Money Cometh To Me

Well, I am back.

Not much has happened. I have not paid anything new off, since the last time. I have a few delinquent accounts left, but I intend to get them taken care of by hiring a law service to go after these people who are buying my debt and re-ageing it. 80 bucks a month will get me some law service to do it, recommended to me from my dad per a friend of his who used them. My first step is to order full copies of my credit report from the three agencies though, so I need to get on it.

In other news, I have been saving lots and lots of money for some odd reason. My current bank balances:

Credit Union Checking: $1,003.29 (my main acct where I pay for everything; it gets $1100 every 2 weeks, and the rest of my paycheck goes to:)

BofA Checking: $2,632.31 (only used when I can’t find my other atm card)

BofA Savings: $1,863.17 (linked to the acct above)

None of this is school loan money ( I have yet to get my refund of $6K for the term, which I am considering decreasing a bit), and my cousin still owes me that $895.00 I loaned her for rent (I told her to pay her taxes and get me the refund cash). I’ve been paying my tithe since the New Year started, too. It feels great to have $5500 bucks just jingling in your pocket. LOL. I still have to file taxes and get a refund too? I really don’t know what to do with myself. Payday comes in four days too? I don’t know what in the world I did, but all of a sudden I have money to spend, money saved. A few months ago I was eyeing this $4500 trip to Israel with my church and I had calculated that I wouldn’t have the money saved in time. But…now I do, and it’s weird, the math didn’t seem that way when I was calculating it before. I’m not gonna go, but still, it’s an example of how this is unexpected.

Granted, I am not going to spend it on anything silly…..but the thought has been crossing my mind. A new computer would be nice. An SLR camera would be nice. But unfortunately I vowed not to buy myself any new electronics until I buy some new eyeglasses. I haven’t had new glasses in almost 8 years, which is pretty sad. I stick to eye contacts for the most part, but I really should have both. I just take forever to set up doctor appointments, and my new optometrist seems to suck at finding me the right Rx. I need to do better. Once I buy some eyeglasses, my electronics ban will be lifted. Even then though, I am not sure if I can justify a new computer. My current laptop is cool, just needs a new battery.

In the end, I may decide to take the $6K school loan, so I can pay off my car note. I gotta take a look at the interest rates….but I think it would be the smarter thing to do. I have $11K left to pay on the car, with the interest calculated in. Maybe I can pay it off and save a few thousand bucks all around. Then I could stack dough even faster, because my car note is currently $423/month.

Sorry to unload all my thoughts at once. I need to practice baby steps on this financial journey.

$895 Loan

So……

I loaned my cousin $895 to pay her rent.

I know, I know! Don’t loan people money, esp this big chunk of money? Esp family because it gets messy.

I guess I have my reasons. My cousin is 27, single mother of two boys. Well, technically she is married but she is separating or reconciling with her husband. I never know which one it is. Our family is crazy, essentially. Most of the people in the fam are broke, didn’t go or didn’t finish college, the leadership in our fam (mothers, aunts) are unemployed with no forseeable employment. And they all kind of act like crabs in a barrell. This is kind of where I inherited my issues with money, but I am fighting to get on a better playing field. My cousin is as well. We both chose to live very far away from the rest of the family due to the toxicity of their nature. My cousin and I are pretty much the only people in the fam who broke away and tried to do things  on our own without the help of our irresponsible and undependable family. My cousin married young and had children young. Worked two jobs and went to college to get her degree. She isn’t finished with school, but she’s been paying for school all by herself (which is insane! I need to help her with some FAFSA…). She married this guy but he’s kind of like….not upwardly mobile. He’s a carpet cleaner and he wants to make beats for a living. Not to knock his choices, but you get the idea of how my cousins life is. My cousin wants more for herself and for her sons. Everything is in her name, she bought two new cars over two years ago because she needed them for the fam.

Anyway, my cousin lives in San Diego, and she had to evacuate because of the fires. She came back after she was allowed back to her apartment and found an eviction notice on the door. She would have to pay up or get evicted in three days. So, she called me for help. My cousin has borrowed money from me before, the largest amount which was 300 bucks, and she paid me back like 5 days later. Here she was calling me and asking for money, very hopeful of course, but understanding if I didn’t have it. She said I was pretty much the only person she could ask for help because any other family member (the crazy ones) would just yell at her for not moving two states away to where they are and live with them. I totally understand her plight. When things go wrong, the peanut gallery fam wants you to move out into their desolate home state so you can sit there and be miserable with them. Usually their plans include staying with them or lettin them watch your kids. However, they’re all so unstable, trying to start drama, kick you out at a moments notice, not holding up to their end of agreements because they woke up on the wrong side of the bed that day. Just nuts.

So, I lent it to her. $895 for a two bedroom apartment ain’t bad at all! Her neighborhood and apartment isn’t even bad. She’s not living above her needs at all in that department. I don’t know, I just think she has had it bad these past few months with her husband moving out. He hasn’t paid any childsupport, not to mention her younger brother moved in and isn’t paying any rent. She just started a new job as a bank teller, so now she can afford easier childcare. She has a lot going on trying to reorgnize her life these past few months. I definitely don’t think I could have made it this far.

Hmm.  I had $2500 bucks sitting in my savings account, so I figured I could lend it and not feel any real impact right now. My cousin has a lot of pride and she and I are like sisters (the kind who love each other lol). I don’t think she would turn on me or not pay me back for those reasons exactly. I’m just worried that her paying me back won’t take away from her ongoing problems.  Someone told me to draw up some contract…I thought about it, but figured I trusted my cousin enough to stay on top of paying me back in her own time. I think if I don’t hear anything back by 2 months, I’ll pipe up.

Update

I have spent most of the day stressing about a lot of things. My weight, which means my health. My health which means my weight. My weight which means all the money I spend on food. Money wasted on food, at this rate I will never live on my own. Can I afford to live on my own? Looking for apartments, there is no hope. I can’t live anywhere nice and for 800 bucks or less. I can afford more in rent, but I would prefer to stick to 800 for my own financial sanity (fear of being broke). Not unless I live somewhere inconvenient. I want to live near Hollywood….but I guess I don’t have to. There’s always a trade off with aesthetic, safety, location, and price. I hate this.

Anyway.

I got to thinking about this old AT&T bill that came in the mail and said I owed them 50 bucks to a collector. I think I do owe them that money. When AT&T switched to Cingular a few years ago, I switched over to a different phone and type of service. My old AT&T phone was carrying a balance, but I got my Cingular phone new and no balance. I never got any word about what I owed AT&T but I am guessing that this is the 50 dollar balance coming back from the dead. So, I will pay it and not play any more games with them.

This Saturday I sent off a $1100 check to the people who sued me. This should close out everything with them. I will follow up next week. It feels good to get them off my back, even if it’s just transferring the debt elsewhere.

Some law office is calling me about this pesky B0fA bill. I must call them or call NCO Financial to get that squared away. Nobody has bothered to send me anything in the mail. All I get are harassing phone calls, and when I answer or call them to ask for a statement in the mail, they refuse to send me another letter. *sigh* I hate these people. A $300 bill is now $430 I think, all because they won’t send me a letter in the mail as requested. I just need to take some time and get this settled.

I got another bill in the mail for $2200. I do not know which bill this is, but I think it is somebody re-ageing an old old bill. They don’t even tell me who they bought the bill from. I think I may be able to fight them with some valid arguements. We’ll see.

I have been so extra busy with work and school these things are just piling up. But, soon it will all be straight.

Expensive being Healthy

I am a really busy chick, and my health is suffering because of it. I barely have time to eat, I eat at odd hours. I literally do not have the time in the day, especially with my thesis this semester and my new job with lots of cool but big responsibilities. I decided that the one thing I can motivate myself to do is run. I have a gym membership I pay for, I need to use the gym. I also need to lose a lot of weight. And soon. This isn’t for vanity reasons (not like I have a wedding or anything to go to in a few months), but I have some potentially serious health issues, and I am too young to die. Ok, that’s a bit dramatic but you get the drift. The longer I have the weight on, the more depressed and distraught I feel about these health issues.

So, I am going to train for a half marathon. I think this will be good for me. I’ll lost weight, the right way, and feel better. The plan was that the year 2007 was the year to get my shit together. Academically, Financially, Emotionally, and Physically. Academics and Emotions have been coming through like a champ, and I am working on the finances. So, I need to hurry up and get serious about this health. That’s why I picked a local half marathon race to run in January. I’ve never run anything before. LOL. I did used to play basketball and track though, so I have a little athlete in me. This past year I’ve been running on the treadmill, for the first time ever. I’ve been doing pretty good, and even from one week to the next, I notice a difference in my body’s adaptation.

Why am I talking about this here? Because I have decided to use this Nike+ running system to track my progress and motivate myself to do this half marathon. But it’s kind of expensive. $150 for the iPod nano, then $120 for new running shoes (I need new running shoes anyway, and have needed them for some time now), and $30 for the technology kit that makes the tracking possible. That’s roughly $300. The plan is to use my Apple iPhone $100 credit to get the nano, and buy a refurbished one at $99. I’ll skimp on my manicure and do them myself for the next month to pay for the Nike+ system. I won’t sacrifice anything for the shoes, because I was going to buy new ones anyway. Nike+ shoes are no more expensive than what I had planned to buy (I’m a Nike fan and had budgeted this price out anyway).

There you have it. Now I must commit. In the event that my training schedule falls behind, I may go for a 5K race instead and then do the half marathon later.

The First Step

Things have been silent over here because I haven’t been too devoted to this personal finance freedom bit, mostly due to not making the time. I’m stressed. Work is busy, we have big deadlines coming up. While I am on target for my own deadlines, everybody else’s deadlines are like next week and so they are pulling me in to help them. School has been going on…busy.

Anyway, today I conquered one of my biggest problems in this whole ordeal: getting organized. At work, I am the biggest nitpicking neatfreak. All my files are super organized, color-coded, etc. At home? My mail and bills sit in grocery bags or piles around my bedroom. Unopened, unorganized. So today I sat down and went through what was easily three grocery bags worth of mail and bills. A lot of things were still unopened. I din’t get all the way organizied, meaning I didn’t get to put everything in date order in it’s own manila folder. However, I was able to tear up and throw out all needless enveleopes, tear up all credit card offers, seperate everything into its own pile, create some labels in my hanging file folder bin, and put everything in its hanging file folders for further organization. I have paperwork that dates back over a year. The good thing about this is that now I have more space for my books, and now I can truly try and conquer this bill/creditor fiasco. I now have all my creditor bills, and credit reports in one place. I can go through and figure out what needs to be worked out. Hopefully I can get all that done by next weekend, and start writing some checks. I may write some checks early,  because there are some things I know I need to clear up.

Anyway, I am happy to have been able to get this ball rolling.

More Spending Update

I paid $88 on my Cingular bill. For whatever reason, perhaps bad  habit of being broke, I carry a past due balance on my cell phone bill. I used to carry this balance because I was always broke. Lately I have been carrying it because I am lazy and “forget” to pay my bill. I also just don’t like parting from my money.  Since I theoreticaly have money to pay these bills off, I have paid that one off. Great.

I canceled this service I used to use for keeping track of my weight loss. LOL. I don’t know why I joined, maybe it was free, but I never log in and use the service yet they charge me roughly 25 bucks a month so I can chart my weight loss and get some ole recipes. Canceled. Plus I can use Dr. Ian’s site for free. And he is cuter.

I have a $120  parking ticket to pay from my school. Plus the $70 ticket to pay from the city. My car gets me in THE MOST trouble. I paid $1100 this year in parking/moving violations alone.

Speaking of The Ride, I have been exploring public transportation options. In LA, it’s not an option unless you live in the boondocks AND your job is near a subway stop. Otherwise, it’s useless. It would take me 1 hr 20 minutes to get to work, when I could drive for 40-50 minutes. I am annoyed. This why the city has smog, it doesn’t pay to go on the bus or subway unless you are poor and cannot afford to buy a car.  I have reached my 30K mark on the mileage, and must fork over $250 for my service checkin. Pooh.

I was bad today and spent 10 bucks on lunch, when I have plenty of food at home to bring and eat. Tomorrow I will do better.

I may not be able to go on a super budget binge until mid-October or November.

Spending

Still no itemized list of paying off what I owe. It’s coming. I hope.

I will tell you what I have been squandering my money on though.

$64  for a nail salon visit to Happy Nails in West Hollywood. I got an eyebrow wax, pedicure with a foot scrub, and a french manicure with a flower design. I mean I think it was 52 bucks, and I tipped 12 bucks. Granted, I haven’t had a pedicure in over a month…I would say I could go to a cheaper place, but I seriously think Happy Nails is worth every penny. I tried  a cheaper place by my house, and the waxing is lazy, and I don’t trust them with my toes. *sigh*

$70 parking ticket this morning. Score.

$160 church tithe. Here goes the controversy. I was sitting in church for the first time in a few weeks and I knew I was going to give something in the offering….but I didn’t think it would be 160 bucks! I’ve been going to church since I was a kid, and my belief system is one in which I believe in giving a tithe, ten percent of my income. Not just sometimes, but everytime. It has to be consistent. Anything less would be stealing from God. When I was younger, giving 4 bucks on a 40 dollar allowance was nuthin. Even in college, 8 bucks on my 80 dollar weekly check was nuthin. But when I became an adult with an actual salary, giving 50+ bucks became difficult. Not so much as the dollar amount, but the fact that I was always so broke, 50 bucks could easily pay my electric bill. So I stopped tithing. I mean, I stopped tithing before then but not because I was broke. I stopped because I thought I was slick.  A few years ago I stopped tithing because I figured God would think I was stupid for not paying rent on time, or something to that effect. Essentially I told God, “look, I can’t afford to tithe right now.” I could barely pay my bills, and He knew that. The numbers didn’t add up. So I told God that in addition to believing for a higher bangin ass salary from Him, I was believing for the capacity to give Him my tithe…to the point where the amount I had to give him wouldn’t phase me. I wanted to be making enough money where I could give Him his tenth and not trip about it, because I had more than enough.

So there I was Sunday morning in church. Trynna pretend like this wasn’t my first big paycheck….pretending like I didn’t have the brand new salary that was more than what I had asked God for. A little less than a year ago I asked God to give me a salary 5K lower than what I make now. He made it happen, and here I was trynna act brand new. So I whipped out my checkbook and wrote a check. I can’t beat God giving, this is true. It’s an investment as I see it. Call me crazy if you want, but this giving to God thing works.

The Check Is Here.

So the check is here. The big one. The one that holds my destiny out of Bad Credit Score Land.

To make room for it, I’ve transferred all the money in my BofA checking acct into the BofA savings account. So, now that’s roughly $1200 in the savings account, with $4100 on the way. I still have my regular $1100 in my main credit union account that pays bills.

Today I must figure out a way to spend this money, the best way possible.

Yesterday I paid $300 bucks to the people who sued me back in March. I think I have $2K more to go? Or $1K? I know they’re charging me an insane amount of interest, and haven’t explained where all this interest has come. I might stop paying them altogether if I come to realize I have paid all the principal. I gotta do research. They sued me for $3700, but then when I cut a deal with them to pay in insallments all of a sudden the balance was something like $5K, because of “interest.” Let me bust out my calculator and make some calls, and we will see who owes whom what.

Ok. I’m off to the bank and then my long overdue nail salon visit.

Too Much On Hand

“Let ‘em hate though/ I’m on my way to the bank, L.M.A.O.” -Lil Wayne, Can’t Tell Me Nuthin Remix.

Aight, so I got paid. I had my payday wrong, by the way, only because I lost track of the day of the week it was.  That happens when you’re too busy. Right now I have about $2600 in cash in all my bank accounts, with the $4100 school refund check on the way. I think this means I can make moves and pay off my bad credit report information pretty soon. This is way sooner than I thought. There are still some things I do not want to pay, because of principle and bad recordkeeping by the creditors. I have to fight those creditors with certified letters and threats, which will take some time. Hmm.

In the meantime, THIS WEEKEND,  I must look at my credit reports again, line item everything I owe, and make a solid plan of action to getting this stuff paid, taken care of, and/or removed from my credit report.  I’ll summarize it all here on the blog. Now that I have some money to work with, there is no excuse for my sub-par credit scores to keep on going.

Payday

“And I’ll be good like God with a extra 0. God knows that my check needs some extra 0′s”

-Kanye West

First of all, sorry about not responding to my readers’ comments. I just realized I was getting comments on this thing! I’ll reply when I get a minute.

I spent 80 bucks at Whole Foods Market on Sunday, to buy my food for the week.  That’s a gang of money. I need to cut down somewhere…as soon as I get this budget planned. For now, the idea is to work on my health as well. If I am going to take my lunch to work, it might as well be healthy food.  In addition, I pay 30 bucks a month in my gym membership, so I am going 4-5 days a week, if possible, to get my money’s worth.

Bank of America sent me a bank statement today. I forgot about another savings account that I had with them. I thought perhaps Bank of America took my money or closed the account, since my ATM card doesn’t work for the account anymore. Either way, I’ve got 11 bucks and yet another savings account to work with. I think I’ll use it, if possible. Just have to think of a reason to use it. Maybe my business funds can go in there.

Today is payday. I have $1100 of my check going to my credit union account and the rest going into my Bank of America checking. The CU is for paying bills and car notes and such. I picked $1100 arbitrarily, just because at some point in time my paycheck was barely $1100, after taxes,  every two weeks. I figure if I can “pretend” like I still live on that salary to pay off my bills, I should be straight. Seeing that I’m not paying any rent, this should be more than enough to work with. The rest goes to my Bank of America checking account, which is a holding account for things I have yet to determine. It’s the gateway to my savings account, so I can quickly transfer money online. I think for now I use it as an emergency fund, as in I can’t find my main ATM card or I had a big unexpected expense that came up.

I wish my money hit at midnight. This is my  first full paycheck in this new position, so I have no idea what kind of numbers are going to hit my bank accounts. I hope I filled out my W-2 form properly. I never know how to do that correctly. Guess I will find out the results in the morning. My school refund check is on its way in the mail…