First, the obvious. I know what I do and basically why I do it. Especially after almost 8+ years, I have a lot of guilt. It's hard not to let it eat me up a lot of the time. And times like this especially bring it to the forefront. When we're doing a little better than just "getting by" or "struggling to get by", I can deal with it somewhat. When it comes down to times like this - where a good portion of this year we didn't know (or least I didn't know) if we were going to be able to keep the house. That's on me, obviously. And everything this year financially not related to the house (especially the last 2-3 months) - that's on me as well. This current situation is enough to tear me up inside, not to mention 8+ years of regrets.
I've never been able to draw the proverbial "line in the sand" and put everything in the past behind me and move forward. That's what I need to be able to do.
As far as right now, according to my "best case scenario" calculations, we are about 800.00 in debt. Most of that can be broken down into:
- Electric - 321.00
- HOA -267.00
- Insurance-73.00
Per my latest calculations, the things we have up for sale (and pending sale depending on things like the TV, which wouldn't make financial sense unless I got Mitsubishi to ship the part to me and let me install it for free). It also includes things like the autographed basketball and autographed guitar. Needless to say, we haven't been able to sell those things for 4-5 months, so to suddenly "expect" a sale in the next 3-4 weeks of ALL those things is a bit unrealistic. It's the about the only thing I have, however.
More calculations that look especially nasty. Between Craigslist and SweepSheet sales, as well as the 2180.00 loan off my life insurance policy (plus a few others - Shelly's recent 2nd job and our 600.00 win @ Winstar), we've brought in about 6100.00 in extra income this year. Less what I call "extra" expenses (meaning it's not something on the regular monthly budget) of about 1000.00, we've had over 5000.00 in extra income this year. Over 7 months, that averages out to roughly 728.00 extra per month spent on average. That is horribly disgusting.
To wrap this up, "Where Do We Go From Here?" - something I've been saying for quite some time. I have to become "relevant" again. That means providing a pretty decent income on a regular basis doing SOMETHING. That and I think doing a better job on the grocery bill - planning meals and therefor shopping/saving better =======> is our only way out.
Addendum
I don't know - but I've had a very hard time getting my head around our finances lately. Is it because we're so far behind the 8-ball that I've given up? Hint - times have been really tough lately, but I haven't given up. You can throw just about any other word in there - disgusted, upset, frustrated, etc - but I haven't given up. I'd like to think that when tougher times require more diligence that I can "kick it up a notch" so to speak, but that hasn't been the case. I guess there's been a lot of unknowns and confusion coming in from different angles. Shelly getting alarmed yesterday when she thought that we were dangerously low in the account (which we are). You could tell she didn't want to hear that. And I didn't want to tell, either.
It's other things - counting on the VZ gift card, but knowing I wouldn't be able to make the payment in time to get it sent out on the 18th, so when will it arrive? Who knows. I've already budget it, though. Kinda like when I started penciling in the Cavenders card a few weeks ago. Anyway, I wasted all that that time and space to get to this point. I was looking over the "numbers" again, and it's just downright insane how far behind/in debt we are. Anyway, the total estimated sales "potential" we have to sell on CL/other places is upwards of 900.00. Now like I was saying (or was it just thinking???) earlier, that's putting a lot of faith in these items selling in a timely fashion. The simple fact is that we've been trying to sell these things for 4-5 months, and between the guitar and basketball, I've had one, (count 'em just ONE) inquiries, and that was 2-3 months ago. I hope to do whatever it takes to get these silly fuckers sold. And now, down to brass tacks. I think it really, really sucks that the best possible outcome of all this is that all our items "miraculously" sell, and for the price we want them to sell , and yet we wouldn't be able to do any better than just "break even". Seeing where we've come from, perhaps that's not a bad thing. It's also not a given, at least at this point.
No comments:
Post a Comment