@Anonymous wrote:
I'm not sure if this is the right place for this or if it even belongs here at all. I'm just desperate. Me and my husband have been trying to play catch up for what seems like years. I was a stay at home mom and we lived off of one sigle income. It was not enough. We were constantly trying to stay afloat. I got a full time job a few months ago and now we make more than enough to make ends meet. The problem is we have been so behind since the month before i got my job. We are constantly negative in our checking account, trying to dig out of the hole. Even though we make enough, we are drowning in fees every month b/c of late payments and bounced checks. Christmas was the breaker. It set us back in a huge way. We are good with our money. We dont blow money. We just cant get ahead b/c we have constantly been in the hole since we've had enough income to cover it all. Our checking is now 2,000.00 negative. We want to be ahead so bad!!!! Its so hard to handle! We cant get a personal loan b/c our credit is not the best. We are trying to get back on track so we can rebuild our credit and start living a normal financial life!
Does anyone have any tips on how we can get ahead? We have no savings. When our paychecks go in and cover the negative, more bills are due, so we go negative again. Its a vicious cycle. We have no credit cards and no car payments. We do have some medical debt but that is it.
WE NEED A BREAK!! Any help would be appreciated!
Hi, welcome to the forums!
You're not really asking a credit question. It's more of a personal finance question (which is fine.)
I'd say that the first thing to do is to completely change your habits. You mention Christmas as having thrown you off track. In my experience, family members (including children) understand about tight money and tough times, and they can accept and even enjoy a no-gift Christmas, one where you make presents like cookies and give "gift certificates" for such things as doing the dishes every night for a week without a whimper or setting up a weekly family movie night, complete with popcorn. Don't let the current culture of spend, spend, spend wreck your lives.
I'm sure that you don't "blow money", as you wrote, but you say that now that you have a paycheck, you have "more than enough to make ends meet," and yet, this isn't happening. This means that you're not blowing money, you're leaking it. Plus you're still fighting back from the overdrafts, etc from before you got a job outside the home. Who do you bank with? Have you thought about going into the local branch and asking them to back off long enough to let you catch up? Some banks are great at working with people in tough times (USAA comes to mind), while others gleefully squeeze every last dollar out of you that they can. And in the meantime, look at dropping cable, cell phones, whatever, on a temporary basis if you can. Think in terms of 3 months or 6 months, and then you can resume. It's not forever. Who knows, you might find that you don't really miss it that much.
Since you're having recurring problems with OD's and returned check fees, I'd suggest going cash only, meaning NO checks and NO debit card use, for an entire month, or however long it takes to break the cycle of returned checks and drafts. Whatever it is that is incurring these charges that are wiping you out, stop using it.
Anyway, hope that doesn't sound too judgmental. It's hard to tell from your post exactly what is happening. But you have the advantage of not really having debt to deal with, other than the medical debt, so with determination, this should be reversible. You just have to look awfully hard at things that you think must be bought or paid for, and consider taking them off the list for a while. Good luck!
* Credit is a wonderful servant, but a terrible master. * Who's the boss --you or your credit?
FICO's: EQ 781 - TU 793 - EX 779 (from PSECU) - Done credit hunting; having fun with credit gardening. - EQ 590 on 5/14/2007
