Hello again everyone and sorry for the long absence. I recently had a sort of heartbreak. If you're no interested at all in a rant, I'd suggest not reading this particular entry. I'll probably have another entry this weekend to get things back on track. For now though, I need to get this off my chest.
So, I decided to start looking for a house to buy but it turned out to just be a terrible idea. After being turned down by numerous lenders I was very depressed.
I haven't completely recovered and I haven't completely given up. I really want a house of my own. Renting is almost just like tossing money into a dumpster and I really don't want to continue to rent apartments like this. These disappointingly small, run down apartments that go for as much money as it would be for me to pay a mortgage on a decent house. I mean, it is absolutely disgusting the shape this apartment is in. I pay more for this two bedroom piece of crap than my friends do for their three bedroom brick house. We've had so many bad experiences with this apartment that I never want to rent again.
(boring alert! If you don't care about our crappy apartment, which you probably don't, you can skip this.)
The neighbor, he's a nice guy, nothing against him, but he smokes and we can smell it in our apartment. It's not his fault, it's the shoddy construction of this building. The floors are uneven, the windows are drafty, there were squirrels living in the ceiling (I'm honestly not sure if they left of their own accord or if they died up there.) and the air conditioner doesn't work as well as it should. Heck, I found even more wrong when I was hanging up curtains the other day. While I was making measurements to make sure I got the curtain rod straight, I discovered that the ceiling is actually not level. I thought the molding around the top of the walls looked off, now I know it's off. No matter what I do, that damn curtain doesn't look like it's hanging straight. I knew that I should have backed out when they showed us the model and then wouldn't let us see our actual unit until only two days before we were set to move in.
(End of apartment rant.)
I'm still saving money but now I'm trying extra hard to build credit. Why is the credit system so stupid anyway? So many ways to screw it up, but so few ways to actually build it. I have this dumb secured credit card that is supposed to report like a normal credit card. I've been using it for seven months, to no actual avail. I still have a credit score of zero. I didn't think that it would be quick but I also didn't think that my score would still be non existent by now. We're working on converting other bills to my name since that seems to help at least somewhat.
I'm actually really irritated that they never taught any of this crap while we were in school. I mean seriously, a little head's up would have been nice! Like hey, this is how you write a resume, this is how you go to an interview, this is what credit is and how it can royally screw up your life if you don't know what to do with it. What did I learn instead? Thanks for the course in calculus, I've totally been using that. (note the sarcasm.)
Not that I scoff at knowing calculus, just that it's amazing how it doesn't matter once you get into college. I mean, the first thing they do for your core classes is take you back five years. Seriously. Algebra I, again? I took that in the seventh grade and passed! Why in the hell would you make me pay for a class that I took and passed when I was twelve?!?
Anyway, back on track here.
Why not work with my husband to get a loan? Well, we can't use his credit score at all, even though he has a good one. Three words: defaulted student loans. His loans went into default when he was nineteen and since we've been together, we've made attempts to settle his debt and start making payments on it again.
We tried anyway.
What it really means when your student loans go into default is that they give your debt to some dickhead collection agency that works for the government. If it works for the government you can expect it to make very little to no sense and you can also bet that everyone you talk to in that agency is an asshole. They will not bargain with you. Especially not this one in New Jersey apparently.
They want far too much money a month in order to get back into good standing. Twice our rent payment a month for six months? $1400 a MONTH just go get back in good standing with them? Excuse my language, but they can go fuck themselves. I'm not interested in running myself into the ground to pay off a debt that isn't even mine to begin with. I swear, this isn't student aid, this is the goddamn mafia. They have to take small payments if we throw it at them, this is true. The catch is that if we were to make payments of anything less than the outrageous amount they want, it won't even go toward fixing his credit. It would be all for nothing and the interest stacks up faster than this shit gets paid.
I would love to know who it was that decided that loaning money out to dumb kids was a good idea. Especially when there's no real collateral for it. For any other loan you have something of value you could lose. You don't pay your mortgage, you lose your house; don't pay your car payments and they repo your car. There's nothing of value that they can take back from you if you fail to pay a student loan. Their solution to this? I guess some asshole was like, "Oh I have it! The collateral for the loan will be their quality of life!" For those of you that don't know just how badly student loans can screw you over, they are the ONLY debt that will never leave your credit until you pay it off. You either pay it off or you die, those are the only two ways out of it. Not even filing for bankruptcy will get rid of it.
It's absolutely ridiculous.
It will keep you from getting anything in the future. It will keep you from getting a home, it will keep you from getting just a small loan for anything, it can even keep you from getting a job. (Apparently you have to have squeaky clean credit in order to be a cop. Didn't know that until recently myself.)
All things considered, I'd think twice before signing those FAFSA forms if I were you. This day and age it's almost more likely to hurt you than help you.
So... is America still sounding like land of the free to you guys? More like land where everyone is expected to start life $20,000 in debt.
Well now that that's off my chest, the next entry will get us back on track. Back to art and writing and away from the doom and gloom!
May the next blog post actually be happy! May it also actually be about art or writing.
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