Gas

I've been spending a lot on gas this school year, and I'm thankful that summertime will decrease my daily 50 mile commute.  That's about $8 a day in gas.  Now, I know I'll be doing some driving this summer, but the total I'll spend in gas will have to go down. I hope.

Gas is one of those necessary evils that just gets me hot under the collar.  I'll leave for work in the morning and pass my local station, where gas will be 3.44 a gallon.  On my way home, it will jump to 3.69.  Seriously, how can it change that much in a day?  Of course, when it starts to dip, it's a few cents here or there, but I never see the dips like I do the jumps.

I spend about $250 a month on gas......it's hard to spend so much money on something that literally disappears.

Every Little Bit....

My total debt balance hasn't done much dipping lately, but I'm thinking that within the next month, I should see some nice decreases.

A couple posts ago, I said I wanted just one little thing to fall into place......happily, it just has.

My teaching contract has finally been agreed upon (now that school is nearly over....), and should be settled by the end of the school year.  Result?  I'll be netting about $1000 in back pay, hopefully soon.  Much of that will go to debt, though I plan to get some into the savings account too. My salary next year will be about $3000 more than what it is currently, and I plan to start putting money into my 403b again. I've been on hiatus for about two and a half years on that, and I need to get back into it. I still won't be making the salary I left at my old job, but I'll be there by the 2013-14 school year, and I can accept that. Happiness was worth it.

My honey should be getting an April bonus at the end of this month, and hopefully it'll be more than a couple hundred dollars, because April was a good month for them (and because we owe the dentist four hundred bucks).  Of course, the employees seem to think they're having a good month a lot of the time, and then when the final numbers shake down, it's not always the same.  I really dislike the company he works for. As soon as they make a good bonus, they move the target and seem to make it impossible to repeat it.  He works so damn hard for the salary he makes, and this year is shaping up to pay him much less than last year did. What do you do?

So, I'm sitting in a bit of a holding pattern, but summer is on the horizon.  Summer is more expensive in lots of ways, but the fact that I won't be tossing hundreds into my gas tank with my commuting should make that sort of balance out.  I have summer employment for 16 days, and those sixteen days will fully fund my family's 10-day vacation in August. I'll be happy to pay for vacation without using credit....as long as gas doesn't go up to $5 a gallon.  I paid $3.49 this week and somehow thought I was getting a great deal.  Funny how I've been conditioned to think that......

Perspective

Today is payday.  My check will cover my bills, and leave me just enough to get to the next payday.  I won't make much of a dent in my debt, and that stinks.

But today, that doesn't matter.

I just learned that one of my former students passed away about three hours ago, after a long and terrible battle with cancer.  He's in ninth grade.  His family (as one would expect) is devastated, and he's leaving behind hundreds of people who care deeply for him and are so sad that the battle ended like this for him.

Yeah, I'm in a mess of debt.  But today, I don't even care.

Debtwave

Before I begin writing, please know that this is not a shameless plug for any service.  It's just me thinking about how thankful I am for a service I started using nearly two years ago. They didn't ask me to write about them, but they deserve my thanks.

When things were getting to the point where I knew I wouldn't even be able to sustain making minimum monthly payments on a REALLY bad credit card, I started looking into debt settlement.  In that process I learned about a number of things, most importantly the difference between debt settlement and debt management.  Being a person who's a little OCD about her credit, I knew that debt settlement would continue to haunt me for many, many years.  Debt management had the possibility of getting me out of debt faster, while still making me accountable for the debt I had chosen to incur, which I knew in my heart I had to pay back.

I found a company called Debtwave that specialized in debt management.  After I researched them pretty thoroughly, I called them up to see about starting the process.  I spent a lot of time on the phone with a couple guys named Frank and Mike.  They were nice, understanding, and patient, as I asked a million questions about the process.  When all was said and done, they helped me develop a plan to pay off my Chase card (which had a 15,000 balance, most of which was cash advances at over 20% interest).  My monthly payment of $340 is made to Debtwave on the 3rd of each month, and by the 15th, they transfer my payment to Chase, less a $49 fee.  Obviously, the fee hurts, but not nearly as much as 20+% interest would have hurt me.  They negotiated with Chase to reduce my interest rate on all $15,000 to 6%. They send me monthly statements, and I check my Chase balance monthly as well, to make sure everything is still moving along.  If I've ever had a question or concern, it has been addressed right away and the people on the phone are great.

The other thing that's nice about the "program" is that it's so good, I'd have to be a complete idiot to go off it.  If I take over the repayment again myself, the interest rates shoot right back up to where they used to be.  This kind of sounded mean at first, but it keeps me focused on finishing the repayment this way because it could cost thousands more if I abandon it.  Yes, I realize Debtwave will make about $2500 off me by the time this whole thing is done, but that's a drop in the bucket of what it could have been.

My card was "closed" and it's listed on my credit report as "closed by consumer" so it didn't hurt my credit.  In fact, my credit was probably helped a little by what I did with Debtwave, because part of signing on involves an online course in debt management and budgeting.  I sent my certificate of completion of that course to the three credit bureaus and it's on my credit report as a special statement.

Today, my balance with Chase is $8,850.  By the end of summer, I will have reduced that $15,000 debt by over 50%.

If I had not found Debtwave, I wouldn't have even been able to afford minimum payments, because they were $500+, and I would have made little to no dent in the total debt for many, many, many years. I would have likely defaulted on something, or resorted to debt settlement, which I would probably regret terribly. I also would have felt like a terrible failure, instead of feeling a bit successful, as I am starting to.

I will be out from under the Chase card in 25 more months.....and I'm so glad I made that call.

Half-Full, or Empty?

So, my honey is sitting on a couple dental bills right now. We owe $136 for a periodontal appt. back in March, because his joke insurance only covers the checkups he needs twice yearly, and because he has "issues" {which are genetic and nothing to do with how he treats his teeth; he is, in fact, very orally conscientious} and needs periodontal checkups every three months.

Yesterday's bill was $285, from the day they drained his abscess. Insurance covered a whopping $20.09 of that bill, and none of the meds he needed. He still needs an extraction and the cosmetic-reattach-the-tooth thing. We called insurance and 70% of the extraction will be covered, but we're on our own for the rest.

When we were talking about this, he informed me of all sorts of other things the dentist wants to "fix", like doing a gum scaling (we did this on half his mouth last year and it was a $2800 procedure {with a $1000 max, you can do the math}; now they're pushing the other half) and filling in some fillings that are old. He told me he isn't planning to do either of those things yet, because he knows we can't handle that......but someday, I'm sure we'll need to.

Then I started to cry, because I just didn't know what else to do.

One day I feel like we're moving forward, and then these things (things like teeth, and car accidents, and buying a new/old car that we really didn't want to buy because ours was "totaled", and my kids' health insurance rising, and gas costs) happen, and I think about making it to the next payday, and the fact that all our pennies seem to be spent when we get our checks, and I get pissed because I know I totally made my bed here, but it's hard to get a leg up when it seems like I'm "in bed" with Murphy's Law.

So then I cry (and fret and worry and panic and blog and revisit my balances in an OCD-type fashion), and my fiance keeps telling me we're going to get through this, and his bonuses are going to start getting better this summer, and we're going to pay stuff down, and we have to keep plugging along.

I don't know how his glass can stay half-full, when mine seems to be even less than half-empty.

And I know he's right. We didn't do this in a few months, and we can't undo it in a few months either.

I just wish something could happen.....even some little, little thing....that could make me start looking at my glass a little more positively.

Or maybe I should just fill my glass with some wine.

It Could Be Worse...

My honey's mouth is no longer in pain.....thank heaven for antibiotics.

It looks like the tooth isn't saveable, which means a couple things. The tooth has to come out, and we need to make sure something goes in there so my honey doesn't look like a hillbilly.

No root canal (or crown, or whatever), which is good money-wise, and will make it so we don't have to always be on the lookout for more problems with this particular tooth.

Turns out, they can remove his tooth, get the roots out, and then put his tooth back in his mouth and adhere it to the adjacent teeth.

I think insurance will take care of the extraction, and the cosmetic piece of reinserting the tooth will be around $200 out of our pocket....of course, we still have the last two appointments to pay for too....but it could be worse.

My honey will still have a beautiful smile, and I won't have to kiss a hillbilly goodnight.

I Hate Teeth

So, future-hubby woke up yesterday morning with shooting pain in his mouth.

Long story short, he had an abscessed tooth.....same one that was abscessed last year and led us into $2000 of out-of-pocket dental work. They drained it, gave him some drugs, and instructed him to come back Friday. At that point they can start talking about the next step. He has a 50/50 chance of "saving" the tooth, and if he can save it, he will need a root canal. Either way, this is going to be one hell of an expensive toothache. He has dental insurance, but it craps out at $1000 a year, so it won't go far. I don't know much about root canals, but when I was telling someone about this at work, they mentioned he would need a crown too.....I didn't even want to entertain that notion until details are for sure.....otherwise I would likely hyperventilate.

Funny how things work out.....he might actually get a decent bonus for work at the end of this month (the first decent bonus in a very, very, very long time), but instead of sending some extra to US Bank and our "little" cards, we'll probably be paying it to the dentist.

What do I do? I tell myself these platitudes over and over....

Breathe in, breathe out.

I can't get bent out of shape over things that are out of my control.

It is what it is, and we'll get through it.

It's a marathon, not a sprint.

I wonder if I say them enough times that I'll start to actually believe them.