Vacationing From the Edge: Introductions part 4- Me

Note: This was once part of one giant post but I have decided to break it up into smaller parts, so that the post isn't that long to read!

The last edition for this posting series Vacationing From the Edge: Introductions. I've talked about my Graduation Blues, Money Trouble, and My Family. It's the fourth part, and there's only one last thing to talk about...Me. Again another *sigh*.

4) Me

And then there is me. I just kind of gave up after the summer; I was tired, abused, and disillusioned. I quit a job that I had been at since my freshman year and got two new jobs that were mindless. I didn’t save anything and went overdrawn almost every month. I’m back in my parent’s house something that I didn’t want. I have no job prospective and no income to speak of. Needless to say, I am beyond depressed and can only hope to get better.

All this as cause me to become a resident of a village located at the edge of sanity. I hope my stay here is brief. I invite you to journey with me as I stumble my way back to solid grounds in sanity. I know that it will be rough and not pretty, but that’s what makes good living right?

Vacationing From the Edge: Introductions part 3 - Family

Note: This was once part of one giant post but I have decided to break it up into smaller parts, so that the post isn't that long to read!

Last time I talked about my Money Troubles, and before that I talked about my Post Graduation Blues, this I talk about another major stress for me...My Family...*sigh*

3) My Family

Another big source of woes is my family. Okay so my father has been jobless since May of 2003, that’s really, where things got bad for us. He had a well paying job and quit it because God told him to. I don’t know what God told him but I do know that we have suffered mightily for it. And every year since then it has been the same, "our time is coming" speech, but meanwhile he gets pissy at my mom over everything and does nothing all day. At first he was trying to get a job within a church, he’s a Preacher. But no church has called him to be their pastor, but almost every weekend my mom has to shell out money so he can go and preach all over the state. My younger brother is disrespectful and thinks he should get all that he wants because he does. My older sister is a moocher and can’t understand why she can’t make ends meet. My sister didn’t go to college but has a well paying job at a bank. With a budget and some frugal living ways, my sister could be financial stable. But she won’t listen to me; her answer to making a budget is she is too poor to have a budget. My mom has a weird way of thinking when it comes to living frugal and really is wasting money severely. She too refuses to make a budget, saying that her one paycheck isn’t enough for the three of them, now the four of us. Again, a proper budget, frugal living ways and a new mind set, could make it work. But my pleas fall on deaf ears, and now I must pay for their mistakes.

Vacationing From the Edge: Introductions part 4 - Me

Vacationing From the Edge: Introductions part 2 - Money Troubles

Note: This was once part of one giant post but I have decided to break it up into smaller parts, so that the post isn't that long to read.

Last time I wrote about by Post Graduation Blues. This post is really the introduction for the reason behind this blog. Money Troubles. I have money troubles, there I said it. I know it's not something special. many people have money problems, if you are reading this then you probably have money problems. Join the club.

2) Money Troubles

This is really the source for all my woes, just like most humans, I have money troubles. You see I am not that bad of a spender. I mean I have my times were I can unnecessarily impulse buying. But I understand the idea of restraint. I have had a total of 4.51/2 (two jobs were held at the same time but for one semester) in my life. Last year about this time, I had high hopes of building a savings fund and meeting a lot of personal goals. I had a nice solid budget and I never overdrawn my bank account. So what happened? My family happened. My inability to say no to them happened. And poor planning on my part happened. So now, I have $29 dollars in cash and $22 and some change in the bank. I have close to twenty thousand dollars in student loans, no job and my credit score is poor. In my life, I have had two credit cards. I got them my first year in college, they were like heaven sent when my mom drove up to the campus to drop them off. At the time, I was in a very expensive major, Interior Architecture. They expected us to pay for a lot of things without having a job, (one professor actually suggest I quit my job when I told him I was having a hard time keeping up with all the insignificant projects). I couldn’t depend on my parents for financial support they were barely making ends-meet. Citibank had given me two $800 dollar credit cards. I allowed my mom to keep one and I kept the other. Within the first couple of months, most of the $800 dollars were spent, some on school items and others on frivolous things. I started making the minimum payments on my card through the internet and never missed a payment. However, my mother was not as diligent as I was, and had not told me that she had maxed-it out and had not paid a dime to the balance. The company had not informed me of this but had been calling home, and my mom is in the group that ignores phone calls from bill collectors.

That summer I went to visit family upstate and ask my sister if she could continue to make the payments for the two months I would be away, $20 a month wasn’t much. Well somehow, she forgot even though I reminded her on several occasion. So I entered my sophomore year with bad credit. I asked my mom what I should I do she said not to worry about it. It was then that I realized I didn’t know much about credit and money, a friend of mine and went through something similar where she was behind on her payments, she told me she made a call to the company and they were willing to let her make smaller payments until she could catch back up. If I had only knew that then. Well within that year I let my family talk me into getting a cell phone, well when I found out they were unjustly charging me for items I never agreed to put on my account, I refused to pay them thus another hit to my credit score. After that I got smart and no longer took my finances for granted, I started saving and budgeting. I got out of the expensive major and was very positive about my future. So what happened? Yet again my family, my sister moved into her own apartment, but she posed to me that it would be our apartment, my mom’s car got reposed so she used my name to get a new one. Well my sister used me for a second paycheck (causing me to go overdrawn every single month) and kicked me out, my mismanages her money and now she’s two payments late. I get phone calls from them almost every day.

Vactioning From the Edge: Introductions part 3 - My Family

Vacationing From the Edge: Introductions part 1

Note: This was once part of one giant post but I have decided to break it up into smaller parts, so that the post isn't that long to read!

So it has begun, today is the last day of 2007 and I have nothing to show for it, no wait, I take that back I recently just accomplished something that not many people can say. I graduated from college I have a Bachelors degree. Unfortunately, this joyous occasion is tarred, for I am literally tottering on the edge of sanity. Why is this you might ask? Well it's really a mixture of things, I'll go through them one by one, mainly to help you understand where I am and for me to get it off my chest.

I'll start with:

1) Post Graduation Blues

So I graduate less than two weeks ago and I want to go back to school already. Well in a way, I want to go back. Really, it's just that I want something to do with my life. School gave my life a purpose. You see I'm not that very socialable, in fact I'm pretty much anti-social to a degree. I can make friends easily but I don't keep because I don't stay in touch. Before I would shrug this off and go and make a new friend, but as I grow older I realize I grow tired of the getting to know someone ever year or so. College was the first time I really stayed in touch with various people; through class and work, I had amassed a good collection of friends. Of course, through the years I lost some and made new ones, part of life. But the ones I had when I graduate I hope to keep in my life for a long time. Now that I am out of that atmosphere, I fear that I will sink back into my anti-social ways. Another factor that is creating these blues is that I no longer have a source to feed my need to learn, I love to learn. I love to go to class and take notes; it's just something that makes me happy. Another thing that makes me happy is buying school/office supplies. I can spend countless hours pouring over a Office Depot catalog looking at the different types of pens and such that they have. It's a weird vice, I know. But it's what I like. Now that I'm out of college, I have no reason to stock up on such items. But that change the fact that I want to. I don't have the money to stock up so I haven't, I have bought a few items...a new expanding file folder and some legal pads.

Vacationing From the Edge: Introductions part 2 - Money Troubles


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