Dream Job

My dream job has always been to write. To write a novel or be a freelance writer or even be a songwriter. I've played in many bands but I never really wanted to be the onstage, touring, famous musician. I would much rather just be a songwriter. Kind of like Robbie Hart (The Wedding Singer though I shouldn't need to tell anyone that). Recently I've been kind of unhappy with my current career choice. I enjoy building but I don't think it's for me on a full time basis. I want to be able to be home with my family more and I want to work in a less dangerous environment. I had this weird thought about how hard I worked to get my current company going and how successful I was. In no way am I a huge company, but I've been working steadily through a failing economy and pulling in jobs pretty well. If I can do that for construction work, I can do it for anything. I wanted to change jobs before and rushed into something that was not for me at the promise of a possible six figure income. But even the short time I tried it I was miserable. So as long is it's something I love to do, I think I can make a new career work really well. I have a lot of drive when I get my mind set on something. So I'm signed up for a couple freelance writing classes at Portland Community College this summer. I am reorganizing all my writing. I have been creating a list of ideas for article to write that I can sell freelance. I have a couple of novels I am partially done with that I'm putting together outlines to get them finished so I can just self-publish them online (on paper and through the kindle). I'm going to take it one step at a time and just do a little building and do a little writing and see where it takes me. My dream is to be able to freelance full time so I can work from home and we can also travel more since I would be able to write from anywhere. Like buy an RV and just cruise around while I write. That would be fun.

All the people that say, "oh, you can't do that now that you have a kid." Screw those people. We can do anything we want if we put our minds to it and I plan on teaching Elliott the same thing. If Krystal and I both put our minds to it and get determined enough we can make our dreams happen.

Sometimes You Just Need It

I purchased a couple of less necessary items recently. I bought a weedeater because our yard has different levels and I can't mow right up against the lower level which leaves a line of tall grass between the level. Same thing with the fence on each side of the yard. So I got a $40 electric weedeater. I thought it was a wise investment. Plus our electricity bill is set up so our power only comes from renewable sources (wind, solar, wave energy) then the electric weedeater isn't harming the environment. Then I got Krystal a digital picture frmae for mother's day. It's a gadget that we don't need, but it's not big. It's a fairly portable object that has thousands (or can have thousands) of pictures on it. We haven't had much luck seeling much more stuff. The big ticket items were gone pretty quick. Now that the weather is getting nicer I am going to start cleaning out the garage and taking stuff to the dump or Goodwill. We're turning what used to be the TV rooom into an activity room. The living room has become the office. My friend gave me a drawing table to set up next to our desk so I have something to lay plans out on when I'm bidding jobs. That baby was FREE. Otherwise our house is getting pretty cleared out. Right now if I do purchase something the biggest thing I look for is something portable. Digitizing all our media so we don't have racks of DVD's or CD's. If we ever get a new computer, maybe we'll get a laptop. I want less stuff, but at the same time, the stuff I do need has to be space saving and/or portable. Because the goal is to get out of debt and maybe travel. We'd like to rent an RV and just take an extended road trip in a couple years. So media on a harddrive on a laptop would be great. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The first payment into the credit counseling service has been sent. So as of the 20th I stop paying our credit cards individually and pay $233 once a month. The service splits it up and pays the credit cards which all have between 0% and 2% interest now. I was paying a collective $362 a month in minimum payment so we're saving $129 a month now. And I can pay more a month to pay the cards off faster. My small section of student loan is down to $400, so I will pay that off hopefully in the next month or so and that will be a $55 a month bill gone.

We're getting there.

Refund, YAY!

Our credit union paid off our car loans at their respective banks and Wells Fargo sent us a refund of $19.69. Yay! Finally I'm getting something back from a bank.

Saturday, I hadn't yet opened a new businerss checking account at the crsdit union so I hadn't canceled our US Bank accounts yet. I checked our balances onlione and one of our US Bank savings accounts which had nothing in it for a long time, suddenly was overdrawn $4.00. They decided to charge a maintenance fee which they had never charged before. I was so fed up I went right down to the bank right then and closed all our account. Then I realized that I had no business account. And when someone makes a check out to The O'Neal Building Group, you can't just cash it at their bank. You have to deposit it into a bank account for said business. So I had to go down to the credit union and open a new account. Of course it was Saturday so it was busy, but I got it done. Which is good because I got a payment from a customer later that day and another one today.

I have an appointment on Wednesday to give the credit counseling place all my account numbers and get that started. And I have an appointment tomorrow to talk about opening a college savings account for the boy. That's with my insurance agent who also does investments.

Decisions, Decisions

I contacted the credit counseling service through my credit union and found out that they will take all of our credit cards and lower their rates. Our US Bank cards will go to 0% interest, our Chase Cards will go to 2% interest and our Care Credit card will go to 15% interest. Then they will take $237 from us and pay the cards which they say will pay them off in 5 year. Of course we can pay more to pay it off faster if we want. Right now we pay about $370 in separate credit card payments. So it's a decent offer, but we would have to cancel all of our credit cards which will effect our credit scores negatively. Your credit score is better when you have some revolving accounts and gets better the more available credit you have on those account. Of course we'd still have the car loans on our credit getting good marks, but it will drop our scores a little bit. It obviously wouldn't be as bad as a bankruptcy or as bad as doing a debt settlement on my own. That's where you call your credit cards yourself and negotiate a payoff amount that is lower than what you owe. If you have $1000 on a credit card you can offer them $300, they'll say no, so you go up to $$400 and so on until they accept your offer. I read they usually accept as low as 40%. But they will put on your credit report that you did a settlement and the card will be canceled which will hurt your score more. So, I think we'll do it, but it's just one of those things that hard to commit to. But I need to do it soon.

Update

I updated the Debt and the Stuff pages on this blog. I will try to keep them as up to date as possible.

Take That Bank of America!

Our credit Union approved our refinancing of the Truck. The percentage went down to 5.49% and the payment went from $451 a month to $372. Not as drastic a drop as the car but that's because the length of the new loan on the truck is closer to the length of the new loan, where as the Kia got put into a new loan that has another year more than what we had on our old loan. All I care about is that we aren't giving money to the big banks anymore. Soon I'll close our accounts at US Banks and I'm going to tell them exactly why. Because they suck. Yeah, that's what I'll say.

So Monday or Tuesday I should have time to call the credit counseling service and see about that. If that works out we should be in much better shape to get this debt paid off within two years. I have a bunch of work coming up and I'm trying to keep things more organized so I'm not wasting as much money business wise. I need to get some more business cards made and a couple new advertising things and then I'll update my website with new pictures from my last couple jobs.

I sold my old broken iPhone on eBay for $217. That's more than I paid for it new (with a contract). I used a little bit of that money to buy a new hammer, tape measure and couple of finish carpentry tools. Then we were going to go to the Tillamook Cheese Factory today but my unexpected doctor's visit for my eye canceled that. So we got some snacks at the store and are just gonna veg. I'll be working tomorrow to get one job completed and to get a little ahead on another. Then as long as this week goes to plan I will actually have a full weekend off next weekend.

Goodbye Car Loan Interest

Our new credit union had no problem refinancing our car loan for us. Our interest rate is going from 13.59% to 5.49%. Our payments go from $316 down to $119 a month. So if I try to keep paying about $300 a month the car will be paid off in no time. I gave them all the info to refinance the truck as well. It qualifies for 5.49% interest too, and right now it's loan through Bank of America is 9.39%. Honestly, I wouldn't care if the interests was the same if I could stop giving money to Bank of America. I hate those bastards. The other thing that helps is that our first car payment with the new loan isn't due until May 5th. That's a month off from the car payment. And if they approve the truck that would be a month off from both payments. That would give us a chance to get caught back up. Then once I know about the truck I will call the credit union's free credit counseling service and possibly consolidate our credit cards.

I'll get you if it's the last thing I do Debt!!!!