In which I do it all over. Again.
When I was 18, some ignorant asshat gave me a credit card with a $500 credit limit. (Or maybe it was $250. I can’t remember anymore. It wasn’t very much, but it was more than I could pay off at the time.) Twelve years later, I paid upwards of three grand to get that little account settled up, and at the same time cleared up the rest of my abysmal credit. I spent hours feeling awful, making embarrassing calls, feeling incredibly angry about the insane usury, and wishing desperately that all those asshats hadn’t given me credit at such a young age.
I paid off old bills that had bloated to incomprehensibility, paid off trivially small old debts, and even refinanced all of my student loans. A lot of work… just to get a small personal loan so that The Ex and I could make our down payment for the farm. Let us say that my credit was in fairly good shape when I bought acreage in Batavia and got married. Time passed…
The Ex didn’t work much during the last couple years of our marriage; from what I could tell it was half slow economy and half disinterest. Since I only worked part-time myself–he wanted a housewife, remember–our income was extraordinarily limited for a significantly long amount of time. (And then there was the whole let’s-go-sell-roofs-in-Indianapolis fiasco, but that’s only worth mentioning in the sense that we really didn’t pay our bills properly for an entire quarter. I didn’t borrow money for that endeavor, he did, so he gets to pay that shit off.)
The Ex had never been much involved with the bill paying during our years together, and really didn’t understand that we’d barely made our bills when we were both working full time nor that some bills weren’t being paid at all while he took his little sabbatical. I saw no point in nagging him about it; either there’s money or there isn’t: bitching doesn’t help.
Our mortgage, the property insurance, and the cell phone bills got paid. Other bills were paid sporadically or not at all. (The Ex paid for his big shiny late model truck and its insurance, of course, because that was important – it was in his name.) Everything else had to wait because we just didn’t have the money. Time passed…
By the time I left The Ex, I had three credit cards in collections, student loans nearly in default, a $1500 judgment against me, two cell phone contracts in collections, and a checking account with a lien against it. (I still can’t open a checking account because of that, actually.)
I was homeless, heartbroken, and had been laid off. I couldn’t even cash a fucking check by myself. So I ignored the whole debt situation and drank vodka for a year. Time passed…
When I landed on the left coast, I sought the assistance of one of those debt assistance programs. I’ve been dumping hundreds of dollars into the assistance program each month, and dutifully paying four different companies for my surgery (I almost have my surgery paid off, w00t!) and feeling pretty responsible. Time passed…
Then The Ex contacts me last week. We play phone tag for awhile, and then finally manage to speak one morning. He’s working somewhere outside of Iowa, and has a friend crashing at his farm house. (I say “his” farm house because I signed a quit-claim deed. I don’t want the damn property, and I couldn’t afford the property taxes on it anyway.) The friend says a deputy’s been trying to serve me papers out there for a couple of weeks.
Fuck. Fuckity-fuck-FUCK.
Yesterday I got my credit reports and printed them out and poured over them to find out who the hell could possibly be serving me papers. I was freaked that things were going to look really, really terrible.
The paper-servers are probably the fucktard monsters Capital One sold my accounts to, the ones who broke my checking account a couple years ago. (They’re aggressive and not overly concerned with being legal.) The debt in question is less than two grand, but doubtless they’ve already spent well over that in man hours alone, not to mention all the certified letters and visits from the sheriff. Ah, well – my debt reduction program people will deal with them.
The point is, I was expecting total insanity but in point of fact only have a few loose ends on my credit report: the things already in my program, The Ex’s satellite bill, The Ex’s cell phone bill (the one from Indy that he swore he’d take care of, no matter what), and some really old department store card I once used to buy Christmas presents with when we were broke.
I’ll pay off the old department store myself, and try to get The Ex to handle the other two. In less than two years, I should be free and clear again!
I just feel so responsible. You know, for a total fucktard.