WalletPop

Plastic is the devil. All of it. Whether it be plastic surgery or plastic credit cards, it is all evil. I've become so accustomed to using my debit card that I use it for literally everything. People tell me, "Just leave it at home," or "Don't use it," but that's hard. Especially since I have memorized the number.

I don't need to have my credit card on hand to order the new Ipod when I can just punch my number onto the internet. I've even got the expiration date and the CVV number in my head. It's horrible being blessed with a photographic memory.

That leads to the problem of overspending. It's so easy to spend money with a debit card. You want to know what's worse? My bank pays everything. All checks...all debits. Even if I'm about to go into the negatives. That has led me to some deep red numbers.

June 22. Less than three months away. It's the start of a 1400 mile road trip. It's a long drive; Grants, New Mexico to Columbus, Georgia. It will take about 24 hours if we drive straight through, which we plan on doing.

Why are we driving across the country? It's one of the most memorable days in a woman's life. A wedding. My wife's cousin's wedding to be exact. She's not just a cousin though, she is a best friend; a lifelong friend. My wife is the Maid of Honor. We have NO choice but to go.

We've known about this trip for a long time now. At first we were going to fly, but the cost of two adult and two child airline tickets aren't exactly cheap. Then my father in-law said he probably wasn't going to the wedding because of the cost of the same tickets. A lightbulb shined over my head, "Let's all drive there!" That set the plan in motion.

So here's the deal. We're broke. Not poor, just broke. We live paycheck to paycheck and it's just rough. We can't live like this forever. It's not safe and just doesn't make sense. So we have to develop a plan. A plan for today, a plan for tomorrow.

What can we do to get out of this financial mess? I think it's obvious to state that I'm not a financial planner or expert by any means. What I'm planning is based off what I have read and been told and plain ol' common sense.

We can't save money if we don't have money to spend. So the first thing I have done is lowered our monthly bills as much as possible. I've only made a few changes but already I have saved us about $120 a month on our TV and cell phone bills. We are all working on using less electricity and gas to hopefully bring those bills down as well.

Many people have asked me why I blog about personal things such as my money. My answer is not usually that simple, but it boils down to a couple things: support and networking.

These two things are important to me because I obviously cannot do this alone. I look to the readers for support and help on my trials and tribulations. The readers here at Walletpop have been instrumental in helping me get to where I am now, although I still have a LONG way to go.

There are many other personal finance sites out there: Mint, Wesabe, NetworthIQ to name a few. I have signed up and used all those sites. Each one of those has it's own strength's and weaknesses. One thing that they are missing is community. There is such a steep learning curve to financial issues, whether it's figuring out which credit cards to sign up for, how to consolidate a student loan, how to go about getting a mortgage, what on earth an IRA is--whatever. Sometimes people can feel alienated by their lack of experience or their debt. There are countless other people out there that are going through the same things we could all learn from each other.

I've been going on and on about my situation. The debt, the mortgage, and trying to save it all. I never really spoke about how we got here in the first place. We didn't just wake up and *poof* had a house. No, no. That would be no fun. The story I'm about to tell you is worthy of a book, and it's just one chapter of my interesting life.

It all started about six years ago. We were driving back from Phoenix from a funeral. We were dropping my sister off when her husband came out and gave us the horrible news that my mother and step-father passed away in an accident. The vehicle they were in had a blowout and rolled over. This led to a lot of in-fighting in the family. Mainly the six siblings vs. me, the one who didn't want to take the route of the lawsuit. It took a lot of convincing from MANY sources to convince me to go ahead with everything, and four years later we settled the lawsuit.

I can't say how much money I got as my share of the lawsuit, but it was a lot. Not "go off and retire," amounts, but enough to where I should have been able to solidify my credit and save for the future. Needless to say I did neither.

In my last post, I wrote about the hassles of refinancing. It's been a while since I've updated everyone, and I apologize for that, but I've just been dwelling on what to do.

The wife and I sat down and talked about everything. About how we got into the position we are in and how to get out of it. Basically what it came down to is that we jumped into the "home-owners" market too quick. We got sucked in by the allure of owning our own home. We didn't realize all the side effects of owning a home; the maintenance, the upgrades, and most importantly, actually paying for it.

I received a lot of very helpful comments. My short Walletpop career has been jammed with more information than I have read in the past few months. The help and the tips I have received have been great, and have steered me in the right direction.

I've hit a wall. A realization. The point in my life where I have realized how bad I was with money. It started with my tracking my spending for a week. It was ugly. Then came a big time in my life...refinance. We got one of those variable rate loans...you know the ones...where your interest rate blows up after two years?

Well, we are about 8 months from that point. So I go out and look for refinance options. Get lots of great schpiels, quick talking salesman, but that's about it. I can not get help getting refinanced. "Your scores are too low," they tell me.

It's horrible. I feel like crap now. I even left work just so I could come home to mull around. Our house payment is about to go up. I've seen a lot on the news about sub-prime problems, and I never really understood what it was all about. But now I do. It's about ME!

Am I in danger of losing my house? No. Not even close. But we are living paycheck to paycheck right now and I don't like the fact that I don't know where my mortgage will be in a year.

So now I feel like I'm back at Square One, with nowhere to go, and no idea what to do. I submit my plight to you, readers. What would you do in my position? I'm all ears.

In my last post I told you of my problems. About how I love "things." I also talked about how I would track my spending for a week and post it here, for ALL to see. I must say I was a little hesitant in the beginning. "Do I really want EVERYONE to be able to see my bad habits," I told myself. I even delayed this post a few days while I tossed around the idea of doing this. But look no further...here it is...7 days of spending...courtesy of the lax spender.

02/13/2008 breakfast: $7.
02/13/2008 Carlene lunch: $4.
02/14/2008 water bill: $132.
02/14/2008 lunch: $9.42
02/15/2008 lunch: $30.
02/15/2008 New Phone: $300.
02/15/2008 Shaq Jersey: $100.
02/16/2008 new phone: $360.
02/17/2008 dinner: $12.
02/17/2008 lunch : $34.

$1600. That is the total of our monthly bills. That number doesn't sound too bad, until I tell you that it doesn't include utilities, bills, and all those other glamorous things we all must have. Nope...that is for the mortgage, the wife's car and the Harley Davidson. $1600.

In February of 2007 this was no problem. I had a great job with great pay. I also had this degree with $20,000 in student loans behind it that I wasn't using. I was also away from home a lot. I missed my family. So I did the logical thing; found a job closer to home, and it was a much better job.

Currently I am an IT Technician for the local school district. I actually received a pay raise with this new career. I earn almost $4,000 a year more now. Strangely enough, I get less on my checks, about $200 a check less. There is a lot of mandatory deductions in education. Like the mandatory retirement account (which is a great thing, and my employer matches about 9% of my salary) and the insurance. That's a kicker. Almost $300 a month. I think I need to get sick more often...get some of that money back. So as you can see, I got a raise, but in reality I got a pay cut.

WHY IS SAVING MONEY SO HARD! Sometimes I sit and wonder where all the money went. You want to know what's worse? Sometimes I cannot answer myself!

"Oh you have to save money," they say. "Invest for the future," they tell me. How do you do that when you have all the hassles and worries of today? Have you ever called in to work because you were low on gas and you didn't get paid for two days? Ok, so I've only done it once, but still!

Having kids and saving money doesn't work. Well, I'm sure it does because a lot of other people in the world do it, but I am yet to succeed. The sum of our savings sits on our dining room table in an old plastic pretzel jar. $192.34 – all change. It's a start, but no where near where we need or want to be. Even though we could use that money to pay some bills, me and the wife have decided not to use it. We are going to wait until that jar is full and then go on a vacation. We figure about $1000 will fit in that thing. Actually it's a great thing. Everyday we put any change left in our pockets into the jar. Our kids will find money on the floor or on the sidewalk and run in and put it away. They get so excited! I figure that it will teach them to save, and it will give us all a little getaway. God knows we need it.