I am on Disability. That provides me $789.25 a month.
My portion of the rent is $475
Phone, internet, Hulu is $75
Utilities: around $20
Over the last few years, my boyfriend (now ex) was struggling to keep up with his part of the rent and bills. He paid more rent that I, having the small bedroom as his office. When money was tight, I covered $150 additionally towards his rent, which meant I was living on credit cards those months. At least 12 months in a year and a half span, I covered him. I also blew out my FoodStamps feeding us, and fed us on my credit cards for most of our time together. As a result, I'm now around $5,000 in debt.
He said he'd help pay off my credit cards, but paid into them for only three months after we broke up. One of those months he paid late (he insisted it wouldn't matter as long as it was paid no more than 30 days late), and as a result, my credit line was reduced by $4000, and my credit rating was reduced by 80 points in one month.
My ratio of available credit is now crappy enough that I can't get a consolidation loan. Being low income, my cards all have crap APRs of 25-27%.
Just paying my minimums each month is costing me $220, which is literally all I have left after essentials. I hadn't gotten any money from the ex for six months. He went on vacation last month, knowing he might be evicted from his place a month and a half later. I've had to abandon any hope of him giving me any further money.
My only long term goal, as a person on Disability, has been to foster good credit and low debt so that I could buy property someday and get unearned income through charging rent. Investments like that are the only means of income that doesn't put my benefits at risk. The debt he's left me in has really screwed me and my long term survival.
Now that I am on my own again, I'm no longer in the red every month. I can cover my shit, tight as my budget is. But I'm hardly keeping afloat trying to keep my credit in decent standing. If I keep paying at this rate, it will take me 11 years to pay it off, and I'll end up paying something like $3,700 in additional interest.
I've looked into debt management plans, but those would close out my cards, and the best they could offer was a reduced interest rate of around 12%. It would reduce my monthly minimum to $120 a month, and would only take me 5 years to pay off, but..... that erases all the hard work I've put towards balancing my finances and trying to get good credit.
I don't have any bad marks on my credit report, aside the high ratio of use and less than six years of credit history. Tossing that all aside and having to wait five years to start from scratch again is mind bogglingly depressing.
I've got a friend who is telling me to sue him.
I'm wondering if there are any other paths I could try that I haven't get investigated.
Submitted August 27, 2019 at 06:43PM by Foxcited https://ift.tt/2Zs6t9O
