Great Financial Decisions in DelMoniq History #2 - Moving to a Safer Neighborhood

This minorly ties in with Decision #1, but not obviously and not directly.

Picture it... crappy neighborhood Fall 2008. (Gold Girls reference, sorry, my gay is showing)....

Anyway, when I moved cross-country in 2005, I knew that I wasnt moving into the greatest of cities or the greatest of neighborhoods in said city. But it was good enough, the place was nice and affordable, and I could take public trans (or walk) to work.

Over my first three years here, I saw the neighborhood slowly decline. The people on my street (more importantly my building and neighbors owned by the same people) were moving away, and apartments were vacant for a long time. The people moving in were not of the same caliber as before. People around my age and situation (grad/med school types) were moving out and poorer families with many children were moving in.

Graffiti appeared on the back of our house. Cars in the back lot were broken into. The landlords put up a fence (it helped some, but was kinda retarded as it didnt actually enclose anything). A car was parked across the street for over a week with no one attending it, and eventually, all the windows were busted out of it. Turns out the car was stolen and abandoned on our street.

One night last October, I was playing video games and chilling out at home, and I heard shouting outside. I looked out the window, and saw a car parked in the middle of the street and two guys shouting at each other. I sat back down and played more games. And then, I heard it. Five or six very loud gunshots right outside my house. I looked out the window and saw one of the guys running off down the street.

I grabbed my phone and called 911. Moments later, police and fire trucks were there. I never really learned what happened that night. No one was killed on my street. But the seed had been placed... it was time to move. The police action took hours. People were yelling, police investigated. I heard one woman shout: Oh my god! Thats my sisters car! What the fuck? What happened?.

The next morning, I told my carpool what happened, and one of my friends responded, with oh just last week so and so told me that someone was shot and killed outside her house. That was a block away at the other end of my street!

That morning, I was on the phone with my landlord trying to get out of my lease. They understood. I had just signed a new lease two weeks earlier, so they were sad, but they did let me out of the lease. I promised to be out by December 1.

What followed was a month of hunting for apartments. That was so NOT easy. Maybe my standards are too high? Maybe this city is not that good in general? Eventually, I found a place that I liked; however, I (again) missed warning signs.

I was so focus on getting out of the ghetto and into a decent place, that I missed a few things. Anyway, I did see the apartment, but it was after dark and most of the lights in the place were burned out. As devils advocate, there are no ceiling lights in most of the apartment. But still, I should have insisted on revisiting in the daytime. But I liked the location and the layout, and they would take my cats. So I said I would apply. The rent was a bit more than I wanted to pay, and I did try to get him to come down on the deposit. But he said he wouldnt if I had the cats. UGH.

Anyway, what followed was a month of drama. Where I had rented apartments before (in a different state), there are very strict laws in place that landlords and tenants MUST follow. And everything is very well standardized and thought out. NOT HERE. First off, what I didnt realize at the time, was that I was dealing with a rental company and NOT the landlord. Their only goal is to rent the property for the landlord, collect their commission, and wash their hands of the whole thing. So, when I saw the apartment, I said it was dirty and needed to be cleaned. The rental agent told me that the landlord would have the place cleaned and painted in time for move in. And I agreed.

I had a meeting to sign the lease, but they didnt have the keys. So, I paid money and had NOTHING to show for it. The next day, I got the keys. But it was not ALL of the keys. I was missing a mailbox key and the key to balcony door (which is double keyed, so until I had a key it could not be LOCKED). After several run arounds with the rental people, I finally go in touch with the landlord. And he insisted that the rental people had all the keys. After assuring him that they did not have all the keys, I had to meet with him at his office (an OB/GYN office, very uncomfortable) during the work day to compare my keys with his keys. Turns out he had some keys that he didnt know what they were, and they were my missing keys.

Anyway, I drive up to check on the place during the day (weeks after I was told the place would be cleaned), and it wasnt. Nothing had been done. I talked with the landlord, and he said If I knew it had to be cleaned, I would have charged more for the deposit. What the fuck!?! That charge should have been made against the pigs that moved out of here.

Anyway, I told him that it didnt matter, because I had already rented a truck to move the next day. So on moving day, I rented a carpet shampooer and my friend (the compulsive cleaner) shampooed and vacuumed and scrubbed while us boys moved boxes from the truck.

So, the financial part come in here. At the same time that Im looking for a new place to live, I get my October 2008 paycheck, and I find that it is $1000 LESS than it had been before. Turns out, on my 3rd anniversary, I got reclassified in the system and now taxes are being deducted when they were not before. Well, shit. I needed that money to move! So, I had to beg money from the parents (I hate doing that), and I was able to refinance the CitiLoan and get an additional $900.

So, to recap. Moving is hard enough as it is without the landlord/rental agent being assholes. Moving is expensive enough even when your job doesnt suddenly stop 1/3 of your pay. And now, all the progress of paying $200+/month to the loan from the therapy has been washed away and theres even more debt. And I had to get money from the parents, which I had not needed to do in years.

The upside, no one is getting shot on my street, and I dont feel unsafe walking to my car after dark at home. And there is a washer and dryer in my apartment. The downside, I now have still more debt and more guilt than before. My rent is $175/month more than before and I make $1000 less/month. Plus, utilities here are more expensive, and now I have to drive to work.

I guess, in the long run, for my piece of mind the safety is most important. But I now have ZERO extra money ever. I am back to where I was financially in 2004, which was pretty shitty. I dont have mountains of credit card debt, but there is that damn CitiLoan still out there. And I have no real money in my savings accounts. I had been hoping that by 2010 things would be less bleak, but it does not appear to be turning out that way.

I am kinda very annoyed with my apartment. All the little things are now glaring blemishes. I hate my downstairs neighbors. I dont like the driving to work. And now I am 100% stuck. There is no way to get more money from the parents (especially after they helped with the vet costs in June). And I doubt that I would be able to get more money out of the CitiLoan. So, I just need to tough it out here until I get my real job in the mythological future.

And there is the added horribleness of having my friends not completely understand the situation. I used to travel 3 or 4 times each year to visit friends or family. Now, I absolutely can not do that. There is no money. I havent been on a trip for almost a year. And there are things that I would love to do. But I am living in a situation of my own creating, and I need to deal with that.

It just sucks you know. On paper, moving was a BAD decision, but is the safety issue and piece of mind (however how small) worth the added financial stress? I dont know. Probably. I really dont think that I could handle that neighborhood now. But it just sucks that I had to ruin my finances to get out of there and that I am not 100% satisfied with my apartment.

Overall, I declare this situation NEUTRAL.

OMG! Its been a long time.

I realized over the course of the last week that I have not posted anything in a while. This afternoon when I got home from work, I actually looked at my blog, and I have not posted in 14 days! Holy crap! Where the frak did the time go? No one out there is more angry with me (with perhaps the exception of SS4BC) than I am. The whole point of having a blog is to write in it. Anyway, I had a thought over the weekend about a post (or series of posts) that I wanted to write. Today seems like as good a time as any to get started on that.

This is what Id like to call Great Financial Decisions in DelMoniq History. And of course, the word great is here meant to simply mean big or important and NOT necessarily GOOD. There have been many more bad decisions in my life than good ones.

So without further ado, lets start off with the decision that started this idea for posts, and hopefully, over the next few days, I can hammer out a few more blog posts to go along with this theme.

I. Going into Therapy

This must be a good decision, since therapy is there to help you and not to hurt you. Oh god, I wish that were the case.

January 2006, I was in such a funk. I had been in funks before off and on over the years, but this was a doozy. I wasnt sleeping well, and I was exhausted all the time. Most days, I would go to work and sit at my desk staring off into space not really doing anything and not really thinking of anything (other than what a mess my life was at the time). Frankly, I was miserable pretty much all the time that I was awake. I drank WAY too much, and I smoked a ton. And I was simply drifting through my life existing and not really living.

Eventually, one of my friends (who by the way is no longer one of my friends, but for completely other reasons; he was definitely one of the great friends of my life, and I am really sad that I only knew him for a year or so)... anyway... this friend told me that I really needed to seek help -- either that or go out and fix myself on my own, either way something needed to be done. I fretted for a long time, and once the sad realization that if left to my own devices things would not change, I decided to seek out a psychiatrist.

The seeking out on its own was probably the hardest thing that I have ever done in my entire life. In total, I saw three different doctors. The first one was simply for the insurance purposes, and he suggested a list of other doctors that I could see. The second doctor that I saw told me (mind you this is after waiting over two weeks for an appointment) that I was going to be too much work for him and he did not have the time to devote to me. So, he recommended me to another doctor. After another week or so of waiting, I saw him. He said that the 2nd doctor was basically an asshole; why have me come for an appointment, if he wasnt going to take me? At least he didnt charge me for anything.

At this point (being a finance blog and all), I should point out that I have paid a grand total of $0 over the month of searching for a doctor. Which, by the way, is probably the most humiliating experience that I have had. The initial visit to a psychiatrist is absolute hell. Anyway, the 3rd doctor that I saw seemed like an okay guy, and there was no way in hell that I was going to try for a 4th.

So, we settled in for a regular weekly appointment, and he prescribed some meds. And for the first few months, things were okay; and I might even say that things were getting better. At least, my friends told me that they thought that I was getting better, even though I didnt feel any better.

The downfall of this therapist was one major thing (aside from the fact that I didnt think that I was getting any better), money. Each 50 minute session cost me $175. The meds I was on were too new for a generic version and that cost about $300/month. And in the beginning, he was nice about it. I collected the bills he sent me, and submitted them to the insurance for reimbursment (even though I had not paid anything) and they gave me $60/visit back and about 80% of the prescription charges. And when I had enough money saved up, I would bring a check with me to my appointment.

Towards the end of my time with this doctor, things were horrible. I wasnt feeling like I was getting better (it had been over a year), and he was irritable, because he wasnt getting paid as often as he would have liked. So it was a stalemate; he would not reduce his charges, and I couldnt scrape together more money to pay. And at the end of the year (maybe 9 months even), the insurance stopped reimbursing me, because I went over the max number of visits per year. So, I was screwed.

Eventually, he told me that if I could get together a lump payment of at least $7000 that he would forgive the rest of my bill (which at this point 18 months in was over $10,000). That was the last I saw of him. I started looking in to ways I could get $7000. And thus, the CitiFinancial personal loan was born. I was approved for $7500. They cut a check for $7000 directly to the doctor, which I mailed to him the next day, and I kept $500 for myself.

I never heard from the doctor again. There was no thank you for paying. There was no are you okay, you missed your last appointment. Nothing. And thats when I knew for sure that I had FINALLY made the right decision of dropping out of therapy. He was a shitty doctor.

So, now (nearly 2 years later), I dont feel much worse off than I did when I quit therapy; I dont feel better, but Ill settle for not worse. And I have $7500 in debt, after a long struggle to get my head above water, I was drowning again.

That, my friends, is Great Financial Decision #1. BAD CHOICE. What did I learn? Well, I used to tell myself that the lesson was that therapy sucks and does not help you at all. But after writing all of this out there, I think that the real lesson is to put in the effort to find a good doctor; do the research and you should be able to find someone that can help you AND work in your budget. The other side of the coin, is being able to say no. Had I thought about it when I started, I would have realized that $175/week was unmanageable, and I would have negotiated when I started, had him recommend someone cheaper, or just not started therapy. But now, I think that this experience has soured me entirely on therapy in general, and now I am just self-learning how to deal with my disorder or whatever you want to call it.

An interesting find...

So, I'm bored tonight and scrolling through my livejournal (which rarely gets updated these days), and I came across a post that I thought I'd share here...

Oct. 13, 2008 So, according to my Quicken, over the past three years and 13 days (Oct. 1, 2005 to Oct. 13, 2008), I have increased my net worth by $12,603.53!! This is counting my student loan and whatever is in any savings accounts, so it's not like have that much cash just lying around. But it does mean that in general, my debt has decreased since I've been in Connectihell. And really, that stayed rather constant until August 2007 when my net worth increased by $11,806.52. That seems insane to me. But it's been my strategy of paying debt and not getting new debt. The only exception has been the fact that I had to take out a $7500 personal loan to pay off my shitty-ass therapist last year. So, yeah, I still have a negative net worth (~2/3 of which is student loan), but it's ticking up. It'll be nice once these last two credit cards are gone completely. I love bringing account balances to zero. =)

Interesting. Rereading it now, I'm curious to look up these numbers and delve deeper into this, but the Quicken is on the other computer and I'm all comfy here in bed.

Some Goals for 2009

If you noticed over the past hour or so, I've been updating the Strudel Trackers with some actual numbers and goals. For 2009 the goals are all about debt of some form or another.

I have four sources of debt right now. Credit Card, Student Loan, CitiLoan, and my 2008 Taxes.

Basically, the student loan is inconsequential in the long run. It's a huge loan (more on this in the coming days), and my monthly payment is only $105.66. As long as I pay it each month... no problem.

Credit Cards: A topic to be discussed in more detail in future "History of My World" posts, since it is a prevailing theme in the horrors of my financial past. Currently, I'm down to only two credit cards only one of which I can actually use. The Mastercard is closed and being automatically paid every month. The CitiCard used to be that way until a while ago when my "good payment history" allowed them to open it again. As of January 2008 statements I owed a total of $10,394.74. WAY down from past highs (again, more later), but still high. Upon looking at what I typically pay each month, I've set the goal to pay a total of just under $4,400 in 2009 to get the total debt down to $6,000. After paying the June bills, my total balance is now $9,694.69. So, I've paid $700.05 so far in 2009, and for the first time in a long time, my total balance is down to four digits! Go me!

The CitiLoan: The reason behind this loan is ridiculous and worth of more discussion in future posts, but the short version is at the end of 2007, I took out a $7,500 personal loan from Citibank. At the end of 2008, I restructured the loan to get roughly another $1000 from Citibank. I can't find a current statement, so I don't know what the total balance is right now. But this loan seriously damaged my finances. So, a goal for 2009 is to pay this down. I hate that I had to take out this loan, but there were no other options at the time. My minimum monthly payment is $217.19, so the goal for 2009 is to keep that up and pay off roughly $2,700 of this loan. Since I've paid for six months, I'm half way there.

My 2008 Taxes: This is another horrible situation that I've found myself in. Okay that's putting myself in a passive position, which isn't the case. We'll talk a lot about the taxes and the horrors of being blessed with an NIH fellowship. But for now, just accept that I owe roughly $5,000 in taxes to both Federal and the state of Connecticut. The goal for 2009 is to pay my taxes, which for the most part is going to involve frugality and throwing every spare dollar and penny I get into my savings account in hopes of getting it all taken care of by the December 31 deadline. In the grand scheme of tax evasion, I'm small potatoes, but the idea of prison does not sound good to me at all. Basically, my savings account is what I paid into it on Sunday, so there's a long way to go on this one. The goal for 2009 is to get $6,000 to pay the taxes and start rebuilding the savings account for what it's actually for--saving money.

There's one more goal. It's not entirely financial, but it does involve money. I need to quit smoking (again). Another thread throughout my history, and there definitely will be more on this later. But smoking is gross, addictive, expensive, and can kill me, so it's got to go. I'm going to start this month, so I'm hoping to get this kicked over the summer. Part of this blog will be about that as well.

So, there you have it. My 2009 goals: pay down debt, quit smoking, and don't go to prison.