One fight over. Many tough ones aheads

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.

Do you want to "call with me" ? www.llamaconmigo.com

I have started two income streams related to phone calls. I hope the ball starts rolling.

First of all, I have started a calling service to any country in the world. Actually it is targeted to calls to Honduras since the prices are so low. They are even lower than calls within Honduras!

For example calls to Honduran cellphones cost about $0.13/min. That's lower that the normal $0.20/min rate from a Honduran cellphone to another Honduran cellphone! The next rate available is $0.17/min, still under 20 cents !! There are two rates because I can cater each account to use more than one international carier to complete the call if one or the other is too busy.

I have trouble with getting payment because both paypal and Google checkout don't allow Non-US accounts to accept payments. That's my only weak spot with this service. Any advice or help with this I would appreciate a lot.

I started this business by selling calls to my ex-brother-in-law's stores. They have three stores and cater mostly to Hondurans. Regular calling cards to Honduras have such high rates and connection fees that even adding a 50% markup on the my service's call rates still makes it interesting to customers. The stores pay me by wiring money with one of the companies that charges a fixed fee (about $10), they usually put about $500 every week. That gives me about $60 per recharge.

I have had it running now for 2 months and I know things work very well. They mostly sell calls to Honduras, but even Mexicans and Guatemalans like the way the service is provided because they pay only for the minutes they use. There are no connect fees, administration fees, call completion fees, etc. Many people talk for over an hour and enjoy it because with calling cards they are limited to 20 to 30 minutes at times.

The way the stores sell calls is using calling booths very much like cybercafes here in Honduras. Calls are routed via the internet to the international carriers, which allows to get this low rates. The store managers go to a web page to check the call records and see how much each call costs and from that they calculate how much to charge the customer.

This also helps them attract people to their stores to offer them other services or products. People go in the store to call but also end up buying groceries or food or sending money with them as well. The store managers are smart and sometimes use the calling service to compete with other nearby stores in the remittance service. For example they offer Mexicans free calls if they send money with them instead of the Mexican store. It only a few pennies per call but it drives a lot of business to them because the person can send the money AND call their relative to let them know the money has been wired.

The website is www.llamaconmigo.com (it means "call with me" in Spanish).

Right now the website it's very simple and I try to keep it simple , but with more content, so that many types of browsers can read it with no problem.

I bought the domain with godaddy.com and it only cost me $15 for one year. There was a special sale and I took advantage of it. They are even hosting my website for me for "free".

You can go there to check rates for calls to any country in the world. Just add 12% to the rates you get and that's what the call will really cost. The 12% is my profit margin. I'm not trying to set a high profit because I want to earn on volume. I deduct the 12% from the amount credited to the user's account.

If you know someone, specially a Honduran individual or a Honduran store in the US or anywhere in the world that would like to try it out, tell them about my website and have them write to the email there with their phone number so we can talk some more about how to get them set up. You would really help me a lot if you spread the word. I'm sure Honduran (or Latino) stores could use the extra people traffic.

There are many ways the service can be used. If it's used in the US there is a phone number that can be called to access the system. There is an web phone application right on my website to make calls from the computer. And the most convenient way is to buy an Analog Telephone Adapter (ATA for short) like the ones used with Vonage or other voip service providers. It's a little box that plugs to the internet on one side and to a regular phone on the other side, allowing you to make calls the way you are used to make them.

I would really appreciate your help. I understand that I'm not the only one in need of money so I'm open to partnerships or paying a "finder's fee" if you help me get someone to use my service.

Please visit the page, let me know what you think. Help me spread the word if you think it's a worthy service.

The website is once again www.llamaconmigo.com

I will tell you about the other income stream soon. I'm just starting with it and want to have more experiences to tell you about. To some of you it may shock you, and to others it may seem pretty reasonable. As I've told you before, I open to do anything to get some more income to pay my debts. I'm very motivated to get out of debt. I have been so busy with several projects trying to hedge my bets that at least one should work well.

Well at least this blog is free. More importantly, your advice and words of encouragement are free to you and priceless to me.

The bait not taken

Well,

Honduras' national soccer team won again. This time 3-1 playing against Canada. The "If Honduras wins you eat free" offer was up again, This time I was not falling for it, Ha! Fool me once, shame on you, Fool me twice, i'm a glutton for pain.

No this time we spent the next day enjoying some really free food at my mom's house since it was her birthday. I did buy her a present and spent more than I wanted to, but it's hard to be cheap (or "frugal") when buying for mom. I would say that I settled for the middle-priced present and she liked it. We spent all sunday afternoon at her house, which is two blocks from my house, eating and drinking until very late.

I want to thank the people that leave comments and give me support to continue. Some even try to help by trying to get work for me. I really appreciate that. Muchas Gracias!

Now you can skip the rest or read on if you want to practice your spanish. This is my first attempt at a bilingual post

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Hola, que raro debe ser leerme en español! Varios amigos, pero en especial La Gringa, me habian pedido que escribira mis narrativas en español. Asi talves otros que tienen problemas financieros como yo se podrian identificar. Este es mi primer intento de hacer esto en ambos idiomas. Comenzamos!

Bueno,

La seleccion nacional de futbol de Honduras gano de nuevo. Esta ves fue 3-1 contra Canada. La promocion de "Si Honduras gana comemos gratis" salio de nuevo. Esta ves no cai en esa trampa, jaja! La primera ves cai por tonto, ya la segunda es que seria masoquista.

No, esta ves pasamos el dia disfrutando comida gratis en la casa de mi mama ya que era su cumpleaños. Le compre un regalo pero gaste mas de lo que queria, pero es dificil ser baratero con mi mama. Diria que le compre un regalo de precio intermedio, y lo mas importante fue que le gusto. Estuvimos todo el domingo en su casa, que esta ubicada a dos cuadras de mi casa. Estuvimos comiendo y bebiendo hasta tarde ese dia.

Quiero agradecer a las personas que dejan comentarios y me da apoyo para continuar. Algunos hasta tratan de conseguirme trabajo. De verdad se los agradesco. Thank you!


Well, at least this blog is free
Bueno , por lo menos este blog es gratis

Rise and Shine

Today was the first day of taking my girls to school.

At first I had decided to do this to save around 900 lempiras a month on bus service from house to school for my two daughters.

But today I was also glad that during the short drive, I was able to talk to my daughters. This since during the rest of the day they are at school and when I get home they are already sleeping.

So that was an intangible bonus. How much is having time with my kids is worth ? is it worth waking up at 6:30am ? time will tell.

The other bonus is that I feel I have a longer day to do things. This morning after dropping my girls off at home I went back home and registered myself at www.tecoloco.com . I also registered my wife. More on that later.

The thing is that it was a long registration process and I did it twice! Then it was only 8am, and I already had breakfast.

It's almost 11pm and I feel ok for the first day, not too tired.

Well at least this blog is free.

Supersaver man goes to school

I went to my daughter's school to pick up their mid-period grades. I'm glad that they are doing very well and so I feel it's money well spent.

Before going I had given thought that since we are now living much closer to the girls' school maybe me and/or my wife could drive them to school and have the school bus bring them back home and maybe there was a discount for that.

So after picking the grades I went to the administration office and asked about it. The accounting lady said "Sure! bus will be only 50% of what you pay now". With two girls pay for bus service if I only pay 50% it means about 900 lempiras saved. That is a whole tank of gas when it's totally totally empty! In my old car I get 300 miles for 10 gallons of fuel (about 900 lempiras at current prices).

It's a 5 minute drive from my house to the school with no stoplights or even busy street crossings. From the school back home it's almost the same. I'm total it's about 5 miles round trip. And it's 20 days a month, that's 100 miles.

So i'm seriously considering requesting only afternoon bus service for my girls starting next month (october). It might mean getting up at 6:30am to drop them off but I need to get up early anyway to make better use of my mornings, either to work more or to work out (something I badly need).

Do you think the savings are worth it?

Well at least this blog is free

supplier troubles, hopes and introspection

Well the problems with our supplier continue.

Remember that some of my extra income comes from sending Honduran stuff to the US for my ex-brother-in-law to sell in his stores. Well our main supplier has shipping problems and we've gone a whole month with sending very little over. That affects me much because even though I get paid monthly just to make sure that all related bills get paid, if there are none then I don't get any money.

Every time I call them they say they will get things straightned out very real soon now. Then I call the next day and someone else says some other story. A couple of days later they answer a question I am not asking and state that they thought I was complaining about that.

So i've had it with them. I found a new supplier and if things go well, not only will get a monthly payment from my ex-brother-in-law but since this new supplier will give the same items at about the same prices as the other one, BUT will refund me 10% of everything we purchase to him if we reach a certain amount. It's his way of saying thank you to me for buying from him.

With prices comparable, and some cheaper, than the other guy, a wider selection and with much better infrastructure and logistics I think I do deserve that 10% if I can get my ex-BIL the stuff he needs at a good price and with better quality.

Honestly, a few years ago I would've passed that 10% on to him, but knowing that i'm getting him good prices from the start and that he sells them at 100% markup, it seems like a no-harm way of getting some extra cash. I'm not totally comfortable with it, but I didn't ask for it, it was offered to me by the new supplier. As long as he does better than the other guy I will feel ok. Not great but at least ok.

Have you ever been in this situation ? Purchasing something that was the best of two options and it included some personal "gift" for you ? did you or would you take it ?

I will use this extra money to pay off the high interest credit card with the highest balance. The other extra incomes will be for other payments and to kill the smaller debt.

Another paycheck!

I worked my butt off this week and got calls for support for this company I did some software for them. They always want some changes and improvements and I welcome all that. Plus in a downsizing move they fired their IT guy and so they call me now to fix simple stuff like corrupted files or installing upgrades.

So I got a check for 10,560 lempiras (it was 12,000 minus tax since i'm and independent consultant). I promptly paid 8020 to the credit card that I have a payment arrangement with. I haven't put it the figure in the right column because ever since I got a payment arrangement with them they stopped sending me a monthly statement. I have to call them to figure out how much I still owe them them.

I am going to make a payment arrangement with my main credit card. They offered me to use my extrafinancing to allow me to keep the credit card since I have a good record. However since I have about 6000 lempiras of minimum payment this month they say they needed some payment to get this started. Otherwise I would have to get a payment arrangement and they would cancel the credit card. The extrafinancing would give me a longer term and a lower interest rate than the payment arrangement. So I set aside 1000 lempiras from the last paycheck to have something to give these guys and see if I can get this card on a payment schedule using my extrafinancing (alert to self...DO NOT USE THIS CARD AGAIN JUST BECAUSE ITS BALANCE WILL BE ZERO).

The other 1000 I gave them to my wife to have her pay some of her small debts with friends. The other 560 went into my emergency fund.

I was worried for a while that I wouldn't get this 8020 lempira payment done in time. Now I have to make a payment of 4200 next week. I hope my business with my ex-brother-in-law picks up. This last two weeks it was down due to problems with our provide. That meant $180 NOT comming into my pocket.

Please pray that my provider can supply us with our goods to ship to the US. I need that money bad.

Next week I have to register my girls in school, fortunately I have that money almost all of it ready. It's a lot of money but a bilingual education is my investment in their better future as adults in Honduras. I hope to have enough money left for school supplies.

Well, at least this blog is free.

Super saver man to the rescue, the genesis

I've started walking to and from the nearby mall as a cheap (free) way to exercise and to go pay my bills rather than taking my car to go to a drive-thru teller. To me that seemed as a money saving tip and a way to exercise combined.

Today I got a good 30 minute walk out of it. Didn't pay any bills today as I was going to but office supplies but the walk was good.

As I was there I felt that I have been changing over these months, from oogling over the stuff I wanted for me and my family, to feeling regret after buying something we couldn't afford. From feeling sad about being unable to pay my debts, to accepting the fact that I have to make some big, wait, BIG changes in my lifestyle if I want to get out of my debt, to comming to terms with realizing that I can't buy all that I want and even some things I "think" I need. Now i'm trying to turn myself into Super-saverman, LOL. It's this regular guy that keeps looking for ways to save himself some or all of his money by altering the way he does things every day.

So these are the first "actions" this super-saverman is taking, mainly at the mall right now but more comming from everyday places.

- I used to buy cold coffee drinks with some frequency, not a fanatic about it but when needing a refreshment while at the mall I would go to Expresso Americano (like Starbucks) and get a cold coffe drink there. if the weather was cold I would get a Chai Capuchino. Well not anymore, I just tought it out and wait to get to the office to drink some water, or soda (it's a community thing), or get hot coffee from the coffe pot. I save money and don't use disposable cups and napkins, etc. Basically I try not to buy any snacks or drinks at the mall, there is a superkmarket at the mall and I can buy fruit and water there if I really needed some but generally there is plenty back at the office or at home.

- I like planes, and I like to read a magazine called Airways. Each issue is about $8 and it's been a long time since i've bought them back to back every month. Today I walked into the bookstore and saw the latest edition of it. I was really tempted to buy it but recalled the price (150 lempiras) and took the opportunity to just browse it, read the interesting articles and put it back in the display. The store is ok with people reading their magazines and books there, unlike most other places here in Tegucigalpa. So if I wasn't hurting the store and I was able to get my Airways fix without having to buy the magazine I was ok. Sure I miss having the paper in my hands and being able to reread the articles a year from now but I got most of the news I wanted from that reading and I can be at peace with myself knowing I kept that money in my pocket. I even found out that they have some articles online at www.airwaysmag.com !! I'm sure going to check on those.

- I used to empty the coins from my pockets into my night stand at home and it would just dissapear overnight or the next day. Sometimes my daughter would ask for it and sometimes I'm sure someone else took it. Now I take it back with me the next day and use it when paying for things at the supermarket or pulperia. Keeps me from breaking a higher denomination bill. It's silly but I feel good about that.

- The mall is not the cheapest place to buy stuff, however there are a couple of stores there sell the basics that one would need, like underwear and socks, etc. Now that I go to the mall with almost no money on myself I can relax and check out if they have any big sales like 50 or 80%. I can then tell my friend at work about it and if they can use that then fine. As for me I don't even say a pep at home because I know my wife and daughters would try to get new stuff even when they have tons of it at home already. I might be exagerating as they have been slowly changing their ways in these last few days. I'll probably have to write about them and their behaviors towards money and spending.

Well, at least this blog and these tips are free :-)

Getting Paid!

Today I got some good news.

I'm doing some DBA (database administrator) work for a company in the US. It had been a mystery to me how they would actually send me the money and how would they react to my bill for the work done.

My work consisted on improving the performance of their system. You know when you press the OK button and it takes a while for the computer to display new stuff, my job was to make that go faster.

So I spent many nights reading online documents and forums and logging into their system and tweaking things. After every tweak I would email my contact at the company and ask "can you hear me now?"...actually I would ask "how does it feel now?".

Last weekend I did some big changes in their system and expected to see some really big improvements. Unfortunately monday I got a call from them saying that the system was broken. I quickly undid all my work and still it was broken. I found out more stuff that I had done and undid that and the system was back to work again. BIG SCARE. If there's one thing I hate to do is mess up other people's work. It's an system administrator thing. I want my mark in my job life to be that people don't think of me because the systems are always running ok.

So after that scare they decided some things would be on hold while they looked over my proposed changes and how that affected their system.

By then It had been about a month already and I was wondering if I was going to get paid and the end of the gig or this month , or what. With the Monday mess I was ashamed to come up and ask them when was I going to expect payment (I had already ask before but gotten no answer).

So today, out of the blue my contact at the company tells me they have done a wire transfer for me for the money THEY owe ME :-) for all my work in June and July. It's not much, it's about $1000 but it certainly would give me some much needed financial oxygen.

The transfer should take a couple of days and being Friday I don't expect it until Tuesday at least.

I'm already thinking of what to pay. I have some stuff already paid for the month. I have to put money for my girls school supplies but that was considered to come out of somewhere else. I have some minor repairs that I should do to my cars. The house needs some improvements that I would be refunded for but I have to get them done first. Wife wants some plants, I would love a new external hard drive. So all that is dancing in my head.

However, I really think this is a test. I'm being tested on my determination to get out of debt. While the emotional side of me would like to put some of the money I'm about to receive into debt and some of the money into buying "stuff", my newly anti-debt side is saying that I should put some money into debt and put the rest into my "emergency fund", keeping a tight fist around that hard earned money rather than spending part of it.

What do you think ? Should I just put all towards debt and emergency fund or should I set some of it for spending ? what percent would you spend , save and pay debt ?

Well at least this blog is free

Some Financial Oxygen

If I had a huge source of income, having all this debt wouldn't be a problem. It's not having all that income that causes problems for me. Thus I'm always looking for other sources of income.

Today I got somewhat good news.

I have been doing some freelance work for a company. This year I have been billing them almost monthly. When I presented my bill in May they gave a big run around saying that the general manager needed to talk to me.

July came and still no money. I finally got to talk with the general manager and she said that the board of directors was concern over how much money they were paying me and that they wanted to work something out with me to lower my billing to them.

I explained to her that I was willing to switch to a montly billing instead of a per hour billing. I would lower my equivalent per hour fee by about 33%. She would have a way to lower her bill and budget my cost and I would get a scheduled income as opposed to a every-now-and-then check.

She said she would take it into consideration and paid me that last bill. I quickly paid some of the monthly bills I had back then and did some purchases and bought some medications. I know I spent most of it on debt payments so I feel good about that. My wife wanted much more that what I ended up giving her. She still doesn't grasps how much I really do owe, or doesn't want to face it.

Today, the general manager calls to tell me that she hasn't made up her mind yet but that she needs me to do some work for the company and that I can bill her by the hour but if I could please lower my rate. I told her I would lower a bit it but not to the level I would if she payed on a monthly basis. She agreed and quickly sent me some work I had to do for next week.

So I hope I can do this work and be able to bill her soon enough to pay some of my debt specially my mom and the cellphone card so I can finish off those debts and focus on the other ones.

I also hope that she will eventually agree to pay me monthly instead of hourly. She and I go way back. I've been doing work for her for more than 10 years, but only since about 2003 have I been working as close and with such an importance to her company's daily operations.

She can't really hire me since she couldn't afford my full salary, but she is ok with the arrangement we have. My offer to her was to be even more close in contact with her company and onsite on her 3 locations (Tegucigalpa, San Pedro Sula, and La Ceiba). She said it was an interesting proposition since she was downsizing her company and need more part-time asistance rather than a full time person there.

What do you think about this ? Right now as I'm writing this my computer is churning up some of the work she asked me for next week. I will keep working this weekend. At the same time I'm monitoring another task i'm doing for a US company (more on that later). Well, the computer is done. Time for me to get back to work.

Well, at least this blog is free.

The worst, the bad, the good and the best

The worst: I have this big personal loan that I have to pay. I got it 20 months ago as a way to lower my main credit card bill because I had run it up trying to help my wife start up a clothing store in a street market in the city. I funded her business twice and eventually all I got from that was this big debt. I took a loan at 24% to pay this balance on my main credit card. Since then I failed to keep my main credit card in zero balance. Now I have this loan AND the credit card balance. I hate myself for having done this so many times now that it's so embarrasing to admit to making the same stupid mistake so many times.

The bad: I'm on payment 20 out of 48. Yet another debt to add to all the money I owe. Amount owned at the moment: $6458. Current monthly payment is $311. Will I be able to make this month's payment?..stay tuned cause I certainly don't know if I will get payed for some extra work that i've been doing or for some extra work that I quoted to do on a monthly basis.

The good: Ironically the good part is that I got a letter from that bank stating that they were going to rate my interest rate due to the new regulations including the monetary policy rate. The new rate will be 29% So my new monthly payments would be $325, a $15 increase. Not that much but it's an increase.

So how is this good? Well the letter included an opportunity for me to extend my loan term up to 60 months. So today, actually just a few minutes ago (i'm still aching from walking to the bank branch), I went there and ask for my loan term to be extended to 60 months. The customer service agent said that normally they would extend my loan to 60 months from the date it was originally created. So if the request goes thru normally I would start next month be now on payment 21 out of 60 (or 1 out of 40). New monthly payment would be $257. $54 less per month but obvioulsy I would end up paying more interests in the long run.

However right now I'm just trying to get all my payments within my budget and I would be hard pressed to get a lower rate loan that this one even at 29%. So I took this offer.

The best: I asked the agent if they could actually refinance my loan to 60 months starting from today, not from 20 months ago. He wrote that in my refinance request. If it does go thru this way, I would have just started with a new loan of 60 months to pay for the $6458 at 29%. Monthly payments would be $207. About $104 less per month.

Again I would obviously pay more in interests but in a year or two when I (hopefully) have payed other debts and have more money available I can ask them to shorten my loan term and I'm sure they would be happy to do so. Otherwise I could still get a shorter term in another bank or in the end save up the extra money in an account in their bank and when I reach the balance due, pay it all at once. That will be a very happy day for me.

On the income front, my wife went to job agency today and got letters to visit a bank and a drug company to see if they can hire her. She went to a retail department store about two weeks ago and she has called them every other day and they tell her they will schedule her for tests soon, but still nothing solid.

In the mean time, I have one credit card payment that is already late. I've payed part of it. I have this loan that it's payment was due yesterday, so I hope that even with the late payment they still approve at least the "good" part.

The real hits will come in about a week when I have to pay my main credit card and the minimum payment (lempiras + dollars) is about $650. By then I probably won't have that amount of money so the payment will be past due. I hope by then that this loan refinance will have gone thru (it's the same bank) positively. Either way I will then call or go in and ask them to cancel my credit card and set up a payment schedule for me.

To think that the operations manager of this bank is in the board of directors of my company gives me all kinds of thoughts. Would he help me with a better loan to cover what I owe to his bank? or would he stand by the banks procedures and not help me. Would he keep quiet about my situation or would he eventually talk about it with my boss (who is not only work related but also a friend of him)?

I know that he is a straight man and respect procedures. I know he also helps when he can. I worry that if I ask him for help and explain my situation he might just say that it's out of his hands since my problem is with the credit/loan department and not the operations department. I then would worry that with his inability to help me but knowledge of my problem and how it would affect his bank, that he would talk to my boss about it. I have heard them talk about people running up credit card debt so many times that I would probably pass out in his office if he started asking me questions about that. I have no clue what would they would want to do with/to me.

Pray for the "best" out of this loan. Pray for my wife getting a job SOON. Thank you!

Well, at least this blog is free. ...sounds like this could be my signature from now on.

The good card

The picture above is of a card. It's not a credit card it's actually a prepaid card.

 

They started showing up in a restaurant chain a few months ago. Back then I thought it was wise to put money on a card that you would have to use only on certain restaurants.

 

However one day as I was buying fried chicken the cashier explained something to me. She said that for every 100 lempiras you prepay they load up the card with 120 lempiras. That's like getting 20 lempiras (about 1 dollar) "free". So right there I was going to pay 360 lempiras for chicken, I got the card and payed just 300 (the card itself is free to get). So it's like getting a 20% discount

 

The other good thing is that this card works in several different restaurants. You can look at the picture and see the logos and names of each. I will sum it up for you here: One burger chain, 3 chicken chains, 1 pizza chain, 1 donut chain, 1 ice cream chain, and another restaurant that I can't categorize since i haven't gone to it yet.

 

In any case it's nice since there are options to choose for everyone in the family.

 

Personally, I don't really load it up that much, just 100 or 200 every time (rounding off whatever I have to pay). Eventually some meals are "free" or "on the card" and I don't have to take out any money from my pocket.

 

We eat out on weekends so as you can imagine I usually "suggest" that we eat in any of these restaurant chains so that the meals can be cheaper for me. Plus they all usually have "value meals" that are smaller size. This is also good for our waistline :-)

 

Ok, enough good things, i'm ready to continue telling about my 2 other big debts. Will post about them soon.

 

 

Wealth or Health ?

I was trying to come up with a subject to write about in between the pains of writing about my debts.

 

Well, life tends to be funny in some ways and sad in others.

 

Wednesday my boss went home early because he felt ill. Thursday he didn't show up for work as he had a fever running.

 

Today we got a call from his wife that he was in a local hospital after spending the night in the ER. Apparently his blood pressure medicine had a bad interaction with the medications for his cold/cough/fever.

 

Here I am worrying about my debts and how I'm going to pay for them. I am right in being concerned about it. I wish I hadn't made the mistakes I did. I really feel bad about it, bad to the point of crying about it sometimes. Really! I just can't do it in front of anyone.

 

However I should also be grateful I have relatively good health. My boss has money and lots of it. Right now i'm sure he would pay a lot to be as healthy as I am (and i'm not 100%). Besides even with our medical insurance he will probably pay a lot of money for all of his checkups and tests and labs and hospital room and ER and doctor bills.

 

I called him tonight and he sounded so tired and really depressed. He said they hadn't figured out what was wrong with him, and that he would go somewhere else to get checked again. SO, he'll probably spend more money on repeating tests and doc appointments, etc.

 

So, as everybody says, I rather have my health than being sick and have wealth.

 

Also I prefer my debt with health that sickness and NO wealth!

 

The ideal of course would be great health and wealth.

 

have a good night. Please pray for me, my family, our health and maybe not wealth but at least pray for me to stay healthy and find income to pay me debt. I will pray for you...deal ?

 

Good Night

My Wish List

Almost every commerce site on the web now has a wish list of stuff people can sign up for and other people can give it to them as a gift. It's cool. I like how that works.

After posting another really difficult post (still feeling it in pit of my stomach), I've thought of my financial wish list of things I would like to occur:

0) Have my wife find, get and keep a good job.
1) Profusely thank God for her job.
2) Get a big consolidating loan to cover all my debts (maybe not including the ones to my family).
3) Get a good rate on the loan, maybe 10% tops.
4) Get a a 4 to 5 year term.
5) Profusely thank God and whoever gives me such a loan.
6) Go to each credit card company and pay the balance in full. Take a written note requesting them to cancel that card. (except for the cellphone plan card). no deal sweetener will keep me from canceling the cards. If I can't pay for it in cash I probably shouldn't be buying it anyway.
7) Go to the credit card with the cellphone plan and cancel the balance, request they lower my credit limit to $400.
8) Not tell my family that I've payed everything (since I actually haven't !)
9) Work hard and get the $500 to $600 each month to pay the debt consolidating loan.
10) Tell and help others about the dangers of misusing credit cards and refinancing loans.
11) Help people out but don't allow myself to drown financially in the process.
12) Sleep better every night, stay regularly healthy as I've surprisingly been able to do so up to now.

What do you think of my list? do you feel I'm missing something I should include?

Not Greedy Enough

You know, I was writting the numbers on that last credit card and it was hard!

 

I felt a big weight in my heart and over my head. I got a chill down my spine and my mind was trying to answer myself how did I get into so much debt?!

 

I try to remember where did the money go. It went to several things and over and over again it did.

 

Eventually my boss called me to see some numbers on some stuff we are going to purchase for the company and I could see him going over the little details and trying to squeeze out every penny from the 3 companies quoting us.

 

Then I remember that he recently just payed about $5000 to his credit cards to clean them up for a trip he made. He gave his wife a limit to spend on the trip and he set himself a limit too.

 

He's also got some other businesses were he makes sure that every dollar gets a good return on the investment.

 

It suddenly hit me that I haven't been greedy enough. No, no, I don't mean being evil and stepping on people to get every coin. Rather in the sense of making sure that the money spent is spent well and on things or services for a purpose other than just for spending.

 

He has all this money and doesn't spend as much on some things as I do and he saves a lot. I understand that with so many incomes he has it's probably easier for him. He has houses, cars and other assets paid in full. But he must have gotten there somehow and i'm sure it wasn't spending money getting new cellphones every year or travelling to the US 3 times in a year (like I allowed my wife to do).

 

It's a really sad feeling to remember the vacations we took to the beach and that I charged on my credit cards. From the rental van to the hotel rooms to the meals.

 

I also helped a lot of people for a long time. Mostly on my wife's side. If I hadn't help I wonder what would've happened to them and I also wonder what would've happened to us and our finances. It's definitely a lot more expensive to sustain a house with 10 to 12 people in it that just 5 or 6.

 

I also remember the stupid gadgets I bought every now and then. I almost felt for the same thing just a couple of days ago. I saw this miniature remote control helicopter for $30 and I felt I had to have it.

 

Then my newly discovered greedy little man kicked me in the head. He said "Hey, let it go. You'll probably get frustated trying to fly it. And when are going to find time to fly it? What kind of an example are you going to set for your wife and kids about spending the money? and once you get it will it be something useful? No, it will be a time waster!"

 

Then I took another advice I read sometime ago. Whenever feeling to buy something, write it down and let it be for a week. If after a week you still want it then go ahead and do some research. Most things you will probably not want to buy after a week of just letting them sit in the little notepad. The "urge" to buy them will have passed and that will help you from buying stuff that you will later regret about.

 

Seems I know a lot about that, it's just that I learned about it too late. At the very least I have to consider at least 3 to 4 years of challenging every purchase we make, trying to figure the most efficient (not the cheapest) way of doing things to stretch my income the most and make those debt payments on time.

 

I figure that after a couple of years it will be an automatic reaction in my mind, unlike the active thinking that I have to do now to stop and think before giving my money away.

 

I hope to learn to be a little more greedy to keep my money for things that really do matter!

 

 

Credit Cards good and evil

Most of the money I owe is to credit card companies, which here are banks. I've had credit cards since I was 18 (an additional one from my parents). As I grew older I got my own card. First it was a regular card, then silver, then gold and now it's a platinum. I got into credit cards with the old saying that I would use it for emergencies only. Well, the term got a broader meaning than expected. Soon it was regular purchases that became "emergencies".

 

Along the years i've also accepted other cards for reasons that seemed logical at the time. One for grocery shopping that would give me discounts and points. Another one set to autopay my utility bills and get points for that too. In the end those were more excuses that I made myself than actual reasons to have them. The last one I got really did help me with my finances as it registered me for a group cellphone plan that cut my cellphone bills (mine, wife and oldest daughter) almost in half. Plus now we have free calling between us and most of my family members, since most of them have the same card.

 

In total I think I owe anywhere between $20,000 to $30,000 to credit card companies. Some i've already managed to cancel the cards and put the balance on payment plans. Still it's a lot of money to pay and I will be stuck paying it for at least 36 months on one and 48 months on the other one.

 

One thing you have to know by now is that in my country, Honduras, credit cards interest rates are HIGH. it's common for them to charge anywhere from 4% to 6% monthly! That's 48% to 72% yearly! so even if you pay the minimum balance, if you keep using your credit cards by the end of the year you will owe more and more and more and it will mostly be interests.

 

Before recent regulation, Credit card companies would calculate interest on the bulk of your balance, which already included interests from last month...talk about a good scam. It's not supposed to be that way and the calculations are supposed to be simpler now but I haven't checked them, I just want to get out of it!!

 

It would be easy for me to blame the credit cards for my current situation but in all honesty I was the one that signed the documents. I was the one that used the cards (well my wife too..in a big part but that will be another post). So I can't really say that I was fooled. I think that I just slid so slowly into debt that when I figured out that I couldn't pay my credit cards and keep a low or no balance over to next month it was too late and I was already in a vicious cycle.

 

Most of this year i've had credit card collectors call me every month from every one of my cards, and it's such a bad feeling to get those calls. I will tell you later how i got some of them to stop.

 

I'm sending a picture of my credit cards and I hope it will post correctly. You'll notice some of them i carved out a V from the magnetic stripe. This is a last-ditch attempt of me to stop using them even if I had to so I wouldn't have a choice.

 

What do you think about credit cards? is it the cards that are evil or is it the credit card holder?