Seeking God Knows What

Boo hiss, my keyboard is having some issues as in random letters and symbols appearing or suddenly typing in all capitals and ye olde iMac’s cd/dvd drive is having some real issues.  Darn thing needs to last for just a few more months.  We have discussed using a portion of our income tax return to replace my computer.  In the last 3 years we have gotten a fairly healthy check back with T’s mileage, child tax credits, and our adoption credit.  The last 2 years, we’ve used it to pay property taxes.  This year, our goal is to finish off what we need to for our “$1000 emergency fund”, replace my computer and pay the rest to our debt.

Anyway, I’ve been reading Jean Chatzky’s The Ten Commandments of Financial Happiness:Feel Richer with What You’ve Got in the hopes of gaining some additional perspective and motivation with our finances.  Something I found interesting was, based on a research survey, people who pay their bills as they come in have a greater sense of happiness and feeling of financial control.  I am totally a person who puts them away until they are due or even after they are due, then I sit down once or twice a month and pay them all, feeling completely overwhelmed at the amount of money going out the door.  I’m always so paranoid about not having enough money, so I wait.  But I end up spending some of the money I was supposed to save for bills on some “essential” and then I don’t have enough to pay them all.

I’ve always liked watching Jean Chatzky do the money segments on the Today Show and I do think she has a lot good financial advice.  She just seems very down to earth and realistic.  I skimmed her Pay it Down: From Debt to Wealth on $10 a day while we were on vacation, though right now finding even $10 a day seems nearly impossible.   In fact, I’m trying to figure out how to find $10-15 every couple of weeks to pay a babysitter so we can participate in our small group from church, something I’m feeling a bit disgruntled about because we have really enjoyed the times we got together this summer bringing Widget to play with their kids (she’s the oldest of the 6 kids) but now most of them apparently feel like they wouldn’t be able to do a bible study if their kids are there.  We want to be a part of this group, sigh, but none of our family will commit to watching Widget on a regular basis, except the day my MIL watches her while I work (and even then I wonder if she really wants to do it or if she feels obligated now that she has been doing it for the last 2 1/2 years).  I don’t know any kids of babysitting age to ask, bleh.  It kind of gives me a headache to think about it.

Dear former Mortgage Company,

Thank you for your kind letter regarding the serious personal matter we have with you. As much as I would like to be able to send you a check for the full amount due as per your request, apparently you do not realize that we do not have this money. We are not keeping a secret stash from you. I promise. In fact, if you know where this money might be hiding, would you kindly let me know as it would come in handy during our current financial situation.

If you really would like this money, I shall direct you to contact the mortgage broker and his f***ing appraiser who scammed us in order to sell us a mortgage, which you then bought. In a way, I feel you brought this situation upon yourself by not properly reviewing the documents and recognizing the predatory lending practices that were prevalent in the origination of this mortgage.

Thank you for your time,
Your former mortgagees

******************************

Yes, today we received a letter asking us to please remit the full amount due on the difference between what we were able to sell our home for and what we owed. AS IF.

Do they NOT get it? If we had the money available, we would not have needed a short sale. Duh.

I swear companies are out to screw the consumer over. Add this to the $90 charge I got on our first phone bill with the new phone company (slogan: Your world. Delivered.) Their explanation: we had to send a technician to make sure a dial tone was available through the telephone box. I asked why I was not notified prior to installation. Response: We didn’t know if we would have to send a tech. Had I known this, I would not have made the change. I left a message for the woman’s manager, explaining that I would not be paying this charge as I was never even notified that this was a possibility. And the gas company crap. And yet another HOSPITAL bill from my *retreat* nearly a year ago.

I think I’m going to take another retreat and pretend that there are no bills or debt in my life. Maybe I’ll live in my mother’s world since she informed me she decided “Money was not going have a hold over her life.” Uh, yeah, Mom. Brilliant.

This is another rant about the poor state of our finances. If you do not want to read about how badly we have managed our money, you might as well skip this post….

***************************************

I hate that banks can process checks in the middle of the night when I can’t physically enter the bank and deposit money.

Case in point, apparently our rent check went through faster than usual and before they had processed T’s paycheck, (which comes by MAIL- an incredible anomaly considering the fact they are an IT business). Since we had no where near enough money in there, they bounced it and charged me $30 according to my web banking records. Now I’m praying that the bank will just reprocess the check on Monday since the deposit is there and not send it back to our landlord’s bank. If they do that, I have another $75.00 in fees to pay to our landlord.

I do not have an extra $75.00. In fact, I don’t even have the extra $30 the bank charged me. I just sat down to do our bills/budget for the rest of the month and we are still short because of all these stupid extra things. We have no room for extra bills, like the bill that showed up for the deductible from the hospital for an urgent care visit we made earlier this spring after Widget got her 3 middle fingers pinched in a very, very heavy wooden door in a restaurant and that was only the radiology bill (where the radiologist asked if she had gotten her thumb pinched too because she “saw” something there, her thumb was fine).

This is on top of having to pay my entire bill due to our old gas company, when they failed to tell me that I had to pay the first payment within 4 days of setting up a payment plan for the giant final bill, otherwise they drop the plan and refer you to collections. I paid that first payment within a week. And then started getting calls from the collections people the next week asking when I was going to pay the rest of the bill. They called everyday, acting like they were someone I knew/wanted to talk to when they called, DESPITE the fact their number showed up as unavailable,

“Hello?”

“Is Erin there?”

” Speaking”

“Hi, Erin. How are you? Are you having a good day?”

“Not since you called.”

” This is so & so from old gas company collections people. I was wondering when you would be paying the rest of your bill. Tomorrow? Can I put down that you are paying the bill in full tomorrow?”

“No. Do you have a payment plan?”

“No, we do not. Bill must be paid in full. And we will call every day until it is paid.”

“Oh for pete’s sake, I’ll put a check in the mail Friday and THANK YOU for using my cell phone minutes up with your pestering.” (This was after they had called me every day for two weeks.)
They called me on Friday to verify that I was, in fact, putting the check in the mail that day.

I really hate to say it but I’m truly beginning to think that if we don’t file for bankruptcy, we may never get out of this mess. It is like a sinkhole and all the scrabbling we do to get up the sides ends up just burying us further. I know that if we can get out of this hole, we would be fine financially, but at the moment, it feels like it is pouring financial crises on us. I’m feeling very discouraged by the whole thing and very guilty for the mess we are in.

Plus it worries me about our future ability to adopt, if we have the black mark of bankruptcy on our credit.

The bank took our short sale request and approved it basically because the appraisal they did came back $25,000 less than the appraisal that was done last year, which makes me even more suspicious that the other one was jacked up- while values have gone down, they have not gone down that much.

And they gave us NO indication that we are liable for the difference. In fact, the woman at the bank said we should just proceed to close as we would with a “normal” sale except they take the lower amount as pay-off. I would assume that if we owed money, she would have said something.

Yes, this will be in writing. A letter was mailed to our realtor, which she said he should hopefully have today.

I am so relieved, even if I am not looking forward to returning to apartment life but once we get settled, I’m sure I will be fine. You should have seen me prattle on about my relief during my session with #5 today (then we got onto my mother/parents, not so much relief there but a very good discussion about what is MY responsibility in all of that crap and what is not!)

Thank God!

We got an offer on our house.

It is a bit of a low ball as in $11,900 less than listed and $17,000 less than we paid for it 3 years ago (A LOT less than we owe thanks to the bad, bad mortgage refi we did- I have a lot of words about that- none of them nice, some directed at me for letting us get taken in by a shoddy group). I don’t think values have dropped that much but maybe I’m wrong.

We decided, though, it is in the mortgage company’s hands- well, once we get the paperwork in tomorrow. Who knows what they’ll do.