It was your heart on the line

I am now the proud owner of a savings account. Woo!

Brief story- two of my friends have had a debate of sorts about North American Savings Bank (NASB). One insists that when she enters the bank the women who work there are cold, unfriendly, and hardly accomplish their job without giving her a dirty look. She then sees her boyfriend and his father walk in, and the women perk right up, conversing and damn near flirting. I was going to perform a social experiment and see if, when opening my savings account, the cute female employee would offer herself to me sexually. I decided against it because I already bank at UMB. You might note I didn't say UMB Bank like much of their signage- because UMB already has the word "bank" in it, thanks.

The woman who helped me open the account was a super nice lady named Linda who, as I learned, has grandkids at CHS who I didn't teach, but she still thought that was really neat.

I'm going to completely interrupt my own train of thought to point out, again, how much I hate the Education Connection commercial that airs on Adult Swim between Family Guys. I hate the song, it is arhythmical nonsense, and I can't stop watching the commercial for some stupid reason.

Moving on, Linda helped me set up the savings account. Now I have $100 saved! And I went to the Farmer's Market, Olive Garden, and Baskin Robbins on just $20. I had a good friend in town, and who am I to say no to her desire for delicious Italian(ish) food and ice cream. I'm also trying to eat better, you know, and I made better decisions at the eating locations than I normally do. Then I went for a walk outside tonight because it's nice.

Finally, thank you for your clickin' on those ads. The money it "estimates" I've made is something like 25938% more than I thought it would generate. So I'm assuming the "estimated" amount I've earned on there is wildly inaccurate. In any case, KEEP CLICKING! Keep visiting! Also, if you would, "follow" me on here. I guess it helps too! I love you guys :)

I was only gone for a couple of hours

The point of this blog is to chronicle my experience with bankruptcy and the aftermath thereof, so when I saw the "monetize" button above my last entry, I got an idea. I should totally make money on this! So that's why you see ads here now. You should click on them. I get money when you click on them. I don't know if it tracks how long you're on the website and if that compensates me differently. I don't know how it works at all, actually. I would probably just click a link and leave it open for several hours while you're doing other, more interesting things. Here is a short list of things you could be doing while you have a link from my blog open:

-Play Mario Kart Wii
-Watch a plant perform photosynthesis
-Visit The Tap Room in St. Joseph and not be served for nearly two hours while failing to inform them their Chiefs flag is upside down (and the Chiefs training camp will be here in about a month... hope they catch it!)
-Turn on the radio and change the lyrics to the song playing to being about how Vanessa Carlton is bisexual (this works especially well if the song playing is "A Thousand Miles" by Vanessa Carlton)
-Clean my apartment
-Visit Penn Street Square in St. Joseph and see the Nazi memorabilia case
-Be horrified by that case
-Go to The Gothic House and have lunch with me (So I drive by this place nearly every day, and I saw a commercial the other day and it looks fancy and delicious. Therefore, it will be closed in about a week. WE MUST GO NOW.)
-Read an important book
-Watch funny videos on The Onion
-Nap

I'm about to do that last option now. Thanks in advance for your support!

I can do a backbend- I will not call you back

I had the much worried about MEETING... OF... THE CREDIT-ORRRRSSSSSSS last Friday. I imagine that being said in the voice of James Earl Jones... or Darth Vader, whichever reference works best for you. The morning started by me waking up earlier than I wanted to, which has been the norm for the summer. My body is like, "Hey, I know you're done teaching summer school and all, but wouldn't it be awesome if you woke up every morning at a ridiculous hour even though you don't have to work?" I know, it sounds hilarious, but it actually really blows when you've stayed up until 2:00am watching the Behind the Music about Courtney Love. She's sort of a fascinating creature. I'm awed by her resilience and confused by her decision making process. That all being said, Live Through This and Celebrity Skin were two of my favorite albums in the 90s. Luckily for me, the night before the aforementioned M.O.T.C. was spent sleeping.

I woke up 30 minutes before my alarm and hopped in the shower. I had waited to shave until that morning so I'd give the judge/whoever the impression I was a clean cut professional even though, in reality, I dress with the minimum amount of professionalism to not get in trouble at my job. If I had my way (I'd eat peaches every day... no, not the recording artist. I'd never eat her) I'd wear shorts, a t-shirt, and flip flops every day to work. Anyway.

The photo on the left is the aftermath of my shaving recklessness. I cut my nose. I have never in my life cut my nose shaving, but, of course, the day I have to go to court to convince people I'm going to start being responsible, I cut the hell out of my nose. It hurt really bad, too. If anything, it woke me up. Then I proceeded to cut my neck more than I ever had shaving before. As evidenced by the following photo:



It's like my razor decided to make me look like a meth addict.












Anyway, I begged my father to come with me for moral support. He obliged, thankfully, and he gave me a ride to the aforementioned 1940s style intimidation building. Pictured here.

I sort of felt like I was on Mad Men or something. Although, to be honest, I've never seen Mad Men. I just know John Hamm went to Mizzou and that makes him great. And his great work on 30 Rock.

I figured out how to get upstairs- it's in the world's oldest elevator. When we got up to the second floor there was a large waiting area dotted with other people. I was relieved to see they weren't dressed up because I'd immediately assumed they were all there to yell at me about my poor spending habits. As it turns out, they had all also filed for bankruptcy. There were probably ten cases there with me. My lawyer showed up at the last possible second (or in plenty of time, whatever). It felt like I sat outside the courtroom forever, then inside the courtroom forever, before he showed up.

I was second on the list. The first thing the judge (I guess he was a judge) did was try to scare everyone about what would happen to us if we lied. You know, that jail thing. The first couple that went up, we discovered upon eavesdropping on their conversation, had just filed for bankruptcy four years previously. I thought that was illegal or not allowed or something. In any case, he talked to them for a long time and asked them some really hard questions they visibly struggled to answer. It was potent in scaring me.

He called me up and my attorney and I made the long walk up. There was a woman sitting at a nearby table on the other side of the partition who I assumed was there for me because I'm paranoid. She wasn't. This was almost exactly how the discussion with the judge went:

"Where are you employed?"
And I answered.
"What kind of car do you have?"
And I answered.
"*some comment about my lawyer not being specific on the form*"
I did not answer.
"You plan on keeping the car?
And I answered.
"You don't own real estate now, but had a home foreclosed upon in March?"
And I answered.
"Did you think it had any equity?"
And I answered.
"All right, then, I abandon all interest in this case and wish you good luck."
And I sat for a few seconds longer than I should have, and my lawyer ushered me out of the court room.

That was it. It literally lasted about three minutes. No one was there to yell at me. No one questioned my love of Taco Bell's Crunch Wrap Supreme. It was a tremendous relief.

And now, in two months, I will get a discharge notice, and I will be DONE WITH THIS WHOLE PROCESS! And, most notably, I'm done paying for it. So summer school ended, this bankruptcy thing is ending, and things are really looking up.

The battle to be less of a fatass isn't going as well, but that is a much larger and more intimidating process. It's a daily battle, and I've lost the last two days. There's always tomorrow. Unfortunately, I'm house sitting for my parents, and their food is good. Like there are pizza rolls filled with cocaine in the freezer. Not literally. They're just addicting. I'm making a really smart joke. Anyway, hooray for positive changes. Aww yeah!

You've Gotta Let Me In

I changed the layout around here, and now that background is hilariously topical. Look, it's money, and I write about money on here. It's really clever and works into your subconscious. I'm so funny.

Anyway, this Friday is the meeting of creditors I have to go to at the Federal Courthouse downtown, which is much scarier than the county courthouse (so much scarier that I felt the need to capitalize the words). It's at the building downtown that also houses our post office, and it looks like a building that should be in a bigger city. It's very 1940s stylistically, and it makes me wish I was going there for less terrifying reasons. I don't even know how to get upstairs; I've only been in the mail part downstairs. Maybe I can ride in one of those little tube-y things they send mail through. That'd be cool.

The meeting is at 8:00am, and I don't know much else about it. I'm going (and hopefully dragging my father along for moral support); that's about all I know. They're probably going to ask me a lot of questions like, "Why did you need to have six credit cards?" and "Why are there so many charges for Taco Bell on this credit card?" and I'm not going to have sufficient answers. It will likely be something like "I paid for school with some of them, but I also paid for living," and "I really like the Crunch Wrap Supreme." I have to pay my lawyer the final $300 at this meeting as well, and hopefully that will end the seemingly endless amount of money I have to pay to file bankruptcy which is a public declaration that I have no money. It's certainly a sacrifice I'm willing to make, though, for financial freedom. I'll be sure to update on the goings on at the meeting.

Required before this meeting, however, is a post-filling credit/financial counseling course I was able to complete online. It required a minimum of two hours with the material. There were eight chapters, some much shorter than others, and I was crazy paranoid that I wasn't going to come close to meeting that time requirement. I set the stopwatch on my phone to help me, but it turns out the website kept track for you. I kept thinking "I'M READING TOO FAST!" while going through it, but, to my surprise, it took me precisely 121 minutes to complete the course! Woo! The content was about 75% really helpful and good and 25% stuff I already knew. What's frustrating sometimes through this process is the fact that I know some of this already, I've just made stupid decisions. Certainly a learning process to use my knowledge better! One of the most enlightening things in the course was a fresh look at budgeting. For so long I didn't budget because every penny was going somewhere, and it was overwhelming to realize that there wasn't enough money to go everywhere. Now that I've done the course, I have an actual budget that allows me to put $100 in savings each month. Did you know that I don't even have a savings account? It's ridiculous and stupid to say, but I'm happily going to open an account with my next paycheck. $100 isn't much, but I hope it will add up.

The budgeting process I went through focuses on three different levels of goal setting- under $500, $500-$2000, and over $5000. My goals were fairly simple, some more specific than others, but they suggest keeping the goals on a card I would keep in front of my debit card as a friendly reminder to not spend money on stupid stuff. I'm going to try it!

Consumer Rapport

Now that financial stability is in my future, I'm beginning to consider replacing items that were stolen from me, broken, crappy to begin with, etc. Step one is replacing a digital camera. My dad subscribes to Consumer Reports, so I'm going to start there. When I bought my last digital camera almost four years ago, I was looking to step toward a semi-professional camera, and this caused the purchase of a nice but cumbersome camera. It was huge and bulky, making travel with it ridiculous. I am blessed to have not been mugged in New York wearing that monstrosity around my neck. It also was great at taking still shots, but if my Shaky McShakerson hands moved a half millimeter the photo was blurry. So this time I'm definitely looking for something more cost effective- the last one was nearly $400. I'm not hoping for anything super professional, just a solid camera that takes clear pictures that fits in my pocket and/or messenger bag easily that costs in the $200 or less range.

Step two is replacing a television. I had two televisions stolen last year, so I'm looking for something fairly nice. My current television is terrible, unclear, and sort of huge. I play my 360 on it from the loveseat, literally five feet from the screen, and the details cannot be deciphered. I'm looking for something in the 36" range I think- nothing ridiculous. I don't want a plasma screen, that's not needed, but something that is visible across the vast expanse of my one room apartment would be nice. I'm not nearly as sure about price here, but I'll have to save for awhile for this after my vacation this summer. It's clearly not bothering me enough to do something about it immediately, I'm just... considering the future I suppose.

Step three would have been a new laptop, but God smiled at me and my employer gave its teachers brand spanking new laptops to use, and it has been miraculous to use a nice computer at home. I only wish the internet at my building wasn't awful. The internet at school is fast, but it blocks facebook. I know my way around it, sure, but it's annoying nonetheless.

It's a beautiful day outside, and my friends and I are going to play foursquare and swing on some tire swings. Should be fun :)

It's Been Awhile

Okay, so I haven't updated in a month. My excuse: it was the end of the school year. That essentially translates into my complete exhaustion and schedule explosion. Some developments in my financial life include:

-There is now a date set for my "meeting of creditors." Essentially, it's a terrifying time where I have to talk to my creditors face to face and explain... God, I don't even know what I'm supposed to say. Ideally, I say nothing and my lawyer says everything. I have to complete post-bankruptcy filling credit counseling before this meeting, and it costs $75 or something. Then I have to pay $300 when I go to the meeting. Filing bankruptcy is an expensive thing. I always heard people talk about how divorce was expensive, and I never quite got it. I get it now.
-A beneficial development of the bankruptcy is actually having money now. Because I've been allowed to stop paying the things the bankruptcy is dealing with, I actually have money to pay my bills, buy groceries that aren't under one dollar, and have a little extra to pay for things like graduation gifts, writing retreats, Chiefs tickets, and road trips.
-I'm teaching summer school. It's extra money, and I'm going to use it to pay for my yearly vacation so I don't have to take any of my actual paycheck out to do that. I'm going to New York again, and I'm excited to hopefully avoid being blown up by a car bomb!

In other developments, I'm working on being less of an unhealthy blob who plays his 360 all day after summer school. It's been moderately successful. That being said, I've won a world series playing MLB 2k10.

Invention

I met with my attorney (praise be to God for getting corrected on that spelling. Really, I had been up at night openly weeping because I found out I spelled the word "attorney" wrong. Finally the tears can stop) on Tuesday, and the results were encouraging. He answered my questions, was calming and reassuring, and made the process feel much simpler than it might actually be. I was also required to complete credit counseling, something I will have to do again after I've filed. It was actually pretty painless, and the woman I talked with on the phone was very nice. I'm a little worried things are going too well with the whole thing and something is going to explode in my face. This in combination with end of the school year stress is bad for me. On the bright side, however, the collection phone calls are OVER! Hooooray!

I have also rewarded myself for pinching my pennies over the month of April. I don't own a DVD player, so I use my Xbox 360 as my primary DVD player. Last month the controller I had broke and died, so I'd been living without DVDs and my Netflix subscription for a month. I had money left over at the end of the month (I get paid tomorrow! Woo!), so I bought a replacement controller. A worthy investment, I think.

I've had really strange dreams for the past two nights. Two nights ago I dreamed I shot myself in the stomach. Like to kill or harm myself. I wandered into a strange building for awhile, then called my family for help. They said they'd help me by driving me to the hospital, but I'd have to wheel myself in. Then I was suddenly in a wheelchair. Once I wheeled myself through a labyrinthian hospital, I went to the desk to check in. The desk attendant was, why not, my 10th grade history teacher Charles Blakely. He would not let me check into the hospital. I then wheeled myself over to the waiting area and just sat, apparently waiting to die. The super weird part was, when I woke up, I had this horrible stomach ache. I'm not sure if I had the stomach ache in my sleep, and my brain conjured up this reason for it, or if I had that dream and, in the process, wretched my own stomach in pain. Either way... crazy.

Last night I dreamed I was teaching in my regular classroom, but the eastern wall of the classroom was gone, leaving it open to the hallway. My students (I'm assuming I was teaching a particular class period that is particularly... lovely...) would simply not settle down, and I was losing it at the front of the classroom. I was screaming, pulling out my hair, all that good stuff. When I finally got them settled down, a bunch of students came to the opening from the hallway and talked to them, and they got to going again. It was this intense feeling of hopelessness when I woke up. I pray that is not what happens in 7th hour today in the computer lab!

This line is metaphysical

Tomorrow is the big day! I'm meeting with my attourney tomorrow, paying him an obscene amount of money, and giving him my paperwork to file for bankruptcy. I feel a strange mix of excitement, fear, and anticipation. I just want to know how it's going to work and what's going to happen. I have to pay $50 for a credit counseling course as well, and after tomorrow I will have all of $1.51 in my checking account. Thankfully I have some cash on hand- I need gas in my car! I get paid Friday, and through some generosity from my sister, my friends, and some serious restraint on my part, I'm going to make it through this month.

I finished what I could of the paperwork tonight, but a few things aren't clear to me, and I am going to have to ask my attourney what to do. The paperwork is ridiculous, the amount of money you have to pay to file is ridiculous, but I imagine that is all purposeful. Bankruptcy isn't to be taken lightly, I know. I actually had a woman on the phone from Chase Bank try to tell me I was making the wrong decision because I'm so young. I see it as the exact opposite- I'm young, single, and fluid. I don't have a family or spouse whose credit I'm ruining (nor do I plan on having one anytime soon), so by the time I might be settling down for that sort of thing, it will be off or nearly off my credit. This is a chance for me to finally make smart financial decisions- something I anticipate doing as soon as this process is over.

I'm going to try my best to still do the things I love- including my now annual trip to New York City to stay with my wonderful friends Erika and Adam in Harlem. It might only be a weekend instead of a week this year, but that's okay. And, really, it all depends on whether or not my school district is actually holding summer school this year. I'll be buying my plane ticket with actual money rather than credit. In the past I'd tried to pay it off with the summer school check, but it always ended up being most of it, so something like $100 would be left on the card. In any case, if I can't afford it this summer, I'm going to try to save up and go in the fall- maybe November or late October. I'd love to go late enough to see Rockafeller Center decorated for Christmas. Anyway.

Part of the filling process required me to get old pay stubs- and to do this I must go to the downtown library in Joetown which also houses the school district offices. It is a beautiful old building, and I took some photos of it while I was there.

Allow me to gloat

This in no way relates to my finances, but I felt the need to reflect a bit.

This evening I had the wonderful chance to do one of the best things about my job- creative writing club sponsor. We have creative writing club meetings once a month, and it's always wonderful. I have fantastic kids in the group, they are supremely talented (certainly in comparison to where I was as a writer at that time), and I'm so happy to get the chance to hang out with these awesome kids. This evening we met at Hazel's for coffee and writing fun, and while we were there, I saw one of my former bosses.

I have had two former bosses tell me I'd never make it as a teacher. One said it explicitly, and the other implied it through what she thought was a cleverly veiled insult. The boss I saw this evening was the second of those two, and she was, easily, the worst boss I ever worked for. It was the only job I was ever fired from, actually. It was over a single mistake I allegedly made. A mistake I actually don't think I made, but let's say I did. It would be ridiculous to fire me over a single mistake. This woman was looking for a reason to fire me because I had to leave work every day to go to class at the college. Something they knew when they hired me. She resented it like crazy. I had personal photos hanging on a bulletin board in my office, and when I was fired she ripped them off the bulletin board. Like ripped my pictures nearly in half. She was a monster.

I didn't notice her right away, but when I did, a small part of me smiled inside. I'm at a meeting for a club I sponsor that I love, doing a job you didn't think I could do, and being really freaking good at it. I'm freaking great at my job, and these kids are rock stars. You, ma'am, were wrong. And not much feels better than to be able to rub that in the face of someone who doubted you.

What I said to myself as I left Hazel's was something along the lines of, "Hey, you, former boss lady- fuck you. I'm fucking great at my job, and everyone at your office only kisses your ass because they need your money. By the way, I've followed my dreams, achieved my goals, and have almost anything I could ever ask for. Did I mention you should go fuck yourself? Because you should."

Not that I'd be bitter and resentful and harp on the past or anything. That's just not me.

Why you comin' home at five in the morn'?

It's been a week since I last updated, and progress did not go as quickly as I'd hoped. I have almost all of the bankruptcy paperwork completed, but I still need to get my last six bank statements and my last six pay stubs. Those will be easy to get, but it's hard to find time. Teaching at the end of the school year keeps me pretty much exhausted and sans extra time. The beauty of it is that, knock on wood, things are running about as smoothly as they have all year in my classroom. I'm in the middle of the Shakespeare unit, and it's the thing I feel most comfortable teaching. We had a successful day today, and I hope tomorrow is as good. It helps me get through the day of phone calls.

The phone calls are intense. I've had nine calls today from three different numbers. I asked last week to one particular caller if the simple intention of filing stops the calls, and it doesn't. I have to have actually paid my attourney. So I've called and set the date- April 27th. One week from tomorrow. A day I'm calling "Freedom Day." I have spent as little money as possible all month to be able to afford to file. $1000 to file- it's nuts. But I'm happy to do it. The only problem is that, according to what my attourney said last time I met with him, you have your court case 30 days after the filing. May 27th is the first day of summer school. I'm sure it'd be okay if I missed, but in summer school you have to pay subs out of your own pocket. Well, to be fair, summer school might not get funded by the SJSD this year, so maybe the problem will solve itself. That would be a loss, though, because I teach summer school for the extra paycheck. Bah.

As has been the case in the past few weeks, my personal life has been good. My friends and family continue to be supportive and fantastic. Pictures!

The sunset at LeBlond High School after my cousin's track meet.

I recently bought some firm tofu at the store, and I fried it in olive oil I attempted to infuse with garlic. The garlic flavor didn't really come through, but the crunchy/crispy thing caused by frying it was wonderful. I had it two ways- one time I just put it in some spinach leaves with some raspberry vineagrette I had in the fridge, and the second time I cooked it with two scrambled eggs, more of that spinach wilted in, some diced tomatoes, and made a little scramble situation. The second use worked much better!