Queercents

“Action expresses priorities.” – Mahatma Ghandi

Since my wife’s contract unexpectedly ended last March, I feel like we’ve been doing a pretty good job of keeping up with all our bills.  Although we certainly have made some cutbacks, and I’ve taken on extra work, it hasn’t been completely easy.  It’s been difficult and stressful, but somehow we’ve managed to muddle through.

Recently, we got some incredibly good news.  My wife landed a part-time contract as a paralegal.  This is a wonderful development not only because we need the money, but because it supports our goal of diversifying our income streams.

Of course with every silver lining, there is an ugly cloud.  During the past month, we’ve had several emergencies come up, and my wife’s new gig won’t bring in any significant income until August.  As a result, we are now facing a small financial crisis brought on by the following unexpected expenses:
Read the rest of this entry »

“Today, there are three kinds of people:  the haves, the have-nots, and the have-not-paid-for-what-they-haves.” – Earl Wilson

In a world where credit card issuers can suddenly give you unfavorable terms, or even cancel your card outright, I’ve long since recognized the wisdom in keeping my credit cards paid off every month.  I feel pretty dumb when I’ve had to pay interest charges, late penalties or over-limit fees, because I know that I haven’t received any added value, and I’ve increased the cost of goods and services purchased.

Although paying the cards off every month is the goal around our house, I’ve also realized that adhering to that goal is tougher than it seems.  Sliding a piece of plastic through a slot is a much more convenient way of paying than writing a check or carrying around a wad of cash.  Unfortunately, it’s also much more insidious.  It’s easy to get to the end of the month not realizing how much my wife and I have spent.

Read the rest of this entry »

“Life takes on meaning when you become motivated, set goals and charge after them in an unstoppable manner.” – Les Brown

When my wife’s contract suddenly ended at the end of March, we made a number of sudden and dramatic cuts to our budget.  We trimmed our existing bills, cut unneeded services, and stopped eating out.  We started taking on extra work that normally we’d refuse, including jobs that paid substantially less than what we’d usually accept.

Some things I barely miss.  With all the extra work I’ve taken on, I don’t have time to miss my cancelled piano and guitar lessons.  We’ve been without cable and satellite television for two years now, and I’ve long since stopped caring about the network programs that I previously found so addicting.  The extra work leaves me with little time to watch rented movies, so the cuts we made to our movie rental and entertainment budget have mostly gone unnoticed.

What I do miss is eating out, especially when I have been working so many extra hours.  Back in the old days, when my wife and I found ourselves super-busy at work, we’d pick up the phone, order a pizza, or run out for a nice meal in a restaurant.  We’d go out, get a little time to ourselves, and then go home and collapse into bed. Read the rest of this entry »

“Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.” – James Arthur Baldwin

Last month, the Washington Post published an article entitled “Poor? Pay Up.” The story described how being poor often results in the lack of basic conveniences such as a car or a checking account, and how the lack of those conveniences leads to extra fees and high prices.

When it comes to food shopping, not having a car means that one is much more likely to use the corner store, where the costs are much higher.

You don’t have a car to get to a supermarket, much less to Costco or Trader Joe’s, where the middle class goes to save money. You don’t have three hours to take the bus. So you buy groceries at the corner store, where a gallon of milk costs an extra dollar.

Groceries aren’t the only place where the poor pay more.  A lack of a checking account results in paying exorbitant fees at check cashing places.

Read the rest of this entry »

“The propensity to truck, barter and exchange one thing for another is common to all men, and to be found in no other race of animals.”
– Adam Smith

Despite some experts claiming that our current recession is starting to ease, it’s pretty clear that, at least in my community, the economic times are still very hard.  The other day, I saw an article in my local newspaper that announced our unemployment rate was well into double-digits.  Although the paper claimed that the unemployment numbers were dropping, there was supposition that the decline was not because people were finding work, but because they’d given up trying to find a job or had exhausted their unemployment benefits.

Although my wife and I are by no means unemployed, we are certainly feeling the sting of the local recession.  When I sat down to do my end-of-the-month bookkeeping, I realized that our net income is down almost 33% from the same period last year.  Although we are certainly trying to diversify our income sources, and I’m working incredible amounts of overtime to fill in some of the gap, we are dealing with the ugly problem of having far less income than we’d like.

In the wake of less money coming in, it seems like more than our usual share of automotive repairs are popping up.  One of our cars badly needs suspension work, and drives like an inflatable bounce house.  Another earned a $50 parking ticket from our money-starved local police department because the completely worn clutch finally gave out and the car couldn’t be moved within the 72-hour parking limit.

Read the rest of this entry »

“Concentrate your energies, your thoughts and your capital. The wise man puts all his eggs in one basket and watches the basket.” – Andrew Carnegie

It’s been almost two months since my wife’s contract suddenly ended, and we made dramatic cuts to our budget.  We’ve found that the slow economy is making it harder to find larger, long-term contracts, so we’ve compensated by taking on smaller, lower-paying projects that we would have normally turned down.  I’ve been working a lot of overtime, trying to turn these small jobs around quickly to generate more income.

Last week, I worked 65 client-billable hours.  The week before, I worked 60.  Even though I’ve been putting in extra time and we’ve made every effort to shave our expenses, our business’ second quarter net income is down 30% from the same period last year.  Ouch.

My wife and I have spent quite a bit of time discussing our situation, and we’ve realized that we’ve made yet another mistake with our financial lives.  For the past ten years we’ve both worked in the same industry, for the past eight, we’ve both worked for the same business, and for the past three, we’ve both worked for the same client.  Although this situation has worked extremely well when times were good, it’s been a real detriment as times have gotten harder. Read the rest of this entry »

“To be able to move on, one has to learn to forgive not only the person (or people) who have done one wrong but also oneself.” – Eugenia Tripputi

The most difficult aspect of losing my house to foreclosure and filing bankruptcy has been the overwhelming sense of failure that has come from those experiences.  Even though I filed for bankruptcy nearly a dozen years ago, and I’ve recovered financially, the emotional damage of the experience is still with me.  When I make financial decisions, I mull them over much more carefully than I did in the past.  If it looks like money is going to be tight, I react immediately.  My emotional reactions to money are very much colored by the fact that I realize it’s not that hard to fall into bankruptcy, and if I’m not very careful, it could happen again.

Bankruptcy is also a very isolating experience.  People tend not to talk about money, especially when it comes to sharing financial difficulties.  It’s easy to share good news about a raise, a promotion, or the new car; it’s a lot harder to admit that your spouse is out of work and you are having trouble paying your bills.

At the time I filed bankruptcy, I knew only one other person who had filed.  He was a casual acquaintance I’d met in college, and I regarded him as being irresponsible, lazy, and somewhat dishonest.  He’d run up debts that he knew he could not afford to pay, knowing full well he’d file for bankruptcy at some point in the future.  Since I had no one in my peer group with whom I could compare myself, I felt like I had an invisible “L,” for loser, tattooed on my forehead.

Read the rest of this entry »

“And homeless near a thousand homes I stood, and near a thousand tables pined and wanted food.” – William Wordsworth

Two weeks ago I wrote about how to avoid homelessness in the event you’ve been hit by a financial disaster.  For most of us, money problems don’t last forever, and eventually circumstances change for the better.  Unfortunately, bad times often translate into negative information on your credit history.  Although it’s possible to rebuild your credit, it can take longer than you’d like.

As I was in the middle of filing bankruptcy and foreclosure, I spent a great deal of time unsuccessfully trying to find a place to live.  Ultimately, I ended up giving up on finding a house or an apartment, and I lived in an RV for almost four years.  When my wife and I grew tired of trailer life, we found that the triple whammy of self-employment, bad credit and pets made the rental market almost impenetrable.  Fortunately, we found ourselves in the beginning of the housing boom, and a mortgage broker was able to get us into a house.

So what do you do if you have a job and you have money saved up for a deposit, but your credit history is bad?  What do you do when you are tired of couch surfing, but you know that potential landlords will give you the thumbs-down once they pull your credit report?

Read the rest of this entry »

“It is only the poor who pay cash, and that not from virtue, but because they are refused credit.” – Anatole France

After my bankruptcy was discharged in January of 1998, I had one very important question on my mind: How do I rebuild my credit?  It was very important to me to rebuild my credit rating and get back to normal life, whatever that looked like.  Having good credit is important in many aspects of life, so I wanted to make things better as quickly as possible.

In my own experiences with bankruptcy, I’ve learned that there are actually two schools of thought for post-bankruptcy recovery:

1. Avoid credit like the plague – once you’ve developed a taste for credit, it’s hard to avoid being sucked in again, and you won’t be able to file bankruptcy for another seven years.
2. Establish credit immediately – rebuild your credit rating as quickly as possible.

Although I certainly saw the wisdom in the former, I knew that for many of the goals I had in mind, re-establishing credit was going to be important.  I traveled, which meant I needed a credit card.  I also wanted, at some point, to return to home ownership, which would require a mortgage.

Read the rest of this entry »

“We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.” – Mother Theresa

Last Thursday afternoon, my new neighbor knocked on my door, visibly upset.  He’s an out-of-work mechanic who moved across state lines to accept a job, only to find the offer rescinded when he arrived, due to the recession.  His wife is ill; they no longer have medical insurance, and are out of money.  I’d spoken to him several weeks before about replacing the clutch on our aging station wagon, and he wanted to know if there was any way he could start on the job to earn some money to buy medicine for his wife.

Although the bad economy has hurt us and my wife no longer has a steady contract, my neighbor’s request for help really hit me hard.  I’ve been where he is now, and it’s a scary, upsetting place to be.  The only reason he and his wife are not homeless, he told me, is because he is staying with relatives.

My wife and I quickly discussed the situation, and decided to re-prioritize our spending this month.  We ordered the replacement clutch kit, moved our car into the neighbor’s garage, and gave him a small advance on his labor charge so he could purchase his wife’s medication.

With the down economy, the numbers of homeless are swelling as the middle class teeters on the brink.  This reminds me of my own brush with near homelessness, and the nearly four years I spent living in a small travel trailer.

Read the rest of this entry »