WBRFS # 5

Bang! Right to the Weekly Budget Ronin Financial Showdown!

Showdown!
Budget Ronin vs. the Crushing Fear of Unseen Expenses!
"From out of the Darkness, razor-sharp receipts! Beware the papercuts, Ronin!"

This is still a tough time for us. Despite the deluge of great news about our debt and car loan, we still don't have money. Just resolving the debt wasn't like winning the lottery as far as our bank account was concerned. So we've still had to be very careful, even though I can tell the mood between Naginata and I regarding our finances is markedly different. We're very excited at the prospect of making progress instead of just filling holes that seemed relatively bottomless.

As part of the changes going on around our house and blog, I'm going to stop blogging my receipts. Taking my last Showdown to heart, I'm going to start planning for a monthly budget report instead. I've done a good job at curbing impulse shopping (all shopping really) and I think the previous half-year (177 days to be precise, but still, pretty darn close) has strengthened my resolve quite a bit. I think at this point, reading that I spent $2 on bananas or 10 quatloos on tribble food. Yeah. You thought my quatloo jokes were done, didn't you?

Anyway, obscure fictional science-fiction currency aside, I am going to start working on a monthly analysis that tells us more of an over/under of where we are hitting on our percentages for the month and year. I kind of screwed the pooch on some receipts for the last few weeks, so I won't be doing October, but November and December still give me ample time to ramp up for our first new year of non-car/non-credit card budgeting. I'll probably try some formats and names out just to see what looks good visually.

So sometime in the next couple of weeks between now and All Hallows Eve, I'm going to try and do some number crunching with Budget Naginata and see where we want to put down our numbers. It's like projecting for the next fiscal year, which is all business-like and far too grown up for my own tastes. Regardless, it's a positive first step and while I don't really want to run our household like a business, projecting a profit for the Budget Clan's 2008 fiscal year is an altogether new and giddy experience that I want to be a part of. I think I might have t-shirts made or something. Let's see the Gamemasters of Triskelion beat that!

Further updates from the Budget Clan?

We still have not sold/unloaded the hot-tub. We're thinking about just giving it away at a loss. Now that the extra couple of hundred does not seem an insurmountable loss, I'm inclined just to reclaim the deck space and my sanity.

Our first credit-card refund has arrive and been deposited. Our second is en route. Our last credit-card disbursement has been paid. I have to verify with the creditor it has bee received, but I'm pretty sure this clears us on all the cards.

Our Budget-Mobile is still slated to be paid off by the end of the year. Yay!

Budget Naginata and I are looking to move banks from Spank of America to something else. Recommendations and/or advice are welcome. Something online would be fine, but we would like someplace we can physically make deposits instead of having to mail anything in.

Well, that's it. Showdown is on time and I am off to work on pie charts... or maybe just some pie.

Compounding intrest daily,

B.R.

Your old titles mean nothing here, Captain...

Here is the background you need to know in order to enjoy this story: Budget Naginata has a student loan. When we were married, it was in default. We busted our hump to get it out. At the top of the year, it moved out of default into a regular account. We were happy. The loan is for 5,000,000 Quatloos (this is a fictious sum using the method of currency favored by Star Trek's Gamesters of Triskelion - Making bad Star Trek references will be the only real fun I will have during this story).

So here is the horrible followup to this wonderful story of personal financial accomplishment.

This morning, the polite representative from the Politely Invasive Collection Agency (not their real name) calls Naginata at home. They claim that we have defaulted on our loan and we are in collections again. She freaks a bit, gets a number and calls me. I reassure her that we've been paying every month, on time, to keep ourselves in the black. I tell her, correctly so, that I've been making sure they take my hard earned Quatloos by check every month. I get her to give me the collection agency information so that I can call them back and square this all up.

I call back the collections agent and speak with them for a bit. They insist they have heard from the Department of Education (sadly the real agency and not a ficticious one) and that the request is accurate. They give me a number to call and I do. Sure enough, it's the DoE Default Group. I talk to one of their representatives and over the course of the next twenty or so minutes try to understand exactly what she is telling me. I'll see if I can make it more clear than was presented to me. All Stardates and Quatloo amounts are fictional. The pain is real:

SD 4285.6: A new year! We finish our rehabilitation with the PICA. We are told we can be moved into a normal loan repayment account.

SD 4377.2: We file our Federal Tax Return with the IRS. Our expected refund is 25,000 Quatloos.

SD 4412.7: The Federal Government witholds our tax refund, telling us we are in default with our student loan and the refund will be applied to the loan.

SD 4599.3: Unbeknownst to us, the Government gives the PICA our 25,000 Quatloos. Our new balance, before the rollover from our rehab account is now 4,975,000 Quatloos.

SD 4621.6: We file an Injured Spouse claim, saying that the Government is flat out wrong and we do deserve our 25,000 Quatloos.

SD 4745.9: The old defaulted loan with the PICA is closed and a new loan is begun for our remaining 4,975,000 Quatloos with the Happy Friendly School Loan People (HFSLP). We don't immediately notice anything because we have been told some of our "penalty fees" will be forgiven at the end of our rehabilitaion. Since this seems pretty close to what we owe, we are grateful and begin paying on our new plan to the HFSLP

SD 4882.0: The Federal Goverment decides to honor our Injured Spouse claim and give us our 25,000 Quatloos. In fact, what they have actually done is recall the deposit they made on our behalf and then cut us a check. Why is this important? Because this was money owed to the PICA. We have just shafted them 25,000 Quatloos. They reopen our account.

SD 4923.3: We blissfully continue to pay HFSLP our Quatloos for the remainder of the 4,975,000 that we owe, not realizing that we actually still owe another 25,000 to the PICA, because our "refund" has robbed the PICA to pay us. This can't go on our current HFSLP loan because the HFSLP were never short any money. As far as they are concerned, we're all paid up.

SD now-ish: The PICA calls us because we've defaulted on money we legitimately owe them. They claim we have been notified by mail, but neither Naginata or I recall anything from them regarding the outstanding 25,000 Quatloos. It wouldn't have mattered much anyway, because we don't have 25,000 Quatloos just lying around. By Spock! We're not the Providers. We're not made of Quatloos, people!

So now we are in default for 25,000 Quatloos. Had the Injured Spouse paperwork gone through before the transfer from PICA to HFSLP, none of this would have happened. Had we not filed the Injured Spouse report and let the Government keep our money, none of this would have happened. As it stands, we had to start yet another rehab program (Rehab 2: Electric Boogaloo, the Wrath of Loan) with them. This adds yet another monthly payment to our large stack of monthly payments. We are doing all this to be good and pay off our debts and hopefully improve and simplify our lives at the end of it all. Right now it just feels as if we're taking it up the photon torpedo tube. And it hurts.

On the positive side, the representative at PICA was exceptionally nice and allowed us to do this, even though he was under no obligation to do so. He could have just held us up for the full amount. But since we were happily paying off a whole bunch more already and it was obvious that this was all just a matter of bad timing, he gave us a minimum payment amount for the next nine months (I can't easily convert that into starmonths or whatever the hell they use). At that point, it should roll over to join our close to 5 million Quatloo motherload loan. At least, that is the best they can tell us.

Man is that confusing. Honestly, Tribbles make more sense than this crazy mess. I think I'd rather wear be wearing a Collar of Obedience and fighting gladatorial games against the Game Thralls rather than dealing with all of this. I would also be content had I been away filming The Green Berets like George Takei.

Damn Lucky Sulu.