More recently, I have donated books to our local Boys and Girls club in honor of my friends and family for whom I wish to purchase gifts.

The advantage? No worries about unnecessary clutter, and many of the people I do this for talk about it all year round as one of the most thoughtful gifts they receive.

If you have a charity budget already set aside, why not donate in honor of a loved one?

Margaret

The thing is, the economy has far more people who have been disadvantaged due to under employment than people realize, and not for lack of ability or qualifications. There simply isn’t enough of the good life to go around.

I have to wonder — if that is just a fraction of waht you owe, and if you are talking unsecured debt and not mortgage, are you able to pay any more than your minimum payments every month? I have a lot of debt myself (way more than $10,000 on the credit cards alone, alas), and I know that it gets to be a stretch just to make the minimum payments. Fortunately, we are making enough income to pay more, so we can dig our way out of this. But if you are talking about that huge of balance and that high of interest rate, you may need more drastic action. If you can make the minimums plus some more, then you can do it. But if you are just making minimums, you will be paying that for decades. I think you should get an appointment with a non-profit credit counselling service just to talk about your options. I assume you are in the states, so I don’t know where you would go, but I think there is one main one — I am pretty sure it has been referred to somewhere on this site. If I find the name, I will post it (or someone reading this probably knows it). You may still decide to dig yourself out on your own, but I think you need to at least be aware of other options.

I agree about not selling your furniture. If you were 20, then maybe you could sleep on the floor for a few years, but at the age of 35 I wouldn’t do it, and I think you said you were a little older than me.

Anyway, I will keep looking here to see how you are doing.

As Trent once said somewhere here, you have to take a step, almost any step–actually I think he said a plan, not a step–rather than just remain frozen (my word, not his). I’ve been frozen with indecision, fear–and paranoia that credit card co. staff will outright lie if I ask THEM for info. I have tried to read blgos and books about credit card stuff but frankly find that my situation doesn’t seem to be what people are talking about. That surely is not true, but it’s been my experience so far. But I had to do something.

I did take a step & call for info about the 0% and the 3.9% percent offers I’ve been getting. And asked also to lower my rate.( I’ve asked constantly for several yrs. & have been turned down flat. ) This time I made a huge point to sound extremely nice, polite, and calm. I got lucky & spoke to people who were the same, as well as competent & for once, sounded not terse, robotic, bored, or unintelligible. This is one of the big major banks.

First, they agreed to lower the rate from 29% (yes, I have this rate on several cards; are you still standing?) to around 27 (I don’t have the exact figures in front of me). adjustable. The conversation was lengthy and I took notes and typed them up later, but it is too much to go into here. I asked tons and tons of questions about every conceivable loophole, scenario, etc. I did’t sound like a crybaby but like someone who was very very much wanting to make the right choice. I should get a freaking Oscar! Because it is easy for me to let my anxiety and, at times, exasperation, creep into my tone. NOT a good idea. Anyway, I I ended up kind of with the scenario Margaret said would not work; this is what you said, Margaret:

$10,000 of debt at 4% is worse than $5000 of debt at 19%.

Well, in my case, it will be around $10,000 at 3.9 instead of $5,000 at 29. The bank calculated a huge savings in interest.

This, by the way, is only a fraction of what I owe.

Margaret, I assume you meant it would not work if I were ever late, even by a day (less than a day, actually-I’ve been late by 15 minutes and that was that–case closed, rates zoomed everywhere).

It’s a step, and even if it is not in the best direction, it is not avoiding creditors. At 29% I just don’t know what else to do. So I am praying that was the right decision. If people here think I’ve goofed big-time, let me know. I can handle it.

Other tactics I now implement: I have made copies of the calendar & write in red the amount due on each date it is due; when it is paid off I put a green checkmark. I look at the calender every day & know how much I need to cough up, from somewhere, to make my payments for that day/week. I can see ahead what my story is. I am no longer in the dark about the bb and flow.

Also. I write on each bill’s envelope the exact deadline for paying in person, by phone (if there is no fee), or online. I have a separate sheet with the precise rules by each bank as to when a bill is considered on time; this varies greatly, so I have to know it. I can’t pay when the bill comes in; I need the flexibility of going closer to the deadline–but not too close. My calendar helps enormously because I have a visual reminder.

I also have a list attached to the calender of incoming money owed me (I get paid erratically since I am working solo). I just don’t do the Quicken thing and all that. It is low-tech, for me: The notebook, legal pad, and pen is my thing. I keep this calendar, list of incoming money, and stack of bills with dates due on them, with a calculator, in a basket. That basket is the first thing I think of when I get up. It’s my go-to basket.

I’ve also done a total of amount due, percentage rates, etc. I know I must pick which plan is the best one as to which card to pay off first. I tend to think for me it might be paying off the higher interest ones.

I have many more things I must implement .

Oh, yes, I do write down every single dime I spend. Started this on 9/l and at the end of the month will add it all up and categorize it. And see where I can cut some more.

I am not at the point where like Larry Wygnat I am going to sell all furniture and sleep on the floor — literally he said that. I think since my furniture is so cheap, it would only bring around $200, and then I’d have to rebuy it again, and pay for delivery. I just find it hard to sell things that I’ll have to rebuy again. I think Larry’s suggestion pertains more to people who bought valuable things that might recoup a significant amount of money. MIne would not.

Interesting how the frugality of not tossing things out so that you won’t have to replace them can collide with the goal of paring down and selling so you aren’t in debt. A weird conundrum.

I have to sign off and am hoping eyes are not glazing. I appreciate the practical advice, the time spent on thinking about this, and the moral support given to me. Thank you thank you.

As if that isn’t enough, the first couple we celebrated with is already pregnant. Here comes a slew of baby showers! AUGH!

I can totally relate to the cost of knitting. I learned to knit less than a year ago and have been keeping all my receipts since I started so that I could track my expenses. A couple weeks ago I stuck them all into a spreadsheet, and holy cow! I now have a separate line item in my budget for knitting/crafts! (Not that I’m necessarily able to fund it, but since it’s there, it’ll remind me that I need to be careful.)

scrambling – It sounds like you are still uncertain about whether your gift-giving philosophy is appropriate. I think you know exactly what you want to do but are worried about how your friends and family will react. Maybe you just need to make a decision about it, let people know, and stick with it. If you are wishy-washy about it, people will continue to question you, which will make you all the more uncertain. If you tell people “this is how it is for me for now, take it or leave it,” people will appreciate your strength and learn to accept you. Those who don’t may not be worth your energy. (Don’t expect immediate acceptance from everyone, but also don’t allow people to try to change you back for an indefinite period.) Allowing others to ask questions will help them understand while it helps you solidify your own feelings on the matter.

On receiving gifts that reflect the giver’s tastes rather than yours, I think it is hard to buy for someone whose tastes are the polar opposite of your own. The giver may not be trying to change your tastes but rather may truly believe that the gift is beautiful. It is hard to see things through someone else’s eyes. My mom gave up on buying clothes for me from the time I was quite young because I hated (color-wise) everything she picked out. Several years ago she made a quilt for me but was smart enough to know that she should ask about my color preferences! It’s absolutely beautiful, and I appreciate it even more knowing that she spent countless hours working with colors that she doesn’t really like.

Anyway, here are more thoughts for you:

First of all — I want to say that I admire you for taking steps to fix your finances now. It’s easy to just keep going the old way until you reach a crisis where you HAVE to change. Second — financial mistakes do not make you a bad person. They’re just mistakes, and things happen when you are a human being. Third — congratulations! You are making a plan, you are cutting spending, you are focusing on retirement — things are going up from here!

So — where are you? You have credit card debt, you have lived beyond your means, you don’t want people to judge you, you have made a career move that didn’t pan out. It’s too bad about the career, but, after all, your career is more than just making the maximum number of dollars, and if you were trying something that would have been more fulfilling, it wasn’t necessarily a bad idea (although you might not feel that way in hindsight).

You don’t want to be judged — based on what you said about those people not being sympathetic, I change my advice — DON’T tell them. Your finances are your private business, and if they are not going to be supportive, then don’t tell them. I think you will have to be clear that you are doing some financial belt tightening, but if it comes up, all you have to say is that you have done some retirement planning and you are not where you should be (or where you want to be), and you are determined to get back on track while you still have time. That can mean anything from you have a mountain of debt to you have only saved your first million. Either way, it is your financial future and your choice as to what you do with your money. If you find some sympathetic people, then you can decide if you want to be more forthright. As far as gifts, there are lots of ideas in this thread about how to deal with that without actually saying you can’t afford them anymore — from burnout to going green to choosing to support a charity instead. If you don’t choose to explain why you are stopping the gift giving, I suggest that you send your letters early and either say you aren’t doing gifts anymore or else just let them see that there are no more gifts — that way they will see they don’t have to buy you something and then you won’t get mired in guilt if they send you gifts.

You have lived beyond your means, but not extravagantly. I’m with you on that. I am mainly not extravagant (compared to the regular world, not compared to super frugal people), but there’s a lot of stuff here and there that adds up. There are tons of resources on the web with tips for living frugally. You just have to decide whether you are going to go black belt frugal and cut out EVERYTHING (like that guy you quoted who said don’t spend a nickel), or just cut back. I am working on being more frugal, but I am far from black belt, and I am comfortable with that. I have a plan for how long it will take to pay off the credit cards, then the student loan, etc etc, and although I could shorten that by a few months by going totally black belt, I won’t (although partly that’s because my husband would never go black belt frugal with me, and I can’t see it working out if I scrimp and save and he keeps spending the same amount — there would be too much resentment). You sound like a sensible person, so no doubt you will find what works for you.

I have total sympathy with you on the credit cards. I have also let them get away on me. I have put a few large purchases on credit, but I would have to say at least half my debt is from the little things that you buy here and there — purchases that don’t seem much at the time, but when they add up, it is the same as making a few really big financial blunders. Your comments also make it clear that you fell into all the bad traps — fees and rate increases for mistakes on other cards. Nasty credit card companies. The first thing that springs to mind is that you should call them and ask for lower rates. Particularly if you have been hit by the punative rates (over 20%) for mistakes that have happened in the past (e.g. a missed payment) and you have not made those mistakes again. Again, there’s lots of advice about how to do this on the net and in personal finance books. There’s a post somewhere on the simple dollar about it too, but I can’t remember where because I have been reading the archives. As far as transferring to a low introductory rate card — generally, I would do it. Some people say only to transfer if you are absolutely sure that you will have it paid off be the end of the low rate period, but I am carrying a lot of balances, and I figure that even if it is not paid off, as long as I ended up paying less interest on that part of the debt for some months, it is worth it. So — look at the difference in interest rate. How much interest will you save on that balance by transferring? What is the transfer fee? You have to look in the fine print — and if you can’t find it, I would phone the card issuer and ask what it is. Sometimes there is no fee, but a lot of the time there is a charge of 1 or 2 or 3 percent, sometimes there is a minimum or maximum fee as well. If you transfer a $5000 balance but there is a 3% fee, you are paying an extra $150 right off the bat, so you have to make sure that the transfer fee isn’t more than what you would save in interest. If you are going from a 19% card to a 3% card, and you will save $400 in interest over 6 months, then it is worth the transfer fee. HOWEVER — if you are even ONE DAY LATE making a payment, you will LOSE your low interest rate! Also, if you use the new card for any purchases, your purchases are going to be charged the regular rate of interest and your payments are going to be applied against the lowest interest balance first. Also, what will the interest rate be after the introductory period? If it is the same or less than what you are currently paying, then fine. If it will be more than what you pay on your current cards, then you will want to transfer that balance back onto the old card again at the end of the introductory period. That probably means more transfer fees. If you think you will be overwhelmed by having more credit cards to keep track of, then it might not be a good solution, unless you are transferring the entire balance of a card and then closing that account (but remember that your credit score is affected by how long you have had your accounts open, and newer accounts don’t score as well as established accounts). And I think the most important factor is — will you run up the other card again as soon as you have made room by transferring some of the balance? If yes, then DO NOT DO IT — that is just giving yourself more rope to hang yourself. If you have not plugged the leaks in your budget, then getting more credit at whatever rate is just going to land you with a bigger total debt. $10,000 of debt at 4% is worse than $5000 of debt at 19%. If you want to post the numbers on your offer (the amount you are thinking of transferring, the current rate you pay, the rate of the offer, the length of the offer, and the transfer fee), I would give it a shot figuring out how much it would save you. (And then the people who are really good at math would correct me.) Another thing that you could look into is a consolidation loan from a bank. Again, though, you have to be absolutely sure that once you consolidate, you don’t end up running up the credit cards and end up with the same debt PLUS the consolidation loan. I have been thinking about doing this, but because we have some debts at higher interest rates but some still on low rate offers, it looks like the interest rate savings would be a wash for us. If I did do a consolidation loan, I would then cancel all my credit cards except one. I’m not even sure, but cancelling all the other credit cards might even be a condition of getting a consolidation loan.

Anyway, I’m interested in how you make out with all this. Good luck!

Hitting 40 was a significant turning point for me…something about recognizing that my life being definitely half over let me give myself permission to not do things I didn’t want to do, esp if I was doing those things to please people I didn’t especially like. ie, I too would have been unable to attend a sixth housewarming party for anyone who included a gift list or gift card request.

By now (just hit 60) my friendship pool mostly doesn’t exchange gifts regularly. Of course we still do gifts but they are irregular and depend on having an inspiration for the perfect thing. And generally the very best ones are the ones that cost nothing. In my friendship circle the current winner is my 60th birthday gift of 60 washed and rolled up recycled airline washcloths. Those little hot cloths you get at the end of a long flight are tossed into the trash so a flight attendant friend saves the occasional bag to wash and reuse as rags. She shares this loot with her friends so I had asked for a bag or two before she retires this month.

My best gift recently was to a bride who loves to cook on the occasion of her first marriage of a fabulous kitchen tool I no longer use along with the story of why I bought it and some recipes (ok, it was a huge copper egg white whisking bowl and I bought it because I was so vain I wanted this symbol of being a serious cook.) I have gotten three mentions of what a great gift it was so I think it was a good one.

I am pretty careful about who gets homemade gifts because, as all the knitters have pointed out, they are quite costly in terms of time and sometimes materials too. And not everyone is a good candidate for recycled gifts either.

It is tricky weaning people of the gift exchange thing…esp when they are in the habit of spending a lot more money than you are comfortable with. I ran into this a few years ago when I gave something funky and fun to a new friend for some occasion and then on my birthday or Christmas received a $60+ gift. YIPES! I gave her several more simple, super thoughtful with story included type gifts. It took a couple of rounds before she stopped giving me expensive gifts.

And I have to comment re the silverware….someone gave you service for 25 of real sterling?!! WOW. Too bad it is a pattern you don’t like. My sterling is a pattern I picked out and love. I keep it in my kitchen drawer and use it for every single meal. Never polish it. Well, not quite never but, seriously, if you use it everyday just washing it keeps it from tarnishing. Unless you use the fork to beat up raw eggs. Beautiful silverware and pretty plates makes meals more of a treat..in the French sense that everything about each calorie you put in your mouth should please all the senses. I wonder if you could exchange your ugly pattern if you haven’t used it. It would have to be the store where it was purchased. All of the sites I know of that deal in ‘preowned’ silver buy at about 10% of retail and sell at more than half. Not a good exchange.

One of the best things I have seen recently…was at a family get together to honor the birthday of the daughter of friends we happened to be visiting and most of her gifts were cards with homemade gift cards for lunch with that aunt/grandparent/other adult and an afternoon outing of some sort. And this family is pretty open about gifts so everyone knew what she wanted & most included a bit of cash towards the one thing this kid wanted (a nano iPod. The whole gift thing was so simple and so oriented towards spending time together rather than collecting stuff. What a great tradition to have!

Another idea for gracefully bowing out of the gift exchange is to write your usual chatty holiday letter and include a comment about how you are becoming more sensitive to green issues and how much need there is in the world and that this year you are giving to charity in lieu of buying gifts.

The responses you get will be interesting! I would be surprised if a number of people you used to ‘gift’ didn’t cheer you for not burdening them down with more stuff.

and for the knitters I would like to mention that yarn marketed to weavers is often the same yarn (but in different packaging) as the yarn sold to knitters. And you will not believe how much less expensive it is. So look for weaving guilds & events, esp if a guild is having a ‘bring and buy’ sale at one of their meetings.

The wedding gift that will be the most memorable is largely because it came with a riddle. The giver wrote on his card that it is his family’s standard wedding gift. He wrote that it’s something that can go in nearly any room of the house, something it would be difficult to have too many of, and something that he’d be more than happy to see has never been used even if he comes and visits 10 years from now. However, should he learn we had made use of it, he’d be very glad to hear it was a “life saver”. The gift?

A fire extinguisher!!

One last thing – I’ve never had a housewarming party but when I bought my condo, one friend surprised me with a potted plant. A plant can be purchased for a dollar or two, but with a note about wanting to help the new place feel like a home, it should certainly fulfill any (inappropriate) social obligation to bring something to a housewarming party.