Anonymous Mess

It's been a tough summer. [originally written for September posting] Creditor Interest Rate Owed Amazon Store 26.49% -339.40 Chase Visa 26.49% 0.00 JetBlue 21.99% -19.42 Chase Amazon Prime 18.99% 0.00 Barnes and Noble 16.24% 0.00 Chase Slate 13.74% -50.58 Chase Freedom 12.74% -67.28 CU Signature Visa 2 10.99% -130.34 Bank A Signature Visa 11.15% 0.00 HELOC 8.50% -86,431.68 CU Signature Visa 1 8.40% -827.49 Car loan 2.90% -41,302.90 Bank A Balance Transfer 0.00% -2,003.76 BankAmericard Platinum 0.00% 0.00 BestBuy 0.00% 0.00 Citi Diamond Preferred 0.00% 0.00 CreditFirst (Firestone) 0.00% 0.00 Lowe's 0.00% -142.05 Total CC Debt -3,580.32 All Debt -131,314.90

The internet saved me. I'm chronically disorganized, distracted, and shy. I stumbled through years of missteps and crises large and small due to these deficits, before the internet was born and grew up. Online tools helped me work around them. Let me count the ways, or at least scrape the surface: 1. Online bill pay -- dear lords, the bills I would lose in the old snail-mail days. Even after opening, reading, writing the check, putting it all in an envelope, stamping it and setting it near the house keys to mail as soon as there were funds to cover it... it could still go astray. And be forgotten. And therefore late, with the usual tail effects of fees and diminished credit rating. Now I can schedule the payment weeks before it's needed, and that bill is simply taken care of .  Thank you, internet. Thank you. 2. Online task management -- a to-do list isn't remotely useful when you've misplaced it. But a virtual to-do list is always there. Sure, I used Word a...

We make the progress. Slowly. Creditor Interest Rate Owed Amazon Store 26.49% -556.24 Chase Visa 26.49% 0.00 JetBlue 22.24% -95.92 Chase Amazon Prime 18.99% 0.00 Barnes and Noble 16.24% 0.86 Chase Slate 13.74% -75.00 Chase Freedom 18.99% 0.00 CU Signature Visa 2 11.24% -429.15 Bank A Signature Visa 11.15% 0.00 HELOC 8.50% -86,631.68 CU Signature Visa 1 8.40% -827.49 Car loan 2.90% -42,720.98 Bank A Balance Transfer 0.00% -3,746.58 BankAmericard Platinum 0.00% 0.00 BestBuy 0.00% 0.00 Citi Diamond Preferred 0.00% 0.00 CreditFirst (Firestone) 0.00% 0.00 Lowe's 0.00% -526.05 Total CC Debt -6,255.17 All Debt -135,738.20 The Great Job Search is off to an unsteady start... still, it's a start, right? Had lunch this week with a friend I haven't seen in months. She's been plagued with money problems since I've known her, partly the result of unwise decisions made from ignorance and emotional need. She told me she'd been working with a financia...

Well, we inched a little further along this month: Creditor Interest Rate Owed Amazon Store 26.49% -696.24 Chase Visa 26.49% 0.00 JetBlue 22.24% -95.92 Chase Amazon Prime 18.99% 0.00 Barnes and Noble 16.24% 0.86 Chase Slate 13.74% -36.81 Chase Freedom 18.99% -61.01 CU Signature Visa 2 11.24% -576.15 Bank A Signature Visa 11.15% 0.00 HELOC 8.50% -86,631.68 CU Signature Visa 1 8.40% -827.49 Car loan 2.90% -43,403.57 Bank A Balance Transfer 0.00% -4,163.58 BankAmericard Platinum 0.00% 0.00 BestBuy 0.00% 0.00 Citi Diamond Preferred 0.00% 0.00 CreditFirst (Firestone) 0.00% 0.00 Lowe's 0.00% -622.05 Total CC Debt -7,078.39 All Debt -137,113.64 The contract job is over. I've already committed to A Holiday Thing for the next week, but will have to hit the job search trail hard afterward. O, big fun!

I did an inventory around the end of last year, and came up with a large-ish number of things nearing the end of their useful lives: 35-year-old water heaters (two) 20-year-old mattress 18-year-old memory foam mattress pad 13-year-old car 7-year-old walking shoes 6-year-old air conditioner 6-year-old computer 5-year-old computer 5-year-old sofa winter and summer comforters of unknown age  The car was the first to go, and financially, it went with a bang. Now one of the two water heaters has departed for that great basement in the sky, with the other soon to follow. The landlord has both apartments hooked up to that relict, a situation which cannot long endure. We're replacing both. The air conditioner is a must, and will probably be replaced in the next two weeks. I cannot sleep, think, or guarantee my sanity in temperatures above the low eighties. The mattress has been a champion, but it needs to be retired soon. The shoes, which have been worn almost daily, ar...

Wow. I nauseated myself with that title. So, until a week ago I was feeling rather proud, and prudent. I had dialed back the debt pay-down in order to maximize cash on hand for when my contract expires at the end of June, but still had managed to bring the total down by about $1,000. Not bad, I thought, while paying for a new (gulp) car and the rest of our responsibilities. And then the water heater went. The imaginary friend who reads all my posts and gets all my jokes no doubt remembers my post from the beginning of the month about covering rental repairs. If that's not you, then (1) Yes, we do that and (2) Why? Reasons and (3) Yes, we've done that this time, too. It's on an interest-free-for-six-months card from Lowe's, but it's still an additional $844.80. And that leaves us at this: Creditor Interest Rate Owed Amazon Store 26.49% -403.99 JetBlue 22.24% 0.00 Chase Visa 22.24% 0.00 Chase Amazon Prime 18.99% 0.00 Barnes and Noble 16.24% 0.86 Chas...

Net result: barely budged -- Creditor Interest Rate Owed Amazon Store 26.49% -453.67 JetBlue 22.24% 0.00 Chase Visa 22.24% -144.00 Chase Amazon Prime 18.99% 0.00 Barnes and Noble 16.24% 0.86 Chase Slate 13.74% 0.00 Chase Freedom 12.74% -471.60 CU Signature Visa 2 11.24% -486.96 Bank A Signature Visa 11.15% 0.00 HELOC 8.50% -86,960.98 CU Signature Visa 1 8.40% -1,341.21 Car loan 2.90% -44,762.00 Bank A Balance Transfer 0.00% -5,216.67 BankAmericard Platinum 0.00% 0.00 BestBuy 0.00% -20.00 Citi Diamond Preferred 0.00% -0.00 CreditFirst (Firestone) 0.00% -204.75 Lowe's 0.00% 20.32 Total CC Debt -8,270.98 All Debt -139,993.96 This was partly a conscious decision on our part. With my contract ending soon and without another lined up, I wanted to hold on to cash. We also had some biggish expenses, with a few more to come. Possibly unrelated factoid: in the last almost-seven years, we've spent over $80,000 on direct medical expenses, close to $1,000 a mon...

It doesn't come up often in conversation, but when it does, people are amazed to hear that we pay for repairs to our apartment. "??!!?!!!?!!" they say. (So eloquent, our acquaintances.) That's supposed to be the (possibly single) joy of renting: it's the landlord's to fix, not yours. Are we insane? On drugs? How can we afford drugs if we're paying for apartment repairs anyway? The salient fact is our rent is well below market rate, even for our reputedly borderline neighborhood, even for our admittedly dingy apartment.  As a much younger Anonymous Mess, working multiple underpaid and crappy jobs to scrape by, our low rent enabled me to survive during the periods when I was down to one regular job and a single side gig, instead of two or three. Yes, I could have paid a bit more and lived somewhere nicer with a roommate, but if you've ever had a roommate skip out on the rent and/or the lease, you know that's not a sure thing.  My landl...

Non-financial blog post wondering: Any fanfolk skitter past this blog? I have been around lo, these many and many years, so I remember pre-Internet, pre-Google, when fandom was scarce and difficult and derided. E! didn't always cover the San Diego Comic Con, y'all. Our need to find like minds to obsess with us over our fringe passions helped build the Internet, and the Internet helped make our obsessions mainstream. But mainstream isn't universal, not for any obsession, and so there's still a majority, "outside" world that's, at best, kindly uninterested. I have sort of an ill-footing boot in each world. I have tremendous affection for the various alternate realities I fan for; I think the energy of Cons can be fantastic; I'm in awe of your bad cosplay self and the talent and ingenuity you bring to your creations; I find forums let me appreciate these realities anew by bringing into focus the details and connections I somehow missed; and sometimes...

So, in the last two months, we've paid down over $4,000 in credit card debt. Check it out! -- Creditor Interest Rate Owed Amazon Store 26.49% -731.24 JetBlue 22.24% -333.82 Chase Visa 22.24% 0.00 Chase Amazon Prime 18.99% 0.00 Barnes and Noble 16.24% 0.86 Chase Slate 13.74% 0.00 Chase Freedom 12.74% -454.26 CU Signature Visa 2 11.24% -18.85 Bank A Signature Visa 11.15% 0.00 HELOC 8.50% -87,190.28 CU Signature Visa 1 8.40% -762.99 Car loan 2.90% -44,762.00 Bank A Balance Transfer 0.00% -5,929.57 BankAmericard Platinum 0.00% 0.00 BestBuy 0.00% -44.20 Citi Diamond Preferred 0.00% -0.00 CreditFirst (Firestone) 0.00% -75.38 Lowe's 0.00% 62.52 Total CC Debt -8,286.93 All Debt -140,239.21 Yay us! Oh, and also (cough, cough), we added almost $45,000 in vehicle debt. Sigh. We haven't completely lost our minds. The interest-charging credit cards are being used for convenience and points, and are paid off at the end of the month. The focus for the res...

Or that's what I'm calling it, anyway.  Because EVs do indeed zoom. Yes, we financed a new car, a thing I thought I would never do. But the cost of interest over the next five years -- the life of the loan -- is less than a third of what we've spent on gas in the last five years.  Even after we factor in the cost of charging the vehicle, estimated electricity cost + interest is less than half of gas spending in the last five years. Maintenance/repairs would go down anyway with a new car -- but without a gas engine, we shouldn't have to maintain anything but the brakes and tires over the first five years. (And with regenerative braking, even the brakes get less use, and thus less-frequent replacements, than with a gas engine.) Our battery is covered for life -- so long as we own the car, they'll replace the battery if there are issues, including just age. Overall, with the tax incentives, I believe we're paying about what we'd pay for a certified pre-ow...

It's time. Our champion workhorse of a vehicle needs to be replaced. In the last sixteen months, we've averaged over $300 a month on repairs. The latest system to go wobbly is the transmission, notoriously expensive to repair/replace, and the odometer passed 200,000 miles last month. So it's time. And expected. But circumstances have changed. My original plan, dating back over a decade, was to replace this vehicle with another certified pre-owned, low-mileage (under 20k), high-reliability car.  Heck, my original original plan was to be able to purchase said replacement outright, and we had saved about $4,000 toward that goal when we fell into The Trough of Loss and Despair and Immense Financial Obligation, five years ago, which swallowed that $4,000 whole (and kept going). Back then, Spouse and I sat in offices all day, Spouse commuted by train, and my round-trip for work was under 30 miles. In an average week, our mileage was under 200. Now, Spouse drives to clie...

The post from two weeks ago was actually written late October/early November. Blur the footage to simulate time zooming ahead three months and here we are in  mid-February. And where is "here", exactly? Well, here are the end-of-January numbers: Creditor Interest Rate Owed Amazon Store 26.49% 0.00 JetBlue 22.24% 0.00 Chase Visa 22.24% 0.00 Chase Amazon Prime 18.99% 0.00 Barnes and Noble 16.24% 0.00 Chase Slate 13.74% 0.00 Chase Freedom 12.74% -209.89 CU Signature Visa 2 11.24% 0.00 Bank A Signature Visa 11.15% 0.00 CU Signature Visa 1 8.40% -4,176.45 HELOC 8.40% -87,619.58 Bank A Balance Transfer 0.00% -7,597.33 BankAmericard Platinum 0.00% -0.00 BestBuy 0.00% -204.20 Citi Diamond Preferred 0.00% -0.00 CreditFirst (Firestone) 0.00% -425.38 Lowe's 0.00% -27.48 Total CC Debt -12,640.73 All Debt -100,260.31 Yay, down $4,500, right?  It's not much, but it's progress. Despite more veterinary bills, and a new battery for the car, and expens...

So, these are the things that have happened since my last post -- Elderly Uncle passed away. For the best really, his pain is no more, I got to say my good-byes, all the comforting cliches; but also, so sad, so much worry for Elderly Aunt, so little clarity about where she's left financially, such a flurry of things that must be attended to at a time when attending to anything feels pointless, endless, and overwhelming: all the negative cliches. Funeral, travel, and lodging costs of $3,160, plus several unpaid days away from work. Poor Caterwaul, the feline malign, was diagnosed with cancer, after a series of examinations, blood tests, biopsies, and long waits in veterinary anterooms. (She is not yet feeling the effects, and we will do our best to keep her comfortable as long as possible, but we do not expect her to recover.) Costs to date of $670. Recommended testing not covered by our insurance policy was, well, recommended. Out of pocket cost = $570. For Brother-in-Law...