@Anonymous wrote:
Hi, I was curious to see other peoples opinions regarding this and what I should do..
Back in June I had lost my job making about 55k a year. I was out of a job for 2 months until I find something that only pays about 33k a year. So I am short about 20k a year. My bills come out to be $2800 a month and if you do the math I can't afford my bills. I know an answer would be to find a better paying job, but I love what I do, better then what I did making 55k a year. Anyways, I am picking up a second job, but between life and my siginificant other, I have no time for her and I don't want to give up my relationship because I am trying to pay bills. I listed below what bills I have and am curious if anybody knows anything I can do to shorten them up or even reach out to credit card companies and tell them the situation I am in and see if they have a hardship. I don't want to take a dip on my credit score for this, but obviously I got myself into debt, now I need to find a way out and still be happy. Because I am unhappy with life because I am basically working to have nothing at all. My second job only pays about $512 extra and I don't want to work to have no money or work for negative money if that makes sense. Let me know some options...
Mortgage - $786
Car payment - I pay $269 out of the $539 a month (me and my gf are upside down on this car)
Truck payment - $324
Internet - $60
Gas - $25
Water/Trash - $70
Electric - $75
Car Insurance - $222
Phone - $60
CREDIT CARDS
Capital One - $90
Amex Open - $240
Amex - $144
Walmart - $196
NFM - $79
Barclays - $27
Credit Union - $28
Paypal - $38
Amazon - $25
The second job will unfortunately probably be a necessity for a while. You can still make time to spend with your GF . . it's all about priorities and making good use of your time.
Are these the balances on your credit cards or the minimum payments? I was comparing to the card info in your signature and trying to figure it out.
The good news is that your mortgage is your reasonable.
The bad is that you cannot be spending $600/month on vehicle payments on a salary of $33k/year. In addition to resolving your credit cards, you are going to need to throw enough at that underwater car loan to get it to the break even point and get rid of it. How much longer do you have on your truck? Is it underwater now? If you have any equity in it, can you sell it and throw the equity at other debts? Buy a cheap cash car and share it with your GF if need be. This can logistically be a pain, but most couples can figure this out. My niece and her boyfriend are driving about an extra 90 minutes/day right now so they can share one car and knock out his existing debt before he starts medical school and accrues new debt.
Your house. Reasonable mortgage as I mentioned which is great. Can you rent a room on airbnb or rent the house for a week here and there and go stay with friends/family? Or better yet, rent it entirely for a year or two and stay with family to get yourself caught up? Roommate cheaply with friends looking to get ahead also?
I totally get doing what you love even at a reduced salary . . but there are tradeoffs for everything and you're going to have to bust it out for a few years to get yourself in a position where you can comfortably live on that income. (And this is totally possible. I see people all the time that are better at saving and have more in the bank on your salary than those that make 2, 3 times as much.) But also realize that this lifestyle is going to include living frugally, driving old cars. It's all about what's important to you and priorities. I've recently decided that I want to retire in 10 years. (I'm 37 now.) I can make it happen but it's going to require a lifestyle of going against the grain, driving old cars (I'm actually driving less and taking public transportation a lot more . . saves $$ and preserves my car) and rejecting the consumerism that we're so overexposed to. Freedom to do what I want is more valuable to me.
