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| Mon, 11-01-2004 - 12:37pm |
We owe about $2000 to our ex-landlord (a friend robbed us and got two month's rent out of our bank account before the landlord cashed the cheques. Fun stuff :S
About $2300-ish to cell phone companies Rogers AT&T and Bell. Those are mostly our fault, we signed a contract with Rogers and since their security sucks (someone charged a call to Japan to his phone) we went to Bell instead, even though we still had accounts with Rogers. Why we did that without cancelling the contract first, I'll never know. It was stupid. We also had a run-in with Shaw cable, they charged us for pay per view that we never ordered (the bill right now is about $400) It was $600, but after we proved that we weren't even in the house that week, they reduced the charges. To this day I'm pretty sure that someone in our building hacked into our cable box somehow and messed with it. Also, a bill from Shaw under my name, where we had 3 months free cable and internet and we had specifically requested to have our pay per view shut off so we wouldn't get another monstrous mystery bill. Turns out the guy who installed it lied to us, there is no way to turn it off, there is always access to it. So a friend (probably the same guy who robbed us of our rent and bills money) most likely ordered adult films while everyone was sleeping. That bill is only $200, but it shouldn't have been anything. Still, I have to pay it because there aren't many options for cable around here. I think we also owe about $50 to Epcor (Edmonton hydro) and other small assorted bills. We have the old bills and everything in our little file cabinet back in Edmonton (we moved back to BC in September.)So yeah, now we just want to wipe our slate clean, the creditors aren't calling, yet, but they will and I want to get on this before they do. Any advice or helpful hints for me??? Sorry this is so long, but you know lol

Let's start with this: How much money from your budget to have to pay towards these debts each month? Have you made any arrangements to pay any of them already?
I only added up $4,750 in debt from your post. $2,000 to the landlord, $2,300 phone bill, $400 for pay per view, and $50 for I'm guessing a water bill? Am I missing some other bills to get to $6,000?
Have you done a monthly budget? Do you track your spending?
The next step is making sure you live within your budget. I had been horrible at going back and looking what I spent for groceries, gas, etc., although I always track those things. When I did so recently, I was shocked how much I was spending at the grocery store! I upped my budget a little, since it was apparently unrealistic, and then made a concious effort to spend less... and for October I did! I knocked $100-$150 for the month off my grocery bill just by paying attention to what I spent, and getting by with what I had when I was near my budget amount.