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Crisis Imminent
Sallie Mae expects me to pay. The first payment is due January 1, for $277.97. As if. I have no idea how I’m going to pay that much every month, other than by somehow magically knocking out some other debts by then. With this new job, I expect to bring in about $1400/month. Sure, that much per month, month after month, is certainly much more than I’ve ever made in my life. However, I also need to find a place to live by the end of the year that I can afford. On top of that, my truck seems to be starting to crap out on me, and I don’t know what to do about that, either. It’s certainly not worth putting much of any more money into fixing it than I already have in the past year, but at the same time, I sure as heck can’t afford to get something else either.
This is all just shaping up into a real bad situation. And yes, I know there are things you can do through Sallie Mae to lower your payments, or delay them even further and whatnot, but I know that taking advantage of any of those would only cost me much more in the long run. Another option would be to start taking classes again, but taking on more debt is a poor way to try to avoid debt, especially when I’m pretty darn sure my performance would be just about the same (ergo, massive waste of money). There are, however, quite a few steps I can take right now to possibly greatly improve my situation by the end of the year.
Amazingly enough, despite having this blog, I never did come up with a budget. This is something I need to do right away. I also want to be able to include an emergency fund in there. I’ll be creating another ING savings account for that, just like I did for the gun fund (which I don’t believe I mentioned – oh hey, by the way, I moved the gun fund to its own ING savings account). If I can come up with a budget, and follow it, I should be able to get a clearer picture of where my finances are at.
Speaking of which, I don’t even know how much money I have right now. I really don’t. I could say it’s all the debit card’s fault, but then I wouldn’t be taking responsibility for my actions. Those actions include overuse of the debit card, and no balancing done whatsoever. For example, two checks I wrote finally went through, and cut my balance in half. It’s a good thing they did go through now, though – for a bit there I thought I actually had some money.
I also need to work on an emergency fund. Perfect example of why is the truck. I don’t even want to spend the money to get the parking brake cable fixed, I’d rather carry around a cinder block to chock a wheel with. It’ll take quite a long time to build that up, though – I’d rather pay extra on my debt. But, with enough willpower and enough planning, I should be able to get it done. In fact, idea – half of excess goes to debt, half goes to emergency fund. Damn I’m a genius. Subject to change. Or, maybe I should stop buying CDs, and use that money instead as the emergency fund money. Hmm. I also finally got a small bin with some hanging folders to go along with it so I can get things organized and not lose them soon after receiving them.
Remember what I went and did to my truck? I’ve been getting a ton of reactions and questions to it already. I just wish I had literature to pass out to go along with it. Just yesterday I hopped down to Xtreme Electronics (window shopping). I was in for about 5 minutes, and when I came out, there were two women from the store next door (patrons?) talking amongst each other about my truck. Of course, when I approached and they asked, I tried my best to quickly educate them, while also going along and being on my way as I had very little interest in staying. Literature would be so much easier.
Here are my current obligations:
LFCU Loan: 5,306.63
Kristen: 750
Capital One: 2,220.48
GE/Paypal Buyer Credit: 395.15
Sallie Mae: 28,308.66
I’ve just wiped my ClearCheckBook account so I can start from scratch. I’ll use their handy budgeting features as well, of course. Just as soon as I figure out a budget. Also… budget won’t count for this month. Not only is it soon over, but I don’t know when my first pay from this job will be, nonetheless my first full pay.
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Debit cards are so easy to use, aren’t they? Sometimes I think going to straight cash would reduce my spending a lot. Good look on making progress.
Yup. Sticking with cash also helps when you’re a Georger, too.
We’ve gone to straight cash and it has been awesome. Starting to do something is better than doing nothing at all, you know how much debt you have which is a lot more than many people can say.
Good luck on your journey.
Life is tough. But everything happens for a reason. You seem to be on the right track in thinking about your future. I agree with you that a budget is key. In fact, I’ve just committed to completing a draft of my budget by the end of the weekend. I plan to post it on my blog on Monday.
Why don’t you make the commitment too? It may help things look a little brighter.
And one more thing…things always seem to have a way of working out.
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