23 November 2008

blood from a stone

I'm feeling a little discouraged, mainly because my ex is swearing that he can't afford to give me what he's been giving me already, and I think that even if the court orders him to pay that much, he still won't do it.

So, where can I get some more money from? I had some ideas:

1. Seeing if I can put off paying on my student loans for a while. That wpould free up about 250 dollars a month, but then I wouldn't be making any progress on those loans. Oh please, Obama, forgive our loans!!

2. Cancelling my cable and/or phone. This one seems complicated and depressing. I'll call at&t and see what they can do.

3. Changing my tax allowances so I won't get a refund. That way I can use the money now, instead of letting the government borrow it from me interst free, while I pay interest on credit cards.

4. Transfer another balance back to the card I just transferred off, because they sent me a 0 percent until Oct 09 offer. That would save me about 85 dollars a month in interest.

5. Pay off this very small loan I owe to my old credit union. It's almost done, and that would free up another 94 dollars a month for debt payments.

Figuring the phone company change saved me about 50 bucks (a total guess), if I did all of these things I should be able to come up with an extra 400 dollars a month for credit card payments, which will make up what my ex won't give me.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

be careful with the tax one. The only thing worse than not getting a refund is owing taxes. this has happened to me several times where we thought the witholding was correct, and it turned out to be under and then unexpectadly we owed. a bunch. Its definately not cool to let the gov borrow our cash, but i guess i am infavor of getting that good "surprise" in the spring.

Anonymous said...

ps, i just adjusted the payment plan for our student loan and we're still paying it, but $100 less a month for a few years, and it only added something like 9 months overall. That's definitely one to look into.