I am just so tired of the little person being kicked down all the time.
SS, I feel ya. It sure feels like that sometimes, and it's almost enough to break you. Almost.
I can tell you how I crawled out...though really it was more like dragging myself up a vertical cliff with my fingernails - ack!
You'll often hear accountants say that we don't deal with money - we deal with numbers. We separate it mentally so that we aren't tempted. That's the first step - it's not money, it's just numbers. You have to convince yourself of this, but once you do it gets kinda fun.
Once you quit thinking in terms of dollars, it becomes a bit easier to change how you live. Obviously, you'll do without a lot of things until the two of you get back on your feet. I lived without a phone and a computer for a long long time. I needed the money to be spent elsewhere, simple as that. (And I was able to call 911 if there was an emergency, a courtesy from the phone company.)
I would write up an annual, monthly, and weekly budget. For my weekly, I would make a game of trying to spend less than I budgeted. I used cash only. Any excess cash in my wallet at the end of the week was deposited into my savings account - even if it was only $5. It was an accomplishment, and I was proud of it. Every penny I could spare went to paying off old debt.
The trick there is to choose the smallest bill first:
Visa; balance due $500, monthly minimum $20, budgeted payment $50.
MasterCard; balance due $1,000, monthly minimum $25, budgeted payment $30
Visa is smaller, so pay $50 to them and $30 to Mastercard. In 11 months (assuming interest), the Visa is paid off.
At that point, pay $85 towards the MasterCard.
Keep doing this until everything is paid off...and do NOT take on new debt.
You will live without everything or so it seems. But it's not so bad. There's tons of free stuff to do, and it's really fun to see how much you can do without, to step outside of the consumer mentality (not saying you're in that, but frankly we all are to some degree).
Buy less meat, and stretch it further. It's healthier anyway. Eat popcorn instead of chips, cheaper and better for you. Not microwave, the pop it on the stove kind. Pasta is a poor person's dream; add a few fresh vegies or tomatoes and voila!
All movies eventually hit tv. We don't need to pay $8 per person to go see them. All museums have free days. Most fun events allow you to go for free if you donate your time.
Use your skills to make pennies along the way. I've done a lot of mending for coworkers for bits of cash here and there. From sewing custom curtains to putting new buttons on a blouse, I can pick up $5 to $50.
Public transportation is a lot cheaper than a car plus insurance.
The problem with crawling out of debt is not that it's impossible. It's very possible (as I've ranted before, LOL). But it's a lot of time, energy, focus, and plain hard work.
Try finding a job at a smaller company. They're less likely to check your credit, and though they don't offer great benefits, they usually reward great work. When I was aiming towards increasing my hourly rate, I worked at a smaller company. When I got it to where I could live (barely), I switched to a larger company to pick up benefits and to get the experience my field requires.
I know it's really hard. I truly do. When I left Chicago, I was making $48k plus $12k a year in bonuses. In Portland, I was reduced to $20k a year with 3 kids back in 1998. And I learned the hard way how much I could do without. I've complained about this before, but I was left with our divorce debt over $40k. I'm now down to $7k on it, and that will be gone one year from now. (Less, if the creditors continue to make deals with me.) I've also got 2 years left of child support.
I used to get really mad about it all, and feel like the system was keeping poor people down. But at some point, I realized that everyone gets hit pretty hard. If you make more, it's still painful but you can at least pay your rent and basic bills without losing sleep. And once I realized that, I wasn't so angry anymore...and I found ways to put myself in the position of not losing sleep.
I hope this didn't come off as a lecture. That wasn't my intent. I just wanted you to know that others have been there before you, and it's very possible to get out of this position.
