Reflections, Bastard People, and the Year to Come…

It’s that time of year again – the time where you look back on the year that has passed, look forward to the one ahead, and think about where you’d like to land at the end of it.

Special K and I have had a good year – a busy year, but a good year. We’ve been lucky enough to spend lots of time with family and friends, to leave the metro area a few times (okay – I left more than a few times, but work travel doesn’t really count, especially since the trips were of such short duration), and have enjoyed every minute of it. We really are so incredibly lucky, both as individuals and as a couple, to be surrounded by the people in our lives.
I’m starting 2009 with both a different name and a different job than the ones with which I started 2008 – that’s a mind-boggling change right there. Work has become very, very busy for me, which is good in that they must like my work, and trust my judgment and abilities, but it’s bad in that all the things that you think would come along with 60+ hour weeks are coming along when I have those weeks. It’s got more to do with the particular project on which I’m working than anything else, and my efforts aren’t going unnoticed (unlike at my last place of employment), but the toll on my health and relationships is much the same. I feel exhausted most of the time, and my inability to stay awake on the occasions where I get to actually sit still has become a running joke.

I’m hoping that it will slow down, because it has forced me to cancel plans on occasion, working through the occasional weekend, and I often resent the heck out of it. I’m also less efficient since I’m tired, so that’s not helping things, either. C’est la vie, I suppose. I have a feeling it will pay off in one respect, but I still need to work harder on a better balance. As always, it seems.

Our main goals for 2009 are health-related and financially-related. We both want to be healthier, which means dropping some weight. Which means better eating and more exercising. It also likely means less eating out (which will actually coincide well with our second major goal). We both know what we need to do, and have both been healthier than we are now in life, so it’s not that we’re flying blind. It’s that our priorities and our reality don’t always line up. But my back does feel better, and I know I need to budget for new running shoes soon. Things are moving in a positive direction.

We’re still dealing with debt, although we’ve gotten over one major hurdle so far after a lot of hard work and persistence, and will continue to pay it off as fast as we can. In light of this, we’re making hard choices, like possibly giving up things we want to do because our list of things we have to do is longer and takes precedence. We’re saving up for a down payment on a new car since both of ours are living on borrowed time, and we’re already facing a summer sans air conditioning in either car. Doesn’t seem like a big deal when it’s 30 degrees outside, but it will start to suck as the temperatures head higher. But at the same time, as a wise friend put it, saying “we’re going to go through a phase where things suck now so that they will be good in 5 years” will drive you crazy long before you reach that fifth year. So this, too, is about balance. Always balance.

But here’s a funny. We just managed to pay off our worst credit card, a Chase Mastercard, this past month. It was a long, long road. Right before Special K and I got married, he got nailed with a big tax bill. Big. As in “oh, holy crap, how on earth are we going to pay this?” big. So, I used a low-APR balance transfer check to transfer the balance to my Chase card, which had an existing balance at the time. Now, a common condition of these arrangements is that all of your monthly payments go to the transferred balance until it is paid in full. Okay.

They then jacked up the APR on my existing balance to 29.99%. So it got to just sit there and accrue this obscene level of interest, while we tried to pay off the transferred balance.

I called and complained. They refused to lower the APR, said that my APR has been increased, essentially, because I used my card. They did say, however, that if I was a really good girl, and made all my payments on time for a year, they would lower it by one point. I had never missed a payment in 9 years. I had never even been late with a payment in 9 years.

They are bastard people.

So we worked really hard, used all available “extra” money toward debt (hello, stimulus check…goodbye stimulus check…hello, insurance settlement…goodbye insurance settlement), and managed to get that stupid balance transfer paid off.

In one year, the existing balance had accrued more than $3,000 in interest.

I got a letter from Chase saying that they noticed I’d made large payments to my card, and they hoped they weren’t losing me as a customer. They included some balance transfer checks for my convenience. I laughed. A lot.

We continued to put every “extra” cent toward it, and the card is now paid off. When I called them to change my name (although I don’t use the card, have no plans to use the card, I still thought I should update my information with them), the nice lady from customer service noted, with great concern, that I had accrued a lot of finance charges over the last year. She then began to tell me about a service they offer, for a modest fee, that would allow me to waive my minimums in the event of a job loss, health emergency, etc. She was just so earnest.

So I cut her off as politely as possible, since my blood had started to boil. I crisply informed her that I had actually done a balance transfer in March, 2007, and that they had raised my APR to 30% since I'd had the unmitigated gall to use my card, and refused to lower it. I hadn’t lost my job, I hadn’t had a health emergency, and had, actually, in no way been irresponsible or casual about my payment obligations. So while I appreciated her time, I found it highly entertaining that they were now trying to sell me a product to help me fix a problem that they had created for me.

She transferred me to someone to talk about lowering my APR. Who lowered it to 17.99%. Oh, they have a good sense of humor over there.

So we are continuing to work at our goals, with that major hurdle out of the way I believe that things will move faster, but it will still necessitate some un-fun choices because while we’re closer to our goal, we’re not there yet. This is hard and it’s taking a long time, but we’re grownups and we have to act like it – which means that we have to work for what we want.

I don’t know what’s ahead, but it’s probably more fun that way. The last few years have certainly brought surprises that I couldn’t have foreseen. Special K and I have been talking more about what we want our future to look like, and not just in those “someday” terms, which is interesting and a little scary. But they say that if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans. We’ll see.

Happy New Year to all!