I’m a very busy boy at the moment, the pre christmas socialising commenced last week, I hardly seem to be home, two christmas functions last weekend, I’m off on my first of two weekends interstate in a couple of hours, I have the other weekends booked solid with functions and events.
My credit cards took a hammering last month, and with my hectic schedule making a drain on the finances it looks like I’ll be making minimum payments only until the new year. But I’ll deal with it all then, Having too much fun to worry about something so trivial like credit card debt. And for those that are saying that I need to tighten my belt, Life’s too short.
To illustrate the point, a guy I used to work with was killed in a motorcycle accident last week. I’m not saying don’t plan for the future, it’s just you never know which day is your last.
Joe left a comment on my blog, he’s doing it a lot tougher than me. Check out his blog, http://crcardblues.blogspot.com/. One of his recent posts talks about his frustration of dealing with a not for profit debt counselor.
This may surprise some people but my previous job used to involve debt collection. I’m not sure what the situation is like in the states but I’ve seen so called debt counsellors sending through payment proposals and offers on behalf of their clients. The fee’s they charge and the methods they use are disgusting.
One company demanded that all income (from employment and social security allowances) be put into a trust account and they then negotiated with the creditors for lower or reduced minimum payments. One guy was earning $40k a year, handing over all his cash, then getting a weekly allowance to live on from the debt counsellors. For this service they were charging him 10% of his income. I looked through the figures and they had developed a three year plan for the client to pay out his total debt of around $6,000. So for this service they were going to get paid $12,000 where as the client could have, worked out a simple budget and bowled it over in less than 12 months and saved himself $12,000.
It’s all evil I say.
Anyway posts here will be sporadic until the new year, and we’ll see what that brings for the credit card victim.
November 25th, 2005 at 12:32 pm
Have you updated your balances in the upper left? (Do those balances reflect this post or is the additional $1636 from an earlier post?)
Also, it’s definitely true that you have to watch out for what credit counselors are doing for you. They may be earning their money, or they may not.
Looking forward to seeing some progress toward reducing that number!
November 30th, 2005 at 9:46 pm
Those balances havent been updated for 3 or 4 months, as an estimate I’d say my current credit card debt level is $3-4k higher than that at the moment. I’ll tackle it in the new year, too busy having fun right now!
It’s probably not the right attitude, but it’s the only one I’ve got