Debt Sucks

Homeward Bound

Jake — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 04:58:57 +0000

After an exciting (yeah right) week of adventure (bullshit) romping around New England, it’s time to kiss it all goodbye. In about 10 hours, I’ll be rolling out of wherever the hell I am in Connecticut for the 276.5 mile ride home. After my massive jaunt up to Vermont today, I’m sore as absolute hell as it is, so if anyone wants to come give me a ride, that’d be cool.

I’ve clocked 666 miles on the GPS so far between riding and hiking, so I should end up with just under a grand when it’s all said and done.

I just can’t wait to get home and lay down in bed. For many hours. Because I’m really gonna be hurting then.

P.S. The whole thing is a sham. I’ve really been sitting here in front of my computer playing Warcraft all week.

I wish.

Debt Paid Off – Investor

Jake — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 17:37:41 +0000

In a rather anti-climactic moment, I handed a check over to Mr Investor and finally cleared that debt from my name. Blogging from my phone, so can’t really update sidebars or numbers or anything, but I’ll keep you guys updated throughout the next few days on here and Twitter of my travels, just as long as I can find outlets to plug my phone in to.

WOO WOO!

Vacation With No Plans

Jake — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 09:48:51 +0000

Well here’s a bit of a quandry. Early Saturday morning I’ll be making my ride up to Sugar Loaf, NY, where I’ll be spending the day, night, and next morning with a bunch of good old friends that I haven’t seen in a year. It’ll be a blast, fine and swell. That’s long been established. Highlight of the day will be me paying off an old debt. Fine and swell.

Since I wanted to take a vacation before my company’s buying show (since vacations in the month or two afterwards are basically prohibited), and since I haven’t taken a damn vacation since I started working there again, and since I have 8 days of vacation saved up, and since I already took Sunday off to recover from the long weekend of riding (6 hours each way) as I’ve done before, I figured now would be the best time to take that vacation. Sunday off would’ve killed any overtime I would possibly have worked next week anyway.

But here’s the problem: What the hell should I do during my vacation!? This is the very question that’s been keeping me from taking one for so long in the first place, because I really don’t want to burn all those vacation days only to sit on my ass at home for a week. Obviously, it needs to be a frugal vacation, but preferably without taking it to the point of a staycation.

The only thing I can think of so far is just riding the scooter out to places unknown, doing some long distance day rides. I thought about getting a tent so I wouldn’t have to ride all the way back home every day, but tents cost money, and I don’t know where I’d pitch said tent anyway other than on the side of the road (like so many motorcycle adventurers do), or possibly hanging close to the Appalachian Trail network and using those campsites. This could in addition be combined with geocaching in new areas as well, so I could get a lot of hiking in too.

Hopefully I can find a tent to borrow from someone. If not, I may have to splurge on a cheap one at Wal*Mart. Think in this heat we’ve been having I can skip the sleeping bag. All in all, though, I think this is my best bet at actually enjoying my vacation, rather than sitting here playing WoW for a week. Friday is going to be a busy, busy day, as I haven’t even done any preparations for Sugar Loaf, nonetheless any lofty weeklong activities.

So, anyone within riding distance of South Central PA that can loan me a tent? ;-D

How to go Bankrupt – Anatomy of a Local Case

Jake — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 08:11:46 +0000

A week ago, the Lebanon Daily News did an article about the bankruptcy filing of a local doctor. Some people immediately cried foul as invasive, but others quickly pointed out that Dr. Jeffrey Backenstoes and his wife obtained loans from the city for a few downtown investment properties, which not only makes it newsworthy, but also proves once again that you just can’t make it in downtown Lebanon (the guy who bought and completely refurbished the farmer’s market also went bankrupt a year or two ago, and there are a few other highly visible ventures that appear to be headed toward the same fate).

Not satisfied with just the information the paper provides, I finally got myself a PACER account to see the filings for myself to see how bad it really is, and boy was I in for a trip. I decided to make a budget for the Backenstoes. FMF’s The Wealth of Farmers also contributed inspiration for this little project, in showing that high-income doctors have a bad habit of simply blowing it on keeping up with the Joneses – or perhaps in this case, keeping up with Doctor Jones.

For the sake of making things a world easier for me, I created a YNAB file from the information in the bankruptcy filing. And then I abandoned that idea, because it wasn’t working as well as I would have liked.

The bankruptcy filing lists assets of $936,000 and liabilities of $2.28 million. I couldn’t imagine being two million dollars in debt. It is simply mind-boggling. Dr. Blackenstoes lists a monthly take home pay of $10,455 from his practice. That’s $125,000 a year. Not gross income, but take home pay. I want his job for a year! If they were somehow magically able to negotiate all of their debts to 0% interest (balance transfer, anyone?) it would still take over 18 years to pay off all their debt. I would imagine with the current interest rates (undisclosed) it would probably be two or three times that long. In other words – long after they’re retired, or even dead for that matter.

Once upon a time, the doctor and his family lived in a nice little home on Long Lane, that they sold netting under $50,000. Long Lane isn’t a bad place to live. Nice and quiet, farmland in front of you as far as the eye can see. Now, they live in a cookie-cutter development where they bought their current home for almost $700,000. Four ATVs (who the hell needs four ATVs? A farmer, maybe), a Lincoln MKS, a Jaguar, a Harley, and a mini electric car. Must have been nice.

Throw on top of that mortgages for almost a half million on an investment property downtown, and a little over a million owed to a local contractor for improvements to that property, and your trouble has already ballooned out of control. $300,000 mortgage on the doctor’s office. $140,000 in federal student loans. Wait, WHAT!? Before you dug this gigantic hole you couldn’t be bothered to pay off your student loans first? Focusing on that first before the new house, investments, improvements and whatnot, this could have been paid off in two or three years with a super debt snowball of doom.

But that’s not all. The guy brings home $10,000 a MONTH from his practice, and they want to pay only $584/mo on all these debts for 60 months. It’s one thing to say “wow, this guy’s made some pretty big mistakes in his financial life, he may even be a complete dipshit, but hey, everyone deserves a second chance, right?” But when you compare those numbers, you can’t help to think he’s trying to game the system. Even when you take living expenses in to account to pay for utilities and whatnot in Backenstoes Manor, if they’d start living the frugal life and actually try to turn things around, stop living the rich life (when they clearly aren’t quite), and take a little responsibility, I’d say $7,000/mo sounds about right. That works out to paying creditors 18% of what they’re owed (assuming they’re all unsecured debts, which they aren’t, and there’s a lot of overlap – for example, the $1 million plus debt to the contractor is secured by the home, as well as the mortgages on it), rather than 1.5%.

What started as a matter of curiosity has now pissed me off… I and many other personal finance bloggers (and millions more who aren’t bloggers) are fighting tooth and nail to get out of debt by taking responsibility, living frugally, and doing what needs to be done, while this jackass is living the high life, making tons of money, and he only wants to pay HALF of what I pay every month, while earning 10 times more?

For the uber curious, I’ve uploaded the filings here.

Decision Made, Payoff Pending

Jake — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 09:35:29 +0000

I’ve been doing some minor planning here and there for my yearly trek up to Orange County, NY for a Where’s George? gathering. Tonight that consisted mostly of checking to see how many people were going to be there this year, and who (and who not). It just so happens my friend, the investor, is planning on attending. Back when I was looking for money for that failure of a business venture, it consisted mostly of begging people in the WG IRC channel. It was annoying (for me and everyone else), but it worked.

Anyway, since I had yet to make a decision on what debt to throw all this extra cash at, paying him back seems the definite way to go. It would be pretty akward to meet him in person and hang out for a day with us both knowing that I still owe him such a large amount of money. That just goes back to the usual advice of never lending money to (or borrowing from) friends and family. I just sent him a message a while ago telling him it’s good to go, and asking if he wants a check in the mail or in person, or a sack of 1,150 one dollar bills in person (which would totally be a viable option for such an event, trust me). No turning back.

Good thing I didn’t wake up early enough today to get to the credit union, because that was totally my plan all along… And now my temptation is to destroy the month-ahead buffer on all my other bills to take care of that. It’s like a monster. Can’t control it. Brrrrraaaaiiiiiinssssssss……………

Net Worth Update: July 2010

Jake — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 09:25:59 +0000

From June 1 to July 2, my net worth increased an average of $36.96 per day, or $1,145.62 overall, to -$49,226.60. This is a 2.33% increase, and results in a projected zero net worth on 9/9/2014.

Thanks, extra paycheck, hope to see you again in December! That’s the same zero date as back in May, which also had the same daily change rate. Interesting. So I’m playing catch-up, I just need to keep playing. Visual pleasure below… with a spiffy new graph!

A Debt Payoff Conundrum

Jake — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 20:56:06 +0000

Happy July 2nd! July is a three paycheck month for me, and since yesterday was payday (and I do my budgeting today), I decided to count that paycheck as last month’s income. Not only does doing so help to pay things off a little quicker, but it should keep me from blowing all that extra money. However, it comes with a catch. A big catch.

After all my bills and spending money and whatnot, I have $1,172 left to budget for July. I owe the landlord $600. I owe the investor $1150. You see where I’m going with this. The landlord sued me a year ago, so there’s a judgement. That isn’t going away until I pay, and I’ve only owed that money for a year now. The investor, on the other hand, hasn’t sued me yet, and probably never will, but he’s a friend, and I’ve owed him this money for 4 or 5 years now. I want to get that taken care of pronto, as I’ve already missed a couple promised payoff dates. I could come pretty close to paying off the credit union or AES with this money, too, whose payments could then be snowballed (especially the credit union, with it’s high interest rate and high payments).

Writing this now, I realize it should be pretty clear what I ought to do, but I defer to you, dear readers, to help me make sure I’m doing what I ought to be doing.

What My Parents Taught Me About Money

Jake — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 09:43:53 +0000

Anonymous at High Class, Low Income asks her readers if their parents taught them about money. To that, I say “bwahaha….”

As far as I can remember, we weren’t exactly well to do, if you will. We had a hell of a nice house in a hell of a nice neighborhood, but for most of my younger years my mom worked two full time jobs. When I was really young, she drove a total beater of an old ugly as sin Chevy Cavalier, which is probably the most frugal thing I ever saw happen around those parts. I was too young to know it at the time, but I’m pretty sure we were on food stamps, too, for a bit there. Big house, nice quiet neighborhood, food stamps. Things are adding up quickly, I tell ya.

Probably the first time I thought “what the hell are they doing?” was when I noticed a habit of buying one new vehicle, and finally paying it off only to turn around and buy another. I never even knew how much money my parents made until it came time to apply for financial aid for college. My dad always seemed secretive of how much money he and my mom made, much less anything else involving money in the house. There was always a serious “she made the money, he spent it” thing going on.

Of the two things my parents taught me about money (that I remember), one was “if you want a car, get a job.” They didn’t actually have to tell me this, as I was the youngest of four, so I already knew the routine pretty well. I still only got my first truck and my driver’s license when I was 18, because hey, I was pretty awesome at managing my money at the time. Or not. I didn’t even save up for the truck, I got a loan from a business associate (yes, I was quite the entrepreneur).

The second, and much more important thing I learned about money from my parents was to not hide your finances from the people you have no reason to hide it from. My dad always had a “stash” hidden somewhere, which was quite simply an envelope stuffed with cash. At the very least, it was coupon savings from grocery shopping, but if there was more to it than that, who knows. I can’t imagine how my mom put up with such a thing.

And would the sky really have fallen just by telling your kids how much money you make? Jeez.

Other than all that, I don’t think my parents taught me much about money at all. My dad was a douche about it and my mom wasn’t around for it. What time she was around was spent doing more motherly things like nagging about cleaning and whatnot

Hum… I suppose the point of reflecting on how your parents raised you is so you can do a better job with your kids than they did with you, right?

Net Worth Update: June 2010

Jake — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 07:31:17 +0000

From May 1 to June 1, my net worth increased an average of $27.41 per day, or $849.59 overall, to -$50,372.22. This is a 1.69% increase, and results in a projected zero net worth on 10/2/2014.

Unfortunately, despite reducing my discretionary spending budget from $325 to $250, I’m not going to be able to increase my debt spending for the month of June. Quite the opposite, I’m sad to say. If I hadn’t overspent like a crazy bastard in May… ah, well, we can only plan on the future now. The only other thing I was really able to cut out of the budget was $7/mo for my premium membership at Where’s George? I’m still $156.85 away from paying off the landlord.

A New Tool In The Arsenal

Jake — Sun, 23 May 2010 06:14:37 +0000

Three days ago, the YNAB app for the iPhone went available. To be completely honest, I only noticed it tonight, but when I did, there was zero hesitation to buy it. Even if I don’t really have $9.99 available to spend on an iPhone app, much less anything else. Some might think “ZOMG impulse spending, you’re going to financial hell now!” However, it’s quite simple – sometimes you gotta spend money to make (or rather, save) money.

The reason I noticed the app tonight was because I did my usual once-in-a-while balancing of my accounts in YNAB tonight, as well as trying to beat the hell out of next month’s budget to make it work like my previous post, until of course I realized that I didn’t make any more money this month than last. Right now I’m pretty happy to have my debt repayment budget almost the same as last month’s (a dollar short!).

Anyway, what’s all this have to do with the YNAB iPhone app? Well, every time I balance things out, there’s a huge balance adjustment in the cash category. I don’t keep my receipts anymore, they just fill up my wallet. Hell, I used to write on my hand every time I fed money in to the vending machine at work, but that didn’t last very long either (partly because I don’t feed it money any more). With the app, however, I can quickly and easily throw cash expenses in to my budget when they’re made, rather than saving receipts, getting annoyed at them, throwing them away, and forgetting about it. I’ll need to get myself in to the habit of entering transactions at the cash register, but if all works out well, I think the app will be an even bigger improvement on my budgeting situation than YNAB itself when I bought that.

Should be a ten bucks well spent, I think…