And it’s all ready to go, but I have a few problems:

1. I’m no professional. I can research and gather and write about RRSP’s, or debt reduction but I’m no expert and I want to be sure that you, dear reader understand this. You mileage may vary, etc. If you are in debt, and reading this, please call a professional for advice for your particular situation. I’m writing and doing what works for me.
You might be able go completely cold turkey and give up starbucks. Me, not so much. Debt is personal, and everybody’s situation is different.

2. It’s like WORK! And, OMG researching it is oh so boring. If it were stereo’s, or photography, or some other topic that would be fun…maybe. I can ramble on here and bang out 1000 words in no time flat. But when I have to write something that actually requires research and effort and not just what comes off the top of my head or I have knowledge about without thinking, then I get frustrated. I’ve only got half a paragraph written, but it’s taken me an hours. I guess the upside of the work would be that I’d be actually producing content with some value rather than fluff like this.

Today’s fun item:
As I write this, I am rank number one for the search term I’m woth stupid. I’ve written about it so much I rank number one out of 48 million results. Of all the terms in the world I want to be an expert on, I’m thinking I could chose better than stupid.

Just a short one today, as there’s really not much news on my debt journey for today and I’m in no place to start giving out real advice yet.

Related posts:

1. Big Plans and Small Results.
2. Another Day, Another Two Dollars.
3. How To Declare Bankruptcy

What does this have to do with me and debt you ask? Well, just because you’re in debt doesn’t mean that life has to stop. You’re still allowed to go out there, have fun and make mistakes along the way. In short – it’s OK to screw up.

That’s why they have bankruptcy laws in place. So you can screw up your finances and after you’ve done your best that you can do, your govermnent says that it’s OK, you screwed up and you learned some lessons. Go out and shoot again. Sure, your creditors might get hosed, and for some it’s life and death, but for the bigger creditors they’ve already factored in that a percentage of you are going to screw up and not pay.

At one time in your adult life, your finances are going to be fuzzy – just like this photo. Bet on it.
But it doesn’t mean that that’s the last frame you get to shoot. It’s just one in the movie called life (oh boy, I’m really stretching here). But really: if you can ignore my cheesy cliches it’s true – there’s always tomorrow to do better.

Perfect really is the enemy some days. I wanted this to be sharp (it’s supposed to be of taxi cabs along the sidewalk) but instead I got a tone of blues and golds that looks better than dirty cabs on the sidewalk could ever have been.

Take this blog for instance it is FAR, FAR from perfect. FAR, FAR from becoming a source of income, but I’m learning and save for a few short relapses I’m making a new post every day. Some posts I’ve made on this blog are like the photo above – fuzzy at best. But I’m out there every day. I’m fighting the good fight.

But I’m taking shots. At parked cabs and the debt reduction. It’s when you give up completely is when the debt wins, and that’s not happening. It’s a long slog, but it’ll be worth it. My photos might be out of focus, but my debt reduction is going to happen. Wait and See.

Related posts:

1. How To Save Money and Get Out Of Debt

Rent: $1400 monthy, all in. One monthly payment takes care of it all and includes all but phone, which I use sparingly anyway.

Groceries501.12 I’m not shopping from a list yet, but should – and I suppose I could tighten here even more..but I’ve pretty much killed all other expenses. I guestimated about $500 for groceries in a month before, and it looks like I’m spot on. I don’t know that I couls shrink this much. Heck, I have pasta/sauce a whole lot. And with winter the fruit/veggies are pricey. Top it off that my local grocery store is a minature version aimed at the yuppies so I’m sure I’m paying for it. If I had plain rice every night and drank water only I’m sure I could get the groceries down $100/month. But is it worth it? I don’t drink, don’t smoke… at very least I’d like t eat well. We’ll see how I do for January.

Starbucks I’m surprised. The total was only 93.46, and that includes buying myself my own christmas present, as a joke which was about$15. $80/month for lattes is only $20/week. If you know me, you know this is really good for me. Considering, there’s a starbucks down the street, and I’m me, and. Yay for me. I think I’ll buy a $75 gift card for this month and see if I can live on that. Then, maybe next month: $50.

Transportation. $118.30. My friends and family all live a short train ride away, and this is all train fare. Considering that this number is less than what insurance would be, if I had a car, this number is just fine. It could be higher in fact. It means I’m seeing more of my friends and family, which you can’t put a price on. Oh I’ve got insurance costs of $75/monthly for my motorbike and apartment contents combined. Most is the bike (apartment insurance is like $20 monthly or so)

Bank Fees $38.50. I have to investigate this. I’ve been paying silly bank fees for long enough. I need to contact my bank and remind them that I’ve been a client for 20+ years, and they need to do something about it.

Entertainment I have no life.. all my entertainment costs are ‘jim’s too lazy to cook for one, and I can get a pizza or walk up the street and find something cheaper than I can groceries’. $69.79, for about five meals at $10-15 each. Not too worried about this. In fact, it could be a lot higher and I’d still be OK with this.

Misc Items
I bought a card reader for my camera: $24.95, and a cable at best buy for a hard drive for $55 and that’s it. I did spend some money on postage to ship all my ebay sales but I’ve been paid for the postage so it’s probably a wash, or close enough so I won’t bother listing it. I might have been down a bit this month, as I offered free shipping on a few items and the shipping costs were more than expected…but I was still up, and most important: I got rid of some crap

I managed to pay Royal Bank VISA $650 in December, and Mastercard got a whopping ten grand thrown at it as well this month, plus an additional $500 due to my ebay sales. I’ve just yanked out $600 from my paypal account and as soon as it shows up in my bank account, I’ll toss it in the BMO mastercard too, and even add a few hundred too. This should bring my BMO mastercard down to about a balance of $6000, or close. MY RBC VISA is still at a silly $21,000 balance but we’re working on Mr. Mastercard for the time being as it has the highest interest rate.

So there we are. I really can’t see spending much less. Sure, I could knock out my starbucks habit, but then there’s a point where you’re too frugal for the sake of frugal. Some days that latte keeps me sane. The real money is the make more money option: either with a j-j-job, or through my efforts online here, and elsewhere.

It’s a great start to a new year: I can see the end of the Mastercard debt at very least by the end of the year if not sooner. Then we can work on RBC VISA next.

Here’s hoping.

Related posts:

1. Happy Groundhog Day
2. How to Save Money On Groceries
3. Plugging the Money Leak

I have some consumer debt. About $38,000 $28,000 to date. and here I am. Go ahead – Google Me, I’ll wait.

Here’s a photo of me too:

Are you back? Good. As I start for the first time in a long time to manage my expenses and income and make a concious and concerted effort to get out of debt I am immersing myself in reading other personal finance sites and blogs I have noticed a trend: Some, not all, but lots of bloggers hide behind online personas when blogging about their personal finances, and I have to ask: Why?

Lots of bloggers are real people who had real financial issues who started blogging about their finances and ways to get out of debt using their real names and identities. J.D at Get Rich Slowly, or Trent at The Simple Dollar are two sites I’ve been reading that don’t hide behind made up pen names and are real people, who had real problems and started to write about those issues and how to troubleshoot them.

But other bloggers often hide behind pen names and I wonder what the reasoning is behind it? Is it because you don’t want your boss to know? Is it because they think people will think less of them? Is it they don’t wan their partners to know how bad it really is? Hiding just doesn’t just make sense to me. Is it so bad that if the banks or credit card companies got wind they’d call your debt and then you’d really be screwed?

Share Your Shame

I am in debt. I am Jim Fitzsimmons. That’s who I am today. Tomorrow, the plan is to be better with my consumer spending and I’m on day 26 towards that goal. I have 974 days to go, and I’m OK with that. The time’s going to pass anyway so I might as well do all that I can in my powers to work towards bettering myself financially. I’ve had lots less worthy and more expensive pursuits over the years. This one is a bargain in many ways.

If it’s because you don’t want your boss to know? Do you really want to work for somebody that would somehow penalize your career because of your current financial situation? I know I wouldn’t. The deal with working for the man is quite simple: You do the work that creates value for your boss, and they pay you. Your boss wants you to be profitable, so in turn they can be even more profitable.The company you work for doesn’t care about your debt load. They might worry about their debt load but that’s not your problem

I’m really curious. What’s the reason for hiding? Privacy? If you’ve signed up for pretty much anything online, your privacy is pretty much toast anyway, so what’t to lose? I know that identity theft is real and this is the only real reason I can think of that you might not want to write about your debt as an individual. But I’m going to assume you’re not going to write your credit card number on your site, but just the company you owe, and the balance. I’m going to assume common sense.

I’ve found that sharing the shame of debt has actually be quite profitable. If my friend and family didn’t know and assumed everything was just hunky dory I wouldn’t have been able to knock down my debt by $10,000 earlier this week. I shared my shame, not expecting a thing, other than perhaps some understanding. We’ve all made mistakes. Mine just happened to be paying for extras with ‘extra money’ that never ending showing up.

I’ve also found that writing about my debt and sharing it with you, dear internet, has been rewarding in ways I never knew existed. I found a love of writing. I’m having fun doing this, and it’s profitable. To date the financial rewards from writing on this site have been negligible to the point of not even mentioning. But the emotional, and creative rewards have been absolutely wonderful. And, the best part: It’s cheap! It cost me $9 for the domain name, and that’s it! The rest is just keystroke after keystroke as I tell my story day by day.

I’m happy to share my shame, name, and outstanding balances. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Sacrifice of the Day

I know what you’re thinking: Yay! more cables!. At least that’s I was thinking, when I bought all these. Now I realize how silly it was. Maybe not to purchase them, but to purchase them on credit. I thought my future self would pay for these. What I didn’t think was that my future self would be taking what you can get for every item bought but I’m a man with a plan, and this is today’s step towards that goal.

Today I’ve got a pair of THX approved (which for the most part, is nothing more than marketing in my opinion). Regardless they’re a sturdy cable with firm connectors that will transmit the audio signal and that’s what you want these to do.

Updates
I have been paid for all three watches I had auctioned off and I will ship these first thing tomorrow. All total it comes to about $75 which is better than a kick in the pants as they were just sitting in my closet. I also have a fellow coming to pick up a pair of the monster cables I had for sale and that’s another $40 and he plans on paying cash. The challenge will be to deposit the $40 and not just sqander it at starbucks, which is so easy to do still.

I’ve earned over $100 in income from clearing out my stuff this weekend. I’m up to $813.00 of stuff sold on eBay to date, since my first ebay auction a little over 3 weeks ago. If I can keep up these averages, at $1000/month my debt will be taken care of in no time. Here’s hoping.

Related posts:

1. Ten Steps to Eliminate Credit Card Debt
2. Getting out of Credit Card Debt Is Hard
3. Credit Card Relief