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...

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...