Six Figure Debt

After I wrote my last post, I received not one but two calls regarding potential employment.

I interviewed with job # 1 on Friday.  The position is within my field, not exactly what I am trained to do, but a position that certainly is within my skill set and one that I am qualified to do.  The interview went great and I am confident that I will get an offer from this company.

This spring has brought no relief to our situation.  Currently we are in default on all credit cards and can’t even seek settlements because our basic living expenses far exceed our income.  I’ve had zero luck even getting a job interview and my wife is getting interviews but so far no offers.

To make matters worse, our small business, which was growing nicely in January, February and March has come to a near dead stop.  I don’t know if it is just a cycle or if our customers have just stopped spending money.  I hope it is a cycle but at this point I am losing hope that our customers will return.

I apologize for being falling behind in my posting, I’ve been suffering from a small case of the unemployed blues, never in my life have I been so excited to work and I can’t even get a sniff.  It is so bad that I honestly can’t imagine working, let alone working in a position that I am actually qualified to do.  It is enough to keep me depressed indefinetly.

This morning, I woke up, decided I needed some positive news in my life, so here it is…the “GOOD NEWS” roundup!

I guess I should consider this good news, but it is odd how we got to this.

Today I received a call from Bank of America, remember, we just decided last month not to pay our credit card, instead we decided to save the money and attempt to settle our debt with the credit card companies.  Well, today BOA call to see why our bill wasn’t paid on time and we informed them of our plan to seek a settlement with them to pay the cards off in full.

Every Sunday I am going to focus on good news in the world.  I find it thereputic to seek out some good news each week as I feel constantly beaten down by the string of bad news and dire predictions.  I am an optimist by nature so I tend to look on the bright side of life but it is hard when myself, friends and relatives are struggling so hard in the current economic state.  So, here are a few stories to relieve the stress and hopefully put your mind at ease for a few minutes.

It seems like lately all we get is bad news, the newspapers, the television news, the Internet, you name it all they do is deliver a huge dose of bad news everyday.  It has gotten to the point where I just ignore most of it, but I do feel like it is starting to take its toll.  I’m sure  I and not alone when I say that I feel completely beaten down by the economy, bad news and my job search.

We are taking the advice of Dave Ramsey and we have stopped paying our credit card payments, except for American Express because they were willing to drop the interest rate on our credit card.

As I said in the previous post, none of the credit card were willing to provide and help with our current situation so we have simply started saving our money and not paying the credit cards.

Last week I ran into a woman who was using the “envelope” system to budget her money.  I asked her if she listened to Dave Ramsey and she laughed and said “yes, he’s saved our financial lives.”  We chatted for a while and she told me how she took Ramsey’s advice and called her credit card companies to “settle” her debt.  She said she had great success and was able to trim $50,000 off her balances by simply calling the credit card companies.

My situation is a little different because when I married and had kids I had a good job, a healthy 401k and equity in my house.  Through a series of poor decisions and  a major job loss I ended up with over $140k in secured and unsecured debt.  The normal signs of trouble weren’t there because almost half the debt is housing losses and business start-up capital that I used on my home equity line.

Many of us do however see the signs of financial trouble before they hit, and either ignore or don’t recognize them, here are 8 signs that you may be in financial trouble.

My wife and I are always on the lookout for ways to trim money out of our grocery budget.  The money we spend on food is one of the largest expenses in our budget every month, experts estimate that the average household spends 30% of it’s monthly budget on food.  I can across this article on Yahoo finance and it lists 7 ways that grocery stores rip you off.

The author suggests these 7 tips to save money on your grocery bill immediately.