Bills

My income is limited. I do not have a large savings. I am not Martha Stewart. I have no financial advisor who will "manage" my butt loads of money while I am in prison. I live on a budget. Sometimes I use credit cards. When the semester starts and I receive my funding, my card balances are low, as the year moves on, they get higher. I pay my bills on time. I get approved for my vehicle lease. My credit is not perfect (14 years of damage done from compulsive gambling) but it has slowly improved and one day I may have even been approved for a home. Not anymore, with my restitution, but that's okay.

What really bothers me is that I look at my monthly budget, my bills, what I can save before I leave in as little as 6-8 weeks, and I do not know how I will be able to cover everything without any real income for 10 months. Inmates with spouses or who are wealthy perhaps have options, but those like me (and likely you) do not have many. I am trying to avoid the need for bankruptcy and I know that I must be proactive before going inside if I have any chance to avoid it. Reading online, most sites say that we need to make sure we have someone paying our bills- but that assumes $$ exists. Other sites say that anyone low income that goes in for 4-6 months or longer will inevitably have a bankruptcy. I'd like to prove that wrong.

Another odd factor is that the judge actually put on my judgement that I am required to have credit counseling (because she is freaked out by my educational loans that she didn't understand). That rule, however, does not come into place until my supervision starts after incarceration.

So, today after paying all my bills for the month, I decided to break down each of them into categories. Things I absolutely want to keep paying on time, things I'd like to keep paying, and things I can call and see if they will hold the account/close the account/ or just not pay. I do not have a choice. I simply do not have enough money to pay everything with no income. Once I started that process, though, I hated it. So, I decided to make a non committal call. I called one of the nonprofit consumer counseling services. I'm not sure the counselor was ready for my call, "I have fine credit but I'm going to prison and I want to avoid a bankruptcy and I also want to keep some credit outside consolidation... I just want to see if this will save me money ..."

Two hours on the phone and we are not at the answer yet. They will call me back Monday. I guess the thing about this is that I don't know yet what I will do about paying everything, and I'm going to run every option by my Coach Survivor, but I need to be proactive, figure out all my options, and give myself time to figure it all out. Otherwise, I will just be a statistic, another ex-con needing a bankruptcy and then I will be allowing this prison sentence hurt me financially for seven years beyond everything else. Be proactive!