My unemployed future-husband is considering joining the Air Force, which I totally support 110%. He is a wonderful man, but unfortunately he has no education and has been out of work for the last 13 months. His younger brother recently joined the Air Force and loves it, so my fiance (who I will call J) have discussed long and hard about the Air Force option. Honestly, there aren't many options, but this seems like the most logical. We are in our mid-20s and while I have my career established, he does not. I know we want to get married and have a family within the next 3-5 years, but we can't do that until he gets his career set. Unfortunately, the Air Force doesn't need recruits, so they are never in their office and don't return J's phone calls. In the mean time, J's dad in Boston has some work for him to do where he can make $600 a week, so J is leaving on Tuesday to go back to Boston for a month to earn some quick cash.
Aside from that, on Wednesday, I received a phone call from a collection agency. At first I thought it must be a mistake, so I called them and they said I owed $133.25 to PGE from my old apartment that I moved out of back in April. So I called PGE and talked to them and they said I owed $91 from a February-March bill I never paid (WHAT?!) and another $31 from a March-April bill I didn't pay (SERIOUSLY?!) and $11 from a small April bill. I tried hard not to cry on the phone. I couldn't believe it. I've never missed a payment or made a late payment to anything in my life. And now I was being sent to collections?!
So I looked at my bank statements and low and behold, I totally missed those two payments they said I owed them. I never received any information from PGE because they didn't have my new address, but they did have my current phone number, yet I never received a single phone call from them. I am just furious... at myself for forgetting those payments, at PGE for not calling me, and at the stupid collection agency.
I had no choice but to pay the debt, so I called the collection agency and made a $133.25 payment (plus $4.50 fee for making a phone payment). I'm going to call them on Monday and request that they send me a receipt for payment in full so I have it for my records. But I'm utterly furious and upset about having a collection on my credit report now. I've worked so hard to have perfect credit.
I also did a $2000.00 balance transfer from my Nordstrom Visa to my bank's employee credit card which offers 0% interest for 12 months and after that the rate is only 5.25%. That still leaves about $300 on Nordstrom. My BofA loan is down to $6,500 and my Chase credit card is at $3980. So it's getting paid down, just not fast enough. My savings has taken hit, especially after the $133.25 I just had to pay, plus I had another emergency I had to drain my savings for back in July.
As far as my finances go, things aren't going very well at all. And it just makes me depressed. =(
- Bank Gal
Labels: collection, debt, emergency fund, finances, savings
posted by Bank Gal at 2:46 PM
