Saturday, January 18, 2014

Poverty Climb: Weekly Progress #4

Whew what a week. Somehow we made it and I am still here, nothing is shut off, and we have plenty of groceries.

I even have my $26 savings left. And it has another $50 on top of it!

So how exactly? I"m not really even sure. And as good as that sounds, I'm not sure whether to count this week's adventures as a step forward, or one back...

After we were -$150, I had 2 checks, totaling $139 from my mother to pay her gas bill with. I paid her gas bill, I just never cashed the checks. A family member of ours had also sent our oldest child a $30 check to buy herself a Christmas present.
 I'm not sure we did the right thing for the long run, we could have paid our balance back to zero (and in hindsight probably should have anyways) but we needed gas money and a few groceries for the week. So we took the checks (forgive me child!) and opened a new account at a local bank. We put $50 immediately into savings, and the rest in checking. We only used about $20 before payday. Payday came, and my husband had a good chunk of overtime on there. Hallelujah. Bills were paid, groceries bought, and a new Equestria Girls toy for the oldest to make up for cashing her check.

However, in the meantime, several more auto pay crap things came through (they wouldn't let us turn it off!), so the bank paid our phone & internet bill, which is good, but we are now:

$547 in the negative

Oh my goodness. Talking to the bank was absolutely an excercise in frustration and insanity. We paid them $50 up front, and said we would pay $25-$50 a week until it was paid off, and asked if they would reduce some of the fees so we could pay it down. They wouldn't turn off over-draft, they charged us 2 fees per charge, and also a daily negative balance fee. WTF! They wouldn't negotiate on any of the fees, wouldn't stop charging the daily negative balance fee, etc. 
In 60 days, they will close out the account, turn it in to collections, and put it on our credit. So we are going to be paying all that money in for the same final result as if we had paid nothing towards it at all, the only difference being the amount owed. This bothers me, but if we don't pay it, it will probably end up towards $1000, and if we keep paying, it will end up closer or just below $500. I'm one of those unfortunate souls that doesn't really understand how all this credit crap works, so I have no idea if one is worse than the other, or they are both equally bad.
Either way, We JUST started trying to take care of our credit and get it good, and this happens. Our only hope to not have 7 years of bad credit luck, is to pay it off with our tax return. If it even comes in time. Of course we have a thousand other things we need to spend that on, so we will have to sacrifice something to pay the bank. I'm absolutely blessed to have that money to use, I just wish it wouldn't be all gone to debt before we even cash it. Bleh.

But, whatever, I'm going to try to focus on the good things now. So without further adieu, the few ways our situation has improved this week:

*We got another air mattress with money from my husband's over-time. This is awesome, because those horrible mattresses, we stacked on one another and gave to my daughter, and got to put the futon back in the living room to have something to sit on! They are much more comfortable stacked, and she is light, so she's happy. Our air mattress was $60, and is very thick, so we're happy. We have a couch again, so we're all happy.

*All our bills are paid, even if by the negative bank account.

*I didn't have to go to the food pantry yet this month. I lucked out when I went to the grocery store, and they were just marking all the manger's specials and short dated food. I got lots of fresh stuff (blueberries, green beans, carrots, mushrooms), some bread, and a big package of chicken thighs, all for half price. Yesssssssssssss! And it wasn't old enough for any of the quality to suffer.

*We have $76 in savings! Hooray!

*We bought hangers. This probably seems silly to you, but we have no dressers, and tiny closets. Because my husband works I hang his clothes so they aren't wrinkly, but we haven't had enough hangers for me to hang mine. I've been storing mine in baskets, boxes, in piles by the bed, in piles on the bed, etc. So I'm really, really glad to finally have hangers. The expense for 30 hangers just wasn't one we could afford until now.

*Baby got a new car seat. She outgrew her previous one about 7 lbs. and 2 inches ago. She was ecstatic to face forward. I am ecstatically confident in her safety.

These steps feel so tiny, really, I just hope there are bigger ones soon.

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