H. E. L. P

Finally the check came in the mail today! Yeah. $4,500 to be exact. Rent can be paid…only officially 5 days late. I don’t think we have ever paid rent late in our lives. I have bills coming out of my ears. I hate checking the mail…who doesn’t want something from me? Comcast? Medical Bill? Student loan, take a number please.  Where do you start? Do you pay a little bit on each bill you have (We make good money, But we have way more bills), or do you pay of the small stuff first? Or maybe you pay off the big stuff or what you can and put the small stuff on the back burner? 

 Where I live they have a coupon magazine called “The Clipper”. I have always thrown it away. I have always wanted to cut coupons, but it truly does seem like an overwhelming job. Today when the clipper came in the mail, I actually looked at it. A couple of things I clipped out. Like one had a free dental exam for a child under 3. My son could use that for sure! The rest though were for eateries and bounce houses…which we won’t be going to.

I need to look at all the bills and get things in order. Even thinking about it I shudder. Usually it causes arguments with my husband and I, and tears, of course on my part, then the blame game takes place. We make a bunch of goals that we never follow through on. Then we make a budget that we never follow and never look at again.

Where should I start? I have absolutely no idea. Do I just start lugging through all the tons of mail covering the desk? Or make a budget first? Help…I am drowning in debt!

Overdrafts

Last week our joint checking account was -$562.00 (yes, negative), with our savings -$168.00. I literally scavenged in my house to find 4 dollars (all in change) so that we could put a smidgen of gas in the truck.

I work from home. My job is an online store and it does pretty well. Although we rely heavily on my husband's income, I floated us out last month financially...well sorta. The rent still has to be paid, and that is in my husband's hands. My husband owns his own land development company. He has certain land deals that are supposed to pay us at the beginning of each month, however, we have yet to receive payments  for the month of August. Which is how we pay our rent, vehicles and the big things.

Anyway, my husband wrote a check from one of his personal accounts ( that had very little money in it) and deposited it into our savings account (which had positive $1.48). He did this so he could pull out more instantly and put gas in the truck. We later found out that the check bounced, which was followed by a lovely overdraft charge of $33.00.

When I went to check the checking account, I was expecting it to be positive because I  transferred money from paypal to  my checking. It was still negative! I could not believe it. So, I finally figured out my online banking password and went online to see what the flip was going on with our checking account. I had $300.00 in over draft charges! FUDGE! Every time I went to the closest ATM machine by my house (which isn't my actual bank) they charged me, and of course because I didn't have money in my account, my bank slapped me another hot one with $33.00 each time. I had no idea. I was checking that account religiously praying that it would be positive, only to find out I was was making it more negative everytime I checked my balance.

Small lesson learned: Check my freakin balance at my actual bank and make sure I know my password for online banking so I can check it at home.

Are any of you battling debt? Have any of you overcome your debt? Leave a comment and let me know. Your comments are important to me. I am hoping to use them as some kind of guidance to slowly dig my family out of this mess.

My Debt List

Student Loan 1
Student Loan 2
Car Loan
Truck Loan

In Collections:

Phone bill
Dental bill
Medical bill 1
Medical bill 2
Medical bill 3