My Story

Like is life and a roller coaster of a experience it has the ups and the downs and every now and then you get thrown thru a loop. I’m no guru in life or finances but i like to believe everyone has a tuff point. Now lets get as little history going.

I was able to get a loan to buy a house and a car with in the same year and I thought that was a great move. Now the interest rate for the house is not bad 4.99 but my car interest was 11% now that is a lot. The good news is i was still growing in the company i work for as a supervisor to assistant manager and that came with extra pay as you move up the ladder. My bills got easier to pay and i was able to do more for my kids. Car payment is taken care of and able to take care of the bills with my wife’s income and we were doing good, and we let the Creep in and overtime our life style ballooned with our pay. Now we had all bills payed and things looking good not a lot in saving but had a bit put away.

The thing with life is it will throw you in a tornado of situations and next thing you know you do not know what way is up or how this happened. Now I do not know how to really explain how this happened or blame a singles person as it was a lack of communication and personal responsibility for all involved. Since covid 19 came and went a lot of the focus in life has gotten to be mental oriented and making sure We are all in a good headspace and that comes down to self reflection and accepting your own downfalls.

Now with my wife and myself we are both determined to do better for our kids and make sure they get what we did not have when we were kids. Now that included a house and a good car to be able to do the things we could not as kids. Like trips and random get togethers with other family or friends. Or even just have a lot of snacks and fun things to so over summer break. Now im not gonna lie we indulged our kids with activities they wanted and yearly trips to places like six flags, camping in the redwoods and camping at Bernie falls, now this all costs money and time. Now if we would have planned better and thought about more than a year ahead we would be better off but we lived in the time and just looked ahead enough for almost all our kids to graduate high school. Now both my girls graduated during covid, one was able to walk the other did a virtual walk (kinda sucked ) but they both made it into junior collage and even got into a U.C. ok enough gloating.

The thing with life is that a lot of small things will eventually grow into a larger ordeal and could become overwhelming. With out even noticing it if you are in the moment instead of being on a plan. Now most of my planning was more like a soft squishy ball you know a stress ball. I had a nice rounded plan going money in savings money a Ira and we were able to adjust when needed. Now while in the covid pandemic my wife and i were considered essential workers since she was in the food business and i was in the finance sector since i am in the pawn industry loan money and what not.

Now im gonna whine and cry right now so I’m sorry in advance as when i was still making the same amount of money other people were sitting at home making almost 2 to 3 time the normal what they made on unemployment, and their was no real extra cash for the essential workers since “they are working” yes it sounds selfish but i was only getting like a $100 covid pay from my work now that got taxed so i saw like what 60 from that wow. The covid relief payment was nice from the government but it even went to the people that were on unemployment making 2 times what they normally did so i do blame some of that for the mental drain on us. You know the best part was that the covid relief payments we basically ended up paying back through the taxes and inflation after covid needed. Like i said i am no economist but i do know a bit about everything but not enough to stay ahead obviously. If i was smart i would have continued to pay my school loans while in the covid pandemic deferral and saved the extra money sent out instead of blowing it on some credit cards and or what not items i can not account for now.

During the pandemic we as a family did go out and do some things and enjoyed the time we had together. Hikes walking and puzzles consisted of the days we were home with the kids. It was very nice And i believed that it opened a lot of peoples eyes to what we all are missing working so much. Quality family time and the joy it brings. Now my wife is the bread winner you. Know the majority money maker, as she was working over 50 hours a week at her store sometimes more. Now we are both hard and loyal workers to the jobs that treat us right. By treating right could very from one job to the other but the mane reason someone leaves is management. Now my wife is a great manager and shows her employees she cares but the manager above her were another story only a small handful tried to help her when she needed but they were not on her team in the company so they could only help out so much and when the owner point out all your wrongs and doesn’t ask why their is a lack of support comes to a point of the give and take is gone to far. She could only give so much before cracking and she asked if we could afford her not working. My answer is anyways yes but now dropping that income and only using my income made it hard. By this time covid was mostly over and their was no more extra money coming and no back up plan. During this time as my wife was getting help and dealing with the issues that came with it i was dealing with the pandemic in another way. Some people favorite retail therapy. I was buying stuff for my kids and wife and myself now who doesn’t like new items?

The credit cards loved it i was using them and and i was only making minimum payments and as i was looking in how to pay them down and keep up, I decided a second job to help take care of the finances.and help catch up my wife’s bills as well but what you do not know is what affects you thinking and or habits. Their is stress buyers stress eaters and so one ill tell you what is coming and it might be interesting to read as I experienced and am trying to recover still.

My second job was at a grocery store for overnight shelf stocking and it started out good until they changed managers, and work that was fun became a drag and harder to keep a smile. My first few months I was scheduled as I requested and when the switch happened i had full time hours almost 40 hrs a week and this was my second job and i tried it for a few weeks and the manager still did not help with the hours and kept it up. So for a year i was doing about 16 hour days, now the money was nice and i kept up with bills, credit cards while my wife was recovering, and i was now the main bill payer with her stepping back. Now she didn’t completely stop working she was able to start a small baby sitting gig with family and old coworkers. This income was to help her with any personal bills.

Tell you what if you heard the term burning the candle at both ends? Well i was doing it working a day job at 9am to 6pm and the back to work at the grocery store at 10:30 to 6ish am depending on if i got my aisles done. Then when i got home maybe an hour of sleep and then time to take kids to school. The thing is my days off would change for my night shift and man oh man that is a tuff schedule. Now if you ask me about any event like family birthdays or get together i do not really remember them, i was there as my wife is someone who does not drive at all i mean at all never had a license and will not get behind the wheel, so if they were their so was i but I might have been taking a nap in the corner lol.

Look i stuck out the two jobs as long as i could and a little over a year to year and a half i think is good, i would have been still sticking it out if my brain could handle it. Some not so relevant Signs i was going down was my irritability lack of self control, and bad judgment are all signs of mental health issue from lack of sleep. I’m no doctor or brain doctor just a person who experienced it and read some articles about sleep and mental health. By this i mean i was not spending money in a good way and just paying the bills through credit cards and not paying them off in full just letting the cards grow further in debt. I was purchasing things i wanted and my kids wanted. One item for the kids and me was a nice pre built gaming computer and the next big purchase was my electric bike. Those were the goods i can remember buying and the other part of the debt came from home and car repairs. When it rains it pours man no breaks and life does not care.

Now I could complain about all the small things but that doesn’t make it better. Plus it happened and I’m now here writing about it. I want others to understand lack of sleep is a big part of physical and mental health. You might think you are good in you own head since your thoughts might be I’m good and just tired. This slowly eats away at you and you might not notice the attitude change and compulsion of buying and how easy it is to loose track of you main goal. In your mind you think i can keep this up and keep the Money flowing. One thing i started to see myself doing was snapping at random people and even my family including my grand kids. This moment i was like I can’t keep it up i need to fix my schedule and talk to my night manager. Now he was a person only focused on him self, he would tell me you need to talk to the main schedule manager even though i found out he could do it, he just didn’t want and when i asked the main manager in one of the days i was able to go in you know not at work on my day job and not sleeping the whole day, this was a hard thing to get done. He said he would help get it taken care of and i know he was busier than my night manager being the store manager. After this instance i was fed up and i told myself give it another week and i tried to make it longer but i ended up yelling at my wife over some stupid thing and fought my self snapping at my kids to quickly. I gave up and just slept the next three night and didn’t call out, yes this is bad but i was completely done and I didn’t even want to talk to the manager again as he would try and play some sob story and or try to get me in I didn’t want to even deal with it.

So i pulled the no call no show and was let go/ fired now that didn’t bother me as it was extra cash as i thought oh boy should of stuck it out and had a better plane with money the whole time maybe written down to make sure i was on task. But as you can guess i thought i could stay on task mentally I don’t need a written plan, well i did need one and it would have helped.

Recover from no sleep is a long process yes you get a couple days of sleep you get to feel better but mentally it takes longer to recover. I still thought my plan was good pay regular bills with credit cards and collect the cash back and or points. But now that i do not have a dual income coming in and my plan needed to be revisited as soon as possible but me being a stubborn person i thought my plan was good and i could keep up ah no i could not. I watched as as the credit cards staked on late and interest payments every month even when i pad the minimum payment but that does not get the balance down and with monthly bills plus spending caused a avalanche of debt to happen and no way to get out.

Now this might be ironic but my house has gained value in the market almost double up and i was hoping to pull a second mortgage as in a

Home Equity line of credit as long as their is 20 % to pull out they would loan against it giving you a line of credit off of the house value. But guess what even though i have the collateral they would not approve as my credit was dropping how maddening.

Now what do you think i should do to get back up?