A Time to Act

Today I happened upon this CNN article, which caught my eye obviously because of its title, “Digging out from $80,000 debt.” I have a lot of debt, and I’ve lost sleep over this. In fact, I was sick home all week last week, and on two days, I had to stay home without any PDO left, which means I would not get paid for those two days. Sadly, losing two-days’ worth of pay creates a problem for me. Heck, losing even one day’s pay creates a problem. So I had to warn a friend that I would need to borrow money in a few weeks. I admit I’m the one who got myself in this situation by buying the house that I shouldn’t have bought, but I just want to make something clear. I don’t spend money on things I really don’t need – clothes, shoes, cosmetics, manicures/pedicures, beauty shops, movies, etc. Most of my debt consists of payments to the vet for the last 2 years with more than a fair share of health troubles for my furry ones. But I digress.

So I started reading the article, remembering the phone number I memorized this morning from a radio commercial about debt counseling service or something or other, which talked about some government debt relief program for people with debt over $10,000. I did google this program in hopes to find something about it from a government source, but I quickly lost patience seeing 12 billion search results are the websites for debt counseling or debt consolidation services. Anyway, I digress. Again. Sorry.

As I was saying… I started reading the article, and yeah I finished reading it. That’s it. The end.

You know I was lying, right? That’s not it and wasn’t the end. Anyways, it was nothing special. The usual story – somebody got herself into this situation, and after transferring card balances from one credit card to another with really low introductory interest rate, she finally contacted a debt counseling service, and after a year, her debt is now $40,000. Half way there. As I said, nothing special. But I did get something out of it. NFCC – National Foundation for Credit Counseling, recommended by CNN personal finance editor. It’s a nonprofit organization with credit counseling service agencies as its members, who meet certain standards and provide no or very low fee services. I surfed the site for a long time, and I think I’m going to try contacting a counselor and see what she/he has to say. The first counseling session seems to be free.

Wish me luck. I tend to get very nervous about things like this and forget the questions that need to be asked or just get tongue-tied, even though I have nothing to lose. It’s the times like this that I want a husband who could and would take care of this kind of stuff. And I would need some good sleep vibes too from now on since I was also reminded of the fact that my mortgage rate is going to adjust in just about four months… Oh Fuck! Crap! Shit! Moose dick! *bangs head on the wall*