Money Money Money... I'm not just quoting Abba, the world's greatest rock band. Sadly, it seems to be on my mind constantly lately.
The Danielle Deficit is not in good shape. Not in good shape at all. Of course, I am not the only one in this kind of shape. I know that. I can't afford to take my student loans out of forbearance right now and I am quite scared that I am not going to be able to afford the payment next year when there is no time left to defer...
Right now, I'm trying to get accustomed to living on about $350 less per month. Because it is a 27 pay period year, my usual salary went down. I am finally contributing to a flexible spending account for health care costs, but that is still money that I have to wait to get back. Then there's another $75 to park at work each month. So my take home is a lot less on a monthly basis. I wasn't managing particularly well before, just due to the sheer volume of debt.
So, in the interest of full disclosure, I still have about $90 in student loans. I am paying on my one private loan because it is the only one that wasn't consolidated. I still owe my grandfather $36k for rescuing me from financial ruin when I couldn't sell my house after the bubble broke. Then, there's the credit cards. We'll simply say that I owe my grandfather less than I owe the nice people at Discover, Chase, Citibank and Wamu.
I attempted to get a personal loan from Wells Fargo (my beloved bank) and that didn't go so well. It seems my debt/income is too high. Um, no kidding. Which is why i want to consolidate and deal with it in one big massive pile. Plus, that would allow me to get rid of a couple of the cards, which are, of course, hiking up their interest rates. My credit isn't shot, but it has seen better days.
I completely understand that I have a good income. For that, I'm extremely grateful. But what's scary is this thought: If I am in this much financial trouble - what about those who aren't as lucky when it comes to their income? I'm living paycheck to paycheck and hoping for the best. I cannot imagine the hell that so many families must be going through right now.
I am prone to fits of yuppie whining like this. I grumble that I've gotten myself into financial trouble. whine whine whine. But I'm damn lucky that I have a job that pays me enough so that I can at least make all of my payments on time.
Right now, I am hopeful that I will get money back from my insurance company soon. That should be at least $1,000, I think. That will help since just about all of my medical costs were put onto credit cards last year (and I came in around $8k for my fibro doctor). Then, hopefully, we'll get a tax refund. I've got my fingers crossed that I can get this under control this year. But it feels like I am drowning in debt. There's only so much time that you can spend staring at a spreadsheet and trying to make the math do something magical.
That's it for my yuppie whining. Hopefully I will have good news to report soon and the insurance stuff will be taken care of. Please, please let that happen soon. For everyone else out there in similar situations, I hope you have better times soon too.