My Debt Blog

I didn’t have much to post last week after the crazy $300 weekend that spawned a ton of comments from my readers. This weekend wasn’t that bad except for Saturday. Our cat decided to jump on a table and chew on my wife’s iPod. Now my wife is extremely picky about wear and tear and needs everything new looking all the time, so this was not good. I got her this thing for Christmas like 2 years ago and now it is no good because the cat chewed a button on it?

We went down to the mall (HATE HATE MALLS!) to the Apple store to their GeniousBar (yeah, and they use Macs, right) to see what could be done. They told us it could be replaced for $99 but he suggested the little wear and tear to this unit, it might be better to eBay it and buy a new one. She likes hers because it’s original and looks to me for the answer regarding spending $99 to replace this thing. I was annoyed that the decision has to end up in my hands, but I told her that we really don’t have the money right now to do this and there is nothing functionally wrong with the device. Needless to say, she didn’t like my answer.

After she calmed down about not replacing the iPod, the tables turned to cell phones. Our current cell phone contract is up and we’re going to switch providers, and get new phones of course. She thinks it would be a good idea to get an iPhone so she can get a new phone and an iPod in one device. I didn’t even have to say anything to let her know my answer. The iPhone is a toy! It is a very expensive, media hyped, expensive, fancy looking, expensive, toy! Then she just told me she would get it with her credit card. I feel like things are spinning out of control. As I am working so hard to avoid credit, spending, etc. the efforts are being counterbalanced by my wife.

Not sure what to do here anymore. I feel like we’re going in our own directions here and not working together. The pressure of having to borrow money to sell our house bothers the crap out of me. Sure it makes sense to trade a larger loan for a smaller one, but I think this is the wrong time to do this. I would like her to get finished with student teaching, currently a few miles from where we live, so that we could move next year once she’s done. The market sucks, moving sucks, and borrowing money to move sucks.

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I feel financially defeated this month already and the month has barely started. My wife’s friend had a birthday party this past Saturday and invited us downtown to celebrate with her. Since according to my wife that we never do anything fun, we had to go do this. I got my paycheck two days early so there was some money available now.

The weekend started with Friday going to the mall (I HATE MALLS!) and eating out at Subway ($13). Then we had to go shopping because I guess I needed a shirt. I got two shirts at the GAP ($62) I hope she won’t mind me wearing for at least two years. At least we went home after that.

Saturday brought the bulk of the expense. I got a haircut at a place down the street ($16) and my wife got her nails done ($40) at a salon she frequents, to her credit this is semi budgeted. Had to fill up the car with gas ($32) and got cash out of the ATM ($100) to bring with us. Drove to downtown Chicago, north side and searched for public parking for 45 minutes so we could stay with a friend (FREE!). Got some drinks ($15 from $100 cash leaving $85) and ate pizza (my friend covered it) and got ready to go out. We decided to take a cab to the lounge ($10 from cash, $75 left). This is where the fun part came in. For $35 a person, cover, drinks, included, to get into the place ($70 gone from cash, $5 bucks left). My wife and I made sure to get our money’s worth out of that though and after about 10 drinks I was good, my wife could still hold her own at 6. By now it’s roughly 2:30 in the morning downtown and we leave the bar and go to her friend’s new apartment. We decided to get some greasy food to go with our booze and I ended up using some random ATM and paid the fee ($20 cash plus $3 fee, whatever the food cost). We had to take a cab back to our friend’s apartment at 4 in the morning (used the last of cash).

Sunday my wife and I were probably slightly hung over from exercising a barely used drinking muscle but were able to function, just not very efficiently. We rolled out of my friends place around 1 in the afternoon and at lunch ($15) and then headed home. I didn’t do much of anything yesterday so I will have to do more today to make up for the loss of a weekend.

We still have bills to pay and need to keep on top of other things and now I feel down $300 starting out. I have a feeling we’re going to be eating at home all month and really watching the money situation for this month now. It is difficult for some reason for me to convey to my wife bills and expenses should be considered before other stuff, but that isn’t always the case. She still wants to move downtown but there is no way we could do this kind of thing every weekend. This month our cell phone plan is also up so that means we will be getting new phones as soon as possible. I just wish I knew how we were going to pay for them without causing a fight, but more on that later.

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It has been yet another rough month with some unexpected expenses. All the bills at least got paid, including the dreaded car insurance bill. Some extra money had to come in from the EF and other sources (my birthday) to cover things this month. Part of the problem is things became due early in the month when the money is not available. I also hate playing the catch up game from the previous month. There was way too much month for the money to go around.

I also need to come clean on something. My wife and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary and we started out the month in the red. I ended up using my credit card to buy her gift and go to a fancy restaurant. The damage is about $400 and this month’s payment pretty much covers the finance charges but does not do much to the principle balance. She also used her credit card to buy my gift, something I needed, and another smaller one, something I did not. I at least convinced her that the other thing was not necessary, so it could be returned. Resorting to a credit card when we didn’t have the money is not something I’m proud of anymore. I feel guilty and embarrassed, but did not want to ruin our first anniversary because the money wasn’t available for that moment.

Last big chunk of news is my teeth are breaking down from a lack of responsibility in my early years. I never had much of a problem taking care of my teeth as a kid, but when I got braces it became complicated to try to keep everything clean. A lot of the problems could have been addressed if they were caught early. I also was not the best at going to the dentist during my college years to even have the opportunity. At my dentist appointment this past weekend, I need to have about 3-4 molars crowned at about 1k each out of pocket because I have maxed my insurance for the current year. There is not much of a time frame for how long my chompers will last before they start break down. So far I have had prep work done on 2 of them just to hold me over for now. The good news to all of this (yeah what good news) is I have no problems with the nerves or roots and won’t need any root canals done. The dentist offered me a payment plan system where I could borrow what would be needed to cover the cost, and then make monthly payments over a predefined term. I really don’t want to borrow money, but at the same time I don’t want to lose my teeth trying to avoid debt.

I’m not sure if this is the best time to be selling the house. There is no money on hand to do it right now, which my wife hates to hear. She has been drooling over apartments lately, some of which the rent is higher than our current mortgage payment. That is not a direction I will even let her pretend to justify to me. We’re going to lose money on the house in closing costs because the house is not going to sell for much more than we bought it. The market is soft and slow, there are 26 other houses in our area on the market, and only 1 has a contract. The realtor says we should jump in quickly and get on the market if we want to have a chance to sell. I’m not completely on board 100% about selling anymore which pisses off my wife to no end. We are not in a very good position right now to sell and at the same time get an apartment. She currently has a summer job, but I’m not sure what job she will do later this year if she delays student teaching. I would like her to finish her master’s degree and be officially done with school so she can focus next year on getting a job as an actual teacher. Part of me feels she is not happy about everything is that she has been in college for the past 6 years and is having trouble finding the end. I’m not sure what I’m going to do anymore. It feels like my foundation is coming apart beneath me.

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I knew this would happen when my wife told me she took cash out of another bank’s ATM. Not only did she get that $1.50 charge for doing the transaction at their bank, our bank charged us $2 for using another bank’s ATM. So the total for this cash transaction is $3.50. I really hate bank fees and go out of my way to avoid them. Convenience or just being lazy seems to be the only reason she accepted these fees in order to get money out.

I’m not sure whether I should be mad about this or disappointed. She knows that I really don’t like paying fees or fines because that is money, for lack of a better word, wasted. At the beginning of the month I did not think $3.50 of our money will not have a purpose. Money is like sand in a way that it will slip through your hands if you let it and once it’s gone, you have to wait for more sand to fill your hands again.

This blog is turning a direction I did not intend for it to go. The blog is about paying off my debt and how I’m making progress to do it. I love my wife but we do not see eye to eye on handling money. Don’t get me wrong though, I like to spend money too, that total on the right is all me. I am now trying to do my best to get us both on track and at the same time pay off our debt. The concept of not buying something we want when we don’t have the money for it is no more because with credit, we can have, or appear to have, anything we want right now. I’m trying to destroy this idea and only use our money to own things and get out of debt. Thank you to my readers for the advice lately.

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Over the last roughly 24 hours I hit a breaking point and budgeting is driving me nuts. There are simply too many expenses that must be met early this month that cannot fit in the current realm of things. I don’t want to be hit with any bank fees for not having enough money to cover checks that are now hot. To stop the pressure and ease my stress I am removing $300 from my emergency fund. I do not want to drop the EF below 1k because it will rain again in the future.

What is making things partially difficult is trying to get my wife to be on the same page here with our financial situation. The other problem is she is still in school trying to finish up her masters and is very stressed out over getting homework and such done for classes. I want to talk about our financial situation just brings more stress and she really does not want to take part of it. To her we have this 1k just sitting out there that could make up for any shortfall so I should use that. My rebuttal is the car insurance bill is not an emergency expense and we just need to watch where money is going this month so normal household expenses are met. If we burn through the 1k emergency fund every time something starts smoking, it will be gone very quickly.

Either way though we need to get a budget figured out quickly because she is student teaching in the fall and our income will decrease slightly. I think what it will come down to is I might have to get a second job to keep things the way they are, or we have to live on less. Next month does not have any huge expenses other than the mortgage so we will use July to practice playing budget. Something has to give here and I think our lifestyle is about to be rocked here in the coming weeks.

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Every now and then I see ads about getting a loan from a local credit union. I have always used banks for my loans from the beginning. Car loans, student loans, mortgage, line of credit, you name it. What is the big deal with a credit union?

I of course did a Google on credit unions versus banks. The two are very similar in the sense that they deal with the same thing, money. Credit unions are member based and privately owned while banks anyone can use and they are federally insured. First you would have to become a member of the credit union in order to use its services based on if you’re eligible for membership. Banks don’t care who you are and it is usually easy to open up an account. They both offer similar types of accounts, checking, debit card, even online access for most. With the two being so similar, what is the advantage?

The big difference I found is that a credit union is non profit while banks charge fees and make money for the shareholders. What does a credit union do with money it makes? Members see the benefits in interest and better loan rates. I suppose if I needed a loan of sorts I might consider joining one of these credit unions to see if I could get a better deal.

Question to readers: What do you use, a credit union or bank and why?

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