Back in the Saddle Again (or...Once More, with Feeling)

"I've had it. Pressure turns coal into diamonds? Well, the self-imposed pressure that I'm feeling right now is enough to form a diamond encrusted sword with which I will slay this wretched, soul sucking beast of debt. The Dragon will Die; I'm going to kill it, I'm going to eat it's heart and I'm going to mount it's head on my freakin' wall.The beast will die completely and finally on December 31st, 2008. There - I've set the goal. Does it sounds ridiculous? Absurd? The Impossible Dream? Yeahhhhh....so what. JFK asked the scientist who would later be responsible for the space program what it would take to put a man on the moon. The scientist said, "The Will to Do It." This debt is taking away my financial future, my financial present, my social life, my time with my kids, their financial future - think about all that on a daily basis and see if you don't find the damned will to do just about anything."

Wow....I got chills just reading that, didn't you? Okay, okay - maybe it was just a bug on my neck. But in any case, the words are somewhat inspiring - at least I felt that they were when I wrote them on August 11th, 2007. Problem is, it didn't take. 12/31/08 came and went with the Debt Beast still eating comfortably, having flicked away with its yellowed scraggly claw the tiny peon frantically waving his shiny little stick in the Beast's general direction.

Said peon would, of course, be me. And, while the ideological side of me reads those words and gets re-invigorated, the jaded side of me that's drudged through the last year and a half since that was written reads it again and says..."what a yutz".

I'm no further ahead then when I started this blog, and that's depressing. So what went wrong? Well first off, I didn't work as hard or as smart as I could have or should have. So I'm changing that. I'm raising my rates on jobs so that I actually (gasp!) see a profit when all is said and done. If a client changes their minds about something, a change order will be signed and the price will increase. All jobs will be put in writing and nothing that is not on the page will be done without a change order and more money. Now, this is nothing new - contractors have been doing this for ages, but Debt Daddy has not. I made the mistake of getting too friendly with my clients as well as not valuing myself or my work as it should be valued. That ends this year. To paraphrase, "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and gosh darn it - people are gonna pay me for it".

What else went wrong? Underestimating my opponent. When I first got into this whole "slay the credit card beast" rigamarole, I imagined myself as Rocky in the first movie - the underdog going up against the Champ, Apollo Creed. I think I may have been able to win that one, or at least come out of it with a split decision. But debt comes in many forms, and it comes at you from several different directions at once and, before I knew it, I wasn't just fighting Apollo Creed, but Clubber Lang, Ivan Drago, and Tommy Gunn as well - and that was not a fight I was prepared for. I had prepared for a battle - I need to prepare for a war.

Another thing that sabatoged me - thinking that I could do it all on my own. Debt Daddy has always been of the mind that he didn't really need anyone else's help with anything, and admitting that he did was somehow a sign of weakness. Well, I'm trying to get over that feeling now, and make use of the resources around me. I have great friends that are offering advice and support as far as my business goes, and I'm taking it. I'm making an appointment with a financial counselor to sit down with my wife and I to examine our options (interestingly, this particular financial consulting company makes it a rule that they must speak with both spouses - not just one - to make sure that both parties are on board with debt elimination - I thought that was great); I'm even involving my wife more with my business. Turns out Debt Mommy has a gift for determining the true dollar value of my work. So far the quotes she's suggested, while being up to 30% higher than quotes I would have given, have been easily accepted by my clients, so I'm gonna keep running the jobs past her first. She's a keeper, she is.

I guess it's kind of like building a house. You can't build a house using only your hammer. You have to use many different tools, all working together to get the house built right. I'll beat this beast yet, but I can't do it overnight and I can't do it alone. It'll take time, it'll take help, it'll take perseverence and sweat, brains and guts, courage and tenacity....

It'll take every tool in the toolbox.

The Beginning of the Beginning of the End

Hello, good Debt Daddy readers!

Well, I'm back from vacation, and I'm finally getting caught up with my blogging. I just read my last entry, and I scared myself a little bit. My, my...wasn't I just full of piss and vinegar (for all you kids out there, that means...um....like hyped up - you still say that, don't you?)

Thanks go out to debtsnowballkiller for commending my serious motivation, and she's right - I was motivated as hell. You wanna find out exactly where your finances are? Plan a vacation. Not only do you have to fund the darned thing, but you have to structure all your bill payments to go off seemlessly without you. When I wrote my last post, I had just finished setting all of that up, and I was ready to pull my hair out (and I don't have a lot to begin with, so that's saying something). The actual doing of the thing is easy - schedule your payments online - you pick the date - and they come out of your checking account automatically. Simple, right? However, when you have no money and you're structuring your payments in such a way that Peter pays Paul who pays Mary who pays the other Mary who pays Judas - well, it becomes a riddle wrapped in a conundrum covered in a ponzy scheme - not so simple anymore. (More on that in a later post) In any case, it got done and we got gone.

I came back ready, willing and able to work my butt off and kick some serious credit card ass. Two men enter, one man leaves! Slay the Debt Creature! The theme song from Rocky as performed by System of a Down going through my mind! (Note: System of a Down has never, to my knowledge, done a cover of the Rocky theme song - as I said, this was in my mind - although it would be cool in an extremely warped kind of way, don'tcha think?) I was pumped! Juiced! A bunch of other words that convey excitement!

And there was no work.

I called everyone, and there was simply no work to be done for the entire first week back from vacation. As I've mentioned in previous posts, I'm an independent home improvement contractor. The best part of my job is that I'm not someone's employee. I don't have a boss to answer to. I don't have to play the corporate games. And, since I work alone, sex in the workplace is rarely an issue. The worst part of my job, ironically, is that I'm not someone's employee. No paid vacation days. No sick days. No overtime. And sex in the workplace is rarely an issue. In the corporate world, when there's no work, you can still look busy and get paid. When you're an independent and there's no work, you think about selling your body parts on Ebay.

The jobs are slowly creeping back now. People are back from their own vacations, they've recouped their losses from going on those vacations and have money to spend again. In another week, we should be able to buy groceries.

There's really not much of a point to this post except to say that Armageddon was temporarily called on account of near bankruptcy, but will be on again shortly.

Two men enter, one man leaves.

Diamond encrusted sword.

The whole nine yards.

Don't miss it.