Granny Smith Has to Go

Meet Granny Smith       1974 Ford Ranger XLT

The time has come to let her go. The old gal has served her purpose and we can't keep her here anymore. It makes me sad, but it is just one of those things. Maybe someone will see her here on my blog and want to take her home with them. She still has a lot of life left in her. She still turns a lot of heads and gets a few honks and whistles while ambling by. Yep, Granny Smith has been a great asset to our family, but sadly, she needs to find a place to live where she will be appreciated and pampered. Here she is folks. If you or anyone you know would like this classy piece of work, just drop me a line. Her price is negotiable.

Search for Money for College Continues. . .

My search for any kind of financial assistance for my daughter to attend college continues. She has chosen a state university that really isn't that expensive, if you have the funding. As I have written in a previous blog, my husband and I unfortunately had to file for Chapter 13 Bankruptcy a little over a year ago. One of the questions I asked our lawyer was, would we be able to get a student loan so our daughter can go to college? The lawyer said the bankruptcy probably wouldn't interfere with that. Well, the lawyer, in all his brilliance, was wrong! We cannot acquire any more debt while paying off our previous debt. I totally get that, but if we had filed for a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, we would not be in this situation. We failed the means test for a Chapter 7.
I filled out the required FAFSA forms in hopes that she might qualify for some kind of help. The unfortunate thing is that it appears  my husband and I have a large income. Being a "displaced housewife," I only earn about $4000 a year, but my husband actually has a really decent job. The only problem is that out of each paycheck, money is  taken out directly and sent to the Trustee. We pay a whopping $5595.00 per month to the trustee. That leaves us with a meager $2000.00 per month to feed and clothe our family of six. We have had some unexpected car repair issues  and so in order to save enough money to pay to fix the car, I have not purchased groceries like a normal person would. It saddens me to say that my poor nine year old has gone to bed hungry and gone to school without breakfast on several occasions during the last three months or so. We made many an evening meal of watered down pancakes lately! We are quickly becoming accustomed to meat free/protein free meals around here! My point is, if our true finances were being reflected in the FAFSA forms, I believe my daughter would qualify for some sort of grant or loan. We are still waiting for the "Award Letter" from the school so I don't know for sure where we stand. I am heartsick that because of a terrible economy and some unwise decisions that my husband and I made, our whole family is paying the price--my oldest daughter being the one who is taking the brunt of it. It is just sickening.
In my search for scholarships and financial aid, I came across an appalling article that claims parents who do not pay for their child's college education are bad, selfish, negligent parents. I wish I could get ahold of the dude who wrote that piece! There are plenty of suggestions for paying for college for people who are in normal financial situations. I am all for parents helping their kids pay for at least some of their college. If we could just get our daughter started, by the time she is finished we will have paid our debts in full and have the money available to help her pay for any loans she would get. The problem is just getting someone to take a chance, and loan her the money. I am sure this saga will continue. If you are in a similar situation as I am and you have found my blog looking for answers, I am sorry to say that I have not found any, but if I do, I will certainly post them here. Please check back again for any new things I have found out.

Easter Morning!

One of my favorite days of the year. He is risen. . . . . . .

He is risen indeed!









Happy Easter!

Paying for College While in Bankruptcy

One of the most frustrating things I have encountered lately is the whole college education funding problem. For most people, this process seems easy. You fill out the FAFSA form, you apply for scholarships, and sometimes you get money to help pay for your kid's education.If you don't happen to qualify for any assistance, then you can apply for a loan, and bang, you are good to go. . . EXCEPT when you have me, or my husband for a parent, then things all of a sudden become complicated. We have completed the FAFSA, my daughter searched for appropriate scholarships she could apply for, and she has been accepted to the college of her choice. The only problem is that we can't afford it. My daughter has been rejected for all of the scholarships she applied for. As of yesterday, all hopes of winning even a little scholarship money are dashed; the last rejection letter came in yesterday's mail. My poor daughter, crestfallen! The problem for us is that we are not in a minority, my husband and I are still married, my husband and I both have jobs, and my daughter is "only" a B student. On the surface, that doesn't sound like a bad thing, and it also looks like we should be able to at least help our daughter apply for a loan, but things are not always the way they appear to be on the outside. If you were to look just beneath the fraying edges of our family life, you would see that we are sitting precariously on the very top of a dangerous cliff; one little thing could send us over the edge. Because my husband and I are in an active Chapter 13 bankruptcy, three quarters of what we earn is taken by the court appointed trustee to pay our debts. The other one quarter of the income is to go to pay for groceries, utilities and healthcare. We are not in a position to co-sign on a loan. The FAFSA forms do not reflect the "sins" of the parents. It only looks at how much a person earns, not at what, where or how much of it goes to other things. So, because of the financial ineptitude of my husband and I, my dear daughter(s) are suffering. They are the ones who will be shouldering the cost of something my husband and I should, at the very least, be assisting with. My daughters will be impacted by a mistake my husband made and my inability to see it and insist that it be remedied, for years to come.

If you are currently considering filing for bankruptcy, or are currently in Chapter 13 bankruptcy, and you have found my blog because you were looking for help paying for your child's education, I am sorry, I do not have any help to offer you. There does not seem to be any assistance anywhere. Our only hope is that our daughter will be able to get a high interest student loan with a deferred repayment plan. If that happens, then we might be able to help her in four years when we have paid back all our previous debt. If you are considering filing for bankruptcy, please do a lot of research and if possible, find another way to get out of debt. Bankruptcy is awful and should be an absolute last resort.

No News

There is a lot of crap going on in the world today. There is very little good news that is reported. Everything seems to be negative, and I am wondering how much of this continued negativity are we (individuals, countries, planet) going to be able to take? Things have gotten so bad that I do not listen to any talk radio shows. I no longer watch any shows like Jon Stewart or The Colbert Report. I actually do not even watch any news except the portion on the local news that gives the weather, but even that isn't good. What is happening to us? Why is there nothing good going on? Or, if there is good news out there, why are "journalists" choosing to ignore it? That old saying, "No news is good news" always puzzled me. Does it mean that not hearing any news from anyone means that there is so much good that there is nothing to report? Or does it mean that there is so much bad news that the only news there is is bad? Geez, I think I just confused myself again. The way things are now, for me, that old saying means there isn't any good news to report; not anywhere, not at any time. Now I think I'm depressed. . . I don't want to hear only bad news. Please, someone, find something good to report!

Firmoo, Funny Name, Good Company

My last post was about ordering prescription eyeglasses online from www.zenni.com. I have more recently discovered an fairly new online prescription eyeglass company called Firmoo (www.firmoo.com). Funny name, I think, but there must be a reason for it. Anyway, I purchased two pairs of eyeglasses for myself from this company. The frames were very inexpensive, so I ordered one pair with my bifocal prescription and another with single vision.  It took about ten days for my order to arrive. While the glasses I ordered did correct my vision, they were just too large a frame for my face, so I decided to send them back. The company offers a no questions asked return policy, and they have a fairly generous refund policy as well, but in order to receive a full refund, the glasses need to be returned within 7 days from when you receive them. Since the company is in California and the glasses are shipped there from China, getting the glasses returned withing that 7 day window was nearly impossible for me since I live more than 1000 miles from the west coast. If you return your purchase within 30 days, you can get 50% of the price refunded. You also have to contact the company, either by telephone or e-mail in order to get a "Return Authorization Number" (RAN). I chose to contact them by email, and I lost a little time doing that. Instead of getting a refund, I decided I wanted to just exchange my glasses for a different pair. It got a little complicated, but in the end, I was sent a code to type into my order form that subtracted the amount I was due. I waited another ten days, and my replacement pair of eyeglasses arrived! They correct my vision just great and have that funky, retro look that I like. Firmoo also includes a handy little screwdriver and extra screws, a case and a lint free cloth with each order. In dealing with the company, I found that they were very willing to work with me in order to make me a satisfied customer. Their correspondence with me was friendly and made me feel like they really wanted my business.
There are a couple of things to remember when you are ordering. If you use a credit card, you will be charged a small separate fee for an international transaction. If you pay through PayPal, you can avoid that extra charge. The pictures of the glasses are accurate and almost exactly the size they are in real life. There is a " virtual try on" feature which has various pictures of different faces that you can try the frames on to see how they look. If I had it to do over again, I would probably try to find a photo of myself to load onto that feature so that I could get a more accurate feel for how the glasses would look on me. If I would have done that in the first place, I might have been able to avoid the problem I had with the first pairs.
These days, glasses are almost a fashion accessory, and it is fun to have different pairs of glasses to wear for different occasions and outfits, but buying more than one pair of glasses at your eye doctor's office or at Lenscrafters or any other retail store is just too expensive to be able to do that. Firmoo, with it's friendly customer service, huge selection and low prices makes buying extra glasses something that just about any budget can manage. I feel comfortable recommending Firmoo, even if it does have a funny name!

Google Adsense Works, Haters be Damned!

For some reason, my silly little blog has taken some pretty cheap shots from readers (haters?) who seem to think that just by reading one of my posts they know who I am and feel the need to criticize me. I don't understand that at all, and even though it shouldn't, it does actually hurt when people make comments that are unfairly critical. I post a lot of entries that are just what is bugging me or causing some sort of distress in my life. I post it because, quite frankly, it feels good to get it out. Maybe someone will read it and feel a little less alone, or feel like their troubles are not as bad as they thought, or it  may make them mad. I don't know. I also post entries about products and services I have tried because sometimes people want to know about that kind of thing. It shouldn't be the source of such criticism. One of the last entries I wrote was about an optical firm I purchased some prescription eyeglasses from. One (possibly the only) reader felt the need to criticize my writing and continued writing nasty comments. I deleted one, and he criticized me for that. That sort of stuff seems so unnecessary to me, and why it hurts my feelings, I don't know. What I do know is that this blog makes money for me. No matter how many negative comments it gets, I am making money, and that is what makes doing this worth it. I have created a nice, yet small, stream of income from my writing even if in someone elses opinion, it is not good, or it is boring, or it appears to be something it's not. As it turns out, the haters seem to be the ones who are helping me make a little money, and that makes me the winner. I am proof that writing a blog and connecting it with Google Adsense works, plain and simple. Don't hate me because I am successful.