Filed under: Financial Help!
I’m sad to admit that me and Husband haven’t always made the best choices when it comes to our finances. Sure, we pay our bills, but the need versus want argument with our brains are a continuous battle.
Over the years, we’ve opened credit accounts, paid them off, opened new accounts, paid them off. It’s a never ending cycle. The cycle becomes a problem when the time comes that you cannot pay off the entire account within a short period of time and it lingers on for years. This is our current situation.
We live very frugally, and when I say we have struggles for the needs vs. wants, it’s for things like furniture for our childs room, do we get this couch now, or wait till the other one breaks and then hope we can get it then, buy this when it’s on sale, or wait until later. It’s not an everyday occurence, but it happens.
Since last fall, I’ve come to realize that we NEED to really get moving on paying on our debts more aggressively than we have been. Husband agrees, and we successfully got a loan that consolidated 1/2 our debt into one payment which saved us $60/mo.
Since December, I’m now working part-time making just under $700/mo which is devoted to paying off debt and a little to myself for personal things I need. A girl has to have a Starbucks every now and then, right?
Here is my plan:
1. I printed out a report from our Money program of our credit card debt, and arranged them from lowest balance to highest balance, regardless of interest rate.
2. I’m paying off the lower balances first, and then snowballing those payments onto the next credit card.
I’ve already paid off 1 credit card, and am 1/2 way to paying off another one.
My biggest challenge is going to be making sure I roll over the credit card payment I just paid off onto the next card. I think I’m going to have to make a checklist and put it by the computer so I can know when that payment use to be due, and put it into savings. I think I’ll do it this way, and at the end of the year, I should have roughly $1K in savings to throw at a credit card, or loan to pay it off or down quite a bit.
Filed under: Living the Step Life
Some of you may not know, but I’ve just recently started posting about it, is that my Husband was married before. He was married for 7 years to HER, we call her IT, and they had 2 children; a boy and a girl. I met and married Husband 1 1/2 years after they divorced, and since that time, life hasn’t always been easy with IT in it.
Husband’s kids are now 16 and soon to be 15. 16 will be graduating in 2011, 15 in 2013. Now, child support is supposed to stop at 18, or graduation. Unfortunately, in his court papers, it states that the parents will agree or the court will decide on secondary education, college. We are now in the midst of that argument with IT.
Husband is drafting a letter to IT this week. I’ve only proofread and only added one piece of the letter on the fact that in CA residents don’t pay tuition for community colleges, only enrollment fees per unit, which equals $20 per unit!
I’m just a little upset by it all because Husband has done the right thing by making sure he always had a job to pay his child support, made sure that the jobs he had provided medical/dental coverage for the children, made sure to at least send a card on their birthday and at Christmas, and remember them for special occasions like the birth of OUR children, their brother and sister.
For someone that obviously still has so much anger for Husband, IT seems to feel that because Husband hasn’t been around, he should pay for their college.
Now, in NH there was a significant court ruling last month where a dad had promised to pay for college instead of paying alimony to his wife, and after a year of paying for college he decided he didn’t want to do that anymore, so a NH court ruled that the court papers where this agreement was reached was null, and the dad didn’t have to pay for his child’s college. See: http://www.seacoastonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090131/NEWS/90131013&emailAFriend=1
Now, when Husband’s divorce was final, he was in basic training, and then onto AIT. His attorney spoke in his absence, but wasn’t able to confer with Husband about these issues. So, the only thing that helps Husband is that the court will have to decide because he is not going to agree to anything with IT because she renigs on her promises. She promised to put the proceeds from the sale of the family home in trust for the kids college education, but Husband didn’t get that in writing so as far as she’s concerned, that promise never existed.
Although I had my first few years of college paid for by my parents, it came with great sacrafice. If I had been made to help foot the bill for a part of my education, maybe I would’ve finished. I’m not saying that I wasn’t appreciative, but because I felt my social activity was more important during my later college years, had I been made to pay for my tuition myself, I might not have flunked out. My fault, not my parents fault. They gave me evey chance to succeed. After many years of absence from school, I finally finished my degree in 2004 and am now paying back my loans. Amazing how wanting to get an A because if I didn’t, that was money I lost out on and still had to pay back.
I can see both sides of the argument; however, for children that have no regard for their father’s feelings, I fear that if he is pay for their college, they won’t appreciate the hard work and sacrafice to give them that education.
IT has had many chances over the years to be a little more supportive of Husband’s attempts to contact his children, and to have a relationship. It’s never been about the kids, and if they ever had come to visit, then her bubble would burst and she’d have no more value in their eyes. She’s right, he’s wrong and there’s no in between.
I’ll keep this updated. Right now, it’s just words, but it could be court action pretty soon. We are looking at next year for legal action because that’s when Husband will be filing his paperwork to discontinue support for 16 once she graduates in 2011.
Oh, for those of you that don’t know our story, IT makes $80K/year and lives VERY comfortably in CA in her $500K home! Not that I care, but it just goes to show that money cannot buy you happiness.
Well, I have yet to add any exercise, but we are SO busy anyway with taking Scoober to basketball and scouts, and me chasing after Winks, that I think I get a lot of exercise, just not the traditional kind.
I’m down to 172 lbs now. I’ve got 22 lbs to go before the end of the year. I’d like to lose it before summer, but I’m not going to push it.
Husband is losing some weight, too. His stress from work sometimes keeps him from losing weight because he tends to want to snack more to get those “feel good” endorphins. I pack him a lunch everyday, well, most days, and it’s nutritious, so I think that is helping.
