Starting over

I am starting over. Today I did the impossible and I joined the Goose Creek Recreation Center. If you live in Goose Creek it costs 25.00 to join. Adults are 25.00 and children 16 and under are less. No, it is not World Fitness however it does provide us a place to go and get some much needed exercise. I went back tonight with my shorts and tennis shoes on and got on the elliptical trainer for 20 minutes. I burned 247 calories and ran 1.25 miles. I am starting over. Every day I will be starting over.Every day I will determine to count my calories, drink more water, less sugary crap and exercise more. Every day that I have to live I can start over and take small baby steps to reach my goal. My first goal is to lose 20 lbs and leave it off. Over the last several years I have managed to take off 13 to 14 lbs but I have not been consistent with making the life changes permanent. Some folks force themselves into drastic weight loss diets. The problem with weight loss diets is that the changes are radically different and if you fall off the wagon the weight comes right back on. I need to practice using the knowledge that I already have. I need to eat less bread, sugars, carbs etc. I need to eat more veggies and drink more water and eat less sugary junk. I also need to realize that this weight did not get here over night and it wont come off over night. I have to take it one day at a time, one meal at a time and one exercise session at a time. Instead of eating the elephant all at one sitting I amgoing to eat him one tiny bite at a time. The elephant represents the weight that I am carrying around.

Now that I have spoken about my starting over with my weight loss I am going to speak about something that very few folks are brave enough to talk about in public. I am going to talk about rebuilding my/our credit rating. Most folks would not dare to admit that they have credit problems and or huge debt that they can not handle or an outrageous debt to income ratio. Approximately 1 year ago Katy and I decided to start over. Before that time I was so depressed about my weight problem and our credit woes that my attitude was to just ignore the problem and hope it would auto magically go away. Guess what folks, weight problems and bad credit do not go away, they linger on for a life time if you let them. Not only do they linger on but they can potentially cause you a lot of grief, pain, anguish, stress and sleepless nights. I am glad that we have started over with rebuilding our credit. The firstthing that we had to do was to realize that while things looked dismal the situation was not impossible. Do you remember that elephant? This is an elephant of a different color but an elephant nonetheless. So, we realized that the only way that our credit was going to get better was to do several things. The first thing was to get beyond the mental anguish and depression that it causes. My thought process went like this. Go ahead and put it on my credit, it is so screwed up it does not even matter. The sad fact of the matter is every single thing on your credit report does matter and in a big way. Lets face it folks,we live in a society that says if you do not have good credit then there are certain things that you just wont be able to do. If you have bad credit it will be difficult to lease a house much less buy one. If you have 10,000 bucks lying around in a mutual fund or IRA that you can cash in then it does not matter what your credit is except for a small little thing called an interest rate.There are tons of investors and mortgage companies that will give you an 80 or 90 percent loan but you have to come up with a huge down payment and closing costs AND you have to pay an enormous interest rate or balloon payment at the end. Is that fair?No, not really but it is reality and the sooner that we realize it the better off we will be.

Debt is not limited to nationality, religion or creed. Debt is a problem that most of us have. Debt in and of itself is not bad but how we handle it or dont handle it is what makes it bad. One year ago or maybe longer a friend of mine helped me past some mental road blocks that were hindering me from getting back on the long road to being more successful with regards to credit.

I had to quit viewing the credit problems like it was some sort of uncontrollable monster. I had a fear of this monster and I thought it was about to eat me alive. The only way I knew how to control this monster was to just lock it up and throw away the key and hide from it. Another defense mechanism that I used was to deny the monster was even there. Somehow the monster always managed to announce its presence through the US Mail and my answering machine. Nevertheless I was afraid of the monster and I chose to ignore it. I had to realize that this monster was really just a series of stupid mistakes I had madeand circumstances that I had very little control of. Neither one of these things negate the other, they just exist and cause bad credit. Not too long ago a mortgage brokersensed my despair over my credit and wrote something to me in her response. She told me that just because I have bad credit or a low FICO score does not mean we are bad people. So, with that in mind when I was afraid of the credit/debt monster I allowedit to give me low self esteem. I viewed myself as ugly and unlovable because of it. That also goes hand in hand with the weight problem. I am over weight, I feel bad, I must look bad therefore I am probably bad. There it is again, deriving my value orlack thereof because of my weight problem or credit problems.

My friend helped me to see that the monster really was not a problem but it was a problem that could be solved. The monster is no longer a monster but a puzzle to be solved. This monster isa challenge instead of an insurmountable obstacle. The next thing that I had to do was to take ownership of the problem and posses it. I could no longer ignore it and I had to realize that it would never just magically go away on its own. Once I did that I was able to view the challenge as a series of problems that needed to be solved. The first problem that I had to undertake was to make sure that I did not repeat further mistakes that caused the problems to occur. One of the best ways to keep from making the same mistakes is to educate yourself about debt. My friend gave me a series of books by Suze Orman and they are excellent. Not every single thing that she says applies to my situation however the basics do apply. I do not care who you chose to get that education but for your sake the sake of your credit find someone that you can trust and start learning.

Here is a basic fact that we had to grasp. If you do not have the cash to buy it then you do not need it, period. That especially applies to those of us that have a credit card. For those of us that use debit cards and cash this is how that works. You live by a budget and if what you want will cause something in your budget to get bumped out of place you CAN NOT get it, period. Years ago we started using a budget out of sheer necessity so that we could allocate the necessary funds to pay for necessary living expenses such as rent (mortgage payment), car payment(s), light bill, gasoline for the cars, water bill, telephone bill, cell phone bill , cable bill etc. Please note that of those bills listed there are some needs and wants. It is so easy to blur the lines between a need and a want. Your rent or mortgage payment is a NEED because if you dont pay those items you will find yourself swatting at mosquitoes late at night under a tree somewhere in a public park. If you dont pay your phone bills you will still have a place to live but you wont be able to make a phone call. I guess some folks would argue that having a phone is a need. The bottom line is this. You have to determine where the fuzzy line is between a want and a need and draw it in the sand.

What I did not realize was that we used our budget to pay for necessities but we did not use it to manage the rest of our income. Like most married couples we were living from pay check to pay check with little to nothing left over. The main living expenses were paid and we had a place to live and a car to drive to our jobs but we still had outstanding debt that was piling on theinterest and penalties. God forbid an emergency would happen that would be out of the ordinary such as a unexpected car bill or medical emergency with the kids. We needed to learn how to PLAN for emergencies and to PLAN for paying off that debt. We hadto take the credit report in hand and identify those things that were not ours and dispute it with the credit reporting agencies. Remember the monster I spoke of? Credit reporting agencies do not care what is on your credit report, they are paid to putwhatever is reported on there. It is our job to dispute it and prove that what is there is either valid or not. It took us approximately 45 days but I managed to prove that several of the things that were listed on my credit report did not belong to me.The credit reporting agency took those things off.

I have only scratched the surface on these two subjects. All of us are subject matter experts either on the cause or the effect. My desire here is not to relish in the negatives or my failures. My desire is to communicate to you that there is HOPE. There is hope to start over. One day at a time, one bite at a time. Reach out to your circle of friends and family and God and ask for help. Break out of the darkness and despair and drag that thing into the light. You can do it...