Happy Birthday to you.......................................................

Today we celebrate the birthday's of two people I love. My brother, who I am pretty sure won't read my blog. Translation........ I can share the birthday card I sent to him. It said something like "If we are related...... Why don't I look like you?" On the inside it said, "Just lucky I guess." Okay! A show of hands of those of us that thinks that is just a little mean? (Mine went half-way up.) Now the hands of those that think it is slightly amusing? (Mine is flying proudly.) Is it my fault we were raised in a household in which love was shown through slams? ( Growing up, instead of calling me Pat he called me Fat........... Truth hurts? Maybe now he would be right on, but growing up I wasn't.) My brother will not only relate and appreciate the card, he will be mad that he didn't find one like it first. The friend that is celebrating today is a regular reader, (thank you very much!) so I won't spoil her card before she see it. (It won't spoil it for you if I just say it has a hot young stud on the cover. Will it? Thought you could use a pick-me-up to get you through until spring springs........ I know he perked my eyes right up when I saw him standing there amoung all the other cards........ His smile screamed, Pick me! Pick me!")

Speaking of celebrations............ March is the anniversary of our family not using credit for three entire years. I think it deserves a little trip down memory lane. Maybe it will inspire some of you that feel you are drowning in debt, as we were three years ago.

Doing home Care physical therapy, I went into many private homes, as well as many facilities. In the private homes, I saw many people that could no longer use their bathrooms and/or bedrooms because the doorways were not large enough to allow a walker or wheel chair through. I convinced my husband (By now you all know what a push-over he is..... The man can deny me nothing.......... NOT complaining honey! Honest!) that we should make our home handicap accessible while we could do the work ourselves. This way we would save tons of money. As most Americians, we didn't have that kind of money laying around, but we both had great FICA scores so we gave our plasitic an extensive work-out. Each trip to Home Depot translated into me working outside our home longer, but at the time it seemed worth it. At the same time we were remodeling, I was noting things at the AFCs I visited that I would do differently if I were in charge. Nothing glaringly wrong, just personal opinion. (Put me in charge of the world for just ten short days............Oh! The things I would do!)

It would be much more entertaining to say the idea came to me one night in a dream, but really I don't remember how it formed. I just know that eventually it made sense to open our home to seniors. We could use the increased income to pay off our large debt sooner, I could give a few seniors the Life of Riley, and I COULD STAY HOME in the great house that we were creating.

Since this is a trip down memory lane, I have to share the night hubby and I were sitting in the hot tub chatting and I broached the subject of him helping me with the business. I told him he might have to change an occasional diaper, and you should have seen the look on his face. You'd have thought I had told him he would have to perform surgery on the dining room table! (On second thought, maybe not..... He would have been more interested had I said that.) He emphatically stated (which in itself is a rariety) that he WAS NOT CHANGING ANYONE'S DIAPERS. Wow! Where did that come from? I calmly explained to him that if that was the case I would have to call the licensing agency and withdraw our application, because there would be times that I would be gone and it might need to be done. With that look on his face (You know....... The one he has when he can't say no to me......) he agreed to change diapers......only as a last resort. This whole conversation seems really funny, knowing some of the things he does daily now, without thinking twice about it. I bet when he reads this he will think "What I would give if all I had to do was change an occasional diaper." Now wasn't that story worth getting off track for a minute?

As we were putting the finishing touches on the house and waiting for our official licensing visit, I got fired from my home care job. Least you think it was my fault (Yes! We all know deep down I care what people think of me.) The company decided to fire the entire lot of us and contract out because they thought it would save them some money. I will only say, that all of us (at least fifteen people) went on to find happier positions........ We all ended up much happier than our former employee did with their choice of contract company, according to the rumor mill.

One month after losing my job, I opened the doors of our business, and within two weeks had two residents. Life was looking up. We were able to take care of business, AND pay at least the minimun on all seventeen credit cards and our other lines of credit. Unfortunately, a part of this business is facing the fact that people pass from this world to the next. When this happen to us in February, we were not finacially ready for it to say the least. Being the responsible person I am, I contacted each and every creditor we had (Yup! I was spending hours on the phone.) to explain our situation and see how they would work with us. Every single on of them told me the same thing........ If I wanted their help, they suggested I miss three payments and then (and only then) they would be able to offer me reduced interest rates and/or other help. This really made me hot. I could not understand why they would encourage me to not pay my bills. As time went on, I figured it out. First off, they (the credit card companies) were counting on my responsibility to my bills. They knew (because I told them, and because of my great credit history) that paying my bills was important to me, and they used that against me. They figured (correctly) that I would not eat, buy clothes, etc..... in order to be able to honor my debts. They also had nothing to lose if I fell behind. Falling behind just ment that they could raise my good interest rates, and charge me tons of fees. Legally they had everything going for them and I had nothing. Talk about me against the world! We stopped using all the cards when we knew we might not be able to make the payments. If we didn't have the dumb card payments, we would have had plenty of money to live on, and not need to use the cards. The problem was how could we make the leap from not using the cards and having enough money each month, while we were still paying them off? We just decided we would leap first and hope for a grassy landing. While we were jumping off the clift into the uncharted territory of living without credit cards, we continued to look for solutions to our immediate finacially troubles. You might find this amusing....... I went to see someone about debt consolidation and they told me that I did indeed qualify (with one hundred-four thousand dollars of unsecured debt) for their program, but did not have enough income to make the needed monthly payment. This was exactly the point I was trying to get accross to the card companies. (DUH!)

After it occured to me that if I didn't use credit, I wouldn't need credit, (Somthing the card companies try their darndest to keep us in the dark about.) I decided that I couldn't control much regarding my dealings with the collection calls, but I could at least control my attitude. Since I was spending at least two hours a day on the phone with one company or another, I decided I would have fun with it. When they would call to tell me a bill was past due, I would very pleasantly agree with them and then see how long I could keep them on the phone listening to every detail I could think of about my background leading up to not paying the bill, how things were going with getting a new resident so I could pay the bill, the noble work I was doing to give seniors a great life..... anything. I figured my time on the phone was a public service...... As long as one of them were talking to me, I could be sure they were not harassing some other poor soul. Most of the people were very nice. (And interested in listening to me.) Several of them even shared their credit problems with me, and gave me advice on how to beat the very company they were working for!

In July, we got a new resident, and in August signed up with the debt consolidation company. We did so, as it was the only way we could get any of our interest rates lowered, again the law does not work in favor of the consumer........ Our only revenge is to not use their cards ever ever again. When I started listening to http://daveramsey.com , ( over a year after signing up) I learned that by going with a consolidation company creditors look at me the same as they would had I filed bankrupcty. (Even though I am paying back all the money.) This makes me angry too, but I just have to remind myself that it doesn't matter because I don't plan to use credit.

Finacially speaking, things are progressing nicely. We are paying off about sixty thousand dollars a year on our old debt. (Rather than drowning, we are now doggie paddling in debt.) Even paying off that amount each year, we still seem to have plenty of money to live on and some in the bank so we have a cushion. (Remember, we went on two cruises last year, paying cash for both of them.) I cannot tell you why this is, just that it is. Dave says that when you start making your money behave, (as opposed to letting it control you) you feel as if you got a raise. I still live with the fear of death. (Not mine, that doesn't scare me........ Losing one of our residents would still cause us some financial strain. I have built up the business and do have a waiting list, but I won't fully relax until I have cleaned up from all my past mistakes.)

I wanted to share my finacial debt figures with you, because while I know there are people carrying higher debt loads, ours started out higher than most. I hope that this gives you hope that there is life after credit card use, and you CAN get out from under the card companies thumbs. All it takes is nerves of steel, and a devil may care attitude toward the almighty FICA score. (As well as determination to live on less than you bring home each and every week.) If anyone is interested in some of the ways I make my hard earned dollars stretch, let me know and I will devote a blog to it. You know me, I will probably get around to devoting a blog to it even if no one asks me too.