As I was talking with my father today I checked my checking account and saw $750 more than when I checked this morning! Sweet! Thank the internet God’s! (It was some business earnings from Google). Now, I previously said I would save all my Adsense earnings. (just to note, only about $75 was from this site. But hey, $75 is $75 right?). I can’t do it. I had to work out a deal with Toyota financial today with regards to my car.
I got a two month extension on payments (so I won’t have another payment til July now). I did this just to get some breathing room. That’s what I need at the moment. Just some breathing room. But it cost me (I should say cost, that isn’t the best way to put it) $787 in back payments I had to make to skip two. Like I said, money in, money out.
I sold some items in my Garage this week and have people coming by tonite to look at more stuff in the house. If I can make a few hundred bucks tonite, that will be great.
At my fathers insisting, we are going to sit down with a Bankruptcy attorney here in Seattle. I am NOT filling a BK. Let me say again, I am NOT filling for bankruptcy. Frack that man, my business has gone from 0K to 7.5K in 6 months. If I had 20K in capital right now I could repeat what I’ve done in this one industry in ten others in 6 months. But, I don’t have 20K and so I can’t. Live and learn I guess.
A friend is bringing pizza over to the house tonite to play some games. Should be fun. It’s amazing how with my honestly with myself and my whole mess my social and personal life has gotten so much better. I’ve got lots of social things going on now, but I need more time to work! Gotta find that balance…
I’m thinking of adding a wiki to the site here, a place to organize all my debt contact information and strategies. Would anyone else contribute/think this is a good idea? I use wiki’s for my business quite a bit, and love em.
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
I would review such a wiki, and offer what I can. It may be unwise to show all your cards to the lenders, though. I’m not even familiar with how your debt is broken down. But a spreadsheet can nullify a great many poker faces.
I like wikis too but you’re probably better off not making a wiki unless you just run it privately for yourself due to privacy concerns. Or maybe make a very sanitized one with rounded numbers and examples for educational value. Casey even did a public Google spreadsheet… of course, his irate critics claim to have tipped off the creditors to any money he makes and they report him to tax authorities – so be careful.
I like your blog and you come across as a much more responsible and grounded person than that nut Casey, so don’t take this the wrong way: You wrote “tonite” three times in this post. Why not write “tonight”? It will make you look even more respectable to a grammar-nazi like me. Get the latest version of Firefox – it has a built-in spellcheck for web forms… its dictionary is not that great (it’s never heard of an “axe”) but it’s better than nothing.
that’s a pretty decent revenue on your business!
What do you mean by a personal wiki? I’ve never seen one. I only know of wikipedia.org Can you give an example or link to one?
You are doing a great job and being honest on the blog is really important. Keep doing what you are doing. You are really getting on top of things and over time it will become easier.
I’m glad you are meeting with a lawyer. Sometimes that is the only option and it is good you are finding out. Don’t feel bad. You have to do what you have to do to fix your issues.
Keep positive!!
Congrats on at least getting your car somewhat figured out. You are doing a really great job at everything! Keep up the good work!
Keep it up. I think your dad is right. You should always keep your options open, even BK. You can only make educated decision after you got all the information.
I realize that you must be upside down in that car loan, but why do you have a car payment? You should have a good used car. Has nobody mentioned that?
Having a lawyer is a good thing. You are paying for his advice, write it down or something. It is not free advice, like this.
My two cents:
You’re making great progress, even if it does feel like $75 forward, $787 back sometimes. I agree with other commenters; meeting with a bankruptcy attorney is not the same as filing for bankruptcy, and I think there is a chance you might learn something really helpful.
Finally, I would discourage you from telling all in a wiki. Full disclosure might harm your bargaining abilities but it might inadvertantly subject you to legal liability as well. Let the blogger beware!
In terms of your revenue projections and cost accounting for your business, do you handle that yourself? It might be helpful for you to get some input from someone a few steps ahead of you, say a consultant or an accountant or whatever professional is good at that sort of thing. You might be able to trade your services for their expertise. Just an idea. Knowledge is power, right?
Keep your chin up.
I do not have an accountant at the moment. As soon as my biz revenue hits 10K, I should have enough to afford an accountant look at my business and the giant mess of debt I have (mixed business/personal ect).
I use a wiki at work and at home. My personal one is used to keep things in order so I can look up what certain things need to be done on certain dates or other “routine” information like that.
I have a wiki entry right now called “Billing Cycles” which has all the due dates for all my bills so that I know what bills need to be paid at which part of the month.
Also, I have a wiki entry with pictures of the backs and fronts of all my credit cards and their contact numbers so I can cancel them or call about them at any point without needing the card.
I keep my personal wiki on my usb thumbdrive so I can edit / view it no matter where I am. This can be done with little complication by downloading PmWiki(http://www.pmwiki.org/) and extracting it to your thumbdrive and running the server.bat file.
hope that helps.
I was thinking more of a community wiki on debt. Not just mine specifically, but strategies and experiences from other people as well. We’ll see, its just a side project, but honestly some of the tips I’ve received from writing my experiences here have helped greatly. So, it might be worth investing a bit of time.
@5. Leigh Ann – “personal wikis” are available online at places like JotSpot ( http://www.jot.com ) – unfortunately, since Google just bought them they aren’t allowing new users but they did have the option of making your wiki public or not. For the more tech savvy, the MediaWiki software that runs the Wikipedias is free for download so it could be installed anywhere; for example the absurd: http://www.caseypedia.com/
I don’t think any kind of a publicly visible wiki on debt is a good idea. Not your debt, for sure. And any kind of “general” wiki is just restating obvious points about debt…what would be the point of it?
You’re making good progress, I think, on controlling your expenses, getting rid of stuff (even selling some of it, which is good), and are confronting your very real debts.
Don’t make the mistake CS made of making the blog or the wiki your real passion.
NAT
Wow! I just stumbled across your blog…It seems like you’ve really got your hands full. Since you’re so young, I would say follow your dreams and keep going with your business. You have a lot of time to repay your debt.
Good luck with the lawyer. I’m sure your father has your best interest at heart!