Life
Stories
Debt & How it affected you
This book is written for you and by you
on how life experiences has affected you.
Out on your own
What did you do when you went out on your own? I know what I did
moved in with a girl friends sister in to a town house, we didn't have money for furniture, just took what we had and did temporary jobs through
a temporary work service to pay for rent. She had other plans as soon as she graduated from and became a beautician she moved out leaving me with paying the rent and no notice. I in turned moved back home for a while. I had no car rode my 10 speed graduate from travel school and became a travel agent, met my husband and we moved in together in an apartment in MI.
We were engaged at the time, found out I was pregnant after we moved in and moved the wedding date up from January to November. Our first debt was buying appliances and furniture for the apartment. Not to say that we couldn't pay for the stuff we bought on credit, just that household finance played some sort of game with us. The finance company every time we tried to get ahead and pay more than our monthly payment, they wouldn't send a bill the next month or until our next payment was due, if the next payment was due 2 months from now that is when they sent it.
Solution:
We got tired of this this and went to the local credit union told them what was going on, opened and account, got it refinanced and paid it off in no time. The furniture people gave us no problems and we paid them off quickly.
Tip:
Credit Unions are for people not business as one told me! So if you have one near by they charge less in fees and work with the people more than any banks that I have run into.
Now not to say that we didn't get into trouble financially, my real first debt was a student loan for college, luck I didn't go into debt as much as some. Some people get a loan and don't always use it for college like they should. I worked my way through college, that is why it took me so long to complete just a couple years worth. I graduated with an associates in Business Management. Which came in handy later as I opened and operated a home base Trucking Company.
Marriage & Money
Who controlled the money? Was it the man or women?
In our marriage I did most of the paying of the bills, and we made
decisions together on how to spend it, and major purchases.
Decisions for your money should be done by both! One of the major causes of divorce is debt! Learn how to work together or you won't be together. We had a lot of fights over money especially after the first child was born, not enough income to meet all the bills we had.
When we joined our bills together there was only his car payment and my student loan. Then we started financing furniture, appliances, got a discover card where we discovered DEBT! After two kids and no money coming in from him as a mechanic and I had to stay home with one kid that
was in and out of the hospital ICU. He changed careers and became a Truck Driver, went to school, got his license, and during this time unable to
pay all our bills. Gets going with Gainey and they only paid 250 or 300 a week training pay for almost 3 months so we were living off of the Discover
Card cash advance after a couple months to avoid foreclosure. After a while he was running past the house on a regular basis between Detroit and Chicago so we moved to an area on route between the two.
When we finally moved to our new house 2 ½ hours away we had over 6,000 on the Discover Card, 15,000 in medical from our son, a new house payment, but no car payment.
We paid in a couple of the years before 1/3 of our income just to collection agencies for medical bills.
Solution: I made a list of our bills, put them in order or importance, house, electric, phone, food, gas, propane and then listed the rest of the bills totals and assigned an amount that we could afford on each one each month. I took the average he brought home weekly and put so much aside for each bill out of the pay.
I also adjusted it monthly if we received a bigger pay, then we paid more on the bills to get them paid off.
Tip: Sit down together with the bills weekly to decide who gets paid that week if your pay varies like ours. If you have a pretty fix income decide a the beginning of the month who gets paid, what they get paid and when.
Savings
Do you save your money?
Savings for us didn't start until further in our Marriage, if we started it right from the start we would have been further ahead, with savings, IRA's
mutual funds.
My husband had a traditional IRA set up through when he was in the Army, I didn't have anything. I did short term saving for events that was coming up but nothing else. I really got into saving when my husband got his own semi and we were getting our authority, I saved up over 5,000 to help pay bills and diesel to get us started while we wait for the income to start coming in, in Trucking a lot of the bills of lading get paid with in 30 days, that means that the shipper or broker is getting extended credit by us. Now with 3 trucks and 3 trailers I am trying to save 1,000 per truck for an emergency fund in case of break down, I would like 8,000 saved in all since that is about the cost of an engine for one of them.
When I saved for this I went through an online account called Ing direct which has a higher interest rate on their savings account than your local bank.
Solution: Save for the future long term as early as possible.
Tip: Check out on line savings accounts and local banks, shop around for the best deal, low fees, interest rate, any benefits that you would like to have.
Collections
Crooks & Thieves?
Recently we had a collection agency that worked with Sprint / Nextel on collecting pass due accounts. We owed around $700.00 we had 3 business
phones, and was two months behind as we have a slow period usually at the first of the year. This year was worst because I had family problems, went to Alabama to help my mother out with my dad and my husband was stuck their twice for 10 days with no load to get out a dead zone for hoppers off season. So that put us behind with no income!
I paid what was needed at the time Nextel had to wait, so they shut us down on the phones, well no one was running anyway.
Contacted by their collections department an independent company, don't remember the name but you will understand and know if they call you for a
collection.
They said that they could get the phones turned back on for $400.00 and I usually don't deal with collection agencies because a lot of them are crooks! This one just proved my point, I paid the $400.00 by phone they charged me for it another $6.00 didn't disclose the charge, said the phones will be on in 24 hours after calling them for like a week and nothing happening, phones still not on so I called Nextel.
I called Nextel billing and reported them. Nextel said that they are not authorized to turn phones on, offer a discounted price and wave any payments. When they called back I literally bitched them out, and reported them to Nextel. I also told them that I will report them to FTC if I ever hear from them again!
Solution: Deal with the Company as much as possible, get everything in writing that you agree upon.
Tip: If people don't want to put stuff in writing, don't deal with them.
Not all Collection companies are bad! All though some of their tactics are outrageous.
Even though American Express worked with me on paying off
my credit card with them and let me pay as I could they still put me down as settling on my credit report. I have never settled on any bill before, I started to with Nextel collections but still ended up paying the full amount.
The local Hospital also worked with me and discounted the bill for me because of their new program for people with no insurance to help on paying the bills. They didn't help too much I still owed $10,000 on my ankle from when it shattered.
I still didn't settle because hospitals discount all the time to the insurance companies, based on what the company will pay for the procedure. You get billed for the difference sometimes but not all of it usually.
I was caught between two insurance companies, because my husbands boss was changing companies and neither one wanted to pay the bill so I ended up doing it. We were buying a semi from the boss then and when he closed up his company to reopen under his dad's business he signed it over to us because of the hospital bills, that was his help, on what he owed us for the hospital bills. Start of a new business adventure from there on.
