December 1994, I was involved in a head-on crash. I was driving on a curvy mountain road and a man who was speeding, in the USA illegally, didn’t have a drivers license, and was uninsured crossed the double yellow lines and came into my lane and hit me head on, totaling my car. I had my oldest with me, who was at the time 4 years old. We weren’t hurt too much, I had broken several bones in my foot, some broken toes and had bruises everywhere. My daughter, thankfully was fine.

My insurance company was more than generous with my car payoff. They gave me $200 more than what I had paid for my then two year old car. I really couldn’t complain.

I was wiped out for 7 months. I had developed an extremely painful bone infection in my foot and almost lost my foot. I had three surgeries (even had a morphine drip) and ended up having a “main-line” IV put in my neck that went straight to my heart. Finally seven months later, after six weeks of IV treatment my bone infection cleared up and the open wound on my foot finally healed.

Imagine my surprise when I got the call from my insurance agent saying they were going to settle with me for the maximum payout of $100,000! I was a newly married 24 year old. The most money I’d ever had prior to this was maybe $500.

So where’d all the money go? $10,000 went to my health insurance (they threatened to sue me for reimbursement of medical costs), $20,000+ went towards paying off my husband’s credit card debt, $5,000 for a backyard play system, and $5,000 for a tractor. I gave $5,000 to my mom for putting up with me and all the pain I’d been in and $1,000 to my Grandma to help her out. I also spent $200 on a D&B bag for myself. Over the years we spent another $20,000+ fighting to keep custody of my husbands daughter from his first marriage. I know another chunk of the money went towards a good down payment on a NEW (I was a sucker) Suburban. We still have a lot of that value and it’s now in my husbands truck. I’m not really sure exactly what happened to the rest of the money. I guess we piddled it away.

Look where I am now, this isn’t how my story is supposed to go. We had the best start, a better start than most people will ever get and still here we are up to our necks in debt. I wonder if I’ll ever FINALLY learn to be financially responsible?

The good news is in the next two years I’ll be paying off a vehicle and a travel trailer as well as being done paying child support for my husband’s daughter (her mother doesn’t even own a house and can’t afford to live on her own yet sends this child to boarding school and we get stuck paying for more than half).

In three years I’ll be done paying for our family vehicle.  So over the next three years I should be able to clear up $2,280 a month that I can throw at my credit card debt.

This is a great three minute video. The video demonstrates how you can have “free” cars every five years for life. I think it’s a must watch.

I found this video on Sharon’s site, Paid it Down. Thanks Sharon!

Well, I’m not getting one but if you are wondering where your Stimulus Payment is you can click here and the IRS will let you know.

You will need to know your Social Security Number, Filing Status and the number of exemptions shown on your 2007 tax return.

I just found out on the IRS site that my refund was deposited on 5/02/08. In the next couple of days I’m planning on using that money to pay off my State taxes owed. I’ll be changing my “State Taxes Owed” slider over to the right to 100% paid! In Oct. 2007, I thought I’d be making payments to the state for the next three years never did I even think it was possible to pay it off this soon. This is going to be a HUGE burden lifted off my shoulders.  I’m thinking it’s time to break out the beer and party it up a little.

I’m so excited! My husband called his boss today and asked him when the bonus was coming and he said this Friday. Sadly it’s going to be included in my husband’s paycheck so they are going to tax the you know what out of it. Here’s the exciting part - the bonus is for $13,800! After taxes, I’ll have more than enough money to pay off my husbands truck.

My husband is so a little mystified why paying off the truck makes me so happy, after all the payment is “only” $250 a month. I think he’d rather spend the money on “man toys” but there is no way he’d want to hurt me like that, he knows what a heavy burden making all these payments is on me every month. Normally with a windfall like this, I’d let him go buy another toy or another rifle. Not this time though, we’re in a financial mess and it’s way past time that we started cleaning it up.

This money is also going to help me give my oldest a good high school graduation gift. At this point I’m thinking about giving her $500 cash. It scares me to think she’s going to go out there and blow it on God knows what. I’m hoping she’ll save it and use it for college books.

Last night I made oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. Oh my, I forgot how good they are. YUM!

Michelle tagged me, it’s my first tag, how exciting! I’m supposed to write a six word memoir.

Photo by wiccked

My memoir is “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back”.

It seems like I’m always trying to catch up and no matter how hard I try I’m always falling behind. It’s definitely the story of my life.

The rules of the meme are:

1. Write your own six word memoir
2. Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you want
3. Link to the person who tagged you in your post
4. Tag at least 5 more blogs
5. Leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play

I tag:
Twiggers
Budgets Are $exy
The Frugalista Files
Spilling Buckets
Family Quilter

Edited to Add:  Since most people I tagged have already been tagged, if you are reading this, go ahead and tag yourself if you’d like too.

The people that live in this messy house make me look like a neat freak! The man that made the video blames his wife for the mess. I’m sorry but give me a freaking break, how in the heck can he blame her alone? If your entire house is so bad that you have trails going through it and you are unable to open the front door or go to the kitchen sink then maybe, just maybe YOU may be part of the problem. Why couldn’t he bend over and pick up something? I don’t believe for a second that this happened overnight or that it’s all his wifes fault. Yes she has a spending problem and hording issues but it also seems like he has the same problems. Notice how in every room he has his stuff and he either can’t get to it or it’s broken and he claims that he can’t get a repairman out to fix it because the repairman wouldn’t be able to get to the thing needing to be repaired. Why couldn’t this man at least clean his way to his own stuff?

I’ve never seen a house this disgusting. I’ve never even seen a house half this disgusting.

Something tells me that even though he’s going to file for divorce that his new house will most likely be just as bad. I wonder who he’ll blame then?

Also, I can’t help but wonder exactly how much money a month they were spending on all this stuff. I also wonder what their financial picture looks like.

Last night I had this horrible dream. In my dream, a bunch of teenage kids - about 100 or so were at my house and my neighbor’s house - they were looking for a party. These kids distracted me and took all my credit cards, Visa check card and ransacked my house taking all valuables with them.

I’m not really sure what to make of the dream. I do remember waking up in a panic because I didn’t even know how to go about closing out those accounts. I didn’t have any phone numbers or account numbers.

What did I learn from that dream? I now know that I should have a list of all my credit cards with the contact and credit card numbers written down and stored safely in my safe. Hopefully this dream was some sort of “wake up call” to me.