9pm. I stopped at a cute little Italian place by myself, ordered a nice dinner and a glass of red wine and enjoyed it. Knowing it would be the last drink I ever had. It was time to "put on the big girl panties" as they say - and deal with my life.

I started running again. I started doing yoga. A few short months later I quit that horrible job. I could breathe again. I started to deal with what an angry person I was (the yoga really helped with that - one day in class I just burst into tears - it was insane). I had been angry for a long time - since childhood - for a lot of reasons. At 13 I decided that being the "life of the party" was a lot better than being the weird girl whose mom screamed at her in front of everyone and whose parents were divorced and fighting all the time. There's nothing special about my story - except it's mine. And I needed to deal with all the ways I'd constructed as a child to survive my life. They weren't serving me anymore and here I was - 14 years later - still doing them. Drinking was not the answer to anger. To feeling abused (by my mother, or my boss).

I tell you this because it was the sad angry teenager in me who was spending money on those credit cards. She was the one I was consoling. She was also the one who felt like she deserved to be punished. A normal person would have quit that job within weeks of the boss screaming and throwing things in her office. That's not ok. I didn't - I tried to please her - to fix it - I was sure if I could just be "better" it would all be ok. See what I mean? I had issues, and I didn't want to go through the rest of my life like that. I didn't want that teenager choosing my husband, my career - parenting my kids. So I got sober and I started to systematically rethink all the choices I'd made.

Soon after I started dealing with my debt. I stopped relating to money like it "meant something" about who I was. It was just money. You either handle it well or you don't. You have what you have and you don't have what you don't have. That's it. Everything changed for me then. This is why when I sat down in July last year with James and he told me the truth about how out of control his credit cards had gotten - and he asked for help - this is why I could stay calm, and look him in the eye, and tell him I loved him and he was not alone. That we would get through this together.

I could have freaked out. I could have left him. I could have agreed to work this all out and resented him for the rest of our lives. But I don't. Cause I've been there - and I know that aside from the real-world issues that have you fall behind in your payments - have you lose all control - aside from all that - there is a teenage boy somewhere in my husband. Who doesn't feel good enough to charge clients what things cost. Terrified they will turn him down and he won't get the job, and he'll have to tell his wife that he doesn't have work for another few weeks. Terrified that he would tell the woman he loved he had screwed up and he would lose everything. I know that he's in there - and I love him, too.

So we sat down and worked out a plan. James closed all his bank accounts. He gives me his paychecks. I pay all the bills, and for now - he has to ask me for money. This could be a disaster, except he came up with this idea - to teach himself. To learn how to handle a budget and finances without digging the hole any deeper. We now talk about every purchase. I ask him what he thinks we should do with windfalls like a tax return and then we discuss it until we come to an agreement. We encourage each other when we want to give up (which happens at least every other week - one of us gets so overwhelmed we want to cry/breakdown/give up/run away from the money issues). Then we look at each other, and our little boy, and we choose - in the moment - to keep on going. To fight. To work harder. To become completely unrecognizable so that our little boy never knows what this kind of financial struggle looks like. So we become the kind of parents who teach their kids about money.

So there you have it: The 2 biggest moments of my life. Oh, what was the second one, you ask? The day I met James. The love of my life - credit cards and all.

Pinching Penny's Pennies. Or Something.

2010-01-20T20:45:00.000-08:00

When I first moved to California I was wide-eyed and excited. I couldn't believe I was in such an international city, making it on my own, wearing suits to work. I had taken a job as an Executive Assistant to the VP of a company - working 12 hour days, 62 hour weeks. It was definitely a rash decision, but one I don't regret. I had gone to the Bay Area to visit my mom for Christmas and - unplanned - was living and working there 3 weeks later. It had that strong of an effect on me. I knew it was where I was supposed to be. I'm not sure why - but I was just pulled to go there. Living there as I did, for three years, made me the woman I am today. It changed me. I met my husband there. It's also the place where my debt started to get out of control - the first time I worked for far less money than I should have and used credit cards to make up the difference. See - a lot of people blame their spending on bad "purchase" decisions. I blame mine on bad life decisions. I was grossly underpaid at this job. The company was well aware that they did this to people. They made us sign an agreement that said we wouldn't tell anyone our salaries. No one. I was making 38k a year in the 2nd most expensive city in the country, working my life away. If you're doing the math, it worked out to about $12.50 an hour. YEAH. With a college degree, and a job that in all fairness, should have easily paid twice that.

When I finally started to wake up, and grow up, and stand up for myself - I left. For that Marketing job and its 7k a year raise. Bringing me to 45k (still not rich, but muuuuch better - and only 40 hours a week). This began my life of financial "survival". I was choosing things to help me survive - my job was about survival. I NEEDED it. I needed to get out of that old job with it's horrible boss, bad hours and low pay. I was living on the financial edge all the time. But I was happy now, if 12k into my credit cards. During the first few months of my new job, my roommate unexpectedly moved out - I had to borrow nearly 1,000 dollars from my dad in order to pay the large security deposit on my apartment so I wouldn't have to give it up. I sublet the other room for 3 months until James could make it out west and split the rent with me. Survival. People living in survival mode don't have emergency funds. People "surviving" see no way out. They own the shovel, and they just. keep. digging.

This is essentially the story of my ridiculous career. I say ridiculous not because there is anything wrong with being an Executive Assistant. Or a Marketing person. Ridiculous because I hated doing both and wasn't particularly GOOD at them either. I could pull it off - I'm a smart cookie. But without the drive to succeed, silently seething and hating my boss - knowing that this was not what I was supposed to be doing with my life....it was ridiculous.

Next: The 2 things that changed my entire life. And how that ticker down there just dropped by double digits. Miracles happen when you start telling the truth - I mean it!!

Fast forward to a lot of confusing numbers.

2010-01-19T17:47:00.000-08:00

I think it's important to let you know how we got here - I really, really want to blow open the misconception that this only happens to lazy people. Or people who don't work hard. Or people addicted to handbags or big screen tvs. Or idiots. That is not how this happened to us.

At the same time, there is stuff happening in real time that I think is best told as it goes down. I don't want to spend all our valuable time together recounting the past. I'm currently waiting on an email from our lawyer. Yep, we hired a lawyer. Because CitiBank sued my husband. We were served w/ the final paperwork as I was 1 week past my due date, anxiously eating pineapple and walking laps around the mall hoping to induce labor. I started to panic - James hugged me and said "we can't possibly worry about this right now. There is nothing we can do until after our son is born." He was right in a lot of ways - I was in no kind of place to battle it out with a law firm. So we got home from the hospital, enjoyed our little boy for a couple weeks, and hired a lawyer. Who immediately encouraged the hubby to file for Bankruptcy. It would wipe it all out - all of it except for the 12k we owed to his and my parents; that, and the $7500 I had transferred from his card (harging 30% interest) to mine charging 0%. So - why on earth would we file bankruptcy only to be left w/ nearly 20k in debt?  James' credit sucks, it would continue to suck.  Mine is stellar. Fantastic. Amazing. We'd have to claim my card w/ the $7500 on it as community property in order to have it wiped out as well - which would ruin my credit too.  Which as it turns out, is all we actually have right now.

Plus, there is one thing in all of this that doesn't show up on paper. Our will. Our determination. Our obligation to repay what we borrowed. Because, as I'll tell you - there were a lot of things that led us to where we are today. However, there is one thing that is crystal clear to us - and always has been: It's our debt. We have never, EVER throughout this process - in ALL the letters and phone calls and plea's and tears - refused to pay. That is what is so. damn. sinister. Because we want to pay - we CAN pay. We just can't do it all at once. I think that lawyer telling us to just give up made us want to prove ourselves even more. Who is SHE to tell US we can't do it?

This is what I hate about those women on the Today Show telling us to "call your creditor they are SO willing to work with you". Um, excuse me lady, but NO. They are NOT. We are a nation full of families getting crappy advice from professionals who haven't bothered to notice what's actually happening to regular people. As I mentioned, I sat down with all of our statements, James and Penny, on paper, in July of 2009. I was almost 7 months pregnant and James had just started his new job (I'll get to that later). We finally had some money. It was time to work out some deals and start to pay this stuff off. That's when I realized it was close to 50 thousand dollars. HOLY SHIZ.  I started to formulate a plan. Just as I was going on maternity leave (waitress, remember? I wasn't able to work past my 7th month so here we were, back on one income...).

THE SITUATION:

James had 2 credit cards in collections. One with CitiBank itself, and one with Home Depot - which coincidentally is also owned by CitiBank. I hate CitiBank. Hate them. And Wells Fargo. Anyway...He also had 3 credit cards still with the original lenders: Credit One, Chase and Wells Fargo.  I had two - The Wells Fargo business account, and one with CitiBank.  Did I mention that I hate CitiBank? So anyway, we had SEVEN credit cards. The 2 Wells Fargos and the Home Depot cards were all for our business (are you still following all this? I'll get to the part where we started a business....);  Three were James' personal cards, used mostly to cover personal expenses throughout the launch of the business as well as periods of unemployment.  One was that card of mine, the one w/ the $4500 balance I came into this relationship with. Only as of this past August, the balance was back up to nearly 10k.  I'm not going to tell you what I charged on there until you like me a little more ;D) But I promise, I'll come clean. And it's really not thaaaat bad.....

Did you keep up with me there?  So, that's 7 cards (2 in collections) for a total balance of around $38,000. Add in the money we owed our parents - another 10k give or take - and you have the magic number - nearly 50k in personal debt. BAD DEBT. Icky, horrible debt. And a panic stricken pregnant woman with a humiliated and desperate husband. During the time James was living on his credit cards, we still hadn't combined our money. We dated, moved in together, relocated, started a business, planned a wedding....but never shared a bank account. When the economy crashed in late 2008 and the Construction Industry around the country went in the toilet, and there was no more work....I didn't ask how it was going. I didn't ask if he was paying his bills ok. I was trying to be the wife who was all "cool, you're an adult, I'm not meddling in your stuff". So even though I knew that James couldn't possibly be making ends meet - I ignored it. I let him figure it out. But he didn't know how. And he didn't have any money. And he didn't want to ask for help.  And remember how I was all "guys take advantage of me"...? So he waited - hoping the next big job would come along and that he could make giant payments and get everything up to date and never have to tell his wife what was happening.....I promise, our marriage - and our communication skills - will redeem themselves. Stay tuned.

So CitiBank is suing him. And we have a lawyer. I'm currently waiting for this lawyer to settle a $6029.00 balance for us. Our initial offer is $2000. I don't think they'll take it - but who knows. Every blog and article and MSN freelance writer and Suze Orman - they all tell you not to settle your debts "play ball!" they say. "Offer a payment schedule!", "Ask to pay less and have the debt show as Paid In Full on your credit report! EASY!!". Um, I don't know what these people are smoking, but I made countless phone calls, wrote letters, did everything I could to arrange payments - they just ignored me. For 5 months. They said "give us the $6029 right now, over the phone". Um..huh? Who DOES that? Sure, collector I don't even know, here's 6k bucks (we don't have...or wouldn't we have given it to you?), no need to put anything in writing! Thanks!". Um yeah. NO.

JEEBUS. The good news is that three weeks ago, I DID settle the Home Depot debt - all $5808 dollars of it. For $3200 bucks. That is a savings of .... $2602.  You may or may not know that they make you pay taxes on the money they settle for you - as if it were income. They do. We realized it was worth it. Because they wouldn't take payments.  Because James made so little money last year it won't really matter when it comes time to file those taxes. And James? His credit is already decimated. Settling the debts can't look worse than bankruptcy. It's all a wash.  Only this one he doesn't have to tell every future employer. Or landlord.  The lawyer thinks we are crazy. She suggested we wipe out the debt and tempted us with home ownership. Oh, to own a home..... Sorry. I get sidetracked on that fantasy a lot.....   Oh we were tempted to file bankruptcy. VERY tempted. But in the end - we don't want the karma. We can do this. We WILL do this.

More to come. Because there's more to this story. WAY more.

Someone told me there's a girl out there, with love in her eyes and flowers in her hair...

2010-01-18T09:11:00.000-08:00

James' move out west was a big deal. We had been dating long distance for six months, spending hours on the phone each night, and flying back and forth to visit each other once a month. I TOLD you - we were in love. Instantly. It was ridiculously romantic and fun and exciting. James was in much the same boat that I had been in when I'd moved away from home a year and a half earlier. Happy, but feeling stagnant - wanting to shake things up a little, make a new start - go where no one knew you. To break free from the life where all your friends dictated the person you were - loving you as they limited who you became at the same time. James and I - we were perfect for each other. I flew out to spend our first Christmas with him and his family. On December 26th, we packed the truck with all his belongings, waved goodbye to his parents, and began a 2 week drive out west - together. Just us and the Road.

My husband is a carpenter. I like to joke about how him and Jesus had the same job. He never thinks it's as funny as I do but I think that's a big part of why he loves me. I find that kind of thing hilarious. He's not just a "construction worker" - he's artistic, he's hard working, he takes a lot of pride in what he does - he is a Tradesman. There is a difference. James is a 3rd generation carpenter. It's in his blood...building things. The first time I visited his hometown he drove me around and showed me the different houses he had worked on, and what he had made. He writes our names and major life events inside the walls of his projects before he closes them up for what could be a hundred years. I tell you this because you need to understand James and his work before I tell you how this all turned out. He truly loves his craft.  He IS his profession.

First: a disclaimer. I will speak from authority - like I know how "it is". Like I know the "truth".  Take it all with a grain of salt - this is OUR truth. This is the experience that we had.  Remember, I am clear that other people could do just fine - succeed even - with the same set of circumstances. We did not.
I mentioned James had a job lined up before he came to California.  He'd be working for the long term bofriend of one of my coworkers - another "carpenter" who ran his own business in the East Bay. We'll call him Tim. Tim was a really nice guy - if not a little fried from too many years of clubbing and all that goes along with it. And - as we would come to realize - much like other Contractors and builders in Northern California - Tim was interested in making money, quickly - not necessarily interested in doing good work. This inability to adjust to a mindset where the money means more than the work would be my husband's biggest challenge.

James is the kind of guy who just needs to get in the door. Once you meet him, you give him the job. In fact, in all the years I've known him I don't think he's ever been turned down for a job where he put a bid out there. He's like Jerry MacGuire - King of the Living Room. But not because he's a smoothe talker - he's just a genuine guy. You trust him. You know it will be safe to let him in your house while you are gone - in fact he'll be quiet during your kid's nap and pet your dog on his way out. Three months into his work w/ Tim, James was going insane. He was fixing up rental properties for some slumlord who introduced himself as "the Kahuna". Seriously. They wanted things to "look" fixed, but be done as cheaply as possible. James could not reconcile himself with this. He did things right - not fast, not cheap. He quit.

The good news was - in true James fashion - he'd already found something else. Or rather, it had found him. He had remodeled the bathroom at the fighting gym he went to for some extra cash (remember those concrete countertops that brought us together?). A Real Estate Developer who taught the morning boot camp at the gym saw the countertops in the bathrooms and tracked James down to give him a job. Paying 60k a year - running a crew, working on million dollar homes. Tracked him down. That was how things went for James. In a previous life.....

To be continued...

Enough about ME, let's talk about the Hubs.

2010-01-17T15:42:00.000-08:00

James is a far more complicated story. First, before you want to throttle him, you should know he is the sweetest, most chivalrous, hard working man I have ever met. He's a midwestern, blue collar, door-opening, suitcase-carrying, man. He's humble, intelligent and kind. He plays with our son, calls to check on me throughout his work day, comes home on time, and buys me flowers. And he is terrible with money. TERRIBLE. Or rather..... he had to learn the hard way about credit cards. The cash-money part was most definitely not his downfall.

When I met my husband, he was living in his midwestern city. He was visiting my west coast place of residence to attend a workshop on how to make concrete countertops - building his skillset to expand his marketable business. He was a fully employed 27 year old who bought his plane tickets in cash. He cashed his paychecks. He DID NOT HAVE A CREDIT CARD. At 27. He had no financial issues - other than a lack of real credit history. He made a good wage at his job and lived in a 3 bedroom house with a couple of friends. He drove a nice enough work truck that he paid for IN CASH. He was responsible for his actions, his bills and his life. You see, this is where everything gets tricky - you take two perfectly responsible individuals and make them into a couple and everything changes. Because if you were paying attention you'll realize - hubby came into our relationship with NO DEBT. No debt and a good job. Then he met me.

Six months later my love was packed up and moving across the country - to the great state of California, with all its promise of success. To be with me. It was clear to me within the first 8 hours of our meeting that he was to be my husband. I'm not kidding - I know a lot of people say that.... but ask my mom. I called her and told her. This move is where the first ripple began. James signed himself up for a credit card (through CitiBank - I told you, I'm going to out these MFs every chance I get). In case of emergencies. He had a job already lined up before he moved - I already had a beautiful apartment and my roommate had just moved out. There was no indication that he would need to use a credit card, but he was so worried about things falling through - and being so far from home or anything he knew - and he didn't want to have to depend on me, so new in our love, if something went wrong. Oh, if we only knew then what we know today.

Coming up next: California.

Penny

Enough about us, lets talk about ME.

2010-01-16T10:54:00.000-08:00

You may have noticed by the Scrooge McDuck-type ticker at the bottom of the page that our beginning debt total was over $48,000. It's a big number, right? I almost hyperventillated when I sat down last June with all our combined bank and credit card statements to assemble my spreadsheet of doom.

It's not all hubby's fault. But I'll get to his role in this later. I should tell you, I came into our marriage with about $4500 on a credit card that I had paid down from $12k - living in that big city, I'd been grossly underpaid at first and essentially used my credit card to buy my lunches at Subway and, you know, survive. (Well ok, I won't lie - I also used it buy anything outside of the essentials, like clothing and my gym membership). I told myself I deserved these things - so it was "good debt". Because a girl needs to exercise, right? And have office clothes to wear to work. From Banana Republic.... so yes, I abused my credit cards. But I didn't see it that way. Much like someone who eats to numb the pain, I was shopping to cover up the fact that I was seriously unhappy with my career and wasn't being paid what I deserved, nor needed to live in that city. However, I had "promised" them I would work there for two full years at a minimum. So I bought stuff. Nothing major, but I bought things I couldn't afford on my meager salary.

Once I came to terms with my financially reckless behavior, I really turned the page. I made myself a budget, lived on nothing for 2 weeks in order to pay off my Macy's card immediately, and then cut it up. The shot in the arm of paying a card off really motivated me to do something about my debt. I couldn't believe it was up to 12k in a matter of 18 months. It was time, at last, to get my finances under control. So I quit my job. That's right - I quit that job I promised to stay at and took another one, working 22 hours LESS per week, and making 7k more per year. I felt rich, but let me tell you - I wasn't. I paid my bills first thing on pay day, gave myself a cash allowance for the pay period, and put the rest towards my credit cards. Sometimes $400 payments from one paycheck. This is how I got that debt down from 12k to $4500 in the 18 months between when I met my husband and he became my husband. This and the bank of dad....

James became my husband 8 months after we relocated to my hometown. Unlike a lot of couples, we did not share money or join our finances at all before marriage, and we didn't even do it right after marriage. You see, I had been burned before. By an ex-boyfriend who didn't work, spent all the money, and left me with a bunch of debt and an expensive car he'd put in my name and didn't feel like paying for anymore. To say I was gunshy about the money thing would be an understatement. Poor James - he paid for things all the time, didn't even worry about it. He wasn't a rich guy, either - but he was doing great for himself and things were good. Well, the second I had to pay for something for him, all of a sudden I was freaked out that he was going to "take advantage of me". I kept a running tally in my head of all the things I'd paid for and tried to make sure it was "even". We split things down the middle. Not little things, like dinner - but big things, like vacations. Or our DVD player.

This is the woman he married. This is not who I am today.

Coming soon: The Story of James.

To begin, you must go back to the beginning.

2010-01-15T16:32:00.000-08:00

Hello blog readers. My name is Money Penny (ok, not really) - call me Penny for short. You see, what I'm going to share with you, I want to be able to share without worrying. Without concern. Honestly. And it's the only way on earth my husband would let me tell you all of our deep, dark, secrets. I'm about to share with you the journey my family is currently on. Our journey out of the hell that is personal debt. In order to share that kind of personal information with you, I'm going to have to make sure I don't actually SHARE our personal information. This is the interwebs, after all. I'd have to be crazy, right?  So I'm giving us all new identities.  But most of the rest of the information will be spot on accurate. Otherwise, what would be the point?

My husband (we'll call him.....James) and I have a 2 month old little boy. Our little boy (I can't think of a clever name for him yet) is the inspiration for our attempts at transformation. I want to share with you what it looks like when two people who handle finances very differently get married and start a family. Actually I want to share with you what happens after those two people enter into financial disaster and have the will, but not necessarily the means, to dig themselves out. This blog is about money, yes - but it's also about marriage. And family. And the human experience.

I want to share with you the good, the bad and the ugly. The nuts and bolts. The triumphs and successes, the failures and the hardships. I've learned a lot about credit cards, and budgets, and having that conversation with your spouse, along the way - and I'd like to share those too.

So we are going to start at the beginning. Well, not the VERY beginning - as I'd have to go into all the ins and outs of how our parents handle money, and probably their parents..... So for now, I will start with what is so, in reality. I'll probably dabble in the rest at some point.

In reality my husband and I have been married for a year and a half. We both left fairly stable jobs that paid ok in an extremely expensive west coast city in January of 2008. These would actually be considered great-paying jobs in any other city than the one in which we lived. THERE, the cost of living was so high, we were struggling. Well, let me rephrase that - we thought we were struggling.  So we packed up our beautiful apartment and moved back to my hometown - another fairly expensive, yet not quite as expensive, west coast city. In order to make this move James quit his management role position with a property developer. My hubby is a blue collar dude, through and through and had worked his way up the food chain over 10 years in the business. Along with the job, he ditched its 60k a year salary. I quit my Marketing job and walked away from a 52k a year salary. We made the trek up north.  Short $112 grand. We did not have jobs lined up but we were optimistic and confident.

The first thing I did was take a 25k a year pay cut - but I'll get to that. Dear husband remained unemployed. For close to 3 months. This was not how we saw this going. In all honesty we imagined ourselves picking up jobs that paid close to what we'd been making in the land of sunshine and sourdough. We figured latte-land would be a little less expensive and buy us a little more for our money. We were going to rent another beautiful apartment that would cost us far less than the $1500 we were paying per month to live in the "Big City".  We would get married, save for a down payment on a house, have a family and live happily. ever. after.

As you might guess, this is not what happened. First of all James was having a hard time finding work. Any work. Plus, we quickly discovered that the wages for a construction worker in the rainy place I called home were a LOT lower than even the midwestern city in which he originated, let alone the ridiculously affluent city we'd just left.  Along with the no-work he quickly got an earful from some crazy homeowner threatening his livelihood over a bid the guy thought was too high. Wow. Toto, we are NOT in Kansas anymore.  Then we started looking at apartments in our price range. We hoped to save a good chunk of money and looked in the $1000 range. We found....dumps. Crappy, rundown apartments rented by people who hoped to make some cash and put nothing into the spaces the let out. We felt woefully unprepared. Duped, even. This was not the same city I had moved away from 3 years before.

Throughout our desparate apartment search and James' bleak job hunt we had been living with my dad and his girlfriend in their 2-bedroom townhouse. We were 29 (me) and 28 (hubs). Living with the family, and all of their...stuff. I think they are Hoarders, I'm not even joking. The "guest" bedroom literally encouraged a side-ways turn of the body to maneuver and the closet and dresser remained full of said girlfriend's clothing. We pulled stuff out of single suitcases. For a month. At the end of the month we decided we'd had enough space-sharing and finally put a deposit down on an apartment in our price range. $895 a mont plus $50 (FIFTY!) dollars a month for the cat. No joke, they charge us "cat rent". So, $945 a month. For a 1-bedroom apartment with a bad floor plan, fake hardwoods and hollow Home Depot doors from 1973. The first night in our new place I sat on the floor and cried. James and I stared at each other in shock. What had we done? Why had we given up our beautiful apartment and our good jobs..... for this? Not much has changed - but I'll get to that later.

In that first week in our new place, I went back to waitressing - the job I'd put myself through college on. The pay cut. I know, it sounds so stupid. Because trust me, I don't like waitressing, either. But I could do it in my sleep, with my eyes closed, with my hands tied behind my back.  I wanted to check out. I was done failing and being bored and miserable and so I.....got off the train. I had spent the last 5 years building up to the position I was in "Marketing Coordinator and Office Manager". Yaaawwwwn. It even SOUNDS like a made-up job. I felt like a failure w/ no future. And also, no...TIME. So I figured....at least I can have some time back. I worked 24 hours a week.

Mid-march the hubs was so desparate, he finally took a job with ~~bar-fly~~ General Contractor I met at the restaurant I was working at. He told a tall tale of "months of work" and no one to do it - it paid $5 an hour less than his last job and was hit or miss on making 40 hours a week. We were poor. Already. We just didn't know it yet.

So that is where our tale begins. In the naivete of two people hoping to readjust their lifestyle and the perfect storm of events that set us up for disaster.

To be continued....