Drowning in financial debt.

Post Reply New Topic

I am about $30,000 in debt in currently. Half of it is credit cards, the other half is medical. I made a valiant effort to pay the cards off a few years ago, and I paid more than half of them off, but then I lost my job and was no longer able to keep up the $800 a month I was paying on them.....

Now I have a new job. And I am going to pay all of this off. I don't have any other choice.

I am going to spend most of my free time in bed until I get this paid off. I won't have the money to socialize with my friends, anyway. I am going to ask my psychiatrist to give me something to help me sleep, then I am going to live a life that consists solely of working, eating rice and beans or eating ramen, paying off my debts and sleeping.

I cancelled all of my pre-orders at GameStop. I think I won't even bother to renew XBox Live when the time comes a couple of months from now. I am going to take my website off the Internet. I most likely will disconnect my Internet. I am going to disappear off the face of the Earth.

I applaud your efforts to get out of debt! That's wonderful that you have such motivation. But you don't have to spend all your free time in bed or else you might become very depressed and unable to work. Maybe you could find free things to do-- like go to the library or walk in a nearby park? Little no-cost rituals can keep up your morale until you're able to spend money again. Try a local farmer's market for low-cost fresh fruits and veggies too!
Just a couple of years ago, my husband and I emerged from nearly 20 years of crushing debt. It's an indescribably happy feeling to pay it off. I know you can do it, but take care of yourself along the way. Good luck.
Amelia

Well, I may as well spend my time in bed, as the bill collectors clearly care more about me than anybody I socialize with. 95% of the time, when somebody calls today, it's a collector. I may very well disconnect my phone on top of everything else.

Yes you are in a tough situation, and I too think you are doing a great job trying to work yourself out of it.

But while you are reacting well in a responsible sense, it seems to me you are reacting emotionally as far as your life style goes and in a way that will not help you get thru this. Maybe the opposite. The bill collectors don't care what you do one way or another, and they won't be aware or care about anything you do in your personnal life. You won't 'show anyone' by making yourself miserable. I think you should be going in the exact opposite direction, trying to treat yourself as best you possibly can.

Try to be giving each creditor at least something, to show you are acting in good faith, and realize that is the best you can do and they cannot get water out of a stone, or blood. Your doing the best you can. Have you considered or perhaps already looked into filing for bankruptcy. It costs a bunch of money, but may relieve pressure in the long run. You have to investigate what it will do (in detail) before you can decide to do it.

Hi, okay, a lot depends where in the world you live. In the United States where I live, people who owe debts have some rights, restrictions on debt collection companies, which are sometimes followed, sometimes not, as always big gaps between theory and practice.

I really don't think a personal austerity plan is that good an idea. Among other things, your health might run down, and the feeling that you have several good things going on in your life with the job being one of them. I sometimes am too taunt and serious at a job, which affects my relationships with co-workers and customers. I am open to developing more of a relaxed B game.

Its not easy but it has to be done.

I'm about to get myself into 50k debt on top of the less than 10k debt I'm in just to do my master's degree. How I'll pay for that after grad I've no clue but there's no other option. Jobs just aren't coming.

If your getting calls from debt collectors, you may be able to negotiate a settlement. Are they willing to work with you on a settlement? Also, are any of your debts more than 7 years old?

You could always get a second job?

I handed all of my outstanding bills to my protected payee this morning. And what I heard was a great relief.

First, she will focus on taking care of the medical bills. That will take about a year.

All of the credit cards have been in collections for over four years. I had seven cards at one point, but credit cards and substance addictions do not mix. I paid half of that debt off over the course of three years, but then the job I had at that time came to an end thanks to an economic layoff, and I have not made a single payment on my credit cards since. A woman from a local autism advocacy group talked to my payee earlier today regarding that with me on the phone line when that happened. Between the three of us, we agreed that we were going to take care of the outstanding medical bills that were not sent to collections yet, and get those out of the way first. Then we were going to start a fund on the side where we would save up enough money to make a decent settlement offer on the credit card debts.

All of this will take about 2 or 2 1/2 years.

I won't have to give up my website or my Internet access. I'll still be able to go to the cinema and eat out with my friends - just not nearly as often as I have been doing it. Eating out will be two or three times a month instead of two or three times a week like it had been. I can live with that.

I have lived beyond my means for way too long. I don't need to buy new games or new consoles. I already own over 100 games I have not finished yet. I do not need to buy any new DVDs - I own over 1,000 now, and there is about 100 of them still in the cellophane wrapping. As far as getting a bigger television..... They'll still be around two and a half years from now. I'll stick with my 22" LCD screen for the time being.

I have IPA tastes on a PBR budget. Go figure.

I guess I can relate to a lot of what you're going through. From the age of 30 (my serious suicide attempt) to 50, I'd say those were 20 wasted years.

I amassed bills, had a drug addiction, played in bands that went nowhere, attempted to have relationships that went nowhere, was homeless and jobless, etc.

I'm not saying I like my current job, but it is better having a job than being jobless.

Now that I have a book out, and a company in the U.K. is interested in my music, things are starting to look up.

Those bills are still there, and I can't get those 20 wasted years back, but I am trying to be hopeful. I feel like that's all I have left.

This may have been suggested to you before but.. what you have there are assets you can sell.

E-bay could be a good place for you to sell all those DVDs, games and game consoles and any other 'junk' you have. People buy junk believe it or not.

I'm rather spartan so I own very little besides my computer and my clothes...the only thing I ever bought out of impulse, nearly a decade ago, was a large sized telescope with full lens and CCD camera kits. I sold it last year to pay for my archaeology field school... it was something that I realized 'I use this thing once a year at best' type of thing... but it paid for my most critical immediate need and it was well worth it.

Most DVDs cost 20 bucks or more.. if you Ebay them for slightly less (to sell them) you could make a good amount if you really own that many.

Games you can either try and sell online or take them to a local gamestop for in-store credit.... then use that credit to buy something you can sell online... like a PS3 or something.

E-bay is a great place to get rid of junk. I had three old joysticks that no longer worked.. put them for sale with clear warning they were broken. People bought them because they are a source of spare parts for those old, trusty, discontinued joysticks.

Hi glad you've got a plan for paying off debt. I go through periods of depression where I just buy stuff on my credit card and then end up in debt. I'm really trying to stick to a budget at the moment too. It is difficult. I noticed your comment about living off rice and beans. I've just discovered this great blog with cheap food ideas. It's brilliant. Food I can actually afford, but lots of ways to mix it up.

Below the Line Budget Recipes

Wow. $800/month is practically my whole monthly income.

I sold all of the DVDs I was willing to get rid of a couple of years ago, actually. Most of the DVDs that I have left no longer have the cases - I put them in those massive 248 CD binders and threw the original packaging away. I doubt I would get much money for that at this point, especially since most DVDs have minimal resale value these days to begin with. If I had 1,000 Blu-Rays with the original packaging, that would be a different story.

I used to own twice as many games, as well. Selling half of them off helped me keep my apartment and my independent living situation going during my two year period without employment. I probably should not sell what I have left though. That's a guaranteed source of countless hours of entertainment for the next three years. As long as I don't keep adding to it, it will be good.

Like I said above, I have a new budget plan. I intend to stick with it, and I really don't have to give that much up. I just have to learn to enjoy what I already have and live within my means.

I'm glad you have a local autism group, and actually I wish we had one here in Houston.

And one thing I gathered from an older book by Herb Cohen entitled You Can Negotiate Anything, is that often it's precisely good negotiation to have someone else negotiate on your behalf. So, that sounds like a pretty solid plan to eventually have your payee negotiate with the credit card companies.

Apparently, I will have a food budget of $40 a week for the time being. That will take me very far in both Trader Joe's and at the local outlet grocery stores. I can make this work.

As far as movies go, there is always the local second-run theater (which is $2 a ticket). And I still have Netflix in my budget plan. I don't need to buy anything more considering that I have both of those things handy.

I plan on paying off my library card fines and using that again, as well. Manga has also been a major financial spending weakness for me - I'm not sure about whether or not I should be proud to own over 50 volumes of the translated Bleach manga, but there you go. I may as well check out the library's selection.

What I do with food, is budget for food in 10 day increments. If you think about it, there are slightly more than 4 weeks in a month. 7 days x 4 weeks = 28 days, while there are 30/31 days in a month. BUT, 10 days x 3 = 30. So it works out. I budget for $80 every 10 days, but I eat lots of meat and very little carbs (look up paleo diet) so I will spend more than somebody who relies on ramen. If you have a grocery store called Aldi's in your area, Aldi's is the same stuff as Trader Joes except in off-brand packages. It's a LOT cheaper. In my city we have Trader Joes but not Aldi's. I'm hoping that Aldi will buy out Fresh & Easy (Tesco) and turn them into Aldi stores. Also, if you can get to a Wal Mart Supercenter that carries groceries you can save lots of money. Wal Marts can be hard to get to via bus though. You need to buy a ledger book from Staples and make note of ALL your spending. You can identify where you are wasting money and stop.