Depression

well it's been a long time since i've written and things have only gotten worse....i ended up finding a teaching job but not in a school district but a charter school so i'm not making anything close to what i should be making....i did take a pay cut but not enough to feel a difference...well on the other note though my husbands job is not working for us..i mean he is getting a paycheck but it is nothing...
WE ARE NOT MAKING IT...i have already done a voluntary repo on my car so that cleared up 600.00 a month in a way...my parents gave us money to buy a car cash so now i am gonna pay my mom 250.00 a month till it's paid..that won't take long and i should have her paid off by income tax...we are just not making it...i don't know what else to do...
a couple of weeks ago we did some garage sales and luckily made 400.00 or so which helped us greatly with food and catching up on the utility bills etc. we did two garage sales two straight weeks even though in our subdivision your only allowed one every three months...
well like i said i have just been so busy with my new teaching job etc. i also volunteered to head up the cheerleading program here at school so that keeps me busy as well...
i don't know what else to do...we got behind on our light bill so i did a workout program so i just paid that today or else they would cut us off and now i am negative 140.00...than this week i HAVE TO PAY THE HOUSE..i'm so scared we will eventually lose it...we don't even have enough for our basic bills which include, house,cars, light, water, food, gas...the other day my little 4 year old was telling me that she wanted to go buy clothes but i couldn't because i know we don't have money....she needs tennis shoes as well but this past week we just bought my son tennis since he didn't have any only sandals...my husband had found a part time job for after work but that didn't last...i know i can get a part time administrative but than my husband says what about the kids that i will be away from them to much...i'm just so pissed,scared and so much more...i don't know what else to do...i don't have anything else extra to sell...i'm just tired and drained...

well i havent' written in a while..but today i have alot to say...well everyone knows my financial situation and i am living paycheck to paycheck...well i make pretty decent money now but we have alot of bills.
well anyways i am currently in the HR field but i have been trying to get into teaching. I just recently finished my alternative certification and have been looking for an elementary position. You know you always hear that a shortage in teachers exist but for elementary teachers let me tell you that IS SO NOT TRUE...well anyways just recently i got offered a position to be a kinder teacher in a private school. but i was gonna bring down my pay about $6,000.00 a year..that's like 400 month...YIKES...my husband was freaking out because as it is we barely make it happen...but we always make it work somehow i was telling him...this was my one chance...this way i could of gotten my experience and finished my certification...well i didn't have his support so i turned it down...now i am so upset...i mean if i would of gotten into a public school district next year i could of doubled my salary because by that time i would of been certified and had experience....some one please tell me i did the right thing...
i am so upset..

pretty good weekend

well all weekend long i tried not to check my bank account...just because i know i have my house payment to pay these coming up weeks and i was scared to see how much i was short...it usually takes two paychecks for our house payment...well all weekend long we did pretty good...one time we were going to go out to eat but i though wait, i have food at home to make so i did...that's a great change for me...
the one day we did mess up was Friday...we ended up going out to eat after work at a Chinese place and it was like $35.00....uughgh and it wasn't even that good...i felt so guilty afterwards...GOSH I CAN'T EVEN EXPLAIN HOW GUILTY I FELT....
well than yesterday i felt really good...i had the day off of work which i planned for a while to go to a job fair...well i went in the morning and did my thing...well than in the afternoon i decided to pick up my daughter early and still leave the baby with my mom...than i decided i was gonna take my daughter somewhere where she could go swimming...i could of taken her to our local water park but i was thinking gosh if i go than it's gonna be like 24.00 dollars for me and than like 12.00 for her...plus paying for the lockers and than of course swimming always makes you hungry...so i would of ended up spending 50.00 i didn't have...than i started thinking or i could take her to the local pool by my mom's house and it's only .50 cents each....but than in my head i knew how much she loved the water park...
so than i thought why am i being so silly...i can take her to the pool and she will still have a blast...so i took her and guess what ...SHE HAD A BLAST!!!...she loves it when it's just me and her...so we swam and acted silly and the best part is...THEY DON'T CHARGE ANYMORE....so we did all that for FREE...
so here i was going to spend 50.00 that i didn't have and shouldn't spend and i changed my way of thinking...i felt so proud...

well that didn't last long

okay so remember i was trying to see how long i could keep 25.00...well last post i was down to about 20 or 21 dollars...and wouldn't you know it give it one more day and it's GONE...
let me give you a perfect example of what i mean as to why can't i just change my way of thinking:
so yesterday we were here at work and remember i said i can eat lunch here for like 2 dollars and eat a full meal. well my co-worker said i feel like going to mall during lunch for some pizza do you want to go??? and instantly i thought yha i can go i have money...HELLO I CAN EAT PIZZA IN THE CAFETERIA FOR LIKE 1.50..AND IT'S GOOD...so here we are going out to lunch and she says you know what i don't feel like pizza anymore let's go to like chilli's...so did i go?? OF COURSE I DID...so i ended up spending 11.56 on lunch and than my tip was an extra 2 bucks...so now i am down to 6 dollars left...why couldn't i just think yha i have 20 dollars but i need to save it and stick to eating in the cafeteria and saving my money????
than we got out of work early so i picked up my daughter and she was at the mall with my mom...than my daughter says...mommy i'm hungry can we go upstairs and eat pizza??? there goes my last 6.00....WHY CAN'T I CHANGE ....WHAT IS SO HARD FOR ME???

now $20.00

well that didn't last very long. my so called $25.00 is now $21.00...last night we were at home and my daughter said she was hungry...she wanted waffles but i didn't have any syrup....SO WHO CAN EAT WAFFLES WITHOUT SYRUP...NOT I!!!..
so anyways since she has been sick and not really eating the fact that she told me she was hungry i jumped at the chance to feed her...so than she said she wanted a bean and cheese taco from Taco Cabana...so of course when we get there she says she wants a lemonade also...so i had ones but i didn't have enough so i had to pull out the $5.00 bill...so there we go now only down to $20.00...
than to make matters worse to really aggravate i knew my husband was going to have a beer after work but today i looked at our bank account and he spent $21.00 at the bar...WHAT THE F@*K????? but that is a whole other story for another time...
thanks for listening...

how long can i keep $25.00???

okay so lately has everyone else i have been trying to be frugal with my money. I'm lucky that here at my work we get lunches and breakfast for wholesale prices. So for example for lunch time i can eat a complete meal with drink for about $1.75...that's pretty good right...yes,yes i know it would be cheaper if i brought my lunch but honestly once i get home from work than deal with the kids, hubby,housework, i am too damn tired to make a lunch...so anyways the way i see it is that eating lunch at 1.25 or 1.50 is much cheaper than what i used to eat like 7.00 a day for lunch....
okay so n-e-ways besides that i have had $25.00 in my wallet for some time now...it's not very long but i have had it in my wallet since Saturday...i know you may probably be thinking that 4 days is really not a long time but honestly for me it is....i mean i think i seriously have a problem where if i have money in my wallet i feel i have to spend it...i don't know why i am like this...even if i have extra money in my bank account instead of me thinking that i need to save the extra money for next week or something my mind frame of thinking is oh we can do it we have an extra 20 or 30 dollars....why do i think like that??why can't i just keep the mind frame oh we don't have any money and i better save it since we are broke...i mean technically we are broke and i should just save that extra little bit...some people would pay it to extra debt but for myself i need to save it...
so now i am having a little competition with myself to see how long i can keep that 25.00 in my wallet...

Just another day in the rat race

okay so today i'm feeling kind of down in the dumps...me and hubby are fighting over money which i don't know why. i mean if we don't have it we don't have it....so other than that i'm just here at work. i've haven't been doing too much with the debt but i've been just concentrating on the kids. I guess i'm just getting a little depressed that i know when i just enjoy the kids it makes me happy.
I'm looking at my check from last week and even though i did some overtime it didn't' really make a difference since we got paid a company holiday for the 4th of july. So my overtime isn't really overtime just straight pay. This week will pretty much be the same. Since our offices were closed Monday we also had to use time so any overtime is just straight. I know i shouldn't complain i guess something is better than nothing.
well on the other note we just got a review letter from the Attorney General's Office for my stepdaughter. They said it's been 3 years since the last review and both my husband and my stepdaughters mom can decide if they want a review. ARE YOU KIDDING OF COURSE WE WANT A REIVEW....now things are so funny...According to the child support rules you can ask for a review before those three years if you have a signifigant change in income or something substantial. Well like i have said before we obviously had a big change in my husband's income and we asked for a review and they said no we had to wait for our three years and of course the witch called child support and said it hasn't been three years and she doesn't want a review. OF COURSE SHE WOULD SAY THAT SHE KNOWS THAT HE ISN'T MAKING WHAT HE USED TO. many times we (i keep saying we but i guess it's really him) tried to call her and tell her that they need to have an adjustment doen with the child support office and she just kept saying no. She know she would end up losing money. We can't afford to pay her what we were paying her before and now that we have my son she know that her percent is going to drop down even more. Before my daughter and son were born she would get the full 20% but now that he has two other kids he is responsible for i think it drops down to like 15% of his income. Well anyways i was checking our messages the other day and i guess she got her letter that we want a review cuz she keeps calling saying that she wants to talk to him about the child support. and she keeps constantly calling. i guess since she knows she will be getting less. ARE YOU KIDIDNG ME...did you care or ask for some type of moderation when you knew he wasn't working...DID SHE CARE AT ALL??? no, don't get me wrong i know we are responsible for my stepdaughter but HELLO.....so screw her....i don't know i guess i'm just in a pissy mood lately....i hope everyone else is doing better....
does anyone else have this type of drama?

i guess that's the ticket

okay so like i said last post, me and my husband have been doing overtime and man i guess that's the ticket. It made about a $300.00 dollar difference. If we can do that at least 3 weeks of the month that would be an extra $900.00. WOULDN'T THAT BE FANTASTIC.....

uugghhh

okay so today i checked online and i should be getting my stimulus within the next couple of weeks...alot of good it does me since it's basically already spent. I will save 500.00 as an emergency cash amount and than the rest needs to go in the bank for a credit card agreement i had settled on. so now it's all gone...just like a puff of smoke....At least i will have that emergency fund...
other than that myself and husband having been putting in alot of overtime...i guess we will see this week how much of a difference it made and if it's worth it...right now our checking account is negative $5.00....i hope everyone else is doing great out there....

Do you really think people can live without credit??

okay so we all know i have gotten myself in a heap of trouble with credit cards and i don't use them anymore but how many of ya'll really believe we can live our lives without credit...i mean eventually once i get my cars and debt paid off i want to have my dream house...that will be my only debt and i would hope to pay it off asap....but wouldn't i need some type of credit again to buy a house or is my house right now enough for them to base it off of??
what do you think? Can we live without our credit history and fico scores?

yup Cash Crate

Okay so today I was working on my Cash Crate account and so far I’ve only been able to do $5.40. I don’t know how so many other people are making $50.00 dollars or so…I do the surveys but many times it tells me that I don’t qualify. I will just keep plugging away and hoping that I can make extra money.
I am sure that many of you know how it is when every penny counts…..
You are right I am going to try to get you to go to Cash Crate through my account but what does it hurt? If you are planning to check them out anyways so you can make a few extra bucks just click on my link and it will take you straight there. Maybe you can make that $50 or $80 bucks that everybody seems to be making and let me know how to do it….than you can get people to go to their link off of your account and you can start making more money….I would love to see numbers of how much money people really make with their surveys…I wonder who is the top money taker??
So here you go: http://cashcrate.com/632514

Finally Friday

goodness gracious it's finally Friday...well i already pulled the half i needed for our mortgage payment next week so that means we are left with $86.00 till next Wednesday...sounds pretty good right?? WRONG....we have a pending gas charge coming through of $60 dollars which means we will be left with $16.00. Than i still need to put gas and by pampers since i never made it to the store the other day to buy them...so now i am down to $0.00....that is if i put like $10.00 of gas...which now a days will get me no where ...we have food at the house so i will be okay with that. we will be living frugal and not going to by extra drinks since we are out...i will make all the those tea bags that i have in the pantry and we will just make do with what we have.....the only thing i will run into is next week when it's time to go back to work and my husband needs more gas money....
okay so when looking at my numbers people keep telling me i need to sell the car....i have no problem with that but i am stuck and maybe someone out there can help me....If i am upside down on the car about $7,000.00 how do i go about selling it?? my credit is so shot that no one will approve me for that $7,000.00 as a signature loan so how can i sell a car that i can't get a tittle for??? please someone help me...especially all you Dave Ramsey fans...i know he says it's easier to owe 7,000.00 than 24,000.00 but no one will approve me for that money and i don't have a way of saving 7,000.00 dollars fast to get the tittle ....how do i get out from being upside down??
as far as my school loans i have sent in to see if i can have a financial hardship forbearance....let's keep our fingers crossed...
my husband stayed for overtime yesterday an extra five hours and i figure if i can stay at least an hour everyday extra OT than i can make an extra 400.00 or so a month...i wish i could stay longer but than i come into the problem of the sitters closing...so i will stay as long as i can until i have to go pick my little princess and prince.....
well this week has been an extremely hard week and i want to thank everyone who helped me through the shock of realizing what my numbers really were...i hope everyone has a wonderful weekend....

Looking for ways to cheer myself up

okay so today i had to think of ways to cheer myself up....as you saw before my numbers not including the mortgage that i owe is $123,636.47.
After all the other bloggers that i read i haven't seen this type of number in their blogs...AND LET ME TELL YOU IT'S NOT SOMETHING I'M PROUD OF....
well anyways i was referring to my spreadsheet of bills and looking at where i used to be...yes if you can believe it i used to have even more debt...i guess i didn't feel it at that time since my husband had a better paying job and we had credit cards i didn't realize the numbers....
when you have credit cards it's easy to go through life without really knowing how in debt you are...you just charge, shop, eat and be merry...until the bills come in.....
well any who....my grand total back on January 19th 2007 was $142,109.96. If you can believe it and now it's hard for me to even believe but that means i have (well my husband too but he doesn't really know much about the bills...just now that we don't have enough money) paid off a grand total amount of $18,473.49 in 17 months.............WOW CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT.....this makes me more determined to just keep chipping away at it....I know I can do it...

a new day

so yesterday was pretty devestating for me...today i'm trying to do better and just take one day at a time...this morning i made breakfast at the house, brought my soda, pulled out the meat for dinner and so no money spent so far, however i do have to stop and buy diapers after work. I'm gonna look in my purse and see if i have any gift cards left.

i want to cry...

okay so today i finally did all the numbers...and not including the house but including every other bill we owe including the cars, school loans and medical bills the grand total of debt we owe is...
$123637.25
SO NOW WHAT DO I DO??? DO WE FILE BANKRUPTCY?? we are barely making enough money to pay our bills....we only have enough money for our house, cars and utilities...there is no money to spare after that.....
my car $ 22968.03
husband's truck 19733.54
signature loan $5761.23
MasterCard 5100.84
visa 6749.94
MasterCard 4000
back child support for hubby 1897.78
hubby's school sallie mae 6371.30
my school sallie mae 50876.75
medical bill 177.84
i want to cry.......

maybe i really have a problem

okay so today i had the day off scheduled for from work. I always take a vacation day on days after Mother's Day and Father's Day since we always are so exhausted from all the family being at our house...well so today i am home and no money...but than i remembered "ah ha"....when my son had his first birthday i had to return some of his clothes that he got as presents since they were too small...at that time i did not do an even exchange since i didn't have time to shop so i just asked for...you guess it...A WONDERFUL STORE CREDIT/GIFT CARD...so I'm here at home thinking i want to buy something...so i loaded up the kids and went to children's place...there i bought my kids some cute little clothes and my daughter some more flip flops (like she doesn't have twenty pair already)..

so this is when it occurred to me....maybe i do have a shopping problem...why couldn't i just stay home and spend nothing???

it's friday

so it's Friday and this weekend is father's day....YIKES.....well this weekend i want to work on my spreadsheet from the end of last year to see how far I have come. Of course before my husband lost his job I had planned to be debt free by the time I was 30. This is obviously not going to happen so I need some type of motivation to at least show me how far I have gotten. I will hopefully be posting my concrete numbers pretty soon.

it's true...

well I got referred to a website from a lady where you can actually pay to do surveys and they really do pay you. It's not much but hey when your crunching numbers like me every little bit helps. I just started yesterday and I already started making a few bucks. Try it...
http://www.cashcrate.com/632514

If you have any questions let me know...

PAY DAY

today is payday...it's time to see how broke i am for this week. I was able to log onto the "ivillage debt support group". Those ladies were wonderful. They were able to give a debt snowball excel worksheet that works fabulous.

Murphy stopped in for a quick vist but i took care of him

So remember the other day I went to Walmart for some necessities and pulled out the gift card. Well last night it was time to do that again. My one year son was sick so I had to stop at the store and get some pedialyte and Tylenol. Since I was trying not to spend any money till the the mortgage went through I was trying to think how I could pay for this stuff as cheaply as possible. Of course these were necessities as any mother would know your kids come first. Than I remembered I had a gift card from babies "r" us. So i stopped by got what i needed and only had to pay $3.63 difference. I was very proud. I am really starting to love this living frugal. I checked this morning and my mortgage went through so I now have $15.00 left until Thursday. Now that I can handle.
Now on the other hand I tried to work out some type of agreement with my visa card but they said since they already helped me in November I would have to wait until November again to be eligible for a program. With this same company for my husband we were able to pay $55.00 dollars a month for his card and they would not raise our interest rate or charge us any late fees. I know it will take me forever but at least it's something. My goal is to buy my dream house or at least the house I want to retire in after we get rid of all of our debt. I am waiting till we pay off both my car and husband's truck and of course all of our credit card debt. Now of course this could be a dream since now mine and my husbands credit scores are shot. I however never have been late on my house so at least that should show good.
So I've been checking on the IRS website and i still haven't seen my stimulus. I was one of those who spent the money before i got it or so i thought i did. I thought i was going to get the direct deposit check until they realized their was a glitch. So now I am paper based and I won't be getting my check until the middle of July. I'm hoping with my stimulus to either buy the kids one of those big water slides or buy them one of those little pools. This will serve as two purposes since my daughters birthday is in August we can use either one of these for her party also. I know it's a good investment. Well today I guess for lunch I will be eating soup for a $1.00 here at work. ONCE AGAIN LIVING FRUGAL....

Well i'ts Monday and I made it through the weekend. Luckily I was able to eat at my parents house on Friday night with the kids since hubby had to work late. Saturday we didn't do much but towards the evening we took the kids to the park so they could let out their energy. Than we had some change so we took the kids to Wendy's to get their .99cents frosties. That is what I love about kids is that they have such simple pleasures. Sunday not much happened either. We just stayed home and than went outside while my husband washed his truck. I had to go to walmart for some pantyhose for work. YES I SAID PANTYHOSE...I KNOW WHAT COMPANY STILL MAKES YOU WEAR PANTYHOSE???....they are so expensive and are only good for like one use maybe two if you are extremely careful not to snag them. Luckily I had a gift card from walmart from Christmas time so I was able to get the pantyhose and some baby wipes for my little one. In a way it is kind of cool living frugal to go to walmart and buy about 10 different items and not have to pay a cent. I just pulled out my gift card. I made sure to take my calculator to make sure I didn't go over my gift card amount. I remember back in the day instead of pulling out gift cards I would just look in my wallet and decide what plastic to pull out. NOW LOOK WHAT KIND OF SITUATION IT GOT ME IN..... I went online this morning to schedule some of my bills for this week and when I went to pay my school loan it said it wasn't due till July. It started to make me wonder if my parents didn't pay a month for me....Unfortunately my dad is a co-signer on one of my students loans. At that time I wasn't worried because my bills were always on time since I was basically living off of credit cards I didn't worry about having enough money after bills to last me for the week. I JUST PULLED OUT THE PLASTIC....I know a while back I was behind on my student loans and since they started calling my dad I did whatever I could to bring it current so it wouldn't affect his credit. I've tried to consolidate my loans so that my dad could be off my loan but unfortunately my credit is already shot so they won't consolidate without a cosigner. ...all right I guess I better get back to work....

I still can't catch up

so yesterday..well actually two weeks ago i was supposed to make the mortgage payment. me and hubby get paid every week so i have to break down all of our bills weekly. well every week there is not enough money so i have to push some things to the next week. even though we are about $50.00 dollars short for our mortgage payment considering what we have in the bank i'm just thinking of different ways to make a quick fifty bucks. On top of that I still have to put gas in my car. so in other wards i'm probably negative about 80.00 dollars...goodness gracious...at least we have food for the weekend...i guess we will just take the kids to the park or something free....

can't wait till i'm done with diapers

So i'm heading to groceries straight after work. I'm gonna spend another $20.00 on diapers. I sure can't wait till i'm done with diapers for good.

Just got paid and already broke

So today is friday and i just got paid on thursday and my husband just got paid today. I tried to do a budget yesterday for our week so that we could do like Dave Ramsey says and do a "written budget". I swear I love that man's ambition. Any who....IT DIDN'T WORK. I had barely gotten done with all the bills i had to pay for the week and of course i was already broke. At least we won't be stuck at home this weekend. My sister has her surprise graduation party on Saturday and i luckily one some free tickets to the zoo on the radio (yup, while working..the best way). At least the kids will get to be outdoors and get to run around.
It just seems like every time we are about to get ahead something happens. I am making about $10,000.00 dollars more at this time than i was last year. I was thinking GREAT now we are on a role...we are really gonna get out of debt. Of course something had to happen and BAM my husband lost his good paying job. So now I'm making what he used to make a little less and he is making about the $10,000.00 less that i used to make. So we basically switched roles and took about two steps back. We don't spend more we spend less but still can't get out of debt. We are inching our way along but i want to do more than itch. I shouldn't' be so hard on myself as i have gotten rid of quite a few bills. I got rid of walmart $800.00, medical bills $1450.00, and a bank credit card $4,600.00 dollars. I wish i hadn't of bought my stupid car about two years ago and just kept the one i had. i would of been done paying for it now. of course that is when i thought i was invincible and money was no object. WHO WAS I KIDDING??

WHERE IS MY STIMULUS??

So here i am at work trying to decide how I am gonna juggle my bills around for this week. I originally thought i was gonna get my stimulus check back on the 16th and still nothing. I swear it seems like I can never get ahead...at least I am not using credit anymore and just trying to catch up..I have determination and know that one day i will get there.

Here's what i owe

So like i said i am a young 29 year old. Her is the total list of what me and my husband owe. Why were we so dumb??
House 107,000.00
Cars 44,000.00
Credit Cards 16,000.00
Signature Loan 7,000.00
School Loans 60,540.00
I've tried the different ways to get out debt and I was able to tackle a few medical bills and 3 credit cards. Yes if you can believe it was worse. We live paycheck to paycheck. I get so tired of watching every penny. I see my co-workers going out to eat and shopping and I want to be there again. Now of course I see half of them putting themselves more and more in debt. I hope i can someday be successful with my debt story like so many others. Its so stressful on our marriage. I don't know how my husband can complain and b*tch about money yet he is having his friends over for BBQ and beer during the basketball playoffs. I have completely changed my ways. I used to spend $3.00 in the morning for breakfast and like $7.00 for lunch. Now I'm feeling bad if I spend $4.00 a day. I wish i could see into the future to see if I make it out of this mess.

so it's friday night and here i am just sitting at home. I had to go to groceries for some milk and vegetables. IT REALLY SUCKS having to watch every penny i spend. Do you know how it feels?

Why me??

It seems no matter how hard I try I just can't get out of debt. I just recently received a letter in the mail that my car was getting ready to be picked up. I had to swallow my pride and ask my mom to borrow $1300.00 dollars...YIKES!! I'm almost 30 years old. I shouldn't' be doing this anymore. Right when me and my husband were going to start attacking debt he got let go from his job. WHY ME?? why did i have to be so stupid when i was young. Right before i closed the walmart card i maxed it with everything that would be needed. This was 2 years ago and now where is that stuff?? in the garage...somebody help me. If i only had some type of magical wand where i could have people donate .50cents...little by little it would help...DON'T YOU LOVE FAIRY TALES!!!