Anyways, this is to say that this is someone who I looked up to as a kid but he never had a head for money.  He’s accumulated thousands of dollars in debt and and has already declared bankruptcy once and is on the verge of declaring it again.  Needless to say, he didn’t learn his lesson the first time to keep his financial records clean and erase bad credit from his records.

For the twenty odd years that I have known him, I don’t think he’s ever held a real job.  He has some sort of disability but I don’t know what of. Physically, he looks perfectly fine and when he talks he’s very succinct.  He’s a great artist and writer as well with also a gift for gab.  He was able to talk to a medical professional into saying that he has a stress disorder that prevents him from working.  But my friend does work as a counselor on the side so he knows how to talk to doctors himself and their lingo.  On the outside, it seems as though he has everything going for him but he just cannot get out of his funk to get rid of his credit card debt and who knows how long it will take him to repair bad credit ratings that has befallen him.

So my friend has no regular income stream but does painting and counseling on the side but has a lifestyle that I would describe as middle class.  Nothing extravagant but I would like to say that when you have no regular income stream and you’re living on welfare, you cannot have a lifestyle like regular people.  You must learn to repair your credit and earn these privileges that the rest of society has.  I’m going to run down a list of his expenses: land line, cell phone, cable tv, high speed internet, internet web hosting, rent and utilities, cigarettes.  First off, we can’t do much about rent and utilities because he needs a place to live and I know for a fact that he gets a discount on his rent which is already dirt cheap (he’s been living at the same place for twenty years and helps with maintenance and repairs).  Next, I’ve always told him to get rid of his cigarettes because those are unneeded expenses.  Funny that he will puff on cancer sticks but he will insist on drinking filtered water, buy more expensive organic foods again adding to his expenses.  I just find that a little bit odd and hypocritical.  He has web hosting because he also dabbled in building web pages and internet marketing as well and pulled in at home point a thousand dollars a month.  That was pretty good until the economy tanked.  However, I know that you can create income from free hosted websites as well.  As for the high speed and cable tv, wow, that’s something I don’t have an I have a full time job.  Actually, let me rephrase, his tv and cable packages are better than mine.  I have a job and I can afford better packages and I don’t order it.  Why should he?  And while having a cell phone and land line are handy, he doesn’t have a job!  It’s not like he needs to be in contact all the time.

I know his expenses seem modest but when you’re trying to erase bad credit and get out of debt, you need to see where you’re leaking money.  I’m sorry, but if you want to clean up your credit you must make sacrifices even though it seems as though you can’t cut the basics.  For him, his lifestyle is so sparse and simple that he doesn’t need this extra fluff.   My friend is worried sick about declaring bankruptcy again because he’s using his credit cards to sustain his living and then he’d have to go through the long process of repairing credit rating so he can reapply for more credit cards.  He’s not thinking the broad scope and his using his credit card as his financial support.    A credit card is not meant for daily expenses.  A credit card is meant for convenience only.    He pays only the minimum balance every month and the high interest rates alone puts him into debt further and further each month.  What more proof do you need that your lifestyle is beyond what you can afford?

I’m only going on about this story because I think this is important enough that everyone can relate.  Here is this guy who is bright but doesn’t want to work (or at least work in a sustainable fashion even at jobs he does enjoy).   He scrapes can scrape by on welfare but he over extends himself having the luxuries of the normal middle class.  Something has got to give as living the regular folk is not a given if you don’t work for it.

So I gave my friend some credit counseling  cut his costs and to again generate some sort of income online.  These things are passive and a few bucks here and there can’t hurt.  He has a long ways to go in terms of changing his mind set but in order to erase bad credit that is what you need or else you’ll fall into the same financial traps like he once did.