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Sounds like you aren't serious about saving money based on what you're telling us. I went a year without cable, picking up 5 channels with rabbit ears, and I still found stuff to watch. People are watching TV on the internet more and more, assuming you also have internet. If your wife doesn't understand the need to cancel her phone and cable, then you need to sit her down and total up the bills and let her know that is a MUST unless she can get a part time job. The international calling while you are barely scraping by is just stupid, try emailing them. You can always send pictures to them that way.
skype for international calling, or IM clients. google chat has a "video chat" option. i mean, so much you can get in order.
a few months ago we joined a program with TCA (Take charge america) it's one of those cccs type places that help you with paying off your debts. Personally I would have preferred to do it on my own the Dave Ramsey way, but my wife wouldn't agree to it, and this was the next best thing. Actually she was entertaining the thought of bankruptcy but I told her we need to at least try this before we consider bankruptcy.
Well, we've been doing it for 3 months and the problem is that giving them the payment is a huge chunk of money. Basically we have 2 big payments: mortgage and TCA. After those two come out, there literally is almost nothing left for bills, food and transportation. We're down to one car and I commute 17 miles to work, and sharing a car is a huge pain (she takes the kids to school and also needs the car for part time work) Public transportation here in Phoenix is a joke (takes almost 2 hrs for my commute to work, it's that INSANE). I do take the bus sometimes, but it is definitelly not a long term solution.
Prices have gone up on considerably for just about everything, and anybody who says there's no inflation is full of hot air.
I did get a modest 3% raise, but it really makes almost no difference at all. The needs are starting to pile up, our AC/Heat pumps need maintenance, house needs work, car needs work..etc
The worst part is that I'm the only one in the family that has health insurance. My wife and kids have no coverage (My work pays for mine, but it would cost over $800/month to add a plan that includes the rest of my family (Yup, it's like $400+ per paycheck) I make around 64K. Wife makes very little, she mainly helps her brother's home based business) Mortgage is $1250 so it's not insane. Debts add up to around 1200/month or so if I include the school loan. The rest is bills, and honestly there's not much left after debts are paid.
We have 3 kids ages 5-10 so no, she can't really work fulltime yet.
I don't really know what we can do, but I'm getting tired of this TCA ****. They got some of the banks to lower the interest rates, but some came back that they want a bigger payment, so slowly our monthly payment ballooned up to where, I'm not so sure we're really saving a whole lot.
My health is really starting to go down the tubes, but I have to use my health insurance sparingly because I can't even pay the damned copays.
what a stupid life.
Lets look : You have NO savings. You are paying all your creditors and your mortgage but have NO food , NO emergency fund , No money for gas, No money for anything that will come up , No money for entertainment ( not that you need alot there ).
Let's reprioritize here :
In terms of importance :
1. Food
2. Utilities
3. Gas / house and car
4. Savings
5. Emergency Fund
6. Mortgage ( are you severely underwater , if so, this is LAST )
7. Car Payment ( if one ) Replace .6 with .7
8. Credit Cards
Meaning your self survival is FIRST in your case. You need to visit a BK attorney for a free consultation.
How much debt do you have ?
Everyone ( but you ) is making money here , that company and all your cards are getting paid but your kids are starving . ( whats wrong with this picture ? )
Get your free consultation.
You are basically agreeing with your credit card companies to starve yourself out of existance..
Forget your credit cards , for now.
They are last place.
I realize you said you make 64 K. You might have to do a chapter 13. I do not know much about 13.
But the REAL problem here is HOW you go there , how you do get BACK here , how you clean this up ( and BK might clean it up but won't help if you or your wife spends , but don't worry they will close all your CC's so you wont charge those up again )
Be honest : Does your wife spend too much money ? Have you seen the credit card statements in the last 180 days ? If she hides them , request a copy of everything. Is anything OFF here ? Any secrets from her ?
I have to disagree with no haircuts. Women can`t cut their own hair.
I wouldn't think of cutting my own hair, but it's really not that hard to come up with a flattering style that only requires a $15 trim from Supercuts every 4 months or so.
I have to disagree with no haircuts. Women can`t cut their own hair. As far as his wife working, it may not make that much of a difference because she will have to pay someone to watch her kids. It might not be worth it. I don`t see how he is going to get solar panels if he can`t afford anything now..
Greendesert, have you thought of getting a second job for awhile? A lot of people are having to do this right now.
My husband cuts my hair. I have long straight very thick hair. When it gets too long he just cuts it back to right below my shoulders. He was nervous about it at first, (I basically handed him the scissors one day and told him that I was sick of paying a stranger $20 to chop a few inches of my hair off) but he's got the hang of it now. I've also cut my own hair a few times, but I think my husband does a better job than I do. I used to color my hair and he helped me color it, too. I cut his hair and our kids hair, too. It's super easy with a set of good clippers.
Solar panels - show me where I can buy them cheap enough that they would pay for themselves within a year and I'll buy them and install them myself (yeah I have an engineering degree and plenty of experience)... oh wait, I'd probably have to get a loan for that. There are companies here that give you the solar panels and you pay them instead of your electric company, but it takes many years for them to pay for themselves.
If you could install them yourself that would save you a bunch of money. I still think this is worth checking into if you're wanting to save money. The rebates and tax credits alone would be worth it shortterm, while long-term you could end up earning money depending on how many solar panels you install. You could start small - just enough for hot water.
Quote:
Originally Posted by greendesert
No I can't get a second job. I have meniere's disease and holding down this one job is stressful enough (oh yeah forgot to mention I'm almost deaf... not exactly easy to find high paying jobs), in fact lately i've been dealing with some heart symptoms. I just don't think I could do it.
Yoga- although I'm not crazy about the "weirdness" of it, from an exercise standpoint I think it might be very good for me.
I think you getting a second job is a bad idea. You're under enough stress as it is. And considering your medical problems, you need to destress, not add to the stress you're already feeling. Where will your family be if you end up in the hospital? You need to take care of yourself, or you're not going to be able to take care of your family. A second job will only add to the stress and it probably wouldn't bring in enough extra money to make it worthwhile. I watched my dad fall into this trap. He worked three jobs all of his adult life, was still always broke, and died at age 48. Of course he was out of shape, never exercised, and smoked, too, so there were other factors. But holding down more than one job on top of being a parent is a lot to put on someone's plate. Your health is more important than earning extra money right now. I'm also hearing impaired as well, so I understand, too, how hard it is to find a suitable job with that difficulty.
My husband thinks yoga is "weird", too, but he does it with me once in awhile. To get the full benefit you really need to practice it at least every other day, if not every day. There's a series of yoga DVD's you can get from the library (our library had it) that has a guy taking you through the stretches. My husband felt more comfortable following that guy than he did following the women instructors. Men's Health - Yoga Center
Somehow it's your wife, as the other adult in the situation, who needs to figure out how to earn extra income to help fix the situation. There has to be something she can do. We have a neighbor who's husband just up and left her. She's now a single mom with twin infants. She started a petsitting business. She's a pet nanny. She advertises at vet clinics and pet stores. She brings her babies with her while she takes care of the animal clients. I really believe that where there is a will, there is a way. If your wife wants to earn money, and she's serious about it, and she knows she has your support, she'll figure out a way to do it.
Last edited by haggardhouseelf; 12-09-2010 at 05:27 PM..
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One way is to cut the phone to local only.
Have the relatives call you..no more long distance bills.
I actually have some experience with this as my husbands mother and that part of the family are from another country. When she (husbands mother) moved to the states, it was a major ego boost for her and the family. They seemed to take a lot of pride in the fact that one of their own made it to America. Also, though, it was as if they assumed that because she was an American (by way of marriage), she all of a sudden was rolling in dough. This wasn't true, of course, but there was a strange sort of pressure on her and my husbands father to live up to that expectation. Even though they would express to the family that things in America were expensive, and that living wasn't cheap, etc... the family still assumed they had more money than they actually did. The pressure to send money and gifts "back home" overseas was very high, and stressful for my husbands parents. There was also always talk of them going back home to visit - when in reality there wasn't enough money for plane tickets to even get back home for a visit. Plane tickets are very costly!
I know I might not be explaining it very well, and it might be something you have to experience to understand, but it might just be that OP's wife wants her family overseas to be reassured that she's doing fine and living that American Dream - even if she and her husband are going bankrupt trying to live it. Or it might be that OP's wife literally has no concept of the cost of living in America, that she thinks she is living the "American Dream" (which is a cruel sham IMO), and so she's pretty clueless about things (not her fault, it just comes with the territory. If I relocated to another country I'd be clueless, too, having been an American living in America all my life.)
Since your wife cannot work outside the house for 1 hr/day because of the 5 year old, why doesn't she get a job at a day care center? Most day care centers will let employees children go there too and really only the 5 year old would need to, the other two can get off the bus there after school. Another idea would be to start her own day care center in your house...but there is insurance (liability risk) involved and possibly inspections that go with that, so it may not be as profitable as her getting a job at a day care center.
And seriously, kill the cable and get rabbit ears. There's enough on TV and internet and you can always rent DVDs/videos at the library. Between the commercials and shows on HGTV, cable TV only makes you want to spend money. Children shouldn't watch too much anyway (JMHO), and there's always board games, art/crafts and dancing to music (radio anyone?).
I think cell phones are a necessity these days, especially if you are hearing impaired and need the texting option, but this is the area where you have to set limits. I like the Skype advice...sounds perfect for your international calling situation as you can see who you are talking to not just hear their voice. And does your 10 year old really need a cell phone? Maybe a prepaid plan with very minimal minutes would be better...and instruct her to use it for emergencies only.
Why can't your wife work evenings or nights or early mornings? Target has a position that starts at 4am filling the shelves before it opens, as do many stores. There are 24 hour grocery stores that need overnight staff. Restaurants that hire evening wait staff. Just because she can't work during the day doesn't mean she can't get a job.
Cancel the home phone and get skype. We also have family overseas who we speak to often and skype works perfectly, with the bonus of getting to see each other too.
If all else fails you might want to see what you have in your house that you can sell for some short term cash flow. People still do buy all kinds of stuff on eBay. I just sold my son's stroller and car seat that he had outgrown and got nearly all my money back. It was a bit of work but it more than paid off.
Those of you who have posted thoughtful responses in an attempt to provide sincere advice to the OP are completely wasting your time. He's not interesting in advice; he's just ranting about his circumstance. In fact, he did the same thing about nine months ago in March when he posted almost the exact same rant (only that time he titled his thread "Married to Self-Entitlement Queen."
Here's that post:
Quote:
Originally Posted by greendesert
Ok there's a lot to our story but current situation is just making me feel very desperate.
Married with three young kids, wife stays at home most of the time, works once in a while, sometimes a few days a month, sometimes none.
We're in debt up to our eyeballs, but wife has always wanted to take the easy way out. She constantly looks for some easy trick, bankruptcy or some loophole to just get out of it. I feel we should make a serious effort to pay our ccs and get out, but we're living paycheck to paycheck, wife and kids have no health insurance, my health is going down the drain, I'm almost totally deaf (menieres disease) and work for a charity. I make a little over 60K. We have something like 13 credit cards that add up to somewhere around 40K and about 25K student loan. Plus mortgage of course, but we would be paying rent anyway. I don't know how to talk sense into her. We get calls from these debt settlement companies and it's almost like she would rather believe a crook that tells her what she wants to hear (it'll be easy, you'll be out of debt without problems). I don't know how to get through to her that we're in really deep crap here and this is an emergency. I've tried to get her to get a regular job maybe swing shift so we could switch watching the kids but she keeps saying the kids are important to her..blah blah. Well they are to me too, and I want her to be able to stay home, but this is something we need to take care of ASAP.
I've recently started having serious health symptoms, this stress is killing me.
No I won't divorce her, but I wish someone slapped some sense into her. I can't hold 2 jobs, my current job is already way too stressful.
She keeps saying that maybe there is some option we haven't considered.
What options do we have?
I feel that the main problem is her unwillingness to get a job. Yes it would be tough for her to get a job with almost no experience nowadays, (She has a 4 yr degree in psychology, but stayed at home since day 1) She has experience in caregiving which is what she does but that wouldn't work on a PT basis, everybody asks fulltime 12hr shifts and we can't do that. paying someone to take care of the kids would cancel out what she makes.
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I have long straight very thick hair. When it gets too long he just cuts it back to right below my shoulders. He was nervous about it at first, (I basically handed him the scissors one day and told him that I was sick of paying a stranger $20 to chop a few inches of my hair off) but he's got the hang of it now. I've also cut my own hair a few times, but I think my husband does a better job than I do. I used to color my hair and he helped me color it, too. I cut his hair and our kids hair, too. It's super easy with a set of good clippers.
