emergency fund started!

i just opened up an ING savings account. it is going to take $50/month out of my paycheck to save for an emergency fund. pretty much the only emergency this will get me out of right now is buying myself lunch. however, i look forward to the day that my emergency fund can pay for a car accident or hospital stay.

hitting financial rock bottom

ok, i am now writing three blogs. some of you maybe found this one through getinmahbelly or cincinnatiimports.

after getting a call from one of my credit cards last week saying that i had been charged for 2 months in a row for being over balance, and haggling my way out of the charges, i realized that, in the past 2 years of not really looking at my credit card statements and just paying the minimums, the bastards had, month by month, raised my APR from 7.99% to (please sit down if you are not already) 31.49%. yes, i am officially getting completely screwed and yes, it is all my fault.

i am in this mess because i was jobless for a while after college graduation so i started using my credit cards to live. once you start being in debt and you realize it's not the end of the world, it's
way too easy to just keep going. i spent 3 years living (way outside my means) in new york for law school, which was really the hardest on my finances. i went from about $2500 in credit card debt before i started law school to about $12,000 when i graduated. this is not counting the almost $200,000 in student loan debt i also racked up.

my current debt breakdown:

• auto loan: $1,167.07
• credit cards: $15,736.72
• student loans: $177,741.18

i make way not enough money to handle this. fortunately, my student loans are currently being paid off through loan repayment programs, so that is slowly but surely being chipped away by people other than me.

my current asset breakdown:

• checking account: approx $1000
• savings account: $6
• 401k: $0
  
• pension: approx $3000
• car: approx $4500

that is it!

my tentative goals:

• pay off my credit cards by may 2012 (this would put me at paying approximately $450/month to start)
• start saving for an emergency fund
• start putting away money for retirement

over the holidays, i am going to take some time to make up a budget and specific goals, and then i am going to track my progress on this blog. wish me luck!