Taking responsibilty for my own finances

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I have been using a protected payee service for the last few years. It really saved my life when I first signed up for it. I was a practicing addict and consistent binge drinker when I decided to have responsibility for my financial life handed over to this agency. Since then, no checks have bounced, I had no more overdraft fees, and all of my bills have been paid on time.

However, I have maintained sobriety for two and a half years now. And I have grown frustrated with the situation at my payee's office, where three different women handle my finances, none of them talk with each other, and none of them want to take any responsibility or make any decisions. There have been times when I had to wait a couple of weeks for a bit of my own money because everybody assumes somebody else holds the keys and makes the choices regarding my money.

I am going to start by handling only the money I earn from my part-time job. This will be an extended trial run. All of my necessary bills will continue to be paid with my payee's handling of my SSDI check, and my little emergency fund will continue to grow behind a glass window they are providing. It is not a very easy glass window to break into, but that's perhaps for the best. I just want to have a few dollars set aside in case an emergency medical bill comes up.

The paychecks I get from my job are no longer going to my payee. Starting with the next check, they will be delivered to me directly. I will report my income to Social Security - I have had no problem doing that before. And since I no longer feel the need to blow all of my money on things I do not need (like alcohol, for example), I think I have a real shot at making this work.

I'm 34. I could continue to complain about how incompetent my payee's office can be, or I can be a man and step up to the plate myself. I will never learn how to be responsible if I continue to let them hold my balls in a vice grip while doing nothing more than making empty complaints about it.

Congrats on setting up the extended trial run! In addition to my AS I am also in recovery, and managing my finances has always been something I have to approach carefully lest chaos ensue.

I have had to do something similar, in that all of my bills are automatically paid each month by my bank. (If I had to manually pay them they would all be constantly late.) For me services like that have been a godsend. And because I no longer go off on drunken spending sprees, things have remained stable.

Best wishes!

One thing that may help, is that I find that if my debit card is in my wallet that I have a temptation to spend. Put it in another location that makes it a little difficult to get to, so you have to think before making an impulse buy. Some financial gurus say put it in the freezer, which you shouldn't do because it destroys the magnetic strip on the card. I put mine in with my bath supplies, which keeps it from getting wrecked but makes me have to go get it if I want to buy something, so I have to think. Also, buy a ledger book at your local big box office supply store, and write down every purchase, and what the purchase is. That means, don't write "Joe's Market, $5" but "candy and chips, $5". That way you can see where your money is going. Don't use a computer program, but an actual ledger book and a pen. Good luck on your continued sobriety.

Marky, who is that freaky-looking bloke in your avatar? He reminds me of a young version of one of the great US plutocrats but I can't quite put my finger on it.

I have terrible trouble running a budget and not getting into debt -- part of this is my dyscalculia, which means that I try to keep a running total of my bank balance in my head, and always get it badly wrong.

At the moment, I am £2,300 in debt (Career Development Loan and a credit card that I should never have taken out). I had a call from a debt management company, offering to sort out all my debts into one single monthly payment. Like a fool, I signed up. Then I realised they were charging an £800 (!) set-up fee, and of the £80 a month I would repay through them, they would take £30 and my creditors would get a split share of the £50 left over.

So I phoned up my creditors today and sorted out private repayment schedules with them instead. Which will leave me £100 worse off each month for the next year or so, as opposed to the five years that it would have taken me through the debt management company.

As for my agreement with the debt management company, thank Christ there is a statutory 14-day 'cooling off' period so I can get out of my arrangement with them. Bunch of sharks.

But managing money is something at which I do need to improve. My local Asperger Syndrome Support Service offers money management classes, and I feel I may have to sign up ...

I racked up about $30,000 in credit card debt several years ago in the depths of my addictions. I paid half of it off within a couple of years after that, then I lost the PT job I had at the time and was no longer able to afford the payments. I once had all of that debt down to $15,000, now it is back up to $22,000 thanks to the interest that has been piling up since I got laid off from that job. They have all been sent to collections, and I currently have one judgment against me because of it. I am currently in the process of filing for bankruptcy because of that judgment.

I am looking forward to clearing up my past. I was irresponsible, as all addicts are. Add in my untreated autistic symptoms, and I was running towards my own destruction. But I am not living like that anymore. I actually like myself today. I like myself enough to make recovery from addiction my number one priority in my life. I am thankful for my troubled past, because I have learned a lot through my trials and my mistakes. I no longer hate who I used to be, because I really was doing the best that I knew how to manage at that moment. I have found my way out of that hellish life, and I am going to run with it as far as I possibly can.

I do not have to be who I was yesterday. Hell, I do not even have to be who I was five minutes ago if that was not working well for me. Just because I have a diagnosis of Asperger syndrome, it does not mean that I cannot learn to adapt to life's backbreaking learning curve. I see a therapist weekly. I am in a supported work environment that knows all about my various neurological quirks. They are willing to work with me, and I am responding by being as productive as I possibly can be for them.

I no longer see myself as a failure. I no longer see myself as the defective person that should have never even been born to begin with (that is what my mother told me several times when I was a child). I am a survivor. But to survive is to keep going through hellish conditions. I am no longer seeking to merely survive. Today, I am working on living fully. I am allowed to learn from my mistakes. I am allowed to pick myself up when I stumble. I am allowed to unlearn everything I was taught throughout the first two decades of my life. Changes in routine is difficult, but I am allowed to put all of my effort into those changes, and to not be afraid of tripping along the way.

See what a couple of years of decent psychotherapy can do to me? Heh.

Charity - lol, I have no clue. He just looks like some kind of up-tight, prudish, pedantic, Edwardian snob. He well depicts one aspect of my personal characteristics. Two others are Stewie Griffin from Family Guy, and Tyler Perry's Madea character. I often feel that I am some peculiar combination of those three. (

About finances: For a time I followed a friend's advise to use what she called a "Envelope System". I got a bunch of letter envelopes, labeling each with some budgeted expense, e.g. Groceries, Rent, Phone, Power, and so on. As I got paid I would get cash for each of these expenses and place its respective envelope.

It sounded ridiculously simple at first, but I was amazed at how physically seeing and handling each dollar bill helped me get a more concrete appreciation, focus, and understanding of my finances. I came to take satisfaction in watching the amounts grow in each envelope, and was surprisingly well disciplined about not raiding them for impulse purchases.

i had to go bankrupt over credit cards, charging "little bits of feeling better" three times, but now the fundamentals are pretty much beaten into my brain by force.

Never do accept an unsecured card with a limit over $200 or $300... any more tended to make me go crazy charging.
Good for emergency taxi rides, or the other very little emergencies of life.
Anything i want/need i save up for.
Doing without was a new concept for me.

One thing that helped was finally realizing that what i was doing was kind of "stealing" from these credit-happy card companies.
That goes a long way to keeping me responsible with my credit.
Guilt is one thing i can't stand thanks to Aspergers!

Have a nice day.