The W-2 from a former job arrived yesterday, ushering in tax time Having created a small business nearly a year ago, I’ve been reading up on what business expenses can be claimed, such as computing standard mileage and figuring up the advertising and office supply costs. Fun fun.
Then I went and checked my credit report, which was long overdue. Ugh. You don’t want to know how bad it looks. It turns out that my student loans, the most substantial chunk of debt, are approximately $38,000 standing alone. Damn. The past medical bills tallied up to $5500, and then there’s my current credit lines, like the car which still has $9000 left due. Grandma put me as an authorized user on a couple of her cards, though I don’t have access to make any purchases with them, that hold balances of nearly $16,000. All-in-all, the report reflects $75,000 worth of debt, though only $60,000 of that actually belongs to me. Damn. That’s a heck of a lot of money to be repaid and most it with high interest rates.
All I can do is continue chipping away at it without opening any new lines of credit (which isn’t a problem since I’m rarely approved for anything anyway lol). My current cards all have small balances and are up-to-date, though some of my past debts from my early 20s are still reflected on the report despite spanning back beyond 7 years, some stuff from 1999.
Damn. How daunting. But ah well…I don’t plan on moving again anytime soon and already have most of what I need. My medical bills from last year may be charged off since the hospital has agreed I qualify for financial assistance due to insufficient income and lack of health insurance, so that’s positive. Need to check with them to see if this arrangement only applies retroactively to past medical expenses or if it will cover future visits since I’m still needing to have this breast lump examined.
That’s my current financial situation in a nutshell. C’est la vie, I suppose. Honestly, I’m not so certain that I’ll ever get this stuff paid off when you factor in the monthly (rising) cost of living. And people wonder why some of us are so inclined to pursue “black market” employment opportunities. Sure beats trying to pay the bills at some $9/hr. job. And telling people they ought to have been smarter from the start and never gotten into so much debt does absolutely nothing to improve the situation. Don’t we all wish we knew then what we know now.
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wakemenow said
The taxes are filed as of 10pm. I like to get an early start, a habit after years of filing FAFSAs.
Gotta pay in $300+ this time around. I went with TaxACT for online filing, same as last year.