Vacationing from The Edge: Mood Swings

It's amazing how one can go from a high to a low in space of a day. Well maybe in the space of a weekend. Last week I wrote how I had gotten a part time job, well I still have it, she just pushed back my start date. I was suppose to start this morning, but she wasn't quite ready for me. Hopefully I can start next week. Then my dad did my taxes, I was slated to get almost $300 back from Federal and just over $200 from state. Which I was glad to get, since I had only worked technically part time the whole year. Well they rejected both state and federal and my dad had to re-file for me, the problem? There had been a tax update within the week he had did my mom's and sisters and mines. That update affected me and the tax limit bracket I guess I was in, thus I get nothing from federal and only $54 from state, that's a big difference. Although I wasn't that upset because taxes are something you should never count on having. The government is to fickle to rely on, so oh well.

So I was bit bummed about that, I was going to use half of the money to pay off some debt, but oh well. I'll just use half of that to start the high yield savings accounts. Later that day the post came, and I must admit I love getting mail, even if it's just junk mail. I like it to see my name on it, it's weird I know. I don't necessarily like to get bills, but it is mail so I'm torn on it. Well yesterday there were several things for me, I felt so special. There was a first class envelope with no returned address, some samples I had sent off for, a coupon for free kid's yogurt, and a letter from my student loans provider.

Of course I was curious over the first class mail, no one ever sends me something so important it has to come in a priority mail envelope, not even my college degree was sent in one. So I tore it open, and it was a letter from some government agency conducting a survey. The survey was about how American students pay for secondary education. In gratitude they send you a $30 check after you finish it, since it was a web survey I logged on and completed the survey in about 25 mins. So in about four weeks I should be getting a $30 check. That of course lifted my spirits.

The samples and the coupon lifted my spirits even more, another thing I love is free stuff. I'm really excited to try the kid's yogurt. Even though I'm no where near a kid, the things they put out for kids tend to be more nutritious than the things they put out for grown ups. This one has less sugar than normal yogurt and plus its free.

But the biggest boost was the letter from the student loaner, I thought it was just my monthly statement that they send. But no it was a letter say that two of my loans were being dropped because of no disbursal. For some reason when you graduate in December they still give you financial aid for the spring semester. I had to wait for my alma matter to say I was no longer enrolled before they took away the loans. So a total of $2,751 was dropped from my total debt. Bringing my total to $15,190.98 in student loans and $17,904.00 in total debt. That's not bad, compared to some other's (got to stay positive.)

Well with all that good news coming back to back how could I get into a low? Well I received an email from one of the jobs I applied to and they decided to go with some one else, oh well. Then I sent an email to my mom asking what's the hold up on that job. Apparently they too went with someone else but that person declined the offer. So I'm just going to go ahead a say I didn't get that one. My mom thinks I should send an email to the head inquiring about the job and how I would really love to work for them, but I'm like I wasn't there first choice and they aren't my first choice, I'm not going to "beg" them for the job when I don't really want it. So back to the hardcore grind of applying for non-existent jobs.

I think the good and the bad have just even me out, I'm bummed but not to bummed. I would really like to get started some where in a job, just to give myself something else to think about.

Vacationing From the Edge: Preparing to Buy the Plane Ticket Back Home

Yesterday I told you that I was able to get a part time job, which is the first part in what I am now thinking of me returning from the edge of sanity (hence this blog post title). If you recall I already have a preliminary working budget, (and also here) where I figured out that I would need $23,769.60 (after taxes), or rather about $1,980.80 (after taxes) a month. I already planned on getting a part time job, although be it I had planned on getting one after I got a full time job, but I'm looking at in a positive light. I was mighty fortunate to find this job and to have my boss understand that I am still looking for a full time job and is more than willing to accommodate this. I'm more than excited to work for such a wonderful group of ladies and want to do my best to help them expand their business. At the rate it is now, it more than compensates for the pay I was looking for in a part time job. So in the grand scheme of things, I might be going about it in a backwards fashion but it'll balance out in the end.

I'm still waiting on the teacher position and I hope to hear something this upcoming week. I'm not all that confident that I will get the position and am still actively looking. I received an email from a former work colleague who asked if I had found work and he would be keeping his eyes opened for anything. So keep the fingers crossed, I still have six days before the end of the month to find full time work in order to meet one of my monthly goals.

Despite the fact that I don't have the full time job I still wanted to come up with a plan of action to jump start my personal finances. I know me if I don't think of it before hand then I'll just go on as before. The first thing I have put down is I can't loan money out, I won't be bringing a lot in so I need to be able to control where that money goes. You might have noticed I put back up my progress bars, although they have been paired down quite a back. I have a bar for Other debt (debt not related to student loans), Student Loans, Car Fund, and Apartment Fund, I might be putting one up for Savings as well.

Other Debt

I currently have $2,713.02 in other debt not related to student loans: credit card 1 ($1,468.00), credit card 2 ($ 777.19), class ring payment ($137.83), and medical bills ($330.00). I plan to get rid of this first for a couple of reasons the main one being it's the smallest amount and I could in theory (if it doesn't grow) knock this one out with in the year.

Student Loans

I currently have $ 17,192.00 in student loans and $749.98 in interest on those loans. I still have four months left on my grace periods and I haven't consolidated it yet either. Which I will be doing most likely in the last month of my grace period. I've already started the process of looking up different options. I have all my loans through the College Foundation of my state, and they boost that they save you money on your consolidation loan, which I would think they all did but guess not.

Car Fund

I live in the south and it's not easy to live in the south without a car. I would like to manage to do without a monthly car payment but I am so particular in what I want: small to medium size and mid-90's to early 00's that I'm more than likely going to have to have a car payment. If I could keep it to under $350 a month I would be good. I've set a $2,000 limit for the down payment. I don't really want to use the whole amount on just the down payment, but on all the other things that goes with starting insurance, tags and licensure, and the payment for driver's license. I've managed to put it off for 23 years I don't think I push my luck any more. Plus I'm getting a bit tired of depending on others for rides.

Apartment Fund

This is the biggest for me, other than getting rid of the debt of course, I need my own place. More for keeping my elusive sanity. I've set a goal of $3,000 for application fees, security deposit, first and last months rents, utilities deposits, first round of food stocking, furnishings, and a house warming party. A friend of mines advised me to have at $1,000 set aside to do the first four items on the list but I like to have a little insurance so I added another $500 to it and the rest of the $1,500 is to do the food stocking, furnishings, and the party all on a low cost budget of course. I would like to find a two bedroom in a decent and safe neighborhood under $600 which I can do, the only aspect would be the commute. Honestly I would be willing to do a longer than average commute if I found my dream apartment. I know with the gas crisis that's a big pf no-no but sometimes it's about filling a want rather than a need.

The Plan

Well like I've said there isn't going to be a lot of money coming in just yet, but I would like to start paying down some debt and saving some money. So the first thing to be paid will be the other debt in a SanityGurl fashioned snowball plan. The class ring payment, then the medical bills, then credit card 2 and credit card 1. There's tons of information on handling a snowball debt plan, which was first thought of (I believe) by a guy name Dave Ramsey. A lot pf bloggers would go with the Highest interest method (I'll discuss at another time along with the snowball debt method) but my credit cards don't have high interest rates and the amount is not that great.I plan to pay off the class payment in full and then take that amount and split equally amongst the other debts on top of the minimum. So in a way I'm doing it the way he prescribes but I'm not over paying just one and not the others. Hopefully buy the end of my grace period in the end of June I will have paid off the class ring and the medical bills, and made a noticeable dent in the credit card debt. I no longer use my credit cards so I don't see it growing much outside of the interest. At the same time I'm paying out for debt I want to make equal payment into a savings account. I plan on opening an high yield one, (another topic for another day) and have three sub-accounts, Car Fund, Apartment Fund, and Savings. I think this is a good start, don't you? It helps that my mom is allowing me to stay here rent free, although I'll still give her some kind of money to help out.

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