At what point is a creditor calling considered harrassment?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
61

I started by googling the Fairfax County website. A few steps later, I had the human services directory, and after clicking on “Human Services Resource Guide”, I did a search which got me this list of free credit counseling services. About half the list is branches of the Consumer Credit Counseling Service, which other people have mentioned above, so you might want to start with some of the others. Might want to start with this one, then work from there.

I’m going to second the motion on refinancing, too.

One last idea, in the way of part-time jobs: if you can stand getting up at 3am, might want to read what bodypoet has had to say about her paper route in various threads here. It seems to work well with the SAHM lifestyle, for her at least.

62

Opal, its a major ordeal to get them out? How important is this debt problem to you?

Do yourself a favor, take time and do it. Even if 3/4 of them are pissed on by the Cat From Hell[sup]TM[/sup] do you think that the other 1/4 would help get at least your credit card debt in line? Or are they entombed in concrete or something?

63

USD250/month for your hosting service?! I’m hosting sunspace.org on a U Pro account at superb.net and it isn’t costing me even USD50/month! And I’ve got mysql, virtual domain name pointers,and can resell. Are you supporting high bandwidth or a custom e-commerce app?

64

Oh. Never mind. I see you’re doing a colocation…
slinks off

65

We have ~150 UHaul boxes of stuff, in a chaotic jumble, half of them falling apart. Of those, maybe 8 have anything worth selling in them. Most of the things we own are broken and worthless. In addition, we don’t have room to unpack them all and go through them, so it would be a huge ordeal to try to go through them. We have maybe 3’ x 8’ of space down there that isn’t covered by boxes.

We have been trying to go through these boxes for a year. Most of what we find is old papers, peed on video tapes, old stained & ripped clothes, manuals for things we no longer own, 9,000 feet of various cables that go to god-knows-what, Dominic’s toys from when he was littler, half-eaten by the dog… We have already thrown away a lot of stuff. I’m not sure we’ve found anything yet that could be sold. We have a few nifty things like an antique grammophone, several old books, etc… but those are things that I got from my grandfather before he passed away that frankly ARE more valuable to me than paying off $3000 worth of debts.

I’m not saying that I am not doing these things, I’m just saying that they aren’t an instant solution and that it is going to take time. It’s not like I can spend an afternoon in the basement and come up with a couple of boxes of stuff to sell.

66

Yup, colo.

(and yes, it is high bandwidth. I host a couple of popular and high-traffic webcam sites)

67

Plus I see that you get 500mb of space. Our server has two 80gig hard drives (redundant) and is nearly full. Eeeek!

68

So you’re telling me you’re an electronic packrat as well as an old-fashioned one?

Hell, throw it all out. That’s why I try to do. But Lady Chance is like you…she can’t get rid of anything.

69

Opal, a recent Reader’s Digest had a blurb about an organization that provides small one-time interest-free loans. I doubt they’ll help you pay off your card but they may be willing to take care of that $60 in late fees

70

Are your webcam sites money makers or hobbies? If they’re money makers, after you consider all that you have to pay out each month to keep them running, then by all means keep them. However if they are a financial drain, then you need to seriously consider giving them up-- at least until you get back on your feet.

I definitely second the motion for a part-time job. A lot of places are hiring for the holidays and you should be able to find something flexible enough that will allow you to do your primary job during the day and then go to your night job when Undead comes home from work.

Opal, it all sounds like you are feeling overwhelmed by everything right now. Cat poop and piss everywhere? Oh my. Don’t live like that. God knows I’m an animal lover, but I have my limits and the day my dog starts pissing all through my house is the day he goes. If you don’t think your house is sanitary enough for someone else to visit then how can it be sanitary enough for your son? I really think you need to get some plastic gloves on, some big trash bags and start cleaning. No, you can’t go through 150 boxes in a day. But you can do ONE box a day. I really think it will make you feel so much more in control, and that’s something you probably need right now…plus it’s free!!

Good luck, Opal.

71

For your consideration:

I’m not sure what the rules are in VA, but in Texas one is permitted to sell one’s blood plasma. I’ve seen ads indicating that one may earn up to $200 per month doing this. Between you and the hubby…well, you do the math.

Hey, free cookies and juice!

72

It probably is unjustified. We refinanced our house twice within the last year (the second time closing about two weeks ago). The appraisers are NOT looking for messy beds and boxes in the attic; they’re looking for square footage and type of construction. If it makes you feel better, the first appraiser spent about five minutes in our house and about ten outside (measuring, mostly). The second spent no time at all in our house, only measured the outside.

Anyway, I would strongly, strongly urge you to at least look into refinancing. If your original loan is from a few years back, and especially if you have a better credit report currently than you did back then (you imply that this might be the case) you might be able to save a lot of money. We, for instance, saved about 15% on principal + interest, plus got our PMI (another 10-15%) dropped. That’s substantial. Plus, with the increase in property values, you can probably get cash out to take care of short-term problems.

As someone mentioned above, try calling your current bank to see if you can get an easy refinancing, which may not even require a re-appraisal. As a second option, I would recommend my mortgage lender, ABN/AMRO, where we got a no-money-up-front refinancing which took about 45 minutes total of my time from start to finish. Anyway, if you’re interested, you can email me for more details (since I went through this recently), but I don’t want to bore you here in this thread.

73

Another vote for calling your current mortgage-holder and asking about refincing your existing mortgage. We had refinanced last year with Washington Mutual, consolidating two separate mortgages into a single fifteen-year mortgage at 6.875%. A few months ago I called them to ask about getting a lower interest rate, and within a few weeks I had a new mortgage at 5.5%, which lowered my monthly payments by $170.00. No inspection and no real questions asked (although I did have to pay my property tax a month earlier than it was due). I could have gotten extra money, but that would have meant an inspection and further delay. Instead, I get in touch with ING Direct (www.ingdirect.com) and arranged for a $15,000.00 home equity line of credit at 4.75%, and drew $5000.00 of it to pay for the garage work I just had done.

74

A couple of questions, and believe me, I’m not trying to sound like a complete arsehole here.

  1. The credit card. A little mathematics based on your OP tells me you waited 7 months whilst paying only the minimum, thusly letting a $50 problem become a $250 problem. No offense, but that CC company has every right to call you. Yes, they make money off of you, but you also agreed to their terms when you signed up. The question: assuming you know how credit cards work, why would you let it escalate like this? I can’t look inside your wallet, but is $50 so hard to find when you really have to?

  2. Some people suggest a refinancing solution, which may be an excellent suggestion for all I know. But if you’re in a rut for over a year and your income hasn’t changed, isn’t that an indication that there’s something wrong on the spending side of things? Surely there have been setbacks, but seeing as you work from home, how’s about getting rid of one of your cars? You say your mother bought you a car, which is great. But I’m sure she doesn’t pay you to keep it maintained, insured, filled up with gas and oil, et cetera. No matter how good or reliable a car is, if you get rid of it, that’s $150-200 a month right there, easily. Example: if it breaks down within the next two years and it costs you $1200 to fix it, that’s $50 a month you could have saved.

  3. The costs of your internet stuff. So, you need cable. I second the suggestion that your husband asks his employer to at least partially reimburse the monthly cost, as he uses it for work. Secondly, you have to ask yourself if your internet exploits are worthwhile. You know your costs, and you know your income. How much do you make on a net basis, and how many hours of work does it take to get that net value? If your benefit per hour is less than the hourly wages for a job you could take outside the house, then you need to reconsider your carreer options, plain and simple.
    And I’ll second PunditLisa about the house. This does, with all due respect, NOT sound like an environment for a little boy to grow up in.

75

I’ll third. One word. Toxplasmosis.

76

I agree. We hate it, and we’ve been trying. Fortunately, most of the stuff is in areas that we don’t actually live in—the basement, for example.

I can’t get a part time job. I’m having major surgery tomorrow and it will probably be 6 weeks or so until I’m really recovered. Heck, I don’t even think I’ll be allowed to EAT for several weeks. I’m not even supposed to use stairs or lift anything.

77

//Anyway, I would strongly, strongly urge you to at least look into refinancing. If your original loan is from a few years back, and especially if you have a better credit report currently than you did back then (you imply that this might be the case) you might be able to save a lot of money. //

No, we don’t. We got our house about 18 months ago. We had to do a lot of credit scrubbing at the time and so that was probably our shining moment, credit wise.

//The credit card. A little mathematics based on your OP tells me you waited 7 months whilst paying only the minimum//

Yes. It isn’t a matter of “waiting” it is a matter of not being able to pay more. It may not be so hard to scrape up $50 once, but not every month.

As far as the car goes, our old car DID break down, and we aren’t fixing it [it was a 1989 and we’ve had it for ages]. We are donating it to charity. We coudln’t even get anyone to buy it. We did have someone say they would tow it without charging us, but that was the best offer we could find. The van is supposed to be for trips only. It uses way too much gas, which is why we needed to get the other car. Now that we have the other car, the van doesn’t really cost us anything, since we won’t be driving it except a few times a year to go on trips (like driving to Florida etc to visit family. Flying is too expensive, and if we take the van, we don’t need to pay for hotels). It certainly wouldn’t save us $200 month not having it. What we could sell the van for would be far less than we could replace it for, and it would cost us more in the long run. Unless someone is suggesting that I no longer see my family. My closest reletive lives over 900 miles away.

And yes, my business isn’t extremely profitable. So I should give it up. I should abandon the clients that I have, destroy my credibility so that I can never restart my business, and turn my back on my dream. Because I am $3000 behind. After all, getting money is the most important thing in the world, far beyond personal acheivecment. Far beyond happiness.

Fuck it, why did I even bother trying to start my own business and do something I enjoy? I could be in a dead-end job, totally miserable, day in and day out slinging hash! Screw it! Who the hell was I to try to do something I love and be successful at it! I should have remembered–life is a miserable burden and far too much trouble than it is worth. That is how it’s always been except for small slivers of happiness here and there.

I’ve pretty much made up my mind that what I’m going to do is nothing at all. I’ll let my credit go back in the dumpster where it was when I was in college. I don’t really have that much going for me anyway. CPS is probably going to take my son away because he’s been wetting his pants too much and therefore I’m a neglectful mother. A woman from my support group is threatening to sue me for using her first name in my journal. One of the former members of my message board claims they can have me thrown in prison and my son taken away, and can/will have my server shut down. My business is never going to amount to shit. I can’t get out of the small amount of debt we are in, every time we clean our house it just falls back to shit. My only friends live in a state 2300 miles away. Everything I’ve ever cared about has either failed, left, or been taken from me, with the exception of my husband. I really don’t see why I’ve even bothered to worry about this, since it’s the same as it’s always been, always will be, and I should just accept that my life will always suck. I accepted it before, but for a while I actually had started thinking that I might have been wrong.

78

Opal, I want to point you to a website I found recently, www.flylady.net.

I’m working full time, Ivylad can’t do anything because of his back, and let’s face it, a 10 year old and 13 year old can’t be counted on to do the BEST job cleaning.

In Flylady, you do things a little at a time. Last week, I did the technique and really got the living room straightened up…and it’s stayed straight all week!

I don’t know how long you’ve been living with the boxes, but if it’s been a while, then trash them all without opening them. If you needed anything you couldn’t find, you would have bought a replacement by now. Trash them all. Now. Get a friend with a truck and take them all to the dump.

79

Just out of curiosity, is insurance covering your surgery?

80

My point -which I agree is moot now- was, that had you payed $50 the first month, your consequent payments would not have been $50, but perhaps $10 or $15.

Of course I’m not suggesting that. But in your situation, I’d sell that van today. It’s a luxury item you use rarely, and you’re validating its presence with, IMHO, faulty logic. That van might be the instant solution to your cash problems. If you have more cash flow and catch up on your payments, you can always start saving up for a new one.

Now you’re just being dramatic. Look, you post an OP asking for suggestions of how to deal with your debt. Some people post some well meant advise. Your reaction then shouldn’t be to ridicule what they suggest. No matter what way you look at it, if money is what you need and your business isn’t doing well, then the rational choice is to abandon said business and get a job that renders income NOW, not in 5 years. The emotional choice may be a different one, as we can see. But emotions usually don’t solve credit card debts.

This is beyond the scope of simple financial advise, I’m afraid. If doing nothing is what you choose, then nothing will change. Fair enough.