Anonymous Mess

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...