I Owe so Much

Interesting story

2012-01-02T17:04:00.001-06:00

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/bringing-expired-debt-back-to-life.html

Read this part :

"Some lenders say borrowers have a moral obligation to pay their debts even if they are no longer legally responsible."

I didn't know that debts had a statue of limitations from 3 to 10 years. So after that time they had to stop collecting from you. So the lenders say borrowers have a moral obligation? What if the roles were reversed? Does a lending company have any moral obligations to do something once the statue of limitations has run out? Would they do it?

It's interesting that some people feel the need for a credit card rather than a debit card, it must be a cultural thing because I still hate using a credit card to pay for stuff because I know I'm increasing my debt.

Also interesting is those rates, 19% for these new cards, and a national average of 13%. Even with the high rate that cards is still lower than the one I recently got to consolidate my debt, which is 22%. Everytime I hear those rates in the US I wonder if people here in Honduras ever get out of debt or just move it from one place to another until they leave the country or disappear into the informal sector of the economy.

I hope you are starting 2012 with no debt or at least on your way to debt free life.

Dodged a bullet or stood out among the crowd?

2011-12-29T19:47:00.000-06:00

Today I got an email from the company president of my 2nd job. The one that I work over the internet.

He told me that he had fired all of the software development team, including the IT head that was basically inmersed more in development that IT. He said that he was keeping me because he liked my work and how responsive I was. Bless my little cellphone with email delivery!

So I started quite scared today. I'm used to my boss being that nice guy that I've known for a while, my friend that got the me recommendation for the job, and the other two guys that I work so close with. Now they are all gone at least from my workplace. I'm "all alone" to hold the IT fort thousands of miles away from where the action is.

The president also said that he would get someone local to help me with user support. I wonder if that person will eventually replace me or if it will really be a support person. Only time will tell I suppose. So far they've found it convenient that I provide support over phone, chat and email. I hope the trend continues.

I couldn't stop thinking what would happen if I would've been fired as well. This 2nd job has turned out to be a HUGE income to me, most of it pay debt, but also to help with cost of living. I hadn't notice how much my original job is now mostly all for the basics: groceries, fuel, utilities and housing.

I'm really glad I'm in the right track to consolidate/eliminate all my debt, but something like getting kicked out of the job would really set me back a lot.

Now I have to see how the work dinamics (and the pay dinamics) will change now that i'm mostly by myself there. Who will authorize my purchases for stuff, how will my hours be clocked? etc. All those things I suppose I will figure out in the days to come but still is something that I'm glad I was told early today so I've had all day to absorb before going to bed tonight.

I was going to write about how I was going to have to keep that second BAC card for a few months until the TIGO auto debit thing cleared out, or how I was 6000lps away from completely paying my HSBC card, minimum payment was 400lps I paid 2000lps today. However you can imagine that I'm mentally tired by now.

Have a good night and steady income next year!

Free PORTABLE apps

2011-12-28T18:03:00.001-06:00

As I am doing some year-end cleaning on computers, either servers, desktops, notebooks and netbooks I would like to remind you about Free applications for your computers. I'm going to narrow it down to 2 tips.

#1 The best place for free applications is www.portableapps.com , For starters they have OpenOffice. OpenOffice is like Microsoft office for about 90% of the things you do in MS Office. The 10% that's missing is the interaction of the complex stuff from a MS document to OpenOffice. If you mostly work with your own documents, spreadsheets and presentations I recommend OpenOffice for it's functionality and price: zero!

They have other apps for so many things, games, education, security, utilities, internet, music & video, graphics and pictures. It's amazing how much free stuff is there.

But the best part of portableapps.com is that all the apps they have can be loaded on a USB drive and carried around with you and used on any windows computer. Or you can just copy them form your USB to a hard drive in your computer, No installation required.

Maybe I didn't explained it well last time around. Most MS windows applications require an installer program, usually in a CD or downloadable from the internet. Once you install it, you don't need the installer anymore. Except when you move to another computer, either voluntarily or due to failure of the first one. Then you have to hunt for those darn installer programs again. Mostly likely you won't find them.

Another scenario is like this: Your friend likes that word process you are using, you would like for him or her to use it. You can't copy your word processor to his computer. You would have to look for the installer program.

In the case of www.portableapps.com you don't to look for installers. Just copy your portable apps over and be done.

If you have a small, medium or large computer classroom, portable applications make it so much easier to have everyone set to what they need to do. Just copy the apps over and over. Those that have had to deal with this will understand the relief that comes from apps that are just copied in vrs having to install them.

#2 Dropbox. Your computer will some day fail. Accept it now. Hard drives are mechanical things that have a high lifetime but eventually they will fail. Accidents happen, a dropped computer is so common. How about stolen laptops or desktop computers? has it happened to you?

In any case, there will be a day when you will not have access to that computer that holds those documents, and pictures that you need so much. What do to?

Well, theory says you should back up your documents regularly. Back up where? how regularly? Backing up documents is a pain in the ass. Doing it regularly is even more of a pain.

Dropbox is a way to back up your documents and pictures to Dropbox's servers. If you have more than one computer it keeps all the documents syncronized between them so you don't have to wonder where you have that spreadsheet with your expenses, or the christmas pictures. Best of all it's all done automatically whenever you have an internet connection. When you don't have one it waits patiently until you do.

You can even view the documents on a tablet, or via web at Dropbox's site. So if you left for a trip without your computer you can still get them!

So you had the expenses all done and then you mistakenly delete the spreadsheet, opps! No worries you can recover it at Dropbox's site and get it back quickly. It keeps deleted document for 30 days after you delete them. It even saves several versions of the same document so if you mess your letter to Santa you can recover the previous version and go from there.

Even over a slow connection it's a great tool for individuals or teams to keep backups, syncronize documents and share them. Do I seem like a Dropbox convert? That's because I am.

Did I mentioned it's free? You get 2GB of free space to save all those important things that no computer support or insurance of any kind can replace.

If I have convinced you to install Dropbox, send me an email to iowesomuch at gmail.com (you know it it's really written). Or put a comment below. I'll get you an extra 250mb of free space.

Ok enough slacking, gotta get back to work. I hope you had a Merry Christmas, and I wish you a debt free and Happy New Year.

Two Down!

2011-12-21T15:18:00.001-06:00

I got the "finiquito" letters from Promerica and CitiBank. It's been a difficult road but it's so nice to see that I won't have to go to those banks again. I wish I could post the letters but they have too much personal information. They basically say that any document I have signed before is null and void, and that my credit history will be updated to the credit rating agencies in 15 to 55 days. I'm saving those letters in a safe place!

I requested closing one of my BAC cards and have had to go 3 days in a row to get it closed. One day it's one thing the next day is another. First I forgot the actual card, then I had to cash in my reward points, then I had floating transaction of $10 that I had to wait to have it posted in my account to pay.

Last thing is that since that card is debited for my phone and I have requested my phone company 8 times to stop debiting my phones from that card and haven't done it. So now they say they can't close it because it has a auto debit of my phones but they can put me on the exception list so I can proceed with closing the account. In 5 business days.

So I asked the Customer Service lady why when I went to BAC twice before to get help from them in stoping debit from TIGO of my phones, they said they couldn't do anything and refered me back to TIGO, that only the could close it, when now BAC can actually stop it. The lady was wishy washy and eventually said that "There was probably some credibility problem in the request to TIGO having been actually done". So basically they didn't believe me!?! I was a lazy liar.

She went on further to say that they get a lot, and I mean A LOT of complaints of people wanting to stop auto debit for utilities, cable service, cellphones, etc and it's rarely that the stop auto debit order goes thru. That teaches me a lesson not do to that ever again.

One more time i'm truly convinced I have NO moral obligation to them, only legal obligations. So what if they've give me ok service for years, I don't owe them to keep the card open. I have been warned that I will get a call from their "recovery" department trying to woo me back into keeping the card but with the new security tax laws that have set a yearly fee on credit cards plus the yearly insurance fees I'm happy to see them all go.

Meanwhile I have $70 in insurance fees in that card that would be reverted only if I close the account before Jan 1st, so the clock is ticking, hopefully nothing else will block me otherwise I will have to pay more to get rid of that card.

Last night I made the first payment of my new loan that has enabled me to close these and other accounts. I was able to pay even more than what was due. 1 down 47 more go to. HSBC you're next!

I wish you don't go into debt buying presents for your family and friends. I took it up myself to ask those around me to NOT give me anything for Christmas and instead give it to some charity. A tie or a shirt won't make me love them more or less and will only push consumerism into those that can probably afford it the least.

Here's wishing you have a debt-free Christmas! Happy Holidays!

Free stuff I use

2011-11-30T11:18:00.000-06:00

I work in computers. So there are some things I use that have a free version or that are low priced.

Today I wanted to talk to you about some of those free things that some people are still amazed when I talk about them:

1) Google Voice: Free calls to any US number PLUS your own US number in almost any area code so you can also receive calls. Drawback? you have to have your computer on or get a complex setup like the one I have at pbxes.com (which is free up to 2000 minutes a month)

2) Dropbox: If you have important documents on your computer you have to know something: One day your computer disk will fail and you will loose all of that. Hopefully it will fail in a recoverable way, but most probably the vibrations and heat will make it die suddenly and definitely. You could pay an online backup service $50 a year or so (Carbonite) to back up all stuff on your computer. However if you worry mostly about documents, pictures and the like you can use the free version of Dropbox. They give you 2gb of free storage on their servers.

As an added bonus if you install the same software on other computers and use your own account, your documents will be constantly syncronized among all of them. So if you have a laptop, a desktop a little netbook or even an ipad or iphone, once you put a document on your Dropbox folder it will be available from all the other devices or from their website. and you can even share it with friends (vacation picture or the like). I have to say I don't know how I kept my sanity without it before.

If you do decide to use Dropbox please put a comment below so I can give you 250mb of extra storage as a referral bonus to you.

3) Portable Apps. I hate installing software on my computer. Some I just HAVE to install but given I choice I prefer software that just runs right away without adding menus and stuff to my computer and auto launching when I power it up. In comes Portable apps. These cool applications of all kinds only need to be put in a USB memory stick and you can use them on any windows computers. Or for a double punch you could put them on your Dropbox folder and have them quickly available wherever you go without even having a USB to carry!

4) Ted.com : For inspirational stuff that makes you feel like we still have a chance to make this a better place I urge to you watch the presentation on Ted.com. It's amazing to see the things they have to offer. You might not agree with Bill Gates or Al Gore on their beliefs of how to better the planet, but they are just two of thousands of presenters that can open your eyes to wonderful things. I can't recommend it enough as an inspirational/motivational site.

5) Twitter: I use it to track newssites like cnn or local newspapers. It's so easy and quick to read that in a few minutes I get a general picture of the news of the day without ads, popups and all the extra stuff that bogs one down. IF I do want to read further I can click on the link and read the whole report. Succint and to the point. gotta like how a 140 character limit draws out the creative writing.

6) TeamViewer. If you ever wanted to go back to check something on your other computer located far away, you need teamviewer. Allows you to remote control all computers that have it installed, also transfer files to and from it. If you provide computer support or want to receive it, it's a really simple tool to avoid having to move to get the support needed.

Let me know if you liked any of these. They are all free and they all have great value to me and I hope to you as well.

Citi, they don't want me to go

2011-11-25T12:08:00.001-06:00

So here I am, with positive balance on my Promerica and Citibank cards, about $100 owed on each of the BAC cards and about $300 owed on HSBC (the /(&%/& charged me their renewal fee just now).

The process to cancel my card with Promerica was relatively painless, mostly due to them already having me on a real arranged payment schedule. I asked for a check of the balance in my favor. When I picked it up I request the closing of my account. Today I requested the final closing document. They stated that I could pick up the document Dec 1 2011. One down, three to go.

So Citi is next. I paid it all with them. I have balance in my favor in the lempira balance but owed some in the dolar balance. So I went over to their office a couple of weeks ago and told the Customer Service officer that I wanted to close my account, that I wanted a check for my balance rather than using the plastic (because it's damaged on purpose).

So here are the steps with the time frame for each.

1) Balance transfer from Lps to $ to owe them nothing (3 days)

2) Account unblocking (2 days)

3) Account cancellation (2 days) (only available by phone..WTF??)

4) Check issuing for the the balance in my favor (5 days)

5) Issue final closing document (5 days, can only be requested monday thru wednesday)

As I was waiting for someone to assist me, I found a friend of mine waiting too and she was actually doing exactly the same thing. She got a refinance from Banpais, and was cancelling her Citibank card. She had told me of all the hoops she had gone thru to close her Citibank account. However she was recommended to spend the balance in her favor, and she did. She was now wanting to close the account. I wanted to go the other way, close the account first and then get a check for the remaining balance.

Today I called to do step 3 and they actually told me they might not give me my balance back. Then they told me they would but I would have to request it at a bank branch as a cash withdrawal with my card. I told her I didn't have a card and she had to talk to her manager. Eventually she said she could close my account but I would have to go to a branch to request my balance. The easy thing would've been to get a new plastic and spend it but I wasn't taking that bait.

So now I have to go to Citibank branch on wednesday to request checks for my balance.

I wonder how hard it will be to cancel one of my BAC credit cards once I pay the tail that's still remaining (about $100 due to interests).

Moral Obligation vrs Legal Obligation

2011-11-23T22:35:00.001-06:00

I was recently reading an article on Yahoo Finance about a financial advisor that suffered the effects of recession. He talked about giving sane financial advice yet not following it himself. He took too big a mortage and then maxed credit cards over and over, until the situation became unsustainable.

He was constantly worrying about making his mortage payments even though his house value was only a fraction of what he owed the bank.

He talked to someone else about his situation. He mentioned that even though he could walk away from his mortage he felt he had a moral obligation to pay it.

This person told him something that has left me thinking since then. This person said "You have a moral obligation to your family, you have only a legal obligation to the bank. Think of your obligations the way a company would".

So this person stopped paying his mortage and eventually turned the house back to the bank which sold it and he even got a small amount back from the sale. He's in the road back to fiancial recover now.

Some thoughts on that article:

- Amazing that even a "financial advisor" could be trapped in debt thinking it was the "American Way" to a fancy lifestyle, not wondering how he would pay for it all.

- Interesting concept of not having any moral obligations to the bank. If one thinks the other way around, banks would never have a moral obligation to the customer. They would only follow their legal obligations and not help the customer more than corporate or marketing policies would allow.

- He didn't do anything "wreckless" like run away from his obligations, he negotiated and the bank was not "hurt or resented" about his actions, they just took decisions and negotiated forward.

I then talked to some from Citibank in Honduras. He told me and my boss that they have "debt fairs" every now and then for people highly in debt. Those individuals end up paying about 50% to 40% of the original capital owed.

Superficially one would think "Wow what a nice bank, other banks don't do that, they just keep chasing you legally until you pay". However, Honduran banking regulations require banks to write off debts that have 90 days delinquent. So in the accounting books once you are 90 days delinquent, the bank has "lost" all the amount owed.

They don't tell the people this and keep their collection efforts, however at this point in time any amount recovered is actually a profit for the bank. So in making payment arrangements by 40% of the original amount they are actually profiting by all the amount the customer will pay. No "moral obligation" here to help the customer.

In comparison, the Honduran electric company, the Honduran Social Security Institute, the equivalent of IRS in Honduras have all published the list of their worst debtors. Most of those are companies that have declared bankrupcy and or closed up. However their owners are known by most of the population, they are rich and are alive and well running other companies.

Their "moral obligation" would be to pay whatever was owed to this companies or organizations that have provided services are are now desperately needing this money. Their "legal obligation" is none since it's the companies they owe, not themselves, that are responsible for the debts. Once closed, the money is lost.

This diference between moral and legal obligation is hard to understand by some and easily understood by others. Some follow more the legal obligations, some do a balance betwen legal and moral, some coldly follow only their legal obligations and some actually squeme legal tricks to get stuff and not pay. Lawyers and congressmen have a hard time getting credit or loans on banks, car agencies and similar.

My personal story is a bit more complex. I could have stopped payment to my credit cards or now to the Banpais loan that I got, and eventually try and settle for a fraction of the owed amount. However I worry that in their collection efforts my boss would find out that i'm in such troubles. Given that I work in the banking industry that would not be a good thing, specially since we works with most of the banks I owed money to,

I imagine he would stop trusting me or worst fire me, making my situation worst either way. Maybe i'm wrong and he would understand and even help me, but given the way i've heard him talk (mock actually) about people highly in debt, I seriously doubt it. I've seen him get upset about some of our lower earning personnel getting a loan here or there to pay this or that. If I was starting my life, I would appreciate his tough love and life lessons, but in this situation I would really hate getting chewed out by him.

Why care if my boss talks bad about my financial situation? Well i've been in my job for years, he probably would tell most of his friends (bank executives) about my problems. If I leave my job, having bad references on all the banking sector would cut me out of the best options for a job. So my legal obligation is clear to me, but my moral obligation is supported by a complex job situation.

Another thing, me and some other people that know my situation and are in similar position feel that getting offered to pay a fraction of the debt only to those that forego their moral obligation and deal only with the legal obligations are given an unfairly benefitial treatment. We that pay or try to pay are give very little breaks or discounts. Unfair but totally "legal".

Sure these people are reported to the credit bureau and probably have a hard time getting credit again (if the new lender uses credit bureau) for a while. Yet for someone that is so highly in debt, does it really matter if they can get MORE credit elsewhere? wouldn't it be a great thing to be forced or blocked from getting any more credit which would equate to more debt?

I've written so little lately that I don't know if anyone is following this any more. If you are, please do comment on this as I think all of you would have an interesting point of view.

The wait now

2011-11-09T20:09:00.000-06:00

Today I paid down the final two cards with the two of four checks I got yesterday. Now I have to wait three days, although I know it only takes a day and a half, for the checks to clear. Once they clear it's time to cancel those cards.

I foresee a difficulty, the check amounts were based on my credit cards statements from september, since it took so long for Banpais to give them to me I had paid one more month on the cards. This means that I now have a positive balance on all the cards I want to cancel. Im sure they will give me trouble when I want to cancel while still have a balance, albeit a positive one.

In HSBC and Citi I can request a new card and use the balance for something and then cancel. However on Promerica I was already on a payment schedule and had no card in my name. I hope they are ok with issuing a check for me. In fact I will ask a check from all of them.

I'm now thinking that they might still charge interests even if I paid in full because this was balance carried from previous months. I will have to check. I will go in with a positive but conservative attitude. We'll see. I'll keep you posted.

Good night

Hopefull

2011-11-08T20:39:00.001-06:00

I haven't written here in a looooong time.

Mostly because the news were depressing, sure I have two jogs and i'm paying down debt but it's such a slow process. Mostly because most debt I have is at 30 or 67% interest rate.

About three months ago my boss on my second job told me I got a 25% raise on my hourly rate. Great news, I would be able to stay above the debt-line.

About a month and a half ago I took an opportunity with Banpais with the Alternativa credit card. They told me they would take my credit card debt (most of it, still have some that was over their limit ouch) and give a loan at 22% , compare that to 33 on other card's payment scheduled or 67 on the actual credit cards.

Well it took a long time for the process to come thru, I was hesitant they would accept me since i've missed some due dates on payments, but i've managed to pay eventually. Also the debt amount is still so high that was also a concern.

A week into the review process they asked for clarification of a credit card extrafinacing loan I had as it seem as overdraft but it wasn't, it was just the way the CC company displayed stuff. Then they also wanted a letter explaining my second job...I also attached copies of the deposits for the last 2 years as further proof.

Finally a week ago they called me to say my loan+ credit card was approved. I was supposed to be very happy..yet I wasn't. I had been worrying so much about it that I thought I wasn't gonna be approved. So I figured they could still turn me down before the checks were printed.

Today I got the checks. Today is actually setting in that I'm improving my debt payment situation, consolidating my debt into two payments I can make with half of my second job's income.

I was able to go pay two of my credit cards today. The other two will be done tomorrow because I ran out of time before the banks closed.

I'm really hoping this will put me in a better position to pay it all out. Next month is my first of 48 monthly payments on this loan. As soon as the checks clear I'm closing out those accounts. If I could I would do it today but I have to way two or three days.

Have a good night. I gotta take some anti-anxiety meds now, I can't get too excited about this, I might get sick with a panic attack.

Winning the Lottery

2010-09-04T16:43:00.001-06:00

Isn't as fun as one would think.

Read here:

http://finance.yahoo.com/retirement/article/110553/jackpot-winners-just-as-likely-to-go-bust

Have a good day.

August rant

2010-08-11T16:41:00.001-06:00

Lately i've been overwhelmed with work. I mean seriously. There's only three people in my department and for the last few weeks one has either been sick, on vacation or on a job trip. Which means I have to come in my regular time AND cover for their shift too, which means about a 12 hour workday. That plus my second job is overwhelming at times.

I was forgetting that I too had to take some time for a Disaster Recovery seminar, from 5pm to 10pm for two weeks. That also threw a wrench in my work plans.

Then my family wants me to come home and not work, and not watch tv (at least not what I want). On weekends I always plan on catching up on stuff from my second job. But the wife and girls want me to go out with them and that's ok. However they also want me to go with them to visit a friend of my wife and her family. the women have lots to talk about, they have 3 kids and so my daughters have a great time playing with them. So the husband and I are left with talking about sports, weather and politics. Sometimes for 5 hours. Five hours that I could've rested at home or worked or something else rather than have someone try to entertain me. To top it off they don't get cellphone signal in their house and have no internet service so even if I take my laptop I can't work there.

Yesterday and today have been specially bad at work. One of my coworkers is on a business trip opening a new regional for our processing. No more people on our payroll to do that since all is done from here. This new regional is giving us trouble in our system, which means I have to do manually what usually is done automatically. My other coworker who helps me out leaves at 4pm religiously because he's got classes to attend. So I have the whole thing to run by myself until 9pm

The cherry on top was my boss was in a home accident yesterday and after a few stitches to his forehead had to go home to rest. I thought it was reasonable. He didn't come to work today either, I suppose he is still not feeling good. However that leaves holding everything together, the administrative stuff and the technical stuff. If the secretary hadn't return from sick leave last week I might have had to do the bill collection myself too!

So I got that off my chest. The two things I did wanted to write about were my financial plans for this week and a note I got from Targus.

So as you can remember from old posts way back in May or June, this month I'm going to get a loan from my company coop. I plan to get a large amount of cash to pay down a credit card. I will still have about 40 to 50k of debt on it but that should be much easier to pay faster. A small percentage of the money I get will go to new school uniforms, eye exams and glasses, shoes, tennis shoes, books, etc for the girls. Also some minor but important repairs for both cars and home improvements. At least the home improvements will be repaid by the landlord but I need to put the money up front. I hope to get the ball rolling on all this on monday.

A few days ago I wrote a letter to Targus. They make accesories for notebook computers. I wrote to congratulate them on their great products. I've had one of their backpacks for 5 years now and it's awesome. Today they wrote back and told me that I could upgrade to new backpack and other accessories at cost price thru their local distributor. They said that they had never received such an emotional letter before. So i'm going to check their "cost" prices soon and see if it's really worth it to get a new backpack for my notebook.

On the last days of July I won a month's membership to a country club here, and two hours of golf training. I haven't used them but they intrigue me. I hope I can make the time to at least get those hours under my belt.

Well the phones are ringing so i'm off. Bye.

I love my Wii Fit Plus

2010-07-26T00:22:00.000-06:00

So I bought a Wii Fit Plus for my Nintendo Wii console in June.

Not a money-saving action obviously. It was about 3,000lps with a good discount.

However one month and a bit more after having purchased it I still think it was a good move. Here are the reasons:

1) I thought about purchasing it since about more than a year ago. So it was a well thought purchase. Not an impulse buy.

2) The girls love it and use it almost every day. Not many games attract girls like the Wii Fit.

3) It promotes family activities, competition and mutual congratulation. When was the last time a video game told you while you were playing your game, that your daughter did a great game and you should congratulate her? Wii Fit does that.

4) It tracks all your workout activity, minutes worked (real minutes worked, not setup or warmups), weight, time of day, type of exercise,BMI, it does all the math for you.

5) It's veeeeery patient. The digital instructors never urge you and never lose temper, they always find ways to give the bad news on a positive light, usually saying "You can improve your posture if you do these exercise routinely, great work!"

6) You can exercise by simulating other activities not just gym stuff. Tight-rope walking, hula-hooping, bicycling, skate boarding, snow-ball fight, skying, flying like a chicken (yeah silly but fun).

7) you can exercise seriously too. Yoga, strength, step and other aerobic exercise are there too.

8) After many days of not using it myself, it had tips on what to do on it if I was in a hurry, really cool and a motivating event.

9) It can be set to spanish or english so anyone in the family can play.

10) Being right there in my room makes me think of using it more than if I had to drive to a gym with the right clothes,etc..etc

Any thoughts?

schedule change and money in money out

2010-06-21T15:13:00.001-06:00

It's been a chaotic weeks since I got a schedule change. My main job now starts at 9am and ends at 5pm, my "morning" job now suffers. So what I do is do work for my morning job from 6 to 9pm from my main job's offices. But that's usually interrupted by main job stuff that happens after 5pm. Also after 5pm there are friends that wanna meet with me, errands to run, etc. Always hard to work enough and balance with life's demands.

Mostly sad news, I got my 14th month pay and my bonus pay and although I paid some debt and paid off some debt (a bed), I spent most of the money on car repairs and maintenance, clothing, furniture, etc. Sorta bringing the house and family maintenance up to date. Of course my family did a 50% effort to help me. They would say they "needed" a new tv but were happy to get a model and chip in with half of the montly pay from what I give my wife for food and house stuff every month. Also had to spend money on dresses for the girls as they are going to a "Sweet 15" party. Partly is my fault for giving up to their demands and partly it was a way to sort of reward myself for having been better with my money since my last bonus pay. Now I feel the hangover from all that spending.

I guess the only thing i'm not totally depressed about purchasing is the Wii Fit Plus video game. I had purchase a Wii box last year and this was my ultimate goal. Between then and now, the Wii Fit was upgraded to Plus. Nothing technical attracted me to it, just simple things like a way I can relate to to exercise (on my own at my own pace but with tutoring from a trainer). Also a way for my girls, now in vacation, to have something to do without having to spend more money on "summer camps", and they also stay fit. And it's a family game so at night we gather around and laugh and play against each other to sweat out bicycling, running, skating, boxing, stepping,etc. As days go on I like it more and more.

My next financial goal is to get my loan from the company coop in August or September and pay a big lump towards my debt with HSBC and then do a full effort to pay it off by end of year. We'll see how that goes.

Oh and Honduras just lost to Spain 2-0 , no biggie, it was expected.

Switching accounts

2010-05-06T14:58:00.001-06:00

Lately i've been tapping my "Emergency fund" account very frequently, usually for repairs or to cover miscellaneous expenses like school stuff, gifts.etc. I put 2000lps every quincena on that account and I usually take out about 1000 to 1500 from it.

At the same time i've request my coop to take 600lps every quincena and put it in as "voluntary savings" which can be withdrawn at any time I wish, after filing out the necessary paperwork. THis one was supposed to be my "Freedom Account" to cover the expenses i'm paying with the account previously stated.

It seems natural that the one account which is easier to access be the one that I actually tap into the most. So even though it might seem like a setback i've decided to swap labels on them and have my bank account be the "Freedom account" for car repairs, gifts, school expenses, home repairs, etc.

At the same time I will now label my coop voluntary savings as my "Emergency Fund" since I will access that only in case of a real "Emergency" like unforseen medical expenses, accidents, etc. I would probably have to use a credit card to pay up front since taking that money out requires at least a half day of processing (even though I manage the coop too!). But this paperwork makes it harder for me to take money out in a whim and makes it easier to build up a nice amount. Some other coop members already have 20,000lps or 90,000lps in voluntary savings!!

I will increase my coop voluntary savings to 1000lps every quincena (400 more) and leave the new "Freedom Account" at 2000lps per quincena. The good thing is that both are taken deducted automatically from my pay by my employer. Although for the change I have to wait a bit since the person that does it is on vacation until June.

Surprised again

2010-04-13T18:03:00.001-06:00

Lately i've been having emotional issues and I think that plus work on both jobs has put me on a somber mood. I've been trying to figure out how to finish paying for my girl's school and how to control my budget with a wife and two daughters that cooperate half way.

The most depressing thing has been watching my emergency fund go down rather than up. Even spending Holy Week mostly at home and just travelling to my dad's ranch on a friends car (and on his gas), and we still managed to spend more than usual. Even he complained of the same. He bought a large inflatable pool and we took turns going to each other's house, which are nearby, and we still ended up spending more money than usual. Bathing suits and extra food caused that. So with that and other little things, that add to a big thing, my my emergency fund has gone to a record low.

Then just last week my wife asked me why was I sad looking and I started to explain my money concerns about the girls' school and I got no support from her. My oldest daughter's birthday was comming and she got upset that I wouldn't give her money to buy a present for my daughter, I told her we could buy one this last weekend rather than on the actual birthday since I would have some money by then. My daugher was ok with that, she's turning 13. However that idea got a cold reception with my wife and we had one of those ugly discussions about why I owed so much money, how come I still owed so much money, who else was I paying for (implying that I probably had a mistress), etc,etc. Even though she's a business admin mayor and is studing a master's degree, the concept of interest evades her. I see the credit card bills, no charges, and the balance only goes down about 10% or 20% or my total payment, the rest is lost to interest charges. Such is the price to pay for many years of money mis-management. However she refuses at times to consider that the party is over. Eventually we did it my way. We cut her a birthday cake on wednesday and saturday we went shopping for a shirt and shorts for her and it all went fine, except I had to endure the awful discussion earlier in the week.

Well, this week I had to cover for a coworker which meant I could've leave the office for anything until 2pm. So I told her I wasn't going to be able to come home for lunch. Surprisingly she volunteered to bring me lunch to work so that I wouldn't have to buy food here. I agreed even though in my head I was already making the math of the fuel cost of her driving here versus me buying here. But like most money problems it's not all about math but also about emotions. I know if I start making the math with her she will get upset at me by not recognizing her effort to help me with the food costs.

So I was going over the tution problem over the weekend and this week and thinking about the Promerica balance and how I was going to pay it all up on August or so. I figured that I needed a little breathing room between now and August. The montly payment of Lps 8040 is the second largest payment I make after tuition. So I called Promerica just a few minutes ago.

I got a guy there, let's call him Al, and I explained that I wanted to lower my monthly payment by either lowering my interest rate or extending the term. He looked at my account and said he could make cut my payment in half by refinancing my "loan" to 48 months starting now. Good, but 48 months!!! No no. Plus the balance he had is one payment behind of the balance I have. So I told he I would go to their offices to clear the issue. It's then that he told me that if I could he would prefer I paid a little more because with a 48 month refinancing I would pay a lot in interest, I agreed totally. He said I should try a shorter term. I guess they do have a heart too.

It was then that I told him that I expected to have about 80,000 lps by August and make a "ballon" payment on the debt. He then spoke a little softly and said that once I had that amount to go to their offices and talk to his supervisor and tell her that I had x amount of money and that I could pay it all at once. He said it was probable that I could get a discount on the balance owed!! LG, you commented about this and I said it was very unlike. Well I'm glad I at least had your comment in my mind. He said I could get 10% or 15% off if I pleaded my case well. So I will try that but won't count on it, that way it will be a happy surprise and money that I would put towards another one of my debts

Unfortunately Al is going on vacation starting tomorrow and I have to get this done this week, but he was going to pass my case to his buddy "Dean" who would handle the refinancing and balance review with me tomorrow. I want to lower my monthly payments to something like 5000lps, but still have the plan to pay it all at once when I get to the sweet spot. That being the month in which the money I can take out on a coop loan (at 12%) is equal or more than the money I will owe by then on this card. From previous calculations I estimate it will be August.

So i'm a little happier today. It's probably a combination between getting paid today, having the wife in "cooperative" mode for now and Al's information about refinancing and the possible discount.

I still have to figure out how to pay for 1 and half month's of the girl's tuition to end the year. If things become desperate I know I can pay it but it would mean setting me back for the start of their school year in September. So I have to make a saving's plan to have that money available by mid June. (my 14avo bonus is already comitted to that cause to pay for 2 and a half months).

I had thought of taking the coop loan earlier and making that ballon payment and lowering my balance a lot to keep paying for a couple of months, however with Al's information I think I should do my math once again to really try to get the full amount or close so I can get the discount by making the full payment. We'll see how it goes. I can't wait to start paying up more money to my HSBC account!!

Oh, happy Columbus Day!

Reader Comments

2010-03-22T15:56:00.001-06:00

Well I was away on vacation and I thought I would have more time but somehow it's like money not saved, it goes away unnoticed. I ended up hardly having time to check my email or write on my blog. It's strange that today, my first day back on my day job i'm able to write again.

I'm going to take this time to write back about some comments left by you. Thank you all for writing.

rain said:

Yea! really huge..anywyz, its good to have those numbers written. let it be a constant reminder that you have to go on...at least there was improvement...but you can work on decreasing those numbers some more...maybe wifey could help too. I am wondering, does she read your blog?

I say:

Wife can't read my post because she only speaks spanish. If she knew I had this blog she would be upset because I was venting out my financial problems in public and showing how much it's both our faults that we are where we are.

I've tried and continue trying to get wife a job. She wants to work too. She's studying a master's degree and has some sort of promise for a teaching position once she finishes it, which should be sometime this year. Her problem is that she is in her early 40's and has no work experience related to her Business Administration degree except for a couple of months here and there. Most jobs I find required either someone young with no experience or someone older with several years experience.

La Gringa wrote back about my post "July or August, write it down". She has asked for comparison data between payments to my Promerica card, which is under an arranged payment schedule (at lps 8020 a month) and the loan I would take out of the company coop to pay the credit card in full.

This is her answer to my comparison data:

That's huge difference in the interest rate so yes, I agree that making that co-op loan to pay off the much higher rates is a good thing to do. Just make sure that every centavo of the new loan funds goes to pay down your debt and not anything else.

Can you pay your credit card payments online? Also, be sure to keep the due dates on a calendar so you don't overlook them. If you don't already use something fancier, try google calendar. You can set up recurring events and have it send reminders to email and pop up messages. Now that you've used the emergency funds for a couple of them, I hope that gets you back on schedule so you don't run short when the payments are due.

I'm glad to hear that you're working on a budget. Do you also total it up and talk with your family about it? It's good to group the various types of expenses, such as household (rent, utilites), phone, groceries, eating out, etc. Has it revealed any excesses that need to be cut back on?

Regarding the extra financing: I thought that they took the balance that you owed on the credit card as of a certain date and turned it into a fixed term loan -- equal monthly payments over 3 years, which means that each of those payments includes interest.

So lets say you have 12 months to go and pay L.10,000 per month. Are you saying that if you pay it off early, you'll only have to pay, say L.100,000 and not the total of the payments (L.120,000)? If that's so, then, you're right, there's nothing to negotiate. Unless, of course, the bank would negotiate on your principle amount. Some banks do that in the US, too, but probably not here.

For some reason, I didn't receive your comment on this or I would have responded sooner. I was worried that you might be mad at me. I wouldn't blame you, but I'm glad that you aren't!

I say:

Yes I pay my Credomatic cards (2 and a loan) online. The other's I have to go to a branch to pay. I have seen that most of the money in my budget goes to unexpected stuff, a book, fuel for a trip, presents for birthdays, etc. I try to keep a fund for that but it's hard to fill it faster that it's being used. With the maid we have now, who is very efficient, we don't buy so much takeout food on weekends. I used to buy lunch and dinner for saturday and sunday. Now it's usually only sunday and sometimes only sunday lunch.

The extra financing works just like you say it does, except they don't tell you what to do with the money. It's my decision to put it back as a payment on my card. Extrafinancing is just a fixed term loan, each payment including interest. Maybe I wrote too much or too little information. I have a loan calculator program that tells me how much of the money I pay on a loan is interest and how much is capital.

You are correct in your example, but to help others when she says I would only pay back 100,000 we are assuming that the interests for the rest of the payment plan are 20,000. That's a very rough number and so you don't start wondering if it means they take out the last two payments or something, no, it's not related to the monthly payment, we are just using very broad figures.

Loans or extrafinancing here can be paid back early by paying the capital balance in full. No penalties or additional interests have to be paid. As you state I doubt that they would negotiate the principle amount. I doubt it because when I called they mentioned that i've been paying on schedule every month and so i'm in sort of a good standing about that. Problem is that if i'm on schedule then they won't negotiate, I would have to get behind on my payments, have them send me threathening messages or calls, and then I might be able to negotiate terms or rate. Negotiating on the principal is done with lawyers usually.

And no, I appreciate the comments, sometimes it's tough love, sometimes it's support, etc. I haven't read a single comment that made me feel bad about having written something. Actually I wished I had more time (or be more organized) in order to write my numbers more frequently. I can't change the truth that mine is not the ideal case where everyone in the family rallies behind the goal of being debt free. I haven't read of another person going thru this. all those I read about have a wife or a husband that is supporting them and pitches in with ideas on saving money.

On the other hand I can't say wife or the girls are totally against less spending. They sometimes help and come up with ideas. What I suffer most is that they think that it's a temporary thing, that one saving tip here or there for the month is all it takes. They just haven't change the mentality on a permanent basis. So even though sometimes I feel their help, most of the times I feel alone in my quest.

La Gringa also wrote back when I posted my current numbers on how much I owe. She said:

You've made some pretty good progress on two of them...and not so much on others. Didn't you also pay off a loan to your dad?

I was surprised that the highest balances were the ones you made the most progress on. Are those the ones with extrafinancing and/or lower rates?

So you've paid off about $11,000. An interesting exercise might be to total all of your payments in that 17 months and compare that total to the $11,000. This might also be something to go over with your wife.

I know that you know that paying minimum payments doesn't give you much progress on the balances, but maybe your wife doesn't get it. If she was to get a job, even if only for a couple of years, you could get most of those balances paid off. I just don't know how long you can go on working 12-15 hours a day.

I know you've tried to cut costs in several areas, but it's really going to take something big (like another paycheck) to make an impact. I know that you don't want to live this way for another 5-10 years! I hate to see you living with so much stress.

I say:

Yes I paid off a loan to my dad and some other smaller loans. I wrote only about the active loans. The ones with the highest balances were the ones with extrafinancing too, so once the extrafinancing was paid, I was able to pay more towards the credit card balance.

I appreciate your concerns about me working two jobs for several years. I'm actually more concerned about keeping them. I know the day job is probably safe as long as I perform it well. However the job with the US company is always a toss up for me. I keep wondering when they will stop requiring my services and either hire someone on site full time or decide that someone already on staff should take over. The positive things going for me is that my hourly rate is very low for them and that so for my boss there says i've done a better job than the previous guy who was there on site full time.

About wife and a job. She is frustated about staying at home. She has lowered her job expectations. However she still can't find a job. She even went to an interview for a candy company located in a very bad part of the city, she was afraid to take the car and took a cab and stood outside while they let people in for interviews. No luck with that. I don't scour all over the place for jobs for her but I'm suscribed to a couple of places and it's always the problem of age vrs experience that makes it difficult for her to have the qualifications required, even for jobs below what she had expected.

Well, that's all I have for now. Holy week is comming and there is another spending concern for me. However this time I think we might have already come to a compromise between me and the family.

Have a nice day.

As of 3/4/2010 Part 1

2010-03-04T12:43:00.001-06:00

Ok I finally took the plunge and wrote down on the right side of my blog the amounts I owe as of today on each of my credit cards and the personal loan.

I'm shocked, and confused, and now embarrased but facing my problems.

First of all I know the balances I wrote now are right. I had all the documents to check them. So i'm surprised to see that Citibank and Promerica are so similar as to what they were in October 2008. So I went back to check my Promerica payment plan and it seems I was still having trouble disclosing all that I owed back then.

Now i'm better at it but probably still have to go. So to force myself. I'm going to write down what I had wrote down in 2008 and what my records say that I really owed in 2008.

This is what I had written

As of 10/05/2008
Credit Card One $6651
Credit Card Pro $6000
Credit Card Cr1 $9829
Credit Card Cr2 $1589
Credit Card HS $5485 ($300/mo)
Personal Loan $6458

This is more accurate of october 2008:

Credit Card One $6460 (about $200 less, maybe I was using the previous month's numbers)
Credit Card Pro $8890 ($2890 MORE than what I wrote before. I either just guess it or tried to fool myself and you).

Credit Card Cr1 $9829 (checks out, balance plus extrafinancing)
Credit Card Cr2 $1589 (checks out, just balance)
Credit Card HS $6930(About $1500 higher than post previously and I really don't know why I wrote that number before, it's just strange because it had no basis.)
Personal Loan $6777 (About $300 MORE, maybe I was using the previous month's numbers.

I've corrected the numbers on the right side of the blog, but I left the previous numbers here as a reminder of what I had wrote before. I was going to write about how I felt about each debt and how it had evolved but I had confirm the 2008 numbers first. I see that most of them were about right but the Promerica debt was much much higher and I really don't know why I wrote less. I either used bad numbers to start, bad math when converting to dollars or bad judgement in trying to look like I owed less than I did. Right now I can't remember now I felt back then about disclosing my finances.

I apologize if I have hidden some of the facts of my situation. I've corrected that and I hope from now on to give you the right numbers for all this.

This really hasn't been a good week for me financially yet this disclosure has helped. Thanks to all those who write in with their comments and their tough love for me. I really appreciate it.

Thanks

July or August, write it down.

2010-03-03T19:35:00.001-06:00

I went to pay my HSBC card today. lps 7,1000 . About 5000 went to interest. I hate that and it's all money that I will never see again but I keep telling myself this is just more and more of a reminder to me about not going so deep in debt in the future with nothing to show for.

With HSBC there is no negotiating, they want me to pay their credit card rates or pay the full amount. I can't do the second right now so I'm just paying the minimum until I can hit it with more.

So as I was driving back I was thinking about which cards I will cancel when I can. I have two cards with BacBamer, one with HSBC, one with Promerica, one with Citibank and the latest one with Ficohsa.

The BacBamer ones are the oldest ones and the ones with the most benefit to me, although lately the've become a bit tougher but I can understand given my recent payment history. I would probably keep those in my desk drawer for travel or for medical emergencies.

Ficohsa card is one i'm using for business transactions and it has an extrafinancing on it that is basically paying itself from the selling of Honduran goods to relatives in the US. So I would probably keep that in the short term but would let it go or keep paying the full balance when I get down to 0.

HSBC is going to go. I don't want to have to deal with them ever again. They aren't bad, they just don't care about me as a customer. Even a replacement card took two months and I just took it to cash my points with them.

Promerica and Citibank are the cards on arranged payment schedule. Meaning that i've talked with them and told them that I want a payment plan and then I would want to turn in the cards.

Promerica was very quick with that and I don't even get a CC statement, it's totally turned into a loan now. However the last time I was trying to see if I could extend my payment term to them they pulled a different number than I had, about 4000lps higher. I think I will come into their office with my receipts and settle the number before it's too late. This card will go too. They've been nice with customer service and everything but for some gut reason I hate them. It must be the 8000lps I have to come up with every month to pay because they gave only 36 months to pay back instead of 48 like Citibank.

Citibank cut me the same deal, however they keep sending me CC statement and actually turn my payment plan into an extrafinancing. So they seem to want to keep me as a customer. However that was probably back when it was Banco Uno. Lately I've seen them become more like HSBC. They want their money and little room for negotiation, period. I can understand that but I don't like it so they are going to go too.

So the reason for the title is that I was checking my balance on my company coop loan and the expected balances on my "loans" from Promerica and Citibank. It seems that on either July or August I can request a new loan for about 120,000lps, which wouldn't affect the take home pay amount I have right now (previous loan was 118,000). WIth that money I could pay the balance on the previous coop loan, which is a requirement, and I would have almost the exact amount to pay either Citibank or Promerica, for some reason they will both have balances of about 75 to 80k lps at about that time.

Going the completely opposite way of how I was going about two posts ago. I'm thinking I want to pay Promerica. even if they say I owe them a couple thousand lempiras more in late fees or so, I could still pull that from my emergency fund and be done with them. That would free up 8,000lps a month to:

1- Get back on schedule with Citibank (currently one month behind every month), this would take about a month and a half

2- Pay more towards HSBC and get rid of them ASAP.

3- Save more in my emergency fund and freedom accounts

I could pay Citibank back instead of being tied to them for another two years but that would only lower my outgoing cash flow by 5,000.00 , and i'm always a bit concerned as to how long I will be able to keep the morning job. Not that I'm bad at it, but since i'm on contract it would be easy for them to let me go.

I sure appreciate your comments and they definitely don't fall on deaf ears.

Thanks

Bad Good news and I need help with a decision

2010-03-01T15:19:00.001-06:00

Your prayers were answered.

Remember that credit card that I was offered that gave me 10% discount on fuel and restaurants? Most of your comments were against me having taking it and were warning me to pay it in full every month.

Well worry no more! I was turned down by the credit card company, wohoo!!! Really i'm happy about this. I called customer service today because I hadn't heard from that card anymore. They told me my application was rejected. I wasn't even sad, well a little but mostly I was relieved of the temptation of having it.

So I request to be transfered to the collections department. I recently made payment #19 out of 36, meaning that I had paid more than half of the debt. It was originally 181,685.27 and according to the payment schedule I owe them now 107,673.92. As with most leveled payment types of repayment the first part of the schedule is very interest heavy so most of the payment goes down to pay just interest. It's my "punishment" for having gotten into the situation i'm trying to get out of.

Anyway, I asked the collections guy if I could refinance my payment schedule to increase the term. He checked and said that he dealt with people that were behind in their payments and I wasn't showing up on his screen, so I was probably on schedule. However he had me wait on the phone and went to talk to the ones that deal with people on schedule that want to reorganize their debt, I figure not too many. He came back a few minutes later and told me that I could in fact do that since I was more than halfway done with my current payment plan. I could probably add another 12 months to it, I just had to go to the same office when I went to do the first payment schedule and request the extension. He said I would probably need to make another payment of the current schedule as a down payment on the new one.

So, my question to you is? should I try to keep paying with my current payment schedule which is a monthly payment of L 8,020.00 (about $400) or should I try to reduce it by extending the term, thus being in debt for a longer period but improving my monthly cash flow ?

In my current state I still have 17 payments to go at L 8,020.00 to go from 107,673.93 to zero with a interest rate of 33%

If I were to refinance and if the interest rate were to stay the same I would have 28 payments to go (17 of the current plan minus one taken as down payment on the new one plus 12 months on the new one) at 33% to pay about 100,000.00. WIth my loan calculator this comes one to a monthly payment of L. 5,404.01

Honestly I have thought about this and have considered toughing it out until I really couldn't pay anymore at the current values. Mostly because right now i'm on the side of the payment that would put more money towards capital than to interest and would end this debt it about a year and a half. While if I refinance I would obviously pay more interest because I would keep paying for another two years and a half, almost back to where I started although at a lower debt amount.

The reasons i'm considering a refinance now are the hope of a lower interst rate, less pressure on me to work enough hours each month to make the payments, and more opportunities to save money now that i've learned to do that.

Right now i'm usually able to cover this payment at the current value, although sometimes it's straining because I don't have enough money in my emergency funds to comfortably cover one of those payments if my paychecks are late.

I did learn one thing, they do refinance payment schedule for people that are behind on their payment, so I could wait until I'm really behind and request a refinance until then, hopefully it won't get to that but that's one ace up my sleeve if it's still available in the future.

On other news, my Citibank card (also on a repayment plan) charged me the yearly membership of their credit card, about $70. I tried as last year to have them reverse that but this time I got a negative. They said I should pay up the full amount I owe them and then they could reverse the charges. Sure I can come up with Lps 90,047.00 by the end of this month (no not really, unless I did something very drastic!!). So with them I plan to reach a good point on my coop loan when I can take some 100,000.00 lps out and just blast my Citibank debt and close that account. They have nothing i'm interested in and they have been very tricky ever since I remember.

My HSBC debt would've been the one I would've prefered to pay first because it's at a higher interest rate but I have to take one or the other. It is one of my goals for this year to be able to pay one of those high debts. I think that would really make a different in my snowball repayment plan.

I hope to hear what you have to say about this.

Pay Raise and Bonus (or is it?)

2010-02-26T15:07:00.001-06:00

Wednesday noon I got my salary transfered to my bank account. It was strange because it was only the 24th but then I remember that this month has only 28 days.

Later in the day we got called into my boss's office. He went on to explain that we would get a salary "adjustment" to match inflation. We'll, that's usually what we get every year so no news there.

But wait! there's more. We are also going to get a Bonus pay on July, not the one required by law but something extra that is called a vacation bonus. For a normal employee it would mean that when they go on vacation they would also get a bonus payment to probably pay for whatever they are going to do while on vacation.

In my case it doesn't apply because I can't take a lot vacation time. My boss knows this and yet he complains to me that I have too much vacation time pending, I have almost 50 days of vacation time. I requested 2 weeks and then I wanted to change it to 3 weeks and he said no. Only two weeks because X person was comming over , or Z proyect needs my supervision and that later in the year I could take another two weeks. and so on. Great, in the meantime i'm accumulating another 20 days of vacation time so next year we'll be in the same spot.

Anyway. The bonus. So we are told it's 50% of our normal monthly pay. Great news right? Wrong. It's just a juggling act with the numbers. Our pay "adjustment" was already budgeted for this year for some time already. But we had complained that our sister company that doesn't actually provide any services or generates anything close to the level of income that we do, have that bonus payment.

Our boss had told us that he had been told they didn't have that benefit, but one of their employees came down one day and talking about something else we came to that subject and she disclosed in full how they get that bonus. So that was a little help for us.

Our boss had been juggling with the idea of giving us a pay adjustment or a bonus but not both. So the day before the big annoucement he had me come into the office to help him with some math and I figured out what he was going to do. I think he let me know because i'm the #2 in the company but still i'm not the one calling the shots so it felt awkward to know how the trick was pulled.

He was going to take the bonus from the already budgeted raise and have our pay adjustment be the difference. So if someone was going to get a 7% increase in their pay, now they would get only a 4% increase and the 3% (times 14, the number of montly payments we get each year) would be the "bonus" for July.

So from an administrative point I think it was a cool idea to keep the budget from increasing. And my coworkers were happy to get the adjustment AND the bonus. But for me who knew how the trick was pulled it was a bit of a letdown.

I guess the good side of this is that it's a forced saving for me, and so when I get that bonus I will be more interested in spending it wisely (probably paying bills or school for my girls).

I guess like they say, I shouldn't have watched how that sausage was made.

I think we already got the raise but i'm not exacting sure how much take-home pay I will get. I'm planning on request most of that raise be automatically sent to my emergency fund.

I already increased the savings to that account to 2000lps each quincena and i'm saving 600lps on the freedom account too. I managed to do that by taking the amount that we got deducted in january and may for municipal taxes and divert it to those accounts.

I'm totally surprised at how one can manage to live on the amount of money we get to take home. I remember when I started saving 200lps on my emergency fund and now i'm saving ten times that amount and still make it to every payday. Or well almost, sometimes I do dip into it but it's still growing.

I gotta write another post about how i'm doing with paying debt. This is already long enough.

Feeling down

2010-02-10T19:32:00.001-06:00

I was recently changed the schedule of my anti-anxiety meds in the process of trying to wean me out of them. Unfortunately the adjustment phase means I have some periods where I do experience anxiety, usually mornings and early evening as it's about when the effect is wearing out.

That plus the actual problems of every day life and of trying to get out of debt with a family that is 50% behind me makes it more difficult than usual to get thru the day without feeling sorry for myself and just plaining cry out of despair.

The only good thing I guess is that I know it's my brains abnormal reaction to events that otherwise I wouldn't really let them get to me. I feel the morning chill down my spine and the urge to just sit there and let time go by when I know I have a ton of stuff to do, the urge to to repeat a motion like stroking an arm or hair just because it's a natural stress releiver. All the signs of the onset of an anxiety attack. Fortunately it never materilizes either because I take my med in the following minutes or because by recognizing it I make it go away.

In any case I just felt like pointing out because I imagine that some people might not just be fighting with debt but also fighting with the feelings that come from debt. The exhaustion of thinking about saving on everything all the time. The guilt when splurging on something or paying more than expected. etc.

And it's the crappy little things of every day like a car that runs rough, heavy traffic in a place that usually has none. More user support requests than usual. Hard to solve problems from bosses, calls for help when trying to get some peaceful time, etc. It's easy to let it pile on if one is not aware tha it's a mental issue.

So if you are feeling overwhelmed by things around, it might be time to get some mental help. I know I could have all of this feelings go away by increasing my med dose, but then I wouldn't be moving forward in trying to stop taking it. I could also wait until I don't have debt or problems and stop my medication then, but I do have a plan to get rid of my debt, however problems will always be there, it's part of my job and part of life.

Darn, I have to finish this software deploy, answer phones and print reports. See you later.

Double payday!

2010-02-02T17:46:00.001-06:00

In my last post I was writing that my morning job payments were comming in a little delayed. Well, my payment from Jan 1 to Jan 15 was VERY delayed. It arrived today, 15 days after I sent the invoice.

However it seems they also included payment for the invoice I sent YESTERDAY. I still have to add both invoices and figure it out but from the amount I got It does seem like that's what they did.

Now comes my dilema. Should I keep asking them about my payment each time or should I accept their "forced monthly" payment scheduled? I hate asking for my payment. It's not like they ask me for my work over and over. But my debt re-payment schedule is set to work with two payments per month from them and changing it would surely make it complicated for me since I would get behind payment on some of those debts.

Now I have to go off and make payments. It's not as fun as going shopping but getting that payment number crossed from the payment plan sure feels good.

Have a GREAT day!

Playing with Fire

2010-02-02T16:47:00.001-06:00

Well today I got a call from Promerica. It's the bank with which I arranged to turn in my credit card and start a debt repayment schedule. I'm about halfway with them of the 36 months's term.

I thought it would be one of those calls reminding me that I was a few days behind my payment. I've been getting my morning job payments a bit late and so I get called on it and even threatened to be taken to legal department if I miss two payments. I really don't want to but sometimes the money is not there when it's due. Lately i've been mostly on time in keeping only 30 days late.

My surprise was even bigger when I hear someone talking to me in a happy voice from the "credits" deparment instead of the "collections" department. That was strange.

Right away they told me that due to my "good customer record with them"...I almost laughed out loud but I managed to keep it a a grin...they were offering me a credit card that would give me 5% back on fuel purchases and 10% back on restaurant purchases.

My first instinct as has been with the previous 5 or 10 calls from other companies offering me credit cards, insurance, lines of credit, etc was to say no. However I thought about it and considered that lately i've been able to carry one or two credit cards in my wallet and actually NOT use them even when I was very short on money.

Here the two sides of my mind started playing with me. One side says "just say no, stay the course". The other side says "you spend at least 4000lps on fuel alone each month, that's 200lps back each month"..then it added "On weekends you spend between 200 and 800lps, you could get back 20 to 80 lps back".

So after asking about interest rates and other fees, of which I was told there are none, I told them to go ahead and mail the card to me.

I'm going to play it slow and request it to have a credit limit of $500 even if they give me $5500 like on the one i'm paying back now. I'm going to use an actual can I have here and put the gas money there or go to their office to deposit the money after every couple of purchases. If I find myself not paying the full amount I will stop using it and put it on my office drawer until I get the balance back to zero.

I know I'm playing with fire but I think i'm taking enough steps to make sure I don't get third degree burns today, maybe I might get something like a sunburn but I hope that it will actually help me save.

Let me hear what you think.

2010 goals and challenges part 2

2010-01-13T17:36:00.000-06:00

I just got my first pay for this year on my day job and I want to let you know that I increased my savings to my emergency fund by 200lps monthly (100lps quincenal). Since i'm having problem building my freedom account I have increased my contribution to the company coop by 400 lps (200lps quincenal).

In the back of my mind I know that january meant something different paywise. I wasn't sure if it meant more or less. Actually it's less. I have to pay 850lps quincenal , deducted actually, in municipality taxes for 2 months. So that will be a punch to my finances.

I guess the good news is that I have a gig finishing up and I will be able to pick up some extra money. I'm not sure if I should use that money to pay debt, pay stuff in advance or save in my emergency fund or my freedom account. I think I will probably sprinkle it around.

Also I got a call today from relatives in the US and they are interested in restarting the selling of nostalgic honduran products in the US. for example cigarrettes, over the counter medications, snacks..etc. So I have that line of income that might start. If anyone has ideas on how to to better do this I would appreciate your comments. I'm not talking of big containers, i'm talking about small packages of 1 to 10 pounds each, shipped possibly by regular mail since it would be the cheapest. I think I could involve my wife in this since she is out of a job and have her make some income on her huge lumps of spare time and maybe make herself feel useful and rise her self esteem.

If any of you know of "honduran" or "catracho" stores in your city in the US or anywhere in the world please let them know that I could ship them honduran products or help their customers (Hondurans living there) contact their relatives here thru alternative means to phone calls. Leave comments about this too if you want to help me.

I can say that 2010 feels to me like a year of opportunity for me to pay more debt and get closer to my goals of being debt free. I owe so much money, but I think it will owe a lot less.

The one thing I continue having a problem with is actually writing down the debt numbers here in this blog. I have most of those numbers either in paper on thru my online banking. But putting them here for the same period is a bit complicated since some debts have different cut dates. However I will make an effort to put an update here..it should be for own good too!

See you soon.

2010 new goals and challenges , part 1

2010-01-10T22:37:00.001-06:00

I wish I could sit down and write all I want in one post. But for some reason time for this is hard to make. December is very busy time and this past week i've mostly been catching up in both jobs and the extra gig I have with the cellphone repair shop.

I have goals for 2010. Big goals as in paying down one big credit card debt, and little goals as in saving my spare change instead of losing it. I need to find something to put it in.

I have challenges in 2010 too. Like an impending devaluation of our currency that will probably increase living costs. My boss of my morning job hinted that he was a little bit concerned about my health since I was putting almost 40 hours per week for that job when he knows I have another full time job, plus he reminded me that they had budgeted me at 20 hours per week. So I'm trying to cut back my hours to 30 per week to keep him and me happy, but it does affect my payment plans.

The immediate problems I neeed to tackle is to lower my cellphone bills again because the card with the lowest balance is the one that has autopayment of my cellphones on it. So if I don't pay it in full it increases my balance on that card. I had taken out a cellphone for my daughter but after her mismagement of it by too much text and too much buying codes on it she and I agree it would be better for her to use her prepaid phone and that would help me and help her.

Next I need to get wife to control her phone usage. I think her bill will naturally go down from $65 to $50 because about $15 was spent on partipating on christmas raffles during december (sending $1 text messages to raffles for cars, trunks and other prizes). I too am guilty of that and I too hopefully will see my bill lowered.

My wife text's very little but she talks a lot. I've purchased her the $7 free nights and weekends promotion and the $5 "call 3 numbers for free" promotion too. So her base bill is $12. The rest of the bill is mostly calling. I think she forgets or plainly doesn't care that both promotions limit calls to 10 minutes. After that you should hangup and call again. I explain that to her and she gets upset at me, but when I hear her talk I don't hear her hanging up and calling again.

So another big 2010 challenge will be to try to get my debts paid when my family is only helping me 50%. My oldest daughter is with me about 70%, youngest is about 40% with me in practice but I attribute that to her young age. My wife however swings wildly, sometimes helping me save and sometimes asking me for trips and expenses that I haven't budgeted for. They are always emergencies and if I don't give her the money then I'm some inconsiderate husband that earns a ton of money and is treating her like crap. Yeah she says that.

I do look forward to a pay raise on my day job hopefully in about 20 days. Also we will now get a vacation bonus which will be a percentage of our monthly salary to be given to us on the month that we joined the company. For me it's september so that's still a long time to go.

I plan to save more, specially automatic savings. I'm having trouble funding my freedom account because asking the company to send money to a 3rd account is a bit embarrasing to me as I know my boss and the secretary would start asking questions. So i will increase my contributions to the company's cooperativa. Even though i'm the treasurer on it, I hadn't realize that it pays better rates that a bank's saving account!

I hope to elaborate some more this week. For now I have to get back to fix some bugs on that cellphone repair shop program.

Have a good 2010!

Dream Time

2009-12-22T22:39:00.001-06:00

Well, lately I posted my debt free goal. Now I want to dream a little further.

My daughter always asks me this impossible questions like , what would you do with 100 million lempiras ? (about 5 million dollars). She knows the first part of my answer already which is "pay all the money I owe!!

So this time when they are away with their mom visiting friends I'm take a few minutes to dream. What if I had a very large sum of money ? or how much money would I like to have?

I would like enough that I could enjoy my work freely. I don't want to hang around my house but I wouldn't want to be at work from 8am to 9pm as I am right now. I would like to work some 20 to 30 hours a week. Then spend the rest of the time helping others help themselves. Learning new stuff and making sure my girls would be ready to live their lives as good people and good profesionals, no really big nest egg for them. Then I would like to be able to retire from my dayjob and work as a consultant until the time I have to leave this earth.

Well, they are comming back now ..so time to get back to reality.

Debt Free Goal

2009-12-11T17:14:00.001-06:00

I haven't thought the details of this yet, however I wanted you to know about it.

My first debt free goal, meaning something I want to do when I have paid all my debts, is to take flying lessons and get a private pilots license.

I've always han a passion for airplanes, airlines, flying, airports, and the technology surrounding them. From the simple small planes that are used for instruction to the massive Airbus A380, I enjoy watching most of them. Some time ago I was a "virtual pilot" in a "virtual airline" and using my flight simulator I took "virtual flights" and earned "virtual money". I really enjoyed it until I started having money issues and couldn't spend enough time sitting in a chair watching virtual world go by the virtual windows of my virtual airplane.

Now at most I read airline articles here and there and visit my local airport or hear Air Traffic Control frequency on my radio or online. However deep inside me is that urge to climb onboard an airplane and fly it. I may or may not enjoy it, as it's different to be flying in a smooth passenger jetliner than on a small instruction airplane, but I have to do it at least once.

Flying is definitely not cheap, and I would be scared if it were. So unless I really have money to spend on it I can't take flying lessons. I think that's a pretty good motivating goal for me. If only my wife would appreciate it too I would help a lot.

Anyway, I'm going to get me a tiny airplane model and hang it from my rear view mirror to remind me of my goal.

Enjoy the weekend.

Straight Talk , unlimited cellphone service

2009-12-07T17:13:00.001-06:00

So I was reading this sunday all my twitter posts and as I follow some debt payment, and frugal living posts I came across a post that say "cellphone service for teens". and pointed to www.straighttalk.com

So I read on and was skeptic of what I was reading. Unlimited minutes, unlimited text message and unlimited data access for $45 a month with no contracts! Sounds too good to be true. I spent $30 on two weeks of cellphone service last time I was in Phoenix and I was holding myself back. Specially on the inbound calls because I knew those are charged to me to, unlike here in Honduras.

So I dug up more and read reviews and it is true unlimited use. I texted my sister in the US and asked her what was her usually monthly cellphone bill and she said it was about $150. I told her about this service and I hope she takes it and saves $100 for something else.

Unfortunately there is no such thing in Honduras. However I thought it would be good for you guys to know about this, because if you are looking to lower your cellphone bill to a fixed amount and not be tied to a contract, I think this is right for you. from what I know most companies charge $1 a day for unlimited calls within their network, that's already $30 a month, add calls to landlines, other mobile operators, text message (to and from twitter obviously, hehe), you would end up with about $45 at least.

If you don't think you call or text or go online from your phone that much, they also have a $30 plan for 1000 minutes, 1000 text messages and 30mb of transfered data. Oh but what I'm saying, just go there and read and if it helps your budget them i'm glad I was able to help. Just don't look for fancy phones on their lineup, but in my case I wouldn't care.

I would hope there was such a plan here, but there isn't. My plan is the best one I could have. I can call all the member of my plan for free up to 10 minutes per call. If I only call them them I pay NOTHING every month. However calling anyone outside the plan, either same cellphone company, other or landlines implies charges. Lower rates for same company numbers, more for other mobile operators and landlines. Less during nights and weekend and more during days.

Also for $5 each month I can add three numbers that I can call for free for up to 10 minutes per call. Obviously those numbers shouldn't already be in my plan and have to be on the same cellphone company as I am. and for $7 more I can have nights and weekends free calls to all numbers, once again on the same cellphone company. Plus $15 for the internet service of up to 1Gb of transfered data means that I could look at a $27 bill each month if I only called those numbers and didn't text more than 200 messages each month. So it's no surprise that my regular cellphone bill is about $50. My wife's is a bit more because she keeps talking over the 10 minute limit and charges start to apply.

Oh and I have two phones, one on a family plan and one on a work plan, because each one has free calls only to it's members. Too complicated, right? Before each call I have to ask myself if i'm calling relatives, am I calling coworkers? am I calling one of the three numbers on my 0 rate group? can it wait till night? is it a weekend? am I sending too many text messages? am I boring you?

I would love the unlimited plan from straight talk. Even at $50 I would drop one phone and use a single one for all my calls, then again I guess I would need an extra battery to get thru the day!

Let me know what you think

setting goals

2009-12-07T16:47:00.001-06:00

November and December are hectic. November was hectic because if you watched news for a few minutes you probably found out that we elected a new president amidst a political crisis that we've had since june 28th. So there was a lot of tension in the air about election day. Was there going to be bombs, riots and clashes with police or was it going to be peaceful? was there going to be a great turnout of people voting or would most stay home fearing the violence. Well, it was definitely the most peaceful day in recent months and turnout was great. So that was kind a sigh of relief.

Now that things are more calm people are focusing on normal things. Here in Honduras we get what is called "aguinaldo". That is basically an extra month's pay. Imagine getting one full month of pay on Dec 5, and then your regular paycheks on the day you usually get paid. That and other things make for December a very hectic month. People run around with money trying to spend it all on gifts, food etc.

I already spent 50% of mine by paying september and october of my girls school. The rest of it I have to use to pay for November and December AND buy them clothes and guy supplies for meals on Christmas eve and New Years eve. It's a tradition that there is a lot of food cooked those days so that the next days the cooks can rest and eat with the family.

I tried as much as I could to hold on to the rest of my Aguinaldo, but I found myself paying for a few extras, like chicken from Popeyes, which is about 80lps more expensive than chicken from Pollo Campero. Little things that after a while my mind said stop! Then my wife got sick, again, with migranes, again. I had to buy her some medication and now I have to submit a ton of insurance paperwork with the hopes that some of tha that money will be reimbursed, I hope a stamp or a signature won't make them reject my claim.

The topic of this post came to be because in December, due to that money in the account plus the regular paychecks from my both jobs and other small incomes (coop profit distribution, overtime pay etc), I find myself with money that has no budget, with many things to do urgently and little time to go to banks. That is the recipe for disarter as I try to buy my way out of problems, like gifts or foods and being unable to take the time to go to the bank that always has long lines so I could deposit my money in my emergency fund and freedom accounts. Sure I could do it online but it's 20lps per transfer and for some reason those 20lps seem more real than the 15 lps I have to pay at the "convenient" ATM across the street, rather than the "free" ATM about a mile away after a busy intersection with traffic lights.

I guess these are hard decisions to make for something that is about $1 worth. Do I drive up there and spend time and fuel to get a free withdrawl? or pay 15 lps just walking across the street?

So I figure it would help me focus if I have goals. I mean being debt free is a goal, or is it not? I don't have a mortage because I don't have a house of my own so eventually I could owe nothing if I continue my plan. However I worry that once i'm debt free all that extra money will find a way out of my hands if I don't have goals for it. But what goals should I have? to free up my June and December bonuses by paying for my girls' school with my freed up salary? replacing my old car that goes in the shop frequently with a newer more reliable, comfortable, safer car? buying a house? doing all? doing something else? I haven't had a chance to think about it.

And what trigger it all? well the extra money this month was part of it, but the other was that i'm less that $100 away from paying up my dollar debt to my platinum credit card. That money in my budget will move to the next smallest amount, which is my cellphone credit card. that should take a few months , hopefully 10 or less and then on to the next one..and so on. As you can remember I have two credit cards on a payment schedule so I can't pay more to them than what is already set. So those will end in 18 and 24 months regardless, if I stick to the payment plan. I can see myself saying "ok i'm done paying, please cancel this credit card". It's easy to do that here, there is no negative aspect of canceling a credit card on your credit record (or so I think, I haven't ask for a loan in a while). I can see myself living with two cards instead of six that I have right now. Are those goals too?

Anyway. I feel I have too much money in my regular account, and even though I will pay 20lps for the transfer i'm going to transfer it right now and avoid the temptation of having them within easy reach.

Let me know what you think.

If I had a credit score

2009-11-09T23:01:00.000-06:00

In Honduras there is no credit score, but there is a credit bureau. I know it because friends of mine work there. It's embarrasing when we discuss work stuff and they tell me anecdotes about their job and I know that i'm in their database because of all the late payments and all the debt i'm still paying.

The problem i've had lately is that my morning job is paying me very late. I'm sending my invoices on the 15th and getting paid on the 25 or 29th and I send the other invoice on the 30th and end up getting paid on the 13th or 14th. This is wrecking my credit card payment schedule. So they are once again calling me to pay, and I have to explain that I don't have the money until I get paid. Obviously they don't care and just want a promise from me, I try to set the promise as far in the future as I can. Sometimes I get 30 days behind and get charged late fees, but there's not much I can do.

Top that up with car trouble on both cars last month and I've been squeezed. I'm proud that I have only used my only available credit card to buy my blood pressure pills one night that I just didn't have enough cash on hand to buy it, the next day I would get money from my emergency fund. However I didn't pay it back then, as I'm hoping to get this new payment soon and pay it back from there.

If I had a credit score I think it would be 0, as I usually get at least one call every month. One card or the other goes past the due date for a couple of days.

Anyway..I gotta get back to work, I am grateful to have these jobs. Otherwise I don't know what I would be doing now.

Have a good day and stay out of debt!

Credit Card Companies, World Bank and IMF in miniature?

2009-10-20T17:38:00.001-06:00

I have a payment schedule for my credit cards and loans, however the due dates for some cards bundle up and don't match my paycheck dates for both jobs. That means that every moment I get "gentle" reminders to pay my minimum payments on almost all my cards. Having a loan and two credit cards with Credomatic means they are the ones that usually call me the most.

Just about two weeks ago they were calling me to remind me of minimum payments on my cellphone card and my platinum. Lately i've been doing better in paying timely so this was just their reminder for me, they would call at 7:30am , or noon or 10pm. They would call for one card one day and I would confirm my payment date for both, but they would still call about the other card the next day.

I was mildly upset at their call strategy but I accept that I owe them money and they have the right to call me to pay.

However today they called me offering a second card for my cellphone credit card , "for your wife, son, daughter, father, mother, brother or sister". What?!? So I don't have a good enough record to get extrafinancing but I have a good enough record to get more debt with another card? I was still shocked halfway thru the saleperson's pitch. At the end I just said no and fortunately he didn't press the issue more or I would've let him know of the thoughts in my brain.

So, as I'm reading about US credit card companies charging fees for someone not using their card enough or for inactivity, etc, basically penalizing good behavior, I wonder if this isn't how third world countries live. We get loans from international agencies, then they request payments as they are entitled to, when we are drowning in debt they set economic conditions for us and stop the money flow that the country is used to. The country is then concerned (worried) about making those payments on time.

Eventually we pay back some of the money so the international agencies are then kind enough to loan money back..and the vicious circle starts over.

So, no Mr. mini World Bank, no mini IMF, I don't want your "free" additional card. I don't want the discounted jewerly for us "selected customers", thank you very much. You fooled me for a long time but not any more.

Some days i'm inspired.

We are in!

2009-10-15T12:05:00.001-06:00

Since I last wrote our ex President came back to the country. That led to some tense days were we couldn't leave our houses, then we could for a few hours then we had only night time curfews that at first started only a couple of hours after being announced.

As you can imagine it was some difficult days. Money wise, having to stay at home was a blessing and a curse. A blessing because I could work more for my morning job and put more hours in. But a curse because when the stress of staying at home usually leads to eating more than usual, and when we are then given a few hours to go out, the first things to do are to go buy gas and foods.

With everybody in this 1 million people city trying to either get to work or to get food or gas at almost the same time, it's hard to be picky as to where to go to buy groceries, we had to go to the nearest place, not necesarily the cheapest. Stand in line for a couple of hours and then get back home with one the bare essentials to hold us up until the next day or days.

Then there was the uncertainty of not knowing how long curfews would last..or when the next curfew would start. In general my objectives were not affected much but they were affected some as I spent more on fuel and food than usual. Some days we bought more fast food than usual just because of the urgency to get food home.

Well that was that. Now things are calmer and we are back to regular days. I haven't seen a protest (they are out there, I just haven't seen them) in a long time now.

Remember that some time ago I was writing about asking Credomatic to reverse the $150 membership fee? Well I asked them, even though i've been late doing some payments, They said my request would take 3 to 5 business days. Then our ex president came in and things got delayed a bit more. But one day I logged into my bank's online site and was happy to see the credit for $150. So i'm really close now to finish paying that balance off. There is les than $300 to go on that.

I was asked to put my debt numbers up since it's been a year or so since I've updated. I'm interested too in looking at the comparison.

Lately i've been focusing more on putting in hours for the morning job as much as I can, almost to the point of making it another full-time job. That really cuts into the time that I have to write. However I always feel the need to write about the stuff that i'm going thru, but the day ends before I can sit down and write. I wasn't even able to twitter as frequently! Amazing!.

I still like to twitter because I can just write a thought or something that happened almost at the moment it did. While here I have to gather thoughts and write them out and take more time. But here I can extend myself much more on deeper thoughts. So today I bit the bullet and decided to write to keep this journal alive for myself for those of you who follow my trip to paying up all the money I owe.

I hope to post those numbers soon. I do have budgets now for my two jobs and all my debts and expenses. So I am tracking my money better.

I still have to put in those pesky unexpected expenses and small cash expenses down. They are big problem for me now and they keep throwing my budget off balance.

Today however it's a Honduran Holiday because our soccer team has qualified to the World Cup, so we are all in party mode. As I was writing these lines the Honduran soccer team arrived at the airport and it was a sea of people waiting for them there. Now they are at the presidential office and there is another sea of people there too. Later they are going to a Catholic mass and the church there is already packed with people. A little joy for a country that has been torn apart by political problems.

Well the happiness of today is free...

Trip to the Mall, with my daughters!

2009-09-17T17:50:00.000-06:00

Going to the mall by myself and spending practically nothing there was breeze. Going with my daughters and spending only about 300lps was a much complex task

Last weekend we went to not one but several malls with my daughters because we had two things to do. The oldest one wanted a replacement cellphone for the one that got stolen from here last year. She's been using a simple one but she says shes tired of it, I guess the word would be bored. Also it's from another company and when I give her balance for it, it doesn't last long as it used to. Her friends that had numbers with that company have returned to the one they had before.

Also my youngest daughter wanted a board game as a present for children's day, which in Honduras is Sep 10.

So imagine two girls, one wanting a brand new cellphone and another one a fun filled board game.

I will write it shortly because just remembering how my legs ached after walking thru stores and stores makes my legs ache again.

For the cellphone I was decided not to buy one, I was going to use either my points, my credit card points or my loyalty benefits to get one. After visiting several Tigo customer service stores we found out that I was out of points and my credit card points were not enough for the types of cellphones my daughter wanted. She wants basically a phone that can also play music, typical teenager cellphone.

I found out that my loyalty benefits for her phone numbers would allow for a new phone until march 2010, she was not to happy about that. My own number would allow for a new phone in october, however my dad's number would allow for a phone right away. Unfortunately, or fortunately, the only store where they could do that process was closed until monday.

She wasn't happy waiting for october either but she was happy that I could get her a phone soon. After that she understood that even with the loyalty plan I couldn't get her an expensive one cause I have to pay the taxes on any phone I get thru the loyalty plan and also it was not going to happen that saturday. I think next weekend we will try again at the right Tigo store and with an open mind to models and prices.

The lesson for me was not to give in to buying just because my first options were out, but rather look some more.

Money spent on new cellphone: zero, so far because there is no new cellphone. Oh and her new phone will be rate controlled to about $10 a month or so.

I immediately had to apply the lesson learned with my youngest daughter. We continued shopping and we went to the Hyper Paiz at Cascadas Mall and there were several games she wanted, the cheapest one was about 700lps, way above the 300lps I had set as the soft limit and even above the 400lps I had as a hard limit.

My strategy with her was to let her know that I wasn't going to spend a lot of money on a board game but that we could look at all the games and talk it out and decide on a game. She wasn't going to impose a game on me and I wasn't going to impose a definite price on her (even if I had a limit on my mind). So after the first ones at Paiz were too high I told her we should keep looking in other stores making a mental note of what we found there.

We went to Lady Lee and found some less expensive games but still around 550lps and they weren't in good condition. We went then to a Carrion store and looked at the games there and we finally settled on a nice Bingo game for L200lps. she liked it because it had the big wheel with all the balls inside, I saw it was in good condition and the price was right.

I think an important part was that I didn't outright said no to the first reasonable games. I said "I think those are too expensive, let's keep shopping". So that relieved her of feeling like she wouldn't get a game, just not that game.

After all that walking, I saw them both tired and even though the youngest one was happy with the game, the oldest one was a bit sad of not getting a cellphone that day but not too sad. So i said let get some ice cream. At 22lps each it was 66lps for the three of us. That was all that I spent besides the 200lps for the game. We left the house at about 1pm and came back at about 5:30pm. A whole afternoon having spent only 266lps and bringing back two happy, tired kids. I was amazed myself!

I hope to write soon about the differences in options available to manage debt here in Honduras vrs the US. For that I have to let some thoughts simmer thru.

See you soon

Trip to the Mall

2009-09-11T19:57:00.001-06:00

I had a good experience at the mall today.

First of all I walked there from work since it's relatively close. saves me gas and headache of finding a parking space and it's good exercise.

Second I went there and felt relief of not feeling any urge to buy anything. I could've gone with my credit cards and I don't think I would've used them. I actually went there with a bunch of cash from a payment I couldn't make.

I roamed the hallways and looked into the stores and as usually the ones with low prices had a lot of people in them, the ones with expensive stuff had no one inside but the employees, how do those store survive?! I guess they can still make a good profit even when they put a 50% discount on stuff.

I went to the Tigo store and it was closed for remodeling. Crap, I wanted to remove my mom and dad's cellphones from automatic debit from my Amex BAC credit card. My dad and mom pay their cellphones but sometimes they time it wrong and Tigo ends up charging me and I don't have the hard to ask them for the money back. This last time they charge me AND my dad paid too. It was one of those rare days when both things go thru into the system. That was a month ago, this new bill my dad was expecting to pay nothing since the bill came about the same. But it was charge on my CC again! So Tigo explained to him that they send the bill amount to the CC company and that credits stay there until my dad would go pay manually to the bank, then it would be posted against his next bill. This was too much and he didn't want to cause me more trouble and asked if he could be removed from auto debit AND stay in the good plan we have. I had done this one time before with a cousin and apparently it had worked so I wanted to try it out.

The usual place where the Tigo store is located was being remodeled. I roamed around and made a note to get an ice cream cone when I was ready to walk back to the office. Suddenly a huge rainstorm could be heard outside so now I was sorta trapped in there.

I've been looking for a bluetooth headset for a while trying to get the lowest cost one with good sound quality. So I went into the many cellphone stores looking for prices. I found one headset that seemed good. I wasn't going to buy today but I asked if they would take credit card points. They said yes, and they also told me they took Tigo points!

Cool! I know my mom and dad's cellphones have a bundle of those under my name so I could use them. However I told them the Tigo store was closed. "Oh no, they moved to the first floor while this place is being repaired" , they said.

Even cooler, so I went down and I first took care of the cancellation of auto debit from my mom and dad's cellphones. That will help me kill that balance off now. I called them both and they said they were happy to finally have this fixed, AND they stayed in the plan which means I still call them for free.

Then I went on to gather my Tigo points and I had about Lps 1,300 worth, which was the price of the headset. I know I had used a ton of those points before getting cellphones from Tigo for free so I was happy the balance had gone up so fast.

So I did the usual paperwork and got the good headset I wanted. Most of the points came from mom and dad's cellphones which they were ok with giving to me since they only use their phones to talk so they don't need the latest one each year or any fancy accesories.

Then I went to the ice cream store, and I was about to pay when I noticed I had only a bunch of 1lps bills..I managed to gather the 20lps to pay (didn't want to break the other money I had for the payment I couldn't do).

I toured a little more but now I was a bit itchy to get my headset charged and start testing it. So I walked back to the office under a light rain and got here all soaked. I'm still drying up.

Cancelling my mom and car auto debit from my credit card was a good thing. Getting a BT headset for points (no money) was good too , no more hiding from the police when I talk and drive! And the ice cream cone was 20lps..so trip to the mall , window shopping, improving my debt burden, getting a nice bluetooth headset and an ice cream cone was a total of 20lps , about $1 . :-)

Still I meditated as I was walking thru the hallways how in the past I would've charged the headset first and would worry about how to pay it up later. This time I wasn't in a hurry to buy it, actually I have been shopping for one for months now. Only because I was able to use the Tigo points, which are good only for cellphones and accessories, did I actually buy it today. I had seen the same headset in another store there and was only comparing prices and was ready to walk back to the office without it with no remorse. I even actually had a credit card with me because I needed to bring my CC to cancel the auto debit. At no time was I thinking of using it to pay for the headset today. I did asked for a CC points balance and I had about 2500 points on it. That's when they told me I could use the Tigo points.

I'm putting the credit card back in my desk drawer now. I'm not tempted to use it but it's too bulky on my wallet now and it feels uncomfortable.. :-)

This for me was a good experience, how do you think I did?

budgets and goals

2009-09-05T17:25:00.001-06:00

I've made a budget, two actually. I made a budget for the money I receive from my morning job, most of which goes to paying debt, another part goes to my emergency fund and to my freedom account. And a small part goes to my wife, my girls and me to feel some reward from this job.

The other budget was a quick one I made for a one-off job that I got paid for and again most of it, about 80%, went to debt payment, 10% went to the accounts and 10% to us.

The sad thing about making the budget is realizing that the first fantasy budget doesn't cut it. Going thru the bills and looking at the minimum payments and writing a permament number (not the minimum otherwise I would never get out of debt) really cuts off the money left over for savings and for self-reward.

The good thing is that following the budget is a good way to remember to pay all bills and stop the collector's calls when I get behind on payments. It's also good because on a separate sheet I write the balance, the payment i make, the interest's i'm charged and the new balance.

So last thrusday I got paid on my morning job and othe one off job! Wow a ton of money in my hands. On previous years I would've blown half of it probably and paid with the rest and then would be getting calls for other payments that forgot to make. Not this time, I got all the money into my bank and made the payments online whenever possible and the using free ATM withdrawals took out the rest of the money to pay other cards and deposit on the accounts.

I have some money left that haven't paid yet. Unfortunately I still had forgotten about two bills, a small one and a larger one. Got called for both today, so i'm reviewing the remaining money and due dates, etc. to try and cover the minimum payments. It's sad to have to work it this way because I know I might pay both bills on monday but another bill will be left behind.

The good thing is that this bill left behind will be paid in parts from my morning and day jobs until I get it to date, probably by end of september.

Another good thing, looking at my balance on my Bac Platinum card I realize that my dollar balance is about $230. Strange because I thought it would be lower. I looked and they charged me $150 for the membership renewal. I'm going to ask them to reverse it, I did that for my citibank account and they reversed it even though my credit rating with them wasn't that good. Please wish me luck, or pray or send good fortune to me in the hopes they drop that $150 charge.

IF they do drop it I will be left with $80 to pay. And my budget for that balance is $100 that comes from the second payment of the month from the morning job. SO, on october 4th or 5th I should be putting that balance to ZERO! not yet but I can see it comming. IF they don't drop it then it will be another two months (I might get the $30 elsewhere just to get that thing to zero right away) but still within sight.

Next up is making the budget from my day job, which will include the house expenses and all the stuff I pay for which is not debt. I feel this is much easier to do now that i've done the first budget.

On the political front the US has put more pressure on our country to return the ousted president. They've cut all non-humanitarian aid, are not issuing any more visas to enter the US, are not willing to recognize the november elections at this point and might cancel visas to some 1,200 honduras liked to the interim government.

I hope that my morning job doesn't get affected by this, so far it hasn't been. I hope november comes quickly and we get elections. I hope the US at least recognizes those elections so things can return to normality on January with a new president.

Tonight Honduras has a soccer match with Trinidad and Tobago. I hope they win and raise our demoralized spirits. We thought the US was our ally and right now it doesn't feel that way, but I still have hopes they will eventually help us again. OR we learn to stand up on our own feet and fend for ourselves.

Back to School

2009-08-24T23:44:00.001-06:00

The good: Paid for all of my girls school supplies and tution fees with money saved, no credit card put on it. Cool!

The bad: Emergency fund almost wiped out, at least i'm rebuilding it as fast as I can. I didn't pay 2,400 lps due on the Bac Loan, I will pay it all next quincena.

The bad bad: Wife flunks another of her master's degree classes. Another Lps 2,600 down the drain. She is upset about flunking the class but says she doesn't deserve that grade and that it's everyone else's fault. In any case the school will probably let her take the class again with a simple online course, no test but they will sure want the $$.

Back to 6:30am drives to drop girls at school. Wife won't help because at that time she says she is not alert enough to drive safely.

Another good: I'm back on schedule with the Promerica loan which was the biggest payment.

Another bad: I'm behind on the Bac Loan, see above.

Another good: I now have a budget for the money I get from my morning job, most of it goes to debt payment. a small portion goes to wife, girls and me, and the rest is now budgeted for Emergency Fund and Freedom account. Specially since my emergency fund is almost depleted.

Emergency fund refund and the Freedom Account

2009-08-12T17:05:00.000-06:00

A week of vacation went by so fast and it really just meant working with a different window view as I worked the same hours but more on the morning job.

I had to do mayor car repairs and registration for the other car and unfortunately I had to dip into my emergency fund. So in order to re-fund it, I increase my automatic deposit into that account from 1000 lps to 1500lps.

Also this week i'm going to open my freedom account , which should be the one to have the money for the non-monthly expenses that I should know about. I'll start it off with 500lps and try to put 500lps into it every quincena.

I had a couple of tough love comments saying that I should face reality and put all my debts in one page, and keep track of my spending. Well I guess i needed that. I've opened a simple spreadsheet and the first credit card bill that came this month is already posted there and I will keep putting the others up as they arrive. As I'm covering for a coworker right now I can't go out to get some of the info I need to write it down faster (i'm writing this between tasks and calls).

I think I do need to write my debt down to make sure i'm actually moving forward to reducing it. I know that it's not increasing but on my HSBC card I'm not sure i'm reducing it as I would imagine.

Thanks for reading!

Freedom Accounts and recent events

2009-07-29T17:59:00.001-06:00

I was reading this interesting article. One important point I got from it and it's so true with me is that when I add up my monthly expenses there is always a lot of money left and I wonder where it goes. Selective amnesia is what it's called. We forget the non-montly payments or those informal montly expenses (like hair cuts and daily grocery purchases).

They talk about setting up a Freedom account and I was surprised that basically that's what I was doing with an old account I have in Banco Atlantida. I was putting money in there to save for expenses on the big things that are comming like my girl's school tuition fees this August.

I will ask for another automatic deposit on that account. On my emergency fund I have authorized L 1,000 every 15 days. I will start funding my Freedom account with lps 500.00 every 15 days too. For some reason when it's under 1,000 I feel it is less of a hit.

Why did this jolted my mind? well I have to pay lps 3570 in registration fees for my wife's car by friday. this is a once a year payment. Then I have a lower one for my car in November. There's also the car repairs , actually maintenance that I've found out i'm not budgeting anywhere. In any case these are expenses that throw me a curve ball in my attempt to pay off all the money I owe. This time I will have to dip into my emergency fund to pay for the registration fees. But i've managed to put in more hours in my morning job (do you notice that i'm not here or even in twitter that much any more) and hopefully I will use some of that to take my emergency fund back to it's previous level in a month or two.

Other non-montly expenses are doctor visits, non-prescription and prescription meds not covered by my insurance. Books and other similars for my wife and kids. I hate to say etc because it means I don't remember other non-montly expenses, so i'll leave it at that and list more of those here when I have them in my mind.

On other topics the crisis in my country continues and even though we are living peacefully there is tension in the air on how this all will end. Directly to me it affects me because either my boss, my wife or myself make me waste time by talking about it. Who did what, what was discovered, another deep research article to read, etc.

As much as I support the cause, it takes about an hour or two of my day every day just to keep up with events, as I don't dare be in the dark about it. Just yesterday we had a meeting from 11am to 3pm, a four hour meeting we spend 75% of the time talking about the crisis, that's three HOURS, and about one hour actually talking about work stuff. I hate so much when my boss goes off in a tangent that way. I feel the minutes breezing away as he talks and the others talk back, probably just being polite. Then I had another meeting, and fortunately the work stuff was dealt with in the start and then the crisis talk took over and I excused myself and came to work...an hour later that meeting ended.

My morning job was delayed in sending my payment and I've had HSBC and Citibank calling me since last week about payments and until a few minutes ago I didn't have the money. So right now i'm off to keep both of them at bay.

I still haven't written down the numbers on the money I owe or the money I spend. I think sub-conciously I don't see the reason for it as I should know where my money is going. I know my credit cards are frozen. I know I don't carry then, they are cut up so I think deep inside myself I don't understand the reason to put up in a single page all the money I owe (once again), I think it might even discourage to look at the big number and feel that I can't overcome it. Same for the expenses, but I think that part would probably help me cut down (more!!) on them. My biggest problem is that my wife and to a lesser extend my girls are not on the same boat with me 100%, they are more like 50%. So it's hard each month because of that. How ironic, the oldest and the youngest women in my house try to get the most money from me. My oldest daughter doesn't ask me for money as much as my youngest daughter and my wife.

I've talked a little about this with male friends, coworkers and boss and they all agree that their wives are about the same, any money received they want a piece, a big piece (if not all of it). A bit of relief to know i'm not alone but no real help except facing the reality that I have to become a tougher husband and dad and say "NO" more often that i'm already saying now. I think that is the hardest part about my financial problems, having to face them mostly alone with little help from my family and thus I become a sort of enemy to them when I don't buy them what they want. Sad but that is my reality.

Anyway..I gotta go before they close. Otherwise I will get a call tomorrow. Off to owe less!

The Emergency Fund

2009-07-14T14:50:00.001-06:00

Well, I can't live every day of this political crisis expecting someone else to come fix my problems. So back to talking about the money I owe and the progress i'm making.

I have a lot of ideas about stuff to write, like how i'm failing miserably at keeping records of my expenses or making a budget. I mean a detailed budget, because I already have a general budget. I will post my "general" budget soon I just have to copy it from my cellphone's to-do list.

One thing I had to touch on today was the emergency fund. I was read the debt kid's http://www.debtkid.com/why-you-need-an-emergency-fund article about it and I felt myself on his shoes.

Previous I used to think I was missusing money by saving it on an emergency fund when I had outstanding debt. I should put every penny I could towards paying debt.

Then as it happens to everyone the unexpected would hit, a car repair, a higher than usual bill, someone gets sick ,etc. Any unplanned or overbudget expenses makes one whip out the credit card if you don't have other way to pay for that thing.

So the emergency fund came to be after considering that it would take me several years to get out of this debt and probably the money in the fund wouldn't be missed so much compared to the satisfaction of self-financing in times of crisis.

Two things have made my emergency fund grow now to about L. 7,000.00 ($350) . One is the automatic payroll deduction that goes straight into my emergency fund bank account. Two is the help of a dear friend in keeping for me the ATM card for that account and thus protecting me from the temptation to use it in non-emergency situations.

I have done something else. Every time I take money out of the emergency fund to pay for some emergency I make a note on a sticky note I keep on the savings book for that account. I have made a strong effort to repay the fund and not just let it organically grow thru the money I normally put on it from my paycheck. Right now I have 1000lps to repay. This is down from the highest of 2800lps some time back.

I think if I were to advise someone on things to do to get out of debt I would say that an emergency fund should be one of the first things to do, even if it sounds like going against the nature of paying up debt. It took a lot of meditation of my part to convince myself to do it, and now i'm glad I did it to keep myself from pulling credit cards (which I have destroyed anyway!).

Think about it and take my advice..it's free.

Hardship has it's privileges

2009-07-07T00:27:00.001-06:00

It is strange, and then it's not.

Having a curfew makes one plan a lot more in advance. Having the curfew time change makes it hard to plan.

This week i've spent the most I remember. I didn't write down everything I spent but I know that I didn't spent much money because most stores where closed when I went home from work. That forced to cut on spending on snacks and stuff for my girls. I did buy medications for me and gas for my wife's car and 200lps on repairs to a manhole cover on the sidewalk of our garage.

My wife says that she spent more on groceries, but she hasn't asked me for money because she can't go around freely as she is afraid of driving into a protest either pro or against what is happening in our country.

And then today I got paid at my morning job. I immediately paid my loan with BAC and my platinum credit card with them too. Tomorrow I plan to pay my loan with Promerica and see how that leaves me. The other money I owe is my HSBC card and my loan with Citibank.

I haven't kept good records of my expenses, payments, income, etc. Trying to send messages to the world to let them know the truth about what's going on in my country in this time of crisis has taken priority.

However I have remained frugal even in times of urgency. Maybe not to the extreme but at least buying rationally and being creative.

I hope I can concentrate back on telling my finances to you as soon as possible. In the mean time I just hope that my country's crisis ends soon.

Thanks for your support

Frugal in times of unrest in the country

2009-06-28T16:03:00.001-06:00

Imagine not being sure if you will be able to buy gas or groceries tomorrow. Imagine if power is out and you are not sure when it will be back. Imagine if you don't know if there will be curfews that will restrict your travel to places you prefer to buy. You would be buying foods, probably fast foods, at any price. Filling up your gas tanks at the closest gas stations, buying groceries at any open store. Travelling long distances or waiting in long lines to buy things to supply your family with shelter, clothes and foods. Price comparison and buying frugally take a back seat to fullfilling the sense of protection and people turn to cover necessities at any cost.

Last week concluding today has been one that has had me with those fears in my mind. On thursday we were sent home early as things in our city were feared to turn chaotic and they didn't. Today sunday we had our president removed from post and the city panicked for a while. However order remained and so far there are no curfews.

How has this affected my debt plan? I am happy to say that for the most part it hasn't affected as much as I feared. We got paid on friday and we had filled our car's tanks as regularly scheduled.

We did have to go to another supermarket, not the lowest price that we usually go to, but not overtly expensive. We had to do that because the low priced one had no power today as all the city awoke with no power. We purchased about the same amounts of groceries we usually do. We didn't go to the wholesale supermarket today but we plan to do so later this week when we hope things get more back to normal. Thankfully the supermarket was not running out of most things and even though we had to stand in line at the register for about two hours we were able to purchase what we needed not at the lowest price but at least at an average one.

As power came back I was also relieved that I would be able to work this sunday for my morning job.

However, as the new president and the ousted president will probably clash this comming week, I fear that some of our freedoms and rights might suffer temporarily and will make me spend more money that I would usually spend.

So, if you think you have trouble being frugal, imagine living in a country that makes it even harder by changing the rules of the game from one day to the other.

Right now, I feel calm and in peace, but I ask you to pray for this to continue for my country, my friends, family and me.

Well, back to work now.

Its monday

2009-06-22T19:41:00.000-06:00

I have a throat infection that was really bad last week, was a little bit better last week and it's the same this week.

I have a morning job in which the urgent tasks don't let me get to the important tasks. Urgent tasks like keeping internet available to the programmers when the main connection goes down...switching to the other provider is not easy. Important tasks like figuring out if we can reboot a box without locking everybody in or out of the office in phoenix. Important stuff like wondering how to remove Internet Explorer 8 and put Internet Explorer 7 back into a very busy server without disrupting service. I wonder if my boss is as patient with me as he seems to be. I sometimes feel I would've at least had a talk with myself. He's a really nice guy and I hate not completing the tasks he assings to me the same day.

I have an afternoon job on which we have several projects going on at the same time, fiber lines being installed at locations. Calling people to get access. People calling me for a meeting to look at their product. A team meeting to decide which company will get $250k worth of contracts for software and hardware. A new version of a system that at face value is the same as the previous one but requires a meeting with users to explain the subtle differences, oh and that one has a deadline to go live by July 1st, otherwise we will feel it when we try to get the monthly reports consolidated from the old and the new system. Topping this off is a boss that is a time-hog, he keeps me in his office to fix an email problem, but while I want to know what is wrong he is taking landline and cellphone calls, so I wait. Then he tells me war stories about the things he's done and the places he's visited. And we always go back to his farm. Then he asks me what I do with all the time at the office.

I have a side project with a cellphone repair company. It's an old piece of software that requires a couple of fixes here and there. They've used it for almost 7 years now and it's a monster to support. Early last year they fired their IT support guy, so guess who gets calls now when they can't connect to the application. Or when they can't find a backup that has 30,000 level 3 work orders. And they had the never to ask me to come in the morning cause at 6pm they already wanted to leave as I was searching for the files I would need to figure out if there was a chance to fix the problem later tonight.

Well at least I have work, it beats not having anything to do!

During the weekend my car leaked oil like crazy. The fix was so cheap but the oil was so expensive in comparison! Wife had a flat tire. Repair shop says I have to change all tires on that car soon..like in a month or so. It's a heavy car for the tires I think. Mine still has good ones and we bought them almost at the same time.

I have friends I haven't been able to call since two weeks ago when I said I would call them "tomorrow" and then tomorrow said "no, you are going to be neck deep in work...and sick too".

Well at least my morning job payment came and I was able to pay off my credomatic platinum card, finally paid off my extrafinancing on it. I was paying $315 for that. Now I only have $550 balance on that (on the dollar side) and about 90,000lps on the lempira side. The minimum payment on the dollar side will now drop from $350 to $95. That will allow me to pay off more debt in other places while slowly paying this one off.

I have tons of emails comming in and luckily most of it is spam. The other I read quickly and file or delete. I have avation news I haven't read since january and catching up will probably imply deleting every other email while I read some during my sleep or something.

Well at least it's monday, how bad could tuesday be huh? (I know I'm asking for it, I want to know how bad it can get).

Enjoy your monday

June 15th and 16th

2009-06-16T19:02:00.001-06:00

June 15th

Medicines:

298.03 for Wife's

378.24 for Wife's and mine

30.75 for me (sore throat lozenges)

200lps for seamstress fees for my oldest daughter's uniform for graduation.

38lps for chicken burger for daughter and I as we went to pick up the new uniform

Still pending is my BP medication. which I think will be purchased tonight or tomorrow.

June 16th

50lps for youngest daughter to buy pizza at school during graduation ceremony.

14lps for sodas for lunch

7lps for gift bag for wife's class.

My wallet is empty right now, not a single lempira on it. I have mixed feelings about this. A relief of sorts (very easy to say NO!) but also a sense that I can't buy what is really needed. Every day I see something new.

Sent my invoice today for my morning job payment. Hope it comes thru on or sooner than friday.

More June 14th spending

2009-06-14T23:57:00.001-06:00

50lps for oldest daughter

40lps for youngest

200lps for board game for the kids.

96lps for fabric softener

I started entering some numbers on the spreadsheet hoping to be able to use it on my cellphone. It is much harder than I thought it would be to use it on my cellphone. I need 40 hours on a day!

Today I stood my ground when we went to the mall with some of wife's friends. They went into a couple of stores with her and my daughters. Only thing I bought was the fabric softener. Little trinkets they bought on their own allowances. Even the fabric softener I decided to buy two one liter bottles for 96lps rather than the 3 little bottle for 147. One to pay less and two to try different scents instead of having to stick to one scent.

Ending the day without having completed the numbers in the spreadsheet. Tomorrow I have a normal working day so I should find some time then to start entering the first numbers from the blog posts.

June 13th and part 14th

2009-06-14T14:52:00.001-06:00

Last night,

Bought kitchen containers: 102lps

Bought 10 pieces of chicken for the weekend: 219lps

Fueled my car: 430lps

went out with the whole family for a ride around the city, bought sodas for everyone: 56lps

Satuday:

bought lotto tickets: 30lps

Went out with the girls and bought some granitas: 110lps

Parking fee: 20lps

Paid 2699lps for wife's master's degree classes this month

Paid 300lps for wife's dress for tuesday 6th grade graduation ceremony

200lps at karaoke bar and dance club. We rarely go out but wife's classmates insisted. They footed most of the bill as they had the most drinking and eating there. Got to know two places. One is allright the other one not so much.

Sunday morning:

Breakfast: 45lps

Lunch: 207 with economy combos for the five of us. Dinner should be the leftover chicken from saturday.

Girls was a board game to pass the time, also the youngest one wants a shirt for the graduation ceremony. That is yet to be purchased.

Have I told you I dislike weekends? they really make my pocket ache.

June 12th

2009-06-12T18:33:00.001-06:00

Last night:

99lps on a pizza, 70lps on burgers.

Today:

20 lps on semitas...here we go again buying daily. hmm

400lps for wife to buy "stuff". Includes food at the university, garden cleanup kids, and salon stuff.

600lps on radiator leak repair for my car. They tell me it's the last repair they can do to it, next time I will have to buy a used radiator for 2500lps. At least the price hasn't changed since two years ago when I asked for the price of it.

681lps to fill up my wife's car. It's payday for me and I try to fill up my cars on that day. Later tonight I will fill up mine.

My car has given me a lot of trouble lately. I think all of the problems had just accumulated over time and are manifesting themselves now. Boss says that I should get another car but right now it's not in my plans, not even close! I always feel a little depressed when my car is in the shop mostly because it's never totally fixed. There's always stuff they discover that I should fix soon. So I leave the shop with a fixed car but in my mind it still is not "completely" fixed. Right now I know my car needs a brake inspection, engine work and a tuneup. I was going to do the brake repair now but I might have to wait another week on it since this radiator stuff came out of nowhere.

Weekend is rolling around again and I hope not to spend much this weekend, I am definitely not buying pizza hut.

I'm starting on the spreadsheet and will go over the numbers I've recorded here. Steve suggested to write down the interests on credit cards. My main goal right now was just to figure out where my cash is going so writing down the interest on my credit cards as part of my expenses would be done at a later stage.

I hope to have the first 15 days in the spreadsheet for tuesday and post the totals here.

Placed 200lps extra on my emergency fund on top of the 1000lps that gets deposited there automatically every quincena. I did to start repaying some old withdrawals I had done from the the fund. I still owe the find 1500lps but I don't want to put too much of my own money there because it might make me dip into the fund unnecesarily.

186lps for two months service on my company cellphone (I had forgotten to pay it last month, its usually only $4 each month because I use it for intra-company calls only)

259.51lps for Electricity Bill.

494.13lps for Water Bill

87.38lps for landline 1

56.00lps for landline 2

8000lps transfered to wife for: household supplies, groceries for the 15 days, maid payment, and her personal expenses. This is an item that I should have more control over but it's a difficult subject. Wife says she spends about 3500lps on groceries and pays the maid somewhere between 1000 and 1500lps each quincena. That would leave her with 3000lps for her personal expenses for 15 days. That includes fuel and food she buys for herself. However the 15 days are not over and she comes to me for money stating that she spent some money on X or Y thing for the house, me or the girls. When I ask her for detail report of her expenses she bucks and gets upset at me.

For example right now as I'm transfering the money she's going with my oldest daughter to buy her school shoes for her graduation. She will pay for the shoes from the money I just transferred to her but will want me to reimburse the purchase to her account. I will want her to pay it from her money because I already spent 500lps on the rest of the uniform. We will probably end up paying for it half and half.

Today she ask me for money three times, When I left home in the morning, after lunch and when she was dropping me off at the radiator shop. It really upsets me that she just asks me for 100lps each time and said that she spent it on this or that (when I get upset I don't listen to her that well). Just to end her nagging I gave her the money.

I was specially frustated today because I was spending money on car repairs again and I knew I still have to pay for her classes, people left and right were calling me for assistance..etc. It kinda overwhelmed me with a sense that I'm out there trying to hold the fort, trying to complete all my duties on both jobs and she's just interested in not being bored and knowing when i'm going to give her money.

She just called to know about the money and the money for the shoes. It went just as I described above and she was reminding me that she was going to pay for my daughter's hairdo for the graduation ceremony. I told her I was going to pay for half the shoes and half the hairdo. I think that if she wants more money from me she might give me higher price for the hairdo.

It sucks not being able to trust your spouse with money and having to fight them all the time about it. It's exhausting at times. That plus she gets upset when I work weekends and nights. It's like she doesn't relate the money she gets to the work hours I do. She has the 9 to 5 mentality that if i'm working so much how come she doesn't get more money. We get into arguments about debt every month or so and it's the same story over and over. I know it by heart by now.

Now the youngest daughter wants some clothes for the ceremony too. At least on this my wife sided with me and stated that she would just buy her a cheap shirt at the "Palacio de los Niños" store if I pay for it. I said I would if it's low priced and only the shirt. I know that store always has low prices.She said that the young one had enough clothes to go to the ceremony. Usually pay days lift my spirits but this time they haven't.

I feel like having a couple of beers today, something I rarely desire. The only uplifting thing is that i'm putting in a lot of hours on the morning job (working evenings and weekend) and next week I will probably get paid by friday.

I'm closing this now as I'm not in the mood to keep writing. Although I will keep track of the spending to post it tomorrow.

June 11th

2009-06-11T20:31:00.001-06:00

I now have a rough design of my expenses spreadsheet. I will put the numbers in it over the weekend.

Last night I bought pringles for 47lps and some home supplies for 50lps

Today I spent 500lps on new uniform and accessories for my oldest daughter. They graduate from 6th grade using their daily uniform and the ones she has are kinda old and worn.

Spent 10 lps on the atm fees for that and spent 20lps on semitas for breakfast.

youngest daughter wants something like pizza or stuff to snack on for tonite.. there is a promotion on some fast food restaurants today but I will check it out cautiosly as i've known them to have tricky promos befores.

Hopefully monday I will have some totals for the first 15 days of June.

June 10th

2009-06-10T18:41:00.001-06:00

Gave 20lps to my daughter for food while at school doing her graduation ceremony practice.

Paid 24lps to buy semitas for breakfast.

So far no calls for stuff from home.

June 9th

2009-06-09T20:48:00.001-06:00

Slow day.. woho!

Paid 50lps to recharge my digicel phone. I use that to join US conference calls with my morning job. The nature of the job allows me to do it from almost anywhere I can get online with my 3g cellphone and my notebook. Whenever im not at the local office of this job during the daily conference call I use my digicel phone to join the call from my car my other job, home, etc. A 30 minute call usually costs about 15lps, that's because for every 2 paid minutes, Digicel gives you 10 minutes free (US calls).

During lunch I gave 10 lps to my daughters to buy "churros" or candies.

They say they are out of soda because one of the 3 liter bottle had a hole and lost all the fizzle and even had ants in it. I'll write tomorrow what I but tonite.

A goal would be to have one day of no spending!

June 8th

2009-06-08T23:53:00.001-06:00

I'm going to send this on tuesday because I know after work I have to stop by the supermarket to get some shampoo and some trashbags.

The day started with spending money to fix my car. The accelerator pedal was stuck in. That was quickly fixed but then they discovered something with the distributor.

70lps for the distributor cap, the shop had a rotor and they did some work on the carburetor to seat it down again, and supposedly "fix" stuff that I didn't know about.

Also the windshield wiper on my side had stopped working and with the rain it was difficult to drive this way. Some plastic thingies took me almost all morning to find and even though I neede only two I bought four in case they fail again. 60 lps for that.

shop charged me 350 for all the tiny things they did. The car is not running smoothly but I think I have to take it to a carburetor shop for a tune up. This mechanic warned me that I was going to require some engine work on the car soon because the radiator water had some oil in it. They said to budget about 1500lps for that. ARRGH.

So far nothing more this monday but I haven't gone to the supermarket yet. Opps almost forgot about the 10lps from the ATM fee and the 50lps I gave my girls for their last day o school today.

A coworker picked up the stuff by the supermarket and brought it to me at the office. He said he would look for the recipt tomorrow.

June 7th

2009-06-08T19:39:00.001-06:00

Sunday was another run to do some bill payments:

I thought I had paid my Credomatic loan but apparently I didn't hit OK and a call from their collection dept got me up from bed. Paid 2500lps that were still pending to pay (had paid 3000 before june).

I paid the last 600lps towards the graduation party of my oldest daughter.

Paid 3000lps to my citibank Arranged payment plan (pending 2900lps for this month)

I put money aside to pay for the August payment of my girl's school. They have two payment options, one has a large first payment and lower monthly payments spread over 11 months. The other one has 10 equal payments that a a little higher than the montly but much lower than the first payment. Since the school gives me discount on all the payments except the first one I'm picking the one with the lower first payment since both options add up to the same yearly total to start and for me it means more of that total will be covered by the discount.

Spent 70lps on Marquesote bread for breakfast

Wife asked me about the 14th month bonus and complained that I didn't give her any part of it. Instead of the larger sum she wanted I gave her 1000lps and went to the HyperPaiz to buy some things for the house. 747.75 lps was the total there for some dishes, clothes, soda, and towels.

Also fueled her car, 389lps to fill it up.

The girls wanted some food while we were shopping, 138lps on that.

And then on the way back my car broke down. Brother helped me by towing it back home.

They could make up their mind on what they wanted for dinner and I had to invite my brother and my nephew. Spent 500lps on dinner. That's a lot , damn Pizza Hut is expensive but was the consensus for this time. I'm not buying Pizza Hut again in a long time.

I spend a lot of money on weekends. I've known it for a long time. I hope to get that spreadsheet going now that I have the numbers. It's been hard trying not to forget anything since small purchases and those without receipt are easy to forget. Also the girls ask for one to five lempiras and that get's lost in the shuffle.

June 6th

2009-06-07T22:43:00.001-06:00

Spent 100lps on engine compartment was today, as usual I had trouble starting the engine afterwards. This time it wasn't the washer's fault. I flooded the engine and had to use some carb cleaner to remove the gas and start it. Last time I washed the engine I had to replace the distributor cap as it got cracked (That was over 5 years ago). Yeah I don't like to wash my car's engine. Now we'll see what else leaks from my car.

Spent 300lps on washing machine supplies: a bottle of liquid detergent and a tub of powder detergent. That should last for a looooong time since we plan to use mostly for jeans, towels and bed sheets and similar large pieces of fabric. Our daily clothes will still be washed by hand while we have a maid.

Gave 200lps for gas to wife.She's going out to see some friends and I had used her car all mornings that I had my own car in the shop. I might fuel my car today too.

Going out to pay some bills now.

Paid 7000 to my HSBC credit card.

Atm fee of 10lps.

70lps for fruit shakes for both my daughters. Gave them also their allowance of 30 and 40 lps.

Paid 16lps of parking fees.

179lps of a Keri body lotion offer (two regular bottles and a travel size one). We all use it in the house and were running out of it.

Fueled the car with 495lps. Stupid pump allowed my tank to overfill and I spilled about a cup full of gas into the gas station grounds. It was raining heavily so it went away with the water runoff.

Recharged my food card with 300lps at Pollo Campero and got a family pack of 8 pieces of chicken, 4 fries, 4 breads, and a 1.5 lt soda. The recharge gave me 2 extra pieces of chicken. Unfortunately I didn't notice that I forgot the soda at the restaurant until I was home. It was raining heavily and the streets were flooded and so I didn't went back to get it. Spent 30lps to buy a 3 liter soda.

The 15ft extension cord I couldn't return it because they had already opened the pack at home.

On weekends I usually spend more money. As I was running errands with the girls today I said "no" about a thousand times to all things they wanted. just gave them the fruit shakes.

Today our soccer team is having a match against the US soccer team. Right now it's the second half and we are tied 1 - 1. Let's see how it ends.

We lost. Tough luck.

June 5th

2009-06-05T20:19:00.001-06:00

Last night I spent:

23 lps on soda

60 lps on candles

38 lps on snacks

Today I spent :

610 lps on car repairs to my car. Changed the bendix, fixed the leaky fuel hose, got the battery housing secured and replaced a leaky oil warning bulb and added a quart of oil. Tomorrow I want to to an engine compartment wash to get it all cleaned up so any other leaks and loose attachments. The radiator will soon require some work but it's been holding for a long time now with regular checks and topping off the water. Will check the battery tomorrow too (free!).

Paid 5850 of tuition for my girl's last month in school. I managed to save the bus charge of 1920lps by driving them myself even if I have to get up at 6:30 to drive them. It makes the day last longer and I enjoy sunday mornings sleeping in :-) . Got the prices for next year and they don't make me happy. They do have two payment options and there might be an advantage for me on one option versus the other one. I will write about that when I confirm i'm eligible for the second option.

I noticed that I haven't included any ATM withdraw fees. Since monday i've spent 20lps in ATM fees (10lps each). I have two debit cards, Ficohsa and Credomatic. Ficohsa charges 10lps each time. Credomatic is free on their own ATMs for the first five transactions of the month. I was going to use it today to get the money for my girls but I hadn't transferred from my dollar to my lempira account so I had to go into the bank to withdraw dollars and sell them there.

Spent 325 on two heavy duty extension cords for the washing machine. The orange ones. I bought a 25ft cord first and as I was walking to the counter I was wondering if 25ft was going to be enough. So I started thinking about getting a 40 or 50 foot cord. Then I saw a 15 foot cord there and thought that if the 25 was enough I could use the 15ft cord to better organize my rollaway computer desk. So the plan was that if I needed both for the washing machine then it would be ok. If I could get away with using just one then I could use the other one for something else around the house. I didn't want to go home and not be able to get the washing machine working today because of a few feet of electric cord.

Besides when I added the price of both cords it was the same price as a single 40 ft cord.

In the end the 25 foot was just about right with about only one foot to spare and placed in a way that it wouldn't disturb traffic or cleaning in my girls room. As I started writing this I began to wonder if I really should use the other cord or should I try to return it to the hardware store. The 15ft cord was 145lps. Don't know if they would give me the money back or if they would want me to buy products from them. I will try to return it tomorrow. I have the receipt here and the cord is still in it's original packaging unopened.

I'm now trying to write this during the day to keep better records. During the weekend I will go back to my posts and try to put a spreadsheet together that I can update on my phone, it has mobile excel and so I can do that :-) woho!

I do like the description of my spending because it makes me take a second look at what I've spent money on. I see i'm having a "bad luck" week with the cars and the washing machine installation. However i've noticed that I've bought snacks almosts every day when I really didn't think about it that much before.

Paid 8020 on my Promerica payment plan. That was payment #11 of 36 all of same amount, although I am about 15 day behind schedule and so I get a few calls to set up a payment date. I have been improving as I was 30 days behind schedule before.

Well, the "golpe de estado" (military taking over government) rumors have me going home early and not stopping for much so that's the good side of that. The bad is that I probably won't be able to fuel up my car as wanted to do today after the repairs. We'll see what tomorrow brings.

PS...it's just rumors, right now everything is pretty normal here, but tensely so.

June 4th ....got paid!

2009-06-04T20:42:00.001-06:00

got my 14avo from day job and got paid on my morning job. Got to resist the urge to burn that money.

Today I spent 200 on fuel for wife's car. 350 on fuel for mine (ran out of fuel today! luckily it was near a gas station).

Gave the girls 20 lps to buy snacks at school.

Spent 75 on coffee and donut tonight for me and the night shift operator. He regularly lets me eat from his pringles and drink his soda. So i decided to return the favor.

Paid about 2600lps to my loan with credomatic. Tomorrow is credit card pay day. I get a great feeling of acomplishment when I pay my credit cards and my loans, like i'm making progress.

My car smells like gas and I think it has a leak in a hose somewhere..so I called the mechanic and told him to bring the Bendix on the morning since I can't drive it with a leak (fumes make me dizzy if I'm idling too long in one spot). I'll have to spend at least 500lps on repairs again. I think my cars know my pay schedule!

Do your appliances /cars /house know your pay schedule?

June 3rd , more car repairs

2009-06-03T20:26:00.001-06:00

Spent 350lps repairing the starter engine on my car so I don't have to push it to start it anymore. However the mechanic says I have to change the Bendix on it , so i'm looking at a 300lps part to change in a week or less otherwise I will get stuck again.

Spent 100lps on food for the house (actually it was coke, semitas aaaand some other foods that I can't remember).

Last night I also spent 20 lps on peanuts , 20 lps on candles, wife lits candles to saints to get help getting a job I guess.

My daughter just called and asked me for peanuts again , the ones I bought yesterday were not the ones she likes although she ate them anyway. She told me where to find them and I hope I do and be done with that so tomorrow she won't ask for more stuff (yeah right..more like I will say no tomorrow).

I'm really tired of waking up at 6:30am, wife has been having headaches from something and only gets better at night but if she goes to bed too late she also gets them. I'm just tired. The good thing is that the girls are almost done with school, probably next week or so. Oh and i'm picking them up too so i'm saving about 2000 lps this month just by doing that, specially since half of the month they will already be home all day anyway.

I worked a lot on both jobs today so I hope I can just watch tv tonight and go to bed...arghh.. I forgot I gotta do some programming..it's easy and I might not get to it but i've been begged to finish it soon. So i'll give it a shot and see how much I can do in 30 minutes or so.

The more I write about my expenses the more I recall money spent. For example money for breakfast or late at night was escaping my mind the first day. I'm already designing a spreadsheet on my mind to put the expenses in some way that gives senses to it. MMM maybe I can open a spreadsheet on my phone and write on it. We'll see.

Have a good night

June 2nd... bleeding money

2009-06-02T20:00:00.001-06:00

Today I spent 580 lps on metal pipe to support roof over washing machine. The house's laundry area was too small for the washing machine so we had to hire someone to put in the pipes and ducts and faucets for the machine..but the area was in the back of the house so it needed a roof to protect the machine from the rain. The electrical will have to be done later..for now I will run a heavy duty extension cord from an indoor outlet to the washing machine.

Also today I bought 40lps worth of lottery tickets. 20 lps were wife's request and 20lps were my own impulse buying when I opened my wallet and found the exact change. it's 10lps each ticket and when I buy I usually buy two.

I strolled around pricesmart today. It was safer on my wallet than walking down the mall (I walk for the exercise). At pricesmart everything is so big or so expensive that I can't "impulse buy" anything there. Not even the food is cheap enough to tempt me. I did look at some surveillance cameras and other electronics but mostly for curiousity since they have interesting stuff there almost all the time.

Yesterday I bought 24 lps worth of cookies for my daughters, the youngest one called me as I was leaving the office and asked, and begged for cookies. I don't make it a habit to buy for them but she has very good negotiating skills. Now that i'm writing down my expense we'll see just how much I give in to her requests.

I would've spent more today but the mechanic wasn't at the shop today and I need him to fix my starter engine on my car. Comming up with the money for that is a whole other story. Probably will have to use the emergency fund since it's sorta dangerous for me to get stuck at night (or day now) somewhere not being able to start my car if I can't push-start it.

We get our 14avo friday, but for good or bad almost all of it is committed already to my girls' school.

June, expense tracking month

2009-06-01T20:14:00.001-06:00

Well, i've decided that I will keep track of my expenses thru the whole month of june and write them down here about the time I'm finishing work every night. I hope I can remember to write down everything since every day that I think is going to be quiet turns out to be hectic and then the quiet days are mostly "catching up" days so there's never time for a break. Darn I forgot I have to do some programming tonight.. ugh!

Anyway. Today I spent:

L 14 on meds for wife (she feeling nausea from her migrane)

L 361 on construction materials for the place were the washing machine is going to go (Not including the 600 I spend saturday but that's last month!)

L 250 on car repair (exhust broke on the Lancer as I was driving over a speed bump. a shop close to home soldered it back together)

On the "cutting expenses" front, I went to drop my girls at school today once again, PLUS I went to pick them up at noon since I had to go home anyway. It made no sense to pay for the whole month of june for both when they have only this week left in school.

Anyway, that's my first report. I'll keep them short so I can keep at it all month. good thing I found a good pad to carry in my car.

Is Credit Card a bill ?

2009-05-20T19:57:00.001-06:00

After I got married my dad tried to help me put up a budget for our house expenses hoping to help me raise money for a down payment on the house.

I was already a bit in debt with my credit cards but I was able to manage it then. Actually I think the ship was already sinking but I just didn't notice the water comming in yet.

Anyway, my dad starts asking me about what things I have to pay every month and I'm telling him, water, electricity, fuel, food. He adds clothing and car repairs as montly items, probably to be saved up for when the real need comes up.

Then I had to tell him that I had to pay my credit card, and he said, "why"? I said it was one of my bills. And he said again "why"?. He calmly went on to ask me why was I paying credit card debt. He was under the assumtion that if I was using my credit card it was to pay for something that I could pay in full when I got my paycheck. He couldn't figure out why I would buy something with my credit card that I could pay at the most in two payments.

As you can imagine, his good help didn't sink into my brain soon enough.

Today I do realize that when I see people listing their bills, and they say "I have to pay the house, and utilities, and food, car, fuel, and the credit cards...." I ask the same question, why is your credit card a bill. It should be just a payment type not an actual bill. I know that as most of us who are deep in debt and who owe so much money, the credit card was our tiny loan office. It allowed us to live beyond our means and not face the difficult task of having to put off purchases for when we really could afford such things.

Now years later I can't remember much what did I buy with my credit cards that was significant. I know that a couple of airplane tickets, a lot of groceries and utilities and cellphone bills, etc were put on those cards but back then I should've taken a look at that and stopped myself when I was starting on this downhill path.

I wish young couples or single individuals could read about our stories and look at their credit card statements. If you are only able to pay mininum balance, even if you are still not that much in debt, it's a sign you need to cut back on some expenses. It's a real nag to do so. To not be able to buy those nice clothes or shoes for you, your spouse or your kids. To not be able to have that meal out, that nice vacation that we THINK we deserve.

Well, it's is a horrible nightmare to do those things and them be left with the burden of debt long after the pleasure of whatever you bought is long gone. About the only thing I have to show for all my expenses on my credit cards is my kids education and my car. Everything else is just memories that I could've made sometime later, maybe a year or so, but without the burden of debt that I now carry. Without having to work two jobs and having all of that money go towards paying so much debt. Without having to think that I if I had all my income available to me today to pay the actual bills, with the money left over I could probably take all of my family to Disneyland every three months! IT SUCKS to owe this much money.

At least on a mortage you have a house to show for. it's the place you live in and it's eventually going to be yours. But credit card debt is like paying for sins of the past.

So, I'm working on paying up my credit card debt. I'm down to the last payment on my extrafinancing that I used to pay my car. The rest will go to paying my credit card debt. I hope that as I have to live frugally for several years, this new way of life will set into me and hopefully my wife. However I hope that most of all my girls get a good lesson on how to manage their money better than their dad did.

So, what do you think, is "credit card" a bill ?

I needed to post this, i've had it on my mind for a loooong time. Thanks dad for trying to steer me away from the dangerous waters, sorry that I didn't listen back then. I am listening now..

As usual, advice like this comes to us for free, and I guess because of that we don't appreciate as much...and yet we should. Have a good night..

PS..read my twitter updates in between my blog updates so you have a feel for how my days go by.

Don't Beat Yourself up, Redone.

2009-05-13T22:26:00.003-06:00

You probably received a strange post from this blog. It was my bad. It was just a thought on which now I'm going to elaborate on. Sorry for that one, it slipped out before it was ready.

Amazingly, my twitter user is getting followed by several other twitter users that have similar blogs. So I got this message from Sam in Australia (still amazes me how small the world is on the internet).

She writes to me: "moneypennyme: and don't forget how essential it is to stay focused! just don't beat yourself up if you fall off the wagon. it's okay to make mistakes. (Sam Robinson (Australia) via Twitter. )"

You can look at more of her tweets on http://twitter.com/moneypennyme

Her comment to me hit me on the spot. I haven't been 100% frugal and not overspent since I started narrating my story here. When I saw myself spending more that appropiate, or when my daughter or wife made me buy them clothes they would wear only once, or when food gets spoiled because it wasn't stored properly, I feel I let myself down.

Her words about not beating myself up and knowing that it's ok to make mistakes was kind of soothing. I now accept that I could make mistakes and overspend, but that will be the exception rather than the norm. Very different from the way things were in the past.

I have used my emergency fund twice recently. I've felt bad about dipping into it but I was totally out of money and with the credit cards cut up I couldn't take the easy road out and credit card my way to my next paycheck (actually it's a bank transfer but you understand).

I felt like I had failed myself when using my emergency fund. The person that holds my debit card to that account was more understanding about it than myself.

What I did to repair the damage was to repay my fund as much as I could. Also on Monday I signed a new authorization for my day job to transfer 1000 lps to my emergency fund account. That's 200 lps more than before. I did that new authorization just in time as on Tuesday the payroll was processed using my new authorization.

I had used my emergency fund on monday too and had taken out 780 lps for gas, food and my blood pressure medication. With the added 200 lps I was only 580 down on that account. So today I actually walked to the bank and deposited 500 lps on my emergency fund account. In net terms I dipped only 80lps from it. I hope to manage my money better every month.

Without a maid, food and other stuff seems to last longer around the house. We do buy takeout more but usually one family pack lasts for 3 or four meals. For example I bought Popeyes chicken yesterday for lunch. It was 12 pieces of chicken plus a bonus piece for using the Foodcard, plus family-sized mashed potatoes with gravy and salad. We had lunch and dinner yesterday and lunch today with that.

We have a new maid comming friday but this time I'm not letting my wife be solely responsible for setting the limits. This is going to be a work place and I'm not going to accept friends or family of the maid to come "visit" her while we are not here.

I've seen the difference in little things like the "semitas" I buy for breakfast. I used to buy a dozen semitas every morning at 20lps. I had two, my daughters had none and wife probably had other two. That means there were EIGHT left. Yet the next day I had to buy another dozen. Were did the other eight go? my girls could probably eat two in the afternoon, that's six. If the maid was eating two, that leaves four for the next day...but nope, there were just none. That's just an example on something that I know I had some tracking on.

Oh well, thanks Sam for the kind words. Honestly I had forgotten I CAN fall off the wagon AND get back on it again. I was sulking too much on my past mistakes.

Sam's words, although totally free, are priceless.

Look, he's Maxed Out!

2009-05-08T17:38:00.001-06:00

I was left thinking about the comment left on my Maxed out post and went on to search the whole documentary and sure enough the video is online. You can watch it there:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4AfKLbUCAI

It's posted in 9 sections, but it's easy to watch it all because at the bottom of the video is the link to the next section. If you have a slow connection you can click on a video and pause it until the download progress bar has completed and then watch the section without interruptions.

I'm watching it again because I feel that I need to remember again and again that credit cards are generally bad. I'm starting to dig myself out of the hole I put myself into, but I want to have very good reminders that help me not to dig a hole again.

The documentary is also available for purchase on DVD or on demand video there:

http://www.maxedoutmovie.com/

At least watch it on You Tube. It's very hard to watch it all without having some emotions inside of you get stirred up. I wouldn't advice to watch it with kids.

Please watch it and give me some comments on what you think about it.

Watch it while it's free!

Twitter flu

2009-05-08T11:32:00.002-06:00

As usual it's been crazy at both works. I had my boss from my morning job come for a week. Then this week I had a consultant at my day job training us on new software. So I haven't been able to post the new numbers on the other credit card statements that have been delivered to my desk. I have them and I'll try to post the today later.

Currently i'm waiting for my payment from my morning job, it usually takes about a week or so and now i'm emailing my boss there after I send the invoice so that he doesn't forget to process it.

One big thing. I've caught the twitter flu! I like twitter a lot. I like it because I can write my thoughts in a very concise way (160 characters or less). I don't have to worry about layouts and colors and things because it's all text!

I'm able to send tweets (twitter posts) from my cellphone using software for windows mobile which is the operating system for some smartphones like mine.

I'm also able to send tweets via email thanks to twittermail.com

Finally I'm able to go right to my web page www.twitter.com/bronderblazer and tweet from there!

I like it because when I read tweets from others it's like reading headline news. You get the gist of what's going on without much dabble about it.

I'm thinking of starting some service about traffic information in Tegus. So i've been testing that. There is a way for twitter users to send money to each other and there's a way to have tweets be private and visible only to those approved.

So i'm thinking of having users register to receive traffic updates. And for that information they would pay a small fee per month. It's all mostly in my head right now, although i've done some tests already.

The difficult thing right now would be get the correct traffic information, and also to get enough local users to follow this on twitter. hmm yesterday it seemed much easier. I guess by writing it, it forces me to come back to earth and think about it.

Anyway, I have my twitter posts send to this blog so you can see them on the right side. It's a way for me to put down stuff that otherwise I would forget and wouldn't blog about it ever. I hope you like those tweets in between my posts here.

I'll start writing that other credit card balances hopefully today.

Thanks to Alita for her comment on "Maxed Out".

Voy a buscar el video en metromedia o en mastervideo pero no creo que lo renten. De todas formas lo he visto un par de veces asi que espero alguna ves poderlo ver todo desde el principio. Talves en alguna pagina online o en YouTube o algo similar. Gracias por tu comentario.

Well. back to work. See you soon. Enjoy the free things in life.

Maid no more

2009-04-28T23:17:00.001-06:00

You remember that our maid was supposed to leave on Dec 31st but then she came back.

Well, eventually as with most maids, she and my wife started having clashes and both started hinting their discomfort with the other. So last week the maid left our house.

This means several changes. Wife now has to wash, clean and cook. So she's asking me to do more around the house and to dirty less clothes. She's also requested a washing machine which was already in my plans but will have to be bought sooner than I had planned.

My wife can't handle being alone too well. Last week the day after the maid left she was alone at home during most of the day until our daughters came home. She called me crying that she was feeling anxious and wanted me to drive her to a town where she has friends. I tried to reason with her that it was the anexiety kicking in and to take the pills she and I take for that (long story, good for another post). She listened but did her own thing and drove about 50kms and came back at midnight.

This weeks she has handled it better. She's talking on the phone and the cellphone more now. At least the cellphone has a limit but she's reaching it every month about 5 days before the end of the billing cycle. She used to call the maid a lot when the maid was on her days off so hopefully this month she will not reach the limit.

My daughters are pitching in more now in washing clothes and dishes and cleaning the house.

I'm not taking food from home for lunch. She doesn't get up early enough to cook lunch for me to take to work. Also she wants me to come home for lunch to feel less lonely. So that means I will spend more fuel.

On the other hand with not having to pay,house, and feed a fifth (sometimes a sixth) person, there is some savings there.

So I'll keep you posted how that goes.

tweeting on my blog

2009-04-27T23:02:00.001-06:00

That sounds really funny to me but it's technically true.

On the right side you can see my mini updates (what others call tweets) to my tweeter feed. Hopefully this will give more sense to my blog posts.

I like twitter because there isn't much tweaking around in the design (colors, fonts, etc). I don't like that I can't send tweets from my cellphone as SMSs.

wow, a short post on a free blog

Loan with Bac Bamer

2009-04-27T18:17:00.001-06:00

I have a few other statements and i'm going to write them here just to put the numbers up on the blog.

I have a loan with Bac-Bamer that was actually re-financing some older credit card debt to a lower rate. I actually don't remember what payment number it is or the loan term. The statement that I get looks a lot like a credit card statement except that the rates are much lower.

Starting balance: L 124,067.81 (on March 7th)

Total Paid: L 10,572.00

Interest this month: 3,833.60

Ending balance: 117,329.41

Minimum Payment: L.5,724 (You can notice that last month I was so late that two payments got rolled into one).

Payment due on: April 22 2009

Cutoff date: May 7th 2009

I was expecting my payment from my morning job last week. However my boss there had forgotten to send my invoice to the accounting department and it wasn't until I called about it that I found that out. he apologized and set it forward on thrusday of last week. The payment arrived today and since it is credited to my Bac-Bamer dollar account I went online and paid the minimum (can't actually pay more on this one since it's a loan).

Right now i'm transfering money from my dollar account to my lempira account to go pay my HSBC credit card before they start calling me. This time they only called me twice for this card but it was because my boss delayed my payment. I really believe it was an honest mistake on his part. Although I did tease him a bit telling him that I would have to skip on things like food and electricity this week. He took it well and we both had a good laugh.

Seriously though it did put a dent in my plans because I got those calls that was trying to avoid. As we say in spanish "me gane las llamadas de gratis"..or I won those calls for free.

I hope to be posting other credit cards soon, statements are arriving quickly.

I'm glad this blog is free

follow my blog on twitter

2009-04-26T11:53:00.001-06:00

Well.. i've been using twitter for a while, I find it so easy to use. No formatting, no colors to choose, just text , and short text , hit send and boom. It's posted.

I've been busy all week with my US job boss here in Honduras! so I haven't had time to write about my latest credit card statements and the unfortunate indiced that my US boss forgot to send my April 15th invoice for payment until last thursday (23) almost a whole week after.

One good note. The collecting calls are not stopping but at least they are more gentle now, just reminding me of a payment due in the future.

Follow my twittering on http://twitter.com/bronderblazer . I do promise I'm not going to set up a myspace or facebook thing. Takes too much time.

Well at least twitter and this blog is free.

Lets se some numbers

2009-04-16T17:42:00.000-06:00

Before I forget to put these numbers on the side bar i'm just going to write them up here so you can all see them.

Today I got my credit card statement for my Visa Platinum from Bac-Bamer

Previous Balance (march):

lps 101,975.94

$927.04

I paid 6,111.00 lps and $333.00

I was charged $253 for the payment #35 of 36 (only one more to go!! )

Interest for Lempiras was Lps 4,471.05

Interest for Dollars was $ 31.32

Current Balance (April)

lps: 100,335.99

$ $878.36

Minimum Payment:

lps 6,068.00

$ 334.00

So there you go. I'll be posting the other ones when I get their statements.

Thank goodness that this blog is free.

Just how much money do I owe ?

2009-04-14T21:12:00.001-06:00

I know a lot of you want to know the updated numbers of how much money I owe. So do I. Actually I know some numbers because I can go online on my Credomatic Cards and loan and get the updated number right away.

However for my Promerica, HSBC and Citibank cards I don't have that ability. Signing up for it is such a hassle for cards that I'm planning on giving up after paying that I just stick with the monthly statement.

On all of those cards on each payment some money goes to interest and some goes to capital. Each money it varies.

If you see at the bottom of my blog there is a test slider that could help keep track of a debt payment. However it's difficult to use if you don't know how much of the payment went to actually lowering the debt. However I think one can input the new balance and have the slider figure out where it should go.

SO, How do you think I should keep track of my debt:

- One big number for all the money I owe

- Numerically stating the dollar or lempira balance on each card.

- Slider for all the money I owe

- Individual sliders for each card

Where should I put the value ? should I put it on a post or on a side bar ? at the top or at the bottom ?

I appreciate the creativity of your comments so I figure it was good to know how you wanted to see how much I owe.

your advice, although free, is priceless.

Holy Week Batman!

2009-04-12T22:54:00.001-06:00

Well, it's Easter Sunday and the Holy week is almost over. I am very happy.

My girls were off school all week. Wife was off classes too. I was off work starting on Wednesday.

They were home all day and weather was hot so it means that they wanted to go out. Going out usually means spending money, very usually.

I think giving my friend my debit card to my emergency fund worked well because it's untouched even though I had only about 400 lps available at the start of the week, and we went to Amapala island on the pacific and ate out three meals between friday and today.

The trick was that my wife got paid for some of her "secret customer" visits that she did way back in december. She got paid monday of Holy week so she paid for most of the expenses for the Amapala trip. I only paid for the fuel. I really didn't want to go but if I didn't go the girls would have had trouble going on just my wife's friend's car all in there.

She also paid for the meals out. She protested that I must have some money somewhere but I showed her my bank balance and my wallet and she reluctantly helped to pay for stuff and for fuel for all the errands she did.

I did have to use my credit card today twice to pay for one meal (200lps) and fuel (250lps). I know i'm getting paid tomorrow on both jobs so I will put 500lps back into that credit card tomorrow.

Oh I remember that I also used it to buy a a cake for my oldest daughter since this week was also her birthday. She didn't want much for her bday (which relieved me a lot), but her mom got her new bed clothes (if that's the right word in english). More money to put back on the credit card. L700 now.

I had dreaded Holy week for a long time. It always means spending and spending. Paying for parking, paying for eating out, paying for fuel, entrance to parks, paying for suntan (300lps!!!) , paying for bathing suits. In my mind holidays equal spending and with holy week being, well, a whole week it's the mother of all spending pitfalls during the year. Christmas and New Year are close but one get's an extra month pay at the start of December so that helps with the spending.

I'm so really glad that holy week is over and i'm glad that my daughter was ok with me just getting her a cake on her bday. Oh well I did remind her about the Wii so I guess that should count as a birthday gift.

I'm so glad that regular weeks are back. Tuesday there is a free air show in Tegucigalpa. The key words for me are "free" and "air show". The Brazilian Air Force acrobatic team is doing a performance April 14th (Dia de la Raza) at 2pm at the Honduran Air Force base across from Toncontin airport. Will write on how that goes.

Is faith free? This blog is.

Maxed Out

2009-04-05T15:52:00.001-06:00

One comment left in one of my previous posts suggested that I watch the documentary "Maxed Out".

Well I just watch about the last half of it I think, on Showtime. It's just sobbering.

Not only because so many Americans owe so much money as I do, but that many more owe more money!

Also the credit card practices make it so easy for people to be tempted. Even dead people get credit card applications!

Something that struck me even more was that the documentary makers were pointing out that credit card companies charge 30 to 45% interest rates on credit cards for those high-risk customers, and that at those rates they would never be able to repay their debt.

So I wonder what are my chances of paying off all the money I owe if my interest rates START at 55% or so. I imagine that I'm still a regular customer to my credit cards since I'm staying on schedule and are not so far behind. It drives more the point that I have to pay off those high interest credit cards first or somehow get that debt into a lower rate.

I didn't get to see the whole documentary, but I saw Dave Ramsey and Suze Orman clips there. At least one clip of Suze was put on a negative way. She was saying that the most important part of your credit report is the FICO score (whatever that is). It was then followed by a statement that the makes of the FICO score are her biggest sponsors. Then it was said that the FICO score formula is a secret and that most credit reports have a lot of errors on them. Errors that credit companies don't want to fix because it goes against them.

I didn't see anything bad about Dave Ramsey, but I didn't see the whole documentary. So far i've seen him on TV while I was in the US and his advice made sense to me.

On the other hand , VIP customers like judges, congressman and actors do get their credit reports 100% accurate and with no errors. Someone handles their reports and cleans them up so as not to have trouble with them because if they did they would draw attention to the errors in the current situation.

I was surprised at the number of people that committed suicide pressured by their debt. And how others were considering it. I thought bankrupcy in the US would be a good way to end that and start over, get a second chance.

I wish I could turn the risk piramid over and give people a chance to pay their principal without paying so much interest. Just like on the company coop where our interest rate is 12% and at the end of the year we give almost half of those interest back as savings into their own funds. It's bad enough to owe a lot of money to then be tricked again by some other company into turning their debt over to them only to find out you are going to end up paying more for it than originally. Frankly getting out of debt requires a lot of things to happen right.

I also noticed just how many people say "I don't know how I got into this". I think we all suffer from credit memory loss when we are swiping the plastic, and since the bill comes a month later we have long ago forgotten about it. That just shows how those purchases really don't fill any needs, just wants. Sure there are times when you really use it for emergencies, but I saw people doing big garage sales getting rid of plates and other "wants" that they had accumulated over the time.

Well, the show was very interesting. I hope to see it complete soon. This blog is free.

If you don't ask you'll never know

2009-03-28T18:33:00.001-06:00

All my credit cards charge a yearly "subscription" fee. When I was in good standing with them I would ask them to reverse the charge and they would do it.

When I started missing payments and paying late, and the fee came again I was embarrased to ask them to reverse the charge thinking they would say "no, you have a bad record".

So I was paying my citybank credit card , which is on an payment schedule, and saw that I was charged $70 for the subscription fee. I decided to drop off the embarrasement and go into their customer service area and ask them to reverse it. The worst that could happen was they would say no.

Well, to my surprise the lady there reversed the charge without blinking.

I now hit my head on the wall because I should've asked Credomatic and HSBC to reverse the charges too. I think it's too late now. But next time those fees come back I will ask them to reverse it even if I've missed payments recently.

So my advice is, always ask. If you don't ask you'll never know.

There's no charge for asking, and there's no charge for this blog.

Proud of the homeland

2009-03-25T15:34:00.001-06:00

In previous trips I used to laugh or feel embarrased about finding products made in Honduras.

This time I had realized that I actually should be proud of the quality products that trained people can manufacture.

I bought this six pack of black socks. Very comfortable to wear to work since they are black and also good for weekends. AND they were very low priced at $4 for the whole a¿oack.

National pride is priceless..but this blog is free.

The conclusion of my trip to Phoenix

2009-03-24T18:49:00.005-06:00

The last week in Phoenix went like a blur...it was work all day and go out at night with my friend, have dinner, look for housing (he's moving there soon) and head for the hotel late night.

Wednesday I was also asked by the Sales & Marketing VP to go to his house and fix some computer problems he had. It was a difficult decision for me. On one hand I could go and fix his stuff and he would probably pay me well, but on the other hand he might have something really messed up and I might not be able to fix it or take a lot of time.

In the end I asked for more specifics and hoped for the best. I went to his house in the evening. It wasn't so bad in the end. I was at his house for about one hour and fixed most of his problems. He gave me $75, which was more than the $50 that I was going to charge him if he asked me. After that I meet up with my friend back at our hotel and we went on with our night of eating and talking and drinking.

From the week before there was a cabling reoganization to do in the server room. My boss there had gotten quotes from a local company to do the job at $175/ hour for 8 hours. I volunteered to do it myself at night. There was some delay in getting his approval because the company might become a customer too but eventually that fizzled out and so he handed the job to me and told me that if I did it right he would give me a $100 bonus.

All during my trip I had been looking for something important I was thinking of buying but had some second thoughts about it. It was a Nintendo Wii game console. My friend and I looked everywhere, Best Buy, Circuit City, Ebay, Amazon, Fatwallet, Fry's, Walmart, Sam's,etc and it was priced at $249.95 everywhere. It was even higher on some of the bids on Ebay. Eventually we found it at $245.95 on Costo. I had been torn the whole trip where to get it there now or later back home at about $400 at it's priced here. I'm in frugal mode now so I went long hours pondering if spending that much money was worth it. Eventually I decided it was worth it and bought it along with a second controller and a recharging station, so the total was about $300 for everything. That was the largest purchase I made during my trip. The next biggest one was a $30 face cream for my wife.

Thrusday late afternoon we went off with my friend to get 48 3-feet patch cords at Fry's Electronics. We also picked up some plastic tie straps to wrap everything together. My friend was going to wait for me and do his expense report while I would go into the cable jungle and disconnect and connect cables here and there until it would look something more civilized. We had dinner near the office and headed back.

It was a long 4 hours of disconnecting, tracing, connecting, and then strapping large bundles of cable , and then smaller ones until it all was cleaned up. Then picking up the old 48 cables and cleaning up the mess on the floor. In the end I was tired and my hands hurt but it was a nice work if I say so myself. I took pictures of it and im attaching some to this post. I don't know where they will show up but I hope it is obvious which are the "before" and which are the "after" pictures. It might seem like something small but I was really proud of what I had done.

Friday morning came and my boss congratulated me on the cabling job and showed it to anyone that would go by the office. It was my friend's departure day back to MO so after working all morning we left at noon for the hour long drive to the airport. Picked up lunch on the way (I loved In and Out), dropped him off and went back to the office. By the time I was back it was 3pm so I started packing up my stuff at the office and saying my goodbyes to the people there.

I must have done some good work at the sales VP's house because a lady from the sales dept, actually she was also the daughter of one of the company owners, came and ask me to go fix her computer at her house too. It was a little bit easier but it took more time. I told her I would go there friday night, my last night in Phoenix.

My boss congratuted me once more and reiterated his desire for me to come work full time to Phoenix when (and I would add if) the company grows a lot bigger. He said he was very proud of my work and glad of having decided to hire me. It was hard for me to say goodbye. I really liked the city, the company and the people and working from here, it's almost the same but not quite.

The office manager told me that everything was settled with the car company so that I could drop off the car at the airport saturday morning and also check out from the hotel and they would take care of all of that on their end.

With my friend gone I had to drive myself to the sales lady's house and after missing a few turns I got to her place. She showed me in and told me where everything was. She left her house for a bday party and left me there fixing his puter and the nanny would show me out. She gave me $50 even before I had finished, I hope she had a good impression on what I did on getting her stuff fixed because I couldn't see her again as I was leaving the next day.

Friday night I spent it packing up, making calls and reviewing the trip. The things I had bought, the money I had spent and the money I had earned.

Saturday morning started bad when the hotel told me they didn't have the company's credit card and so they would place the charges on my card. Later this was fixed and my card was reimbursed but that day I was a bit concerned about the car payment too. Turns out the car was in fact paid for and so I just got a receipt for it and went on to board my plane.

I must have been too anxious or the lack or sleep combined with taking my blood pressure meds too early or something, but I felt really ill on the plane ride to Houston. The symptoms seems like I had low blood pressure because I felt really sleepy but also a general discomfort all over my body. I couldn't see my face but I'm betting it was pale. After a strong cup of coffee and sodas I felt better. It's strange because it's the second time this happens to me. It happened on the return flight last year when I was visiting my friend, back then I thought it was exhaustion...and maybe this time it was too. The flight from Houston to Tegucigalpa went normally so again I think it had something to do with low blood pressure in the morning. Next time I will not take my BP med that early and I will try to sleep better.

So Saturday afternoon I got back to Honduras and to my awaiting family.

It was a great trip. I like going to the US and the return home is always bitter sweet. I do like travelling, specially for work because i'm earning money. Travelling for pleasure has become something not so atractive to me as I'm always thinking of how much everything costs. Good thing that I don't travel to the US for pleasure, at least not on my own money. I haven't said so yet but my friend in MO is truly an guardian angel for me. He's always looking for jobs for me and if he could he would get me to the US. The only thing that makes it difficult is that it's not only me that he would have to get over there.

The purchase of the Wii is something that previously wouldn't have bothered me much but now i'm more concious of my decision and of making the best of it. I am actively using it to sweat at least 15 minutes every day (that boxing is hard!!). My daughters and I play on in on weekends. Only my wife refuses to use it but she likes to watch us play golf as she likes the scenery.

That's the end of my trip.. it almost took me the same time to write as I spend travelling. I hope you enjoy the reading. Hopefully now I'll be able to get back to shorter posts.

The memories are forever..and this blog is free.

My Phoenix Trip. Weekend at Springfield MO

2009-03-20T18:44:00.001-06:00

I arrived friday night at freezing SGF, MO. Wearing jeans a polo shirt and a thin wool sweater. Good thing I didn't have to stand outside the airport waiting for my friend to pick me up. However I did went out just to get a feel of what 1 degree celcius felt like. IT IS COOOOLD! I mean not inmediately but soon my head and hands would ache from the cold. Strangely my torso and arms never did feel cold. That sweater is good!

So my friend picks me up and we head to his house to...well actually nothing because I only had carry on. My notebook backpack and a small bag with a couple of boxers, socks, a jean and a thicker polo shirt. So he called his friend and we went to eat sushi.

This was my first time eating sushi. And it's probably going to be the last. I ate octopuss, squid and tuna rolls. The octopuss was chewy and bland so I didn't like it. The squid was too sweet and too juicy. The real bad one was the tuna rolls. I mean the tun and the rice were cool but the seaweed was awful. It was too much flavor in the wrong direction. I ate one roll with the seaweed and then unrolled the rest to eat them. Note to self, skip the seaweed always!! I had some other thing called pink panther and that was ok, I don't know what it had but I tasted ok.

With a mildly satisified tummy we went on to my friend and his friend's hang out bar and talked with some locals. SGF main population is generally wealthier that the average american, but even they feel the economy crisis. I talk to a guy that buys and sells cars and he gave me great insight into his situation. He used to make a great living by charging $500 to look for a car. His service is apparently good because, unknown before to me, buying a car in the US is a pain in the ass. If you go to buy a car, salespeople hassle you and pass you to managers and plead and beg you to leave the lot with car under the worst possible financial conditions they can give you (means more money to them).

So instead, if you go to this guy you tell him what kind of car you are looking for, your price range and flexibility. Off he goes and he calls you when has some cars to show you from someone else who is selling a car that you might be interested in. This goes on until you find the car you like. He even helps you find financing for the purchase. He makes $500 from the buyer and $500 from the seller.

Well, he's had to sell his house and move into an apartment, not party so much, cut down on several things he had going and he doesn't even have kids or a wife! He was going to buy a bigger tv and he had the cash for it, but he is so concerned right now that he stopped that purchase. He says he might be able to live this way a few more months but he is very worried that he might have to look for another line of work. Specially since he is specialized in luxury cars.

All thru the weekend, the economy was a main topic of conversation among the people there. Not only about the problems but also about the opportunities. Every time I go to the US I feel like I have all the opportunities in the world that I don't have in Honduras. In Honduras if a business doesn't work for you in Tegus or SPS, you have very few other places to go and make it. The US is so huge that you can have a very specialized business and still atract enough nationwide customers to make it a good source of income. Specially so when the USPS, and Fedex and UPS and others make deliveries so easy and you can set your business online relatively easy because almost everyone in the US has a computer, has internet access and has a a credit card. The total opposite is in Honduras so getting to your customers here is much more difficult and the payment and delivery options even more so.

I had to take a call from home and I went out to escape the bar's noise. Wow! 15 minutes out in the open really froze me. I could tell my wife or the girls to hurry up just because I was cold so I was out there pacing back and forth, covering my hands with my sweater sleeves and moving the phone to the cold ear every now and then. When I got back in my glasses frosted on me.. funny. It was time to do something about my clothing.

I was wondering how I would do to protect myself from the cold without having to spend money for winter clothes for only three days. Well I didn't have to worry. My friend was ready for me and had a...a...a....well I can only remember the word parka but I don't know if it's the right word in english. It was a heavy piece of clothing that was lined with wool inside and a hood. It worked very well. My hands were uncovered and so they hurt every time I would stay outdoor for more than 5 minutes but I could put them in the pockets and get some comfort.

The only cold weather item of clothing I bought was a cap like the one that rappers wear on their head. The hood limited my visibility at times. We looked long and hard to get a cheap one at Walmart for $2 instead of the NASCAR branded ones for $15.

For my friend and I it was mostly a weekend for relaxing, as much as I could on such a cold place, enjoying dining with him and his family and helping move some of his stuff into storage. That was almost my way to pay for the ticket, quite the workout to haul furniture and a portable electric generator up to a storage area in the second floor of a building. By the second trip I was already shedding off the parka!

Monday morning we reported for the daily standup conference call and worked from his house almost all day as I would work from here. Even though he was inviting me to all meals and beverages I felt it was right to invite him and his family (wife and daughter) at least once. Now I don't remember were we went the time that I invited them, I think it was Taco Bell because I had hunger for it and I had passed it on to them (NO Taco Bell in Honduras!!), so I spent about $30 on that I think. Sure I could've been very frugal and just let him pay for everything but I really felt bad to be a total burden on him so I paid that one meal for them.

Monday evening we got ready for our trip back to Phoenix and he let me drive his car to the airport. He got a great deal on the Mercedes he has, and yet I still prefer the Toyota Siena he also owns (and that costs more than the Benz!!).

The ride back was uneventful as usual, and as we made our way to my rental car we called our houses to let them know that once again we were ok. We drove back to our hotel and then we went out for drinks and playing pool, which is just an excuse to have something to do while we drink and talk.

I have very few friends, and most of them don't live in Tegus. So when I'm with my friends, it's like a relief valve to just go out every night we can, drink some (either beef or just soft drinks) and talk about everything. It's one of the things that it's bitter sweet about comming back to Tegus, that I go back again to a set routine. Particularly so because i'm trying to keep my money for as long as I can.

So that's how that weekend ended.

On a fun note. Remember that I had packed only a couple of clothes for my weekend trip? and remember that I left my large suitcase at the office? well I had totally forgotten about that. So there I was monday night with two pairs of jeans and two shirts that I had worn alternatively friday, saturday, sunday and monday, and wondering what to wear to work tuesday. Good thing that the office dress code is VERY casual.

On a funnier note!!! Tuesday came around and we worked all day at the office and I FORGOT MY SUITCASE at office one more night! ....

The conclusion of my trip will come soon...

The cold weather and the snow was free to enjoy, glad I had the experience, happier that I could get away from it quickly...and this blog is also free.

Phone Unlocking and MagicJack

2009-03-16T19:59:00.001-06:00

Hey there!

I'm back on both jobs which means that I'm doing two or three things at once. So I know I still have to continue describing the money stuff of my trip to Phoenix which has turned to my trip to Springfield,MO.

However, from what I recently wrote I had someone post a comment that I thought it was best to be shared with all of you and responded that way so all could benefit from my personal experience.

Thank you ALL for all your comments. Here it is :

Question? How do u unlock the phone? If you want to share that is. I enjoy your adventures. Also, previously you mentioned the magicjack, are they safe? After i read your entry I went to look for them. There were articles that claimed how unsecure they are. Can u please go over. Thanks in advance

Ok, so how do I unlock the phone. First of all to make things clear, unlocking a cellphone means touching deep configuration in a cellphone that is used on one cellular company so that it can be used on any other cellular company. That is given that the other company uses the same technology. For example Verizon phones can be unlocked but since they use CDMA tecnology they can't be used with other operators that don't use that tecnology (like all the operators in Honduras).

When I purchased my ATT phone I knew I had to buy a GSM phone if my future plan was to unlock it for use with a Honduran carrier (haven't unlocked it yet). So I had a phone that uses the same technology, but then there's also the matter of what frequency they use.

I don't remember the exact frequencies but I know that there are four frequencies that are commonly used for cellphone service. Most phones now can operate on all four frequencies or bands as they are also called. That's why those phones have the labeling "quad-band" somewhere in their documentation. A quad-band phone eliminates the guesswork of wondering if the phone will operate on this or that operator's frequency.

I am not sure but I think the phone I bought is quad-band. If it's not and I can't make it work, well too bad for me but it already served it's purpose. Unlocking it here is an option i'm considering only because it will be disconnected from ATT before I get to go back to Phoenix. Actually even after unlocking I could still using it on ATT but I know that next year if I take it, the sim will have been disconnected and buying just a sim card is not an option with ATT as far as as I know.

SO, the main question "How do you unlock the phone?". Well in Honduras you take the locked phone to one on many many cellphone repair shops and for usually $5 to $10 they do their voodo magic and unlock it for you. Once unlocked you buy a sim card from the cellular operator you want to use and put on the phone and off you go to talk. Now this can be done in Honduras because cellular companies here do sell just the sim card for just a couple of dollars, in other countries they don't do that so you have to buy a whole phone to get a sim so it doesn't make sense to go thru the whole unlocking thing if you have to BUY another phone anyway.

When I came home I tried putting a Honduran sim card on the ATT phone and when it powered on it had a message on the screen that read "incorrect or invalid sim". I put the ATT sim back into the phone and it works well. Actually it just powers up without errors because obviously there is no ATT signal here.

Since that phone was only $15, with the unlocking here and a new sim it's almost reaching a point that it would be better to get a new phone here. I actually don't need more phones, but it might be nice to have a spare phone device in case any phone in the house goes dead and the sim is still working.

One more thing, there's a couple of US cellular operators that use very specially branded software on the phones they use , like Net10 and Tracphone. Those phones are totally useless in Honduras, well except for spare parts. Their original factory software is not there and so they can't be unlocked because there is no lock, there is no door..etc. it's a totally different beast.

On to the next question. "Previously you mentioned the MagicJack, are they safe?". Safe means a lot of things. I won't go on to mention the tons of ways that safe can be interpreted. I will just say that the operation of the MagicJack was safe in that I was able to make calls all the time I had a proper internet connection. I even changed my number to a Phoenix area code number to help my relationship with the company I work for there.

So far no weird software has been downloaded on the computers (plural) in which i've used the MagicJack. It hasn't stopped working. I haven't had to use techie powers to get it to work. At the most i've had to reboot my computer one time to get it to work. TO ME it's been worth the purchase. I know people that bought it and don't have the appropiate bandwith and can't use it , but that's not the MJ's fault.

Could someone have been listening to my calls, theoretically yes because MJ probably doesn't encrypt the voice, but what would they do with me saying "Hi, how are you?, where are you? i'm here at such and such. How are the kids? ,etc etc" ? I wouldn't like for someone to listen in on my calls, but I feel that it's such a far fetched posibility that is as equally far fetched as someone tapping in on a regular phone line, that I don't worry about that.

HOWEVER, when I was doing research to buy the MagicJack I did read that some not technical issues with the Company itself are not as good. Their 30 day free trial offer is kind of strange if you use a debit card because they take the money out on day one. Same deal when I used the credit card. I didn't return the thing so I don't know personally how hard it would be to get a refund, but honestly I guess it's the Honduran in me or my time would just not be worth it to go on hours and hours with them to get back my $50 or so. Probably less if they don't refund shipping and handling. I guess if I had bought it at Best Buy the refund might be easier but there would be no 30 day free trial there.

Also i've read that customer support is crappy. That they take a long time to answer. They go thru scripts, making you do things over and over again, and they give you the run around, until you complain enough days or weeks that they pass you on to guys that apparently do know how to fix stuff. Personally I haven't had to use their customer support because the thing has been working very well. I've read their FAQ and that was all I needed. I think after getting the Magicjack they upgraded my software once and had better features on it, included a "fix" option that I haven't had to use.

So on the operational side of things the MJ is safe, on the purchase side it's kinda safe unless you want to return it, and on the customer support is about as bad as some other companies out there but worst than most of the more famous ones. Then again as low priced as it is, it's kinda hard to complain if they take more time to take your call than say, your local phone service provider.

That was a long non money post. The advice on it is free, as so is this blog.

Cutting the phone bill

2009-03-13T14:58:00.001-06:00

Just a quick note about my landline phone bill.

I had a phone with "gold plan" on it. It meant that for about $25/month I could call 2500 minutes to other Hondutel numbers in Tegucigalpa. I took that plan way back when internet was mostly accessed via dialup connection.

Nowdays i've noticed that I'm not using almost any of those minutes. Calls from the house are rare and those calls that are made are to "sub-operator" providers like Multifon or Telemas, and as such are not included in my free minutes.

So today after I paid that phone bill one last time I went to Hondutel's customer service office and changed my plan to the basic one that goes for about $3 with "only" 100 minutes included.

They tried to woo me into staying with the gold plan but when they looked at my call pattern they agreed with me.

They also wanted me to try out their cellphone service but their only advantage is unlimited textmessages and low price to landlines. But who calls landlines nowdays? I rarely do, at least not from my cellphone.

So tack that savings that will kick in next month to my effort to owe less money and lower my bills. I hope you agree with me that this was a good decision. I do hope so because the gold plan is no longer available and so now that i'm out of it I can't go back.

I have less free minutes now but all of this blog is free.

Trip to Phoenix days 2 3 and 4 and friday trip to Springfield

2009-03-13T10:47:00.001-06:00

My first day at the job in Phoenix started with free breakfast (all my breakfasts during my trip where free at the hotel). Even my boss had breakfast there when he came to pick me up and he liked it. We had lunch together too and all my lunches were paid by him. So I didn't spend any money on that either. That first day was my deep-end dive into driving alone in the US.

My boss requested a car rented for me and at the end of the day we went to pick it up. I was hoping it would include a nagivation system but it didn't. So the next best thing was a big paper map of Phoenix and I was sent on my way. I had little trouble finding my way back to the hotel although stuff was in construction or repair all over the place. I did had to slow down to read some signs and reach my hotel.

After dropping my stuff at the hotel, I went to a nearby mall to buy a book for a coworker from Honduras (she had given me the money beforehand), and there was a Walmart next to the bookstore. I went in and bought $1 and $2 items for my girls and my wife, stuff like body lotions, blouses, shirts. I got some socks for me (Made in Honduras!!) and got my dinner there too. Kept the dinner receipt to get it refunded later. Oh and I got a cellphone too. The cheapest I could buy was one for $15 with no minutes on it, had to also include a $15 recharge card. The good thing about it is that all calls to AT&T numbers were free, convenient since most of the people I would call in the US had AT&T service. The drawback is that there was a $1 service fee per day for that. All other calls were 10 cents each.

It took me about an hour to decide on buying the phone, my boss didn't push for it but recommended I get one. It was a total of $30 for the phone and the first $15 of funds. Comming from Honduras where phones include a ton of minutes when you buy them I wasn't happy spending that much money on a phone for two weeks. Eventually I decided that I might not have an emergency but that if I did I would really like to have a phone with me to call my boss or my friend. And I got it from AT&T because I knew I could later unlock it and use it with any of carriers in Honduras and because of the free calls to all AT&T customers.

That was tuesday feb 24, wednesday and thrusday were pretty much the same except I didn't go out to buy more stuff as I had already bought most of what the girls and wife had asked me to buy.

On friday I was to fly out to my friend's house in Springfield, MO and return monday night. The original plan was for the both of us to fly there. But since he had lost his flight on monday he stayed there. First there was the issue of the car, then the other issue was transportation to the Mesa Airport which even on the map looked really far away. It was all solved when the company told me to keep the car over the weekend and just park it at the airport and keep using it next week. It was cheaper than paying a shuttle over there.

The night before I had printed my boarding pass and had read that there was an extra fee for checked luggage (my friend had bought the ticket for me, he's a really good friend plus the tickets were relatively cheap). So I packed a few clothes on my notebook's backpack and on a small carry-on bag I had brought with me and left my big luggage at the office. I had thought about leaving my luggage in the trunk of the car since it had nothing of big value

So at noon on friday, after making sure I had done all the urgent stuff for the day I started my trek to Mesa Aiport. It was about an hour long drive and I was still within the larger Phoenix metro area!! I arrived with plenty of time to park and make my way to the gate. I bought the expensive food at the airport and took it with me on the plane. It was interesting to see how many elder adults are on those flights. It's very different from flights to or from Honduras where most of the people are either young or middle aged adults. I guess it represents the balance of the population age of both countries.

Interesting flight. There was no music or video onboard, and they sold food and drinks but the funny thing is they also raffled out stuff, you could buy tickets and participate. They did two raffles. I didn't buy any tickets but found it amusing just to see them do it.

I arrived at Springfield way ahead of time. called my friend and waited about half an hour for him to show up. It was very close to freezing point and that was the coldest weather I had experienced so far. I had a light wool sweater which worked really well in keeping my torso warm, but my head would get really cold and I felt pain in my hands after spending a few minutes outside the terminal. It was going to be only a weekend so purchasing cold weather clothing was going to be a interesting decision to make. Specially since there was snow forecasted for later that night. It would be my first experience with snow.

Up to then I think I had done well in spending the least possible during my stay. The cellphone was the only thing I felt was something I should've gotten for a lower price but after reviewing other stores (like best buy and fry's electronics) I couldn't find anything cheaper.

The weather was cold and there was a breeze, and this blog is free.

The savings plan

2009-03-12T13:35:00.000-06:00

I will tell you more about my phoenix trip.

But now I wanted to comment back on a comment left by LW. She wrote that I should have a savings plan and use only for life-or-death emergencies.

Well I have set up the deposit of 800 lempiras every quincena but I had easy access to the debit card for that account. Today I was telling about this to a very close friend of mine that I trust with my life. So I decided to give my debit card to my friend and I would keep the PIN in my wallet. So now I have to call and meet my friend to have access to the card which will just make it easier for me not to touch that money.

What do you think? I think it did something good. Again I thrust this friend with my life.

Friends are priceless but this blog is free

Recap of phoenix trip day 1

2009-03-10T23:25:00.001-06:00

So much for shorter, more frequent post huh ?

I've gotten several comments from several posts. I'm happy to say that I have changed my payroll instructions to have 800 lps sent to my emergency fund account every quincena (15 days) instead of every month.

Now to talk about my trip. It was very enlightening in many ways, specially in economics, both hopes and troubles.

Since I have a lot to talk about I will just write it in days as I was there so I will write trying to remember when I did want.

First day (monday):

Travel from Honduras to Houston. Paid exit fee of thirty something dollars. Kept receipt for refund. Had $500 in my pocket for emergencies and for immigration questions.

While waiting in Houston for my connecting flight to Phoenix, I wanted to call home to tell everyone that I had made it ok (and had passed immigration control too). Also I wanted to call my friend in MO to let him know I was on schedule to arrive in Phoenix that night. I could either buy a prepaid card or use my laptop and some wifi service to dial using my magicjack.

Well Houston airport charges a fee for using their internet service. That's rare in these days as most airports just give it away for free. Tegus charges too but i don't need to use it. Fortunately I had my priority pass card, given to me for free with my Credomatic Platinum card. Just a couple of weeks ago they had sent me the new one (again no charge, just for being a platinum member, although a bad one).

So with that card I went into Continental's President's club lounge and used their free wifi to call home, my friend in MO and my boss in Phoenix. Also enjoyed their free soft drinks, chips, cookies, etc. No need to buy a snack, hehe.

Arrived at Phoenix to away my friend to pick me up. Used the free wifi there to call him (again thanks magicjack). He says he is still in MO because he was late to the airport. So a quick change of plans and unexpected expenses. Had to buy dinner at the airport since it was 10pm already and my friend said the hotel had no restaurant and nothing close by to dine. about $10 for a sandwich, fried and a soft drink. Then a cab ride to the hotel $50. Both hopefully will be reimbursed.

At hotel they asked for my credit card, which I was glad to have it available for this trip. I gave that one and it was ok (I guess they freeze some funds for the duration of my stay). Called my boss (again with the MJ) and he would pick me up tuesday morning.

Well, the calls were free and so is this blog.

the first week in Phoenix

2009-03-06T12:22:00.000-06:00

I'm already finishing the second and last week of my stay in Phoenix. However I have been very busy with work. This is some of the stuff that happened during the first week

Some interesting things:

My friend missed his plane into Phoenix. So I had to pay $50 cab fare to my hotel. I will be reimbursed for that. He will come in until next week. Actually i'm travelling to his town from Phoenix over the weekend to spend the time on his town. I SAW SNOW LIVE FOR THE FIRST TIME, woho!

a guy at the office wants me to go check his home puter and pay me money to do so. I certainly will look at his stuff.

I'm putting in good hours working. I'm not sleeping much because I end up doing stuff at the hotel too.

The girls and wife want some things. I broke down and spent money on some things. Most of them are $2, $3 each. I will try to detail soon.

I like Phoenix, Arizona, except for the dryness.

This trip was free for me, and so is this blog.

Weird World

2009-02-25T00:38:00.000-06:00

Check out this article.

http://finance.yahoo.com/loans/article/106572/Credit-Card-Issuers-Buy-Something-or-Else

I know that Honduran banks don't do this but they do start motivating one to start spending. One of my credit cards on an arranged payment schedule recently called me to tell me of my points available and if I wanted an additional credit card for my wife (NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO). I thought they had cancelled my card but what they did was move my debt to an extrafinancing loan, and so my credit card is basically active with them, except that I cut it up.

Short post, short post! Free blog!

Frugal Trip

2009-02-23T21:05:00.000-06:00

I am writing this as i'm flying high somewhere between Houston and Phoenix. I'm sleepy, tired, and a bit cold but happy to be able to travel and get paid for it!

Now even when the company i'm working for as a contractor is going to pay my airline ticket, hotel and probably my meals, there's still some expenses, hidden ones, that come up to bite you when you are not looking.

Not totally related but a bit so is the fact that my youngest daughter's birthday was on the 22nd, so my whole schedule was set up so I would travel on the 23rd to be with her on her birthday. Her birthday was a good attempt at saving money. She wanted a shirt, shoes, cake, a trip to the movies with her sister and two friends and a table game called Mall Madness.

I got her the shirt and shoes with points on the credit card I had cut up and had replaced again just for this trip (emergency and hotel checking in use only). I had just enough points to get her the clothes basically for free. The cake was 200 lps at Pricesmart, not much savings there except I got the smallest one since it wasn't going to be an actually party anyway. The movie trip cost was cut in 50% because I had a couple of two for one coupons from some gas station hot dog purchases done earlier. I only had to buy three tickets to get us five into the movies (my two daughers, two friends of hers, and myself). Unfortunately snacks were full price and I didn't fall for the popcorn refill trick that required purchase of a more expensive combo than what we finally got.

The interesting thing about the board game is that when we came out of the movies, the store was closed so I couldn't buy it for her. She was sad and upset for a couple of minutes but eventually she forgot about it. For the day that is. She has the memory of an elephant so i'm sure she will ask for it some time later when I get back.

Ok, on to my travel. I had to pay for my airport taxes which is $32. I had lunch before going to the airport so I didn't have to buy anything there. Besides I got a nice hot sandwich on the flight to Houston. During my wait in Houston I have to confess that I was tempted to buy at this or that store but I stood my ground and bought nothing. I had my free priotity pass club card that was given to me with my platinum card (the one of two that I still don't have on a arranged payment schedule.

With that card I was able to get into Continental's President's Club near my next flight's gate. I got there and used their free internet to call home and work using my magicjack and a local honduran IP phone I have. The other options would've been to use a payphone while calling everyone or buying time from the airport's internet service at $15 per day , when I used it only for one hour or so. Another treat at the Club was the free drinks and snacks which I happily enjoyed after walking miles from one terminal, waiting in line with hundreds of people at immigration and customs and then another couple of miles to the other terminal. Ok so I only took ice water and some potato chips but that was enough for me.

After that I got onboard this flight and i'm heading to Phoenix. My friend from MO is flying there to and he will pick me up at the airport in his rental car, so I won't have to pay a cab fare to the hotel. Right now I still have intact the $500 and my credit card, both of which I had to bring with me to pass immigration without problems. I just had a nice cold turkey sandwich, a chocolate and some Ginger Ale which im sure could hold me up until morning. However i'm sure my friend has other plans.

This is it for now. I'm trying to may these post short but they come up long anyway. Will have to improve on this.

At least this blog, and the beautiful night sky i'm looking at thru the window, is free.

What happened to the extrafinancing?

2009-02-18T16:13:00.001-06:00

I know some of you would wonder what happened to that money.

Well, I got the 66,000 lps or so. right off the bat I paid about 42,000 to my Alianza-Bac-Unitec credit card. That's the one that gives me my good cellphone plan. I also paid 9000 and 5000 on the two pay arrangements I had. I did that so as to not fall behind on my payments because this quincena I earned a lot less on my morning job because I spent most of that quincena's mornings on my day job with the consultant that was over here doing work and required my presence.

I wish I could say that ALL the rest I went ahead and put it on my credit card debt. It would be easy to write this. However it's not true. Between lempira and dollar balance I know I paid about 9000 lps to my Bac Platinum card. I did this because since both card are issued by BAC if I miss a payment on one they will block both and I need to have at least one available for my trip to Phoenix next week. I don't plan to use it but in a foreign land, in a place i've never been before it's a safety rope I case I need something urgent. More on that trip soon.

The rest, 3000 lps or so. I spent it. Yes I spent it. Not proud about it. My wife's car had a tire that needed replacement and some fixing to the steering. The rest was spend on mundane stuff that was "necesary" at the moment, things like school supplies or money for activities, medicines (which my wife seems to always need plus my own that I bought extra for my trip), etc. I know I should track those small purchases but they all seemed required at the moment. There was maybe a couple of fast food purchases, but the rest all was "urgent". Maybe I do need to track it just to make sure it was actually required spending.

My daughter got robbed near my house and he cellphone was stolen. This would've been a shock in itself, but it was more of a shock to know that she had racked up $200 in calls up to the day her phone was stolen!!! I had a serious sit down with her and she told me she called several friends a lot and just didn't keep track of time. I'm still waiting for that invoice to show up, but right there I told her that I was cutting her from our post-paid plan. I got her a simple 200lps phone (actually got two cause it was a 2 for one promo) with Digicel. It came out well because all her friends use Digicel now and for 10lps a day they can talk for four hours every day. Putting her on the plan was a mistake. I also took my wife's and my own phone's credit limit down to $60 both, and that's still high with the mini rate we are both enrolled in but I can lower it more if I want.

Well I'm trying to keep it short, and I hope blogspot keeps this blog free.

Pay Raise and other help

2009-02-18T15:45:00.001-06:00

Deploying a new software version of an application to many banks, rolling out a new antivirus solution and doing odd works during the night leaves little time for blog writing. I feel a great relief when I write and so not writing makes me my financial emotions swell painfully. I'm thinking of writing shorter posts more frequently rather than longer ones less frequently.

Last week I was handed my pay raise by my main-job boss. Every year on this ocassion he talks with me for five minutes about the things I did right and for thirty minutes about the things I did wrong. Strangely this year he only mentioned that we should be on the look out for cost cutting measures. No complaints about me. Even my raise was higher than other years in lempira amount although lower in percentage to my base salary.

In any case I guess by now you must know I will not tell my wife about it and if she asks I will tell her there were no raises this year or state a much lower figure. It's sad but if I were to tell her about my raise she would know immediately about "URGENT" stuff that we need to buy or spend the money on. My dad and my boss and other men have told me that they never tell their wives how much they earn. Guess i'm not alone in this problem.

My raise was of 3500 lps more each month, After taxes and deductions it comes to 2400 lps a month, 1200 lps every quincena. That plus the 400lps or so extra that I get from the rise on the initial income tax bracket will help. I've already instructed the payroll lady to transfer 800 lps each quincena to my "emergency fund" account. my previous instruction was 800 lps each month (only on the 30th), now i'm doubling that and will probably go to 1000 lps each quincena after my trip (more on that on another post).

I still can't pay much of my debt with that raise but I can put it on savings to have something to fall back on. I've read everywhere that one has to save even when paying debt.

I know I worked hard for my raise, but this blog is free

calls that make me smile

2009-02-04T20:35:00.001-06:00

Well, to all those thousands of people that commented and sent me private emails telling me not to refinance my car, i'm happy to say that I'm not going to do it. The interest rate is 60% on such a loan. One card I want to pay has a interest rate of 54% and the other two are at 59% and 52% so it just doesn't make financial sense.

I remember that I read on LG's blog that some credit cards charged 70% or more. I have platinum and gold cards so maybe the lower, more common cards charge more. Honestly I was surprised that my rates weren't up there in the 70's cause it sure feels like a lot of money in interest.

So here I was yesterday wondering how was I going to get a jumpstart to start reducing the money I owe. In other words, paying my debt. I have two jobs now. the main job pays for my monthly expenses and a company loan. The other job now is my main source to pay my minimum payments on three credit cards and the payment plans on the other two. So even tough I'm making headway on two cards the other three are killing me and I couldn't earn enough to just pay a lot on one and snowball it from there.

The phone rang and there's this lady calling me to tell me that they have approved me a line of extrafinancing (from one of my active credit cards) of L66,000.00 that I can take now. Being now more cautious than before I ask for the rate and it's 42%. Argh, not the 25% i'm used to on extrafinancing from past times but better than the credit card rates stated above.

Anyway, I took for a term of 36 months. I could've gone up to 48 but I thought that it might be extending it too much into the future.

With that I plan to pay my Alianza-Bac-Unitec cellphone card. It will still get charged with our cellphone bills but I will make sure to pay them in full every month. I will still have about 26,000.00 left to pay on my Bac Visa Platinum card which has a bigger balance. I think that's best to pay this card because if I miss a payment on either of them the bank blocks both and if there's a real emergency I can't use either of them. By emergency I mean something medical!

Of course i've learned to keep all of this a secret from my wife. And I feel it is right to do so because I still owe money, I just have lower payments.

What do you think about this ?

On a side story i'm installing debt tickers at the bottom of the blog's main page. I was wondering how to set it up because the way they work doesn't fit me precisely. So in the end I thought I will one debt ticker per debt instead of a single one for all the money I owe. I have a test ticker right now. Tell me what you think.

Well at the ticker was free and so is this blog.

The mini-rate

2009-01-26T13:35:00.001-06:00

Hello there folks.

It's been busy these weeks with a foreign consultant finally getting our upgrades installed after a 2-year delay. So i'm having to go to my day job from 9am to 9pm , leaving little room to work my morning job. Yeah it sucks. Just when I'm getting up to speed something always happens. Oh well, I'll just work more nights.

Today I wanted to share with you something. I talked a little bit about it before. It's the mini-rate that Tigo offers to plan-based customers. Basically by paying $5 a month you can call up to 5 Tigo cellphone numbers and the rate for those numbers is only two cents per minute any time all the time.

So I went to Tigo's website and pulled the last three months call detail records for my cell and my wife's. It's nice that one can download an excel spreadsheet for each month. So after sorting by number and grouping by number and doing some formula magic I was able to calculate the top 5 numbers she and I call the most each month. Actually I only had 3 but she had 6. So I registered my 3 numbers and added my boss's number just in case. I registered my wife's top five numbers hoping she doesn't start calling new ones now.

I'm expecting at least a reduction in $20 in my bill and $30 in her's. Today monday is the first day of the billing cycle so I won't be able to measure the full effect of the mini-rate until feb 25. But I saw the latest call detail records and they do show a 2c/min rate for the numbers I registered for me and her.

Don't think I haven't ask her to call less, and she agrees but then she turns around and for some reason every call she makes on the phone is a life-or-death call that had to be made. I've heard that story so much before that I just don't care.

What I did not do was to tell her that I got lower rates for those numbers. If I tell her i'm sure she will make up for it by calling them more! So I just did it quietly. Unfortunately everytime the bill is paid a message is sent to the phone stating how much was paid so when the next billing cycle comes she will know her bill was lower than this one. At least she won't know why and I don't plan on telling her.

Had a few unplanned expenses this quincena, like a new tire for her car and vitamins and de-parasiting meds for my daughters (which I eventually will get rembursed on by our medical insurance, but still).

I'm up to date on my bills but not making much headway in paying one in full. I saw an ad for Corporacion Financiera about getting a loan by putting my car as a colateral. I will take a look at that today or tomorrow. Hopefully they will be able to help me.

The mini-rate for this blog is "free".

Looking forward to 2009

2009-01-10T19:28:00.001-06:00

I'm feeling a little down because last quincena's payment hasn't been credited in my account yet. I know from previous payments that sometimes it can take a week but last time it only took 3 days and it was in December!

Anyway. I'm trying to write down things to look forward just to feel a bit more positive this weekend. For some reason I feel the weigh of my debt during weekends more than during weekdays. I guess it's an unconcious feeling of guilt of not working that haunts me, or maybe just that I have more time to thing about things.

So let's see some things that will happen that are positive:

1) There's been a change in the income tax law, so I will have to pay 300 lps less every quincena in taxes. that's about 15 dollars less every 15 days.

2) At my main job we all expect a 7% or so raise during january or at least february. I've been advice by friends not to let my wife know about this extra money I will get but she has a sixth sense about this things, at least this time around I have some more control about my money and won't give her more just because i'm getting more.

3) Some little things: I cancelled caller id and international call blocking on my two landlines. That means $5 a month in savings. On this area caller id doesn't work as it did on my previous house and my wife doesn't have anyone to call the US now and talk for hours like she used to do in the past.

4) I got a high cellphone bill (about $70 on mine) and I noticed that I called about 4 numbers a lot. And these numbers are not in my corporate plan. I can call numbers in my corporate plan for free on calls of up to 10 minutes each. So I took a special service. I get charged $5 per month to register 5 cellphone numbers that I can call for 2 US cents per minute. Regular rate for that in my plan is 10 cents per minute. To not increase my bill I cancelled the insurance on my cellphone which is also $5 per month. I expect to cut my bill about 40%.

5) The government has stated that the electric bill will have a discount of about 10%. They had a fuel surcharge fee which was about half or more of what I pay each month. They will no longer have that. Don't get confused, they will not have that as a separate fee but they will still charge it and the total will get a 10% discount. I used up 90 kilowatts in my last bill which was very surprising to me for all the cooking that went on during the holidays. It was almost half of what I usually use monthly. So this last bill instead of being 240lps (about 14lps) it was only 86 lps (about $5). An added bonus is that if I keep my consumption lower than 150 kilowatts I will get no bill. Water bill is another story!

6) My wife got called for a job interview next monday. I hope very much that she gets it.

That all I can think of right now. But there might be more and I write about it when I remember them. Next week I will write the starting balances on January for all the money I owe. That way you and can track how I am lowering my debt.

I hope you will keep reading my blog this year.

At least this blog is free, and hopefully my electricity will be too!

2009 , the year of repayment

2009-01-03T00:45:00.001-06:00

Happy New Year. This is going to be a blitz of thoughts that have accumulated over the past days. I'm just releasing the pressure valve now.

2008 was a year of awakening for me. of realizing that I was well well over my head in debt and the strong desire to be debt free. The start of changes in my way of looking at life in order to spend less but live more.

A saving in transportation for my daughters has brought me closer to them as we now talk more while I drive them to school.

A reduced spending in fuel meant better user of my car to make all of it last longer.

My friend saying no to loaning me money turned out to be him being part in getting the second job i'm working now. I would've liked the money but I prefer to earn it and owe money to no one. He's one of my saving angels. I wouldn't have known it back when were were college classmates programming together and giving him a ride back home every day in the car I still drive today.

Less christmas spending attempts were damaged by my wife. The spending records show that she's the mayor contributor to the money going out the door. Cold hard facts I have to face and that she refuses to face. She wants to help me as long as she can keep doing the same things she has done all this time. At least I know where the problems areas are and who is helping and who is not.

No christmas gifts this year. I bought the girls a game of UNO thanks to tips from the readers. Unfortunately it has become the passion of my youngest daughter and she want to play it incesantly. An average game of uno with her lasts about 30 minutes! At least some days we all do play together.

I bought shoes, jeans and shirts for the girls. One pair of shoes for my wife ($15) and a pair of pants for me ($6) and I enjoyed teaching my family by example. I gave gifts to no one but my secret santa friend at work. I received some gifts from companies we work with in my job. Some of those I turned around and gave to my mom and to some friends. Some , like the pork leg given to me by the company I gave to the maid for her to enjoy with her family. She's going to leave soon but we want to stay in friendly terms.

I didn't get many material things but today January 2nd I feel better than those years when I bought stuff with money I didn't have. No buyer's remorse this year.

I had to say "no" several times when my daughters wanted to buy something more, usually coaxed by their mother. It broke my heart to say it but each time I did I learned that they can hear no and still love me. They just kissed me good night and hugged me and didn't do it different just because they didn't get toys or more clothes. It's not easier to say no, but I know their world won't end if I say no.

Wife now calls me cheap, and I say "thank you!". I've learned to enjoy not buying something and doing something else to reach the same goal. I'm starting to be more creative and remember places , and prices!

2009 is here now. I hope this second job I have will last long enough to help me pay all the money I owe or at least a big chunk of it. It if wasn't for the interest rates I would be able to pay it all in 12 to 18 months but it's not so it will take longer.

I sent my bill for the last "quincena" of December. $1052 was the total. I worked christmas' eve, christmas, new year's eve and new year's day. The day I worked the most was new year's eve , a total of 9.25 hours that day and I didn't work in the morning because I took my wife's car to get the brakes fixed. I love that job. It's like they are paying me for stuff I would do for free just to play with so many computers. The only problem is that my girls and wife obviously want me to spend time with them. That's a balance act i'm still trying to learn to do well.

From this payment, money will go to getting me back on schedule of my scheduled payments, about $450 for one and $250 for the other, it's actually a little less. Will take $100 to replace money that I spent on car repairs from my emergerncy fund. The rest will go to pay debt on the card with the lowest balance.

If you are debt free, please stay that way! Send me your tips and suggestions. I've taken many and they've been helpful.

If you have debt, don't get more! Use your credit cards wisely. The simplest way to use them wisely is not to use them at all. Debit cards are much better. If you can't afford it, you probably can live without it. Write to me about your struggle, let me know about it. It helps to write. It really does.

If you are worried about debt, join the club! You are not alone. There are several of us trying get from under the pile of debt. It's easier for those with no family to care for or to spend time with but it's not my situation. If you are in debt and want to get out of it, then start by writing about it. I know it has helped me a lot to face the facts and stop kidding myself or at least know that sometimes I am kidding myself and no one else.

I wish you all a good 2009. Economically it doesn't look good either here or in the US but let's just hang in there. It's going to be an interesting ride.

Well, at least this blog is free, I hope it stays free in 2009.

The Christmas rush

2008-12-23T14:55:00.000-06:00

I guess most bloggers don't write much these days with everything going on in their lives. I'm no different, but I wanted to keep you updated to some important stuff.

Got paid last week $950 from my morning job. I paid the minimum payment on two credit cards and a scheduled payment on anothe credit card. So there was no money spend on the us.

From my regular salary I bought the girls their clothes and shoes (spent about $100 on that). The wife was upset because I didn't get her a blouse or shoes and has been reminding me of that every day. I remind her that I gave her money specifically for xmas stuff and she decided to spend it on something else. I told her that I didn't get myself anything and she said she didn't care about that. That I should've al least bought her a pair of shoes.

Our maid's mom got very ill, to the point where she herself is asking her relatives to prepare for her burial, so this week we don't have a maid home. If my wife manages to survive this week without the maid I'll buy her the shoes.

Both jobs are going great. I'm sleeping one more hour since the girls are out of school this week until january. My morning boss told me to start looking at airfare for a trip to Phoenix on January or February. That would be great because I would work at least 8 hours every day for two weeks so I would do in two weeks what I normally do in a month here and would help pay off the credit cards.

Right now my plan is to get back on track with my regular minimum payments first which might take up the next two payments from my morning job.

Our company's coop is going to hand out dividends jan 5 and I'm the one that will get the most (since I have the biggest loan there). All that money will to paying credit card balance on the smallest balance.

I thank LG for her support , I think that mostly knowing that people understand my situation and wish me luck means a lot. I know they can't do much more, unless they can loan me money at 15% :-) LOL.

MIT from "Jan Pedro Jula (slang for San Pedro Sula)" asked if I could consolidate my debt with a lower rate. Some of my credit cards are already on a payment schedule at a lower rate. I also talked to my mom about asking my dad for his extrafinancing line of credit again (the one I just finished paying). That would be a lower rate , something like 25 to 35% and it would probably cover enough to cancel one of the two cards I would like to cancel that I can't at this moment. I will talk to dad tomorrow and feel him out. Then there's the actual calling the bank and see if they will lend him money again since all banks are changing their requirements.

I asked my brother too but his bank would lend him money at 42% which is high but still almost half of the credit card rate. However he only has about $3000 limit (which is the same amount that they would lend him on the extrafinancing) and doesn't know if they will lend him that money.

Kristi mentioned the snowball method and Dave Ramsey. I know him , I wished I knew him before! I'm doing the snowball method balancing with the rates on each debt. Now that I don't owe money to family or friends I have only credit card debt and arranged payments. They are mostly the same rate so I'm going to pay the smallest debts on those first. My cellphone credit card is the one i'm targeting now. Unfortunately I can't call that one because I would loose the cheaper cellphone family plan. but I did cut up that card so all I have to take care of is paying my cellphone bills and not let them get charged to the card.

Well that's the gist of it so far. I would like to say thank you to all that have left comments, or those that just read my blog and nod saying "yeah I'm feeling you man!" . May you all have a happy holiday.

Well at least this blog is free, it was a gift from Santa Claus or San Nicolas, or Colacho (slang for Nicolas).

Se que casi no escribo mucho en español, pero quiero agradecer a aquellos lectores de habla hispana e inglesa que leen mi blog en ingles. En realidad es muy dificil escribir un blog en dos idiomas. Lo he intentado y es mas esfuerzo y tiempo del que puedo darle para que tenga la calidad que deseo en ambos idiomas.

Por lo menos este blog es gratis, fue el regalo que me dejo San Nicolas.

rolling with the punches

2008-12-15T20:02:00.001-06:00

The good (at least financially):

The maid said she is leaving on Dec 31st. I guess she heard so many of you wanting her to go that she is actually leaving, LOL. Didn't have to fire her and there won't be any more rationalizing to do :-)

After that my wife told me to buy lunch somewhere near work or come home for it because I left so early in the morning. It's going to affect her more that it will affect me. On second thought I guess I will have to help more around the house than now. Oh well, 3000 bolas is 3000 bolas!

The bad (also financially):

I gave my wife 3,000 lps and told her that was money to spend on christmas stuff like clothes for her and my daughters and the materials for the tamales and stuffed chicken. She paid money to some people she owed money to. She bought gas, bought groceries, got her hair done, helped a friend who had her car stolen and gave her money, etc, etc. Nothing christmas related.

We got into a strong argument over the phone as to where the 3000 lps had gone. She had to buy the christmas food materials with the regular monthly money, and I now have to buy my girls jeans and shoes from some money that I was going to save. She is pissed off that i'm trying to track her expenses and I'm upset that I gave her money for one thing and she spends it for another thing and doesn't think it's "wrong" in any way. She says I didn't give her enough. In other times I would've just said "fine, I will get some more" but this time I talked to her some more, even as she was still upset.

I told her that I didn't really want to know the minute details of her spending but that the money was supposed to be spent on christmas stuff.Yeah I should've actually tracked down the spending but I could imagine the bigger arguments we would've had if I had done that. She would take it as a lack of trust.

In any case, in the end she felt bad about it and she is trying to make up for it by cutting down on the food she is preparing. I told her I would be ok with only tamales and no stuffed chickens. Instead of doing 6 chickens she cut it down to 3 chickens which I hope will last until new year's too!

The News

Today has been another financial-emotional roller-coaster day for me. Started bad with calls from my credit cards that I was past due on payments. I had the sinking feeling again that even with the new job I would only make enough to make minimum payments on all of them and just stay above water, not really a way to get out of debt. Then I got another call from another credit card in the afternoon

I was so fogged by the feelings of desperation about the thing that I just couldn't put the mimum payment numbers down on paper. I put them on a sticky note on my laptop and just stared at the big numbers. In between calls I had the argument with my wife as I mentioned above.

Eventually I realized that not all were due soon and I would probably be able to pay most of it with one "quincena's" pay from the morning job, leaving the other quincena to do some debt payment on the money I owe. Not as fast as I thought I would be repaying debt but I feel better now than I felt during the afternoon today.

Now that my dad is paid I'm going to focus as La Gringa says on the higher interest rate cards. Actually they all are abou the same rate and it's easy to see it since it's printed on every statement. I will check it again but i'm sure they are all pretty close so that leaves tackling the smallest debt first. Again LG was quick to figure out that I have my Cr2 card with the lowest balance and I plan to pay that one first if the interest rate difference isn't that big.

Morning job is doing ok. My boss there is very VERY happy with my work. I was able to clock about $952 that I will invoice tomorrow and will get paid for it probably next monday. That money will go to paying minimum payments and the rest (if there is left) will go to the Cr2 card.

I might even go back and ask my dad for another extrafinancing loan from his credit card. I hope he wants to help and doesn't ask me why I can't get one myself.

And yet today the secretary at the office was able to make me laugh because she was using a typewriter and making jokes about it and her younger years (she's in grandmother-age).

At least this blog is free. As are some of the best things in life.

One fight over. Many tough ones aheads

2008-12-15T13:46:00.004-06:00

As you can see from my Debt sidebar I have paid my dad all the money that I owed him. I thought I was going to have to pay only $434, however that balance was due to the fact that the bank had put a couple of the payments on his credit card balance and I hadn't paid them completely. So to pay off the extrafinancing and his dollar balance I had to pay $593, just $7 less that the balance I had back in October!! Ouch. This is just a taste of things to come.

In any case the debt is paid and the $180 remaining I'm using them to pay the minimum payment on the next credit card I want to pay off.

I will keep this short since I think it's easier to read this way. Plus even though this battle is over I'm not feeling like talking about my debt mountain right now.