I make what I think of as good money, about 70k. I'm a single parent, with 2 kids, law school and credit card debt, car loan on an old car, rent, utilities, fucking food...food is the most expensive wth decision right now in my daily life. I work so much I'm too tired to cook most days and I buy fast food and drivethru coffee just about every day. Health insurance, life insurance, doctor copays, hospital costs that aren't included in my insurance, prescription copays and urgent care fees, eats up my money constantly. Then, under stress, I tend to give the homeless cash whenever I carry it. I get a lot out of it emotionally, especially because I'm not tracking its Proper Use haha. It's always a free and clear gift.
Meanwhile my credit card and school loan debt is enormous. Mostly, I use credit for emergency car repairs, food or school clothes for three or four months of the year and pay down interest and principal for the rest of the year.
Nine months ago I got rid of all but 1k worth of credit cards, and made arrangements to close and pay down the rest. I stuck to it for a while, but three or four payments on debts that would seem to result in nothing except less debt were hard fir me to pay. School debt is easy to forget, too, for now, via constant forbearance, but of course that adds capitalized interest to the principal and the total is over 200k. It's only real in that it is scary and weighty and frightening that becoming a lawyer was that expensive. Nonprofit loan forgiveness is technically the plan but I've made only about 20 monthly payments of, I think it is 150, before that would kick in. And I read a lot of people have trouble getting it approved.
Last month a credit card company served me, about $2300 of debt. At first it was fine, I was okay about it. Just answer, deny deny deny, they'll reach out with a payment plan, I'll stipulate and go back to paying it, monthly. Right?
Last year I left an apartment early because my neighbors cigarette and other smoke was unbearable . the didn't even bother suing me for the rest of the tenancy term rent. They sent it to collections out if state and posted it on my credit reports. I complained all around that I'ds never been taken to court and that cigarette smoke breaches the warranty of habitability, and I was paid up to the day I left the apartment spotlessly clean. No one listened. Not the credit reporting agencies or the collection company or the attorney general or my congressional rep. Whatever.
So, when I got sued, I was glad they at least were doing it legally. It's Discover. A company I actually have found fair in their dealings with me. But though I was glad, and although I care about my reputation, and ability to get a new car in a year, so my kid can have mine, I didn't send an answer. By the day I had the energy to write an answer and send it, to Discover and the Court, 35 or so days had already gone by. It's a default judgment now. It's $2300 plus court costs. But it's a great deal of money in my world, and I don't know what I'll do if they take a lot of it automatically, in bigger chunks than I can handle.
I don't know how to handle my financial life. I know having two kids with a worthless ex that won't work or contribute to the cost, and the law school adventure, were the really insane decisions. But I can't really negotiate even my little decisions very well.
My finances are too insane to talk this through to anyone I love or turn to regularly for advice or support. I just sound like a series of bad ideas in a row and I dread my loved ones worrying or worse, clinically supporting me with suggestions.
So here I am, posting to strangers.
Thanks Reddit, for listening.
Submitted March 26, 2019 at 01:01AM by redcement https://ift.tt/2YhqyjA
