One Step At A Time

Since we have started on the Debt Snowball, we have started to receive calls from debt collectors and one in particular has not been pleasant. Her name is Ms. Brown and she keeps calling about Felicia's court reporting bill. A little background on this bill: Felicia was going to CRID, the Court Reporting Institute, and she decided to leave early because she was in her last trimester of pregnancy and it was difficult to get around with her steno machine. Before the quarter started she told them that she was taking a leave of absence and would return after the baby was born, but they talked her into signing up for the quarter and told her it would be okay if she did not finish the quarter. It turns out they wanted her to attend until her student loan paid them and then allow her to drop, but the student loan did not pay them and now they want to collect from Felicia. Ms. Brown called Felicia one day and started to tell Felicia that she was in "breach of contract" and needed...

Lately, we have had some weird things happen at the house that has caused us to get a little off track with the budget. In spite of these things, we have not touched our emergency fund and have just found other ways around these emergencies. Our dryer and our stove are busted. We are renting and the land lord had us call a appliance warranty company but for both appliances they claim are unfix-able and not under warranty. We are waiting to hear back from the land lords to see what they want to do about it, but nothing yet. The dryer is a simpler problem to work around because we can take the clothes to our parents house and wash them while we visit, Felicia's mom will sometimes take a couple of loads and do them herself for us, or we can go to the laundry mat. The stove on the other hand is little more difficult especially since we don't like to cook anyway and now we have to learn to bake instead of cooking Hamburger Helper. I am kidding but when we cook it is pretty bas...

We have had to add a few more things to the debt snowball. The new Total Debt amount is $21,625.22 so that leaves the Total Remaining at $20,637.89. Three debts got added to the snowball, and two of them we knew were coming and we were just waiting on the final tally to come in. See back in May, our daughter got sick and she had to spend 3 days in the hospital and she had to have a procedure done. After the insurance paid their part there was $1,403.00 left to pay. Thank God for insurance! The third bill is one we forgot about. Felicia was attending a court reporting school here in Dallas that we were paying for on credit (student loans). The last quarter she attended she dropped early because she was in her 3rd trimester of pregnancy and it was hard for her to maneuver with her steno machine. As a result of dropping early, the student loan did not pay for the classes and the school is now charging her for it ($1,508.00). It looks like if we pay the minimums we can have our deb...