Tag Archives: money problems

Why I'm canceling my hosting plan

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A couple of people have asked about my hosting bill. Since it’s kind of difficult to explain over Twitter and texts, I’ll try to explain it here.

I use Host Gator, which through some trial and error I’ve found to be the most reliable web host, and their prices are awesome, too. I have the Business Plan, which lets me host multiple domains and gives me the option to have an SSL certificate, if I needed it. (Basically, an SSL lets you create a secure connection to the server, so that you, for example, could set up a store online. Since I am — was? — in the web design business, I thought it might come in handy at some point.) The Business Plan is $14.95 a month. When I set up my account, I paid six months in advance (because I prefer to have it all taken care of as far ahead of time as I can). Altogether, it came to $89.70.

On the first, I’ll be billed $89.70, for another six months. Initially, I was just waiting for payment from a couple of clients. As of last night, however, I’m now unemployed*. (Wheee! Except not.) Either way, for the last few months, I’ve been struggling to pay all of my bills: car insurance, student loan repayment, gym membership, and doctors’ appointments. Since I was doing the freelance/self-employed/contractor thingy, every paycheck was obsessively budgeted. Unfortunately, when you’re at the mercy of waiting for a client to send out a check, you can budget all you want, but you inevitably run out of money and have to wait for that next check. Or at least, I did. Every time a specific bill date rolled around, I’d start panicking because I didn’t know if the next check would arrive in time for me to deposit it and pay the bill (or bills). I’ve asked my different doctors if they could bill me so many times, it’s a miracle they didn’t ask me to just leave (considering they all have policies that copays are due at the time of visit).

Anyway. (Whoo, tangent.) Because I’ve been struggling to pay each bill, it just makes sense to let this go for now. It’s only hosting. They’re only websites. I’ve also canceled my gym membership. Again, it’s only the gym. My car insurance and student loan repayments are much more important. (Not that I drive the car; I has no money for gas.)

I did think about canceling my current hosting plan and changing it to a less expensive plan, but again, I can’t afford even the important stuff, so it’s a lot smarter to cut out the extras. (The next plan down is the Baby Plan, at $9.95 a month. I could go down further, with the Hatchling Plan at $8.95 a month, but you only get one domain with that plan.)

Simply put: I need to cut out as many extras as possible right now, until I have a steady income. (When I first wrote about shutting my sites down, I was looking for supplemental income.)

A few people have offered to help me out with this bill, which was surprising and so, so sweet of you, but even if I did pay for another month of hosting, I’d still be in the same position next month. See what I mean? I’d much rather cancel it for now, and once I have found a new job and am not hyperventilating about how I’m going to pay for anything, I can have my websites and gym membership back**.

I’ll be honest: it definitely sucked to cancel my gym membership, and it’s going to be pretty sucky to not have my digital portfolio and other sites online for a while. But I had many offers for employment while I was working that I turned down because I liked where I was, so I’m confident that I’ll find something relatively soon. (It’s a good thing I’m registered with that freelancing agency.)

In short, I’m fine. Broke, yes, but I’ve got a lot of good things going on:

  • It’s nothing new, but Mike is my rock. He’s been so good to me these last twenty-four or so hours. Last night (before we got the news about Konner and before I lost my job), he took me out to my favorite pizza place to cheer me up. I had no idea he was trying to cheer me up; he just told me he wanted to try their pizza, since he’d never had it before. He is sneaky and wonderful and I’m going to marry him (in case I don’t say that enough).
  • Robbie (Mike’s brother) and I are working on a mini graphic novel. He’s a very talented artist, and I’m stoked to be working with him. I’m currently writing up an outline of the storyline we came up with, and will start on the script once we’ve fine-tuned the outline.
  • I have finished reading through the first draft of Sade On the Wall, and am getting ready to outline the second draft.
  • I have a wonderful family and extended family.
  • There’s a roof over my head and I’m far from starving.

So you see, I might be broke, but I’m actually pretty rich. I know that sounds so cheesy, but it’s true.

*I’m probably not going to be blogging about the specifics, because it was a family business and I have family who reads this, but I will say that it wasn’t my choice. Ironically, I was looking for a part-time retail job on the weekends to supplement my freelance income, so I guess now I’m looking for something full-time. Funny how that works.
**When I canceled my gym membership yesterday, I still had a job. The guy at the gym asked for my reason for canceling, and because I’m-freelance-and-broke-at-the-moment was too long of an explanation, I just told him I was unemployed. I feel like I kind of jinxed myself.

Some (slightly) bad news

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Self-employment is really not working for me.

Good thing most of my sites are WordPress and the content is easily downloadable. I’ll still be reading your blogs, though, and I’ll still have Twitter and YouTube.

On the bright side, now I’ll have no excuse to not write! Blogging is one of my biggest procrastination methods distractions.

If I could stop itching, I would probably get more writing done.

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Alternate title: “What I spent 1,000+ words on, instead of working on my NaNoWriMo novel.”

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Somewhere in the last couple of weeks, I’ve developed a mystery allergy. I’m itchy — all over — with no hives, bites, eczema scales, or anything visible. I get so itchy, at times, that I scratch until I bleed. At first, I thought it was dry skin, but I’ve been using lotion and paying attention throughout the last week, and my skin isn’t actually too dry. (The palms of my hands, on the other hand*, are wicked dry. They don’t itch, though.)

Then I thought it might be the laundry detergent we’re using. I put a little bit on my arm, rubbed it in with a Qtip, and went outside for a cigarette. Aside from being very cold because I couldn’t wear a jacket over my detergent-arm, nothing happened.

I got a little worried because a friend of mine has neighbors with a flea/bedbug/cockroach problem, but I don’t have any bites or marks (other than scratches from scratching so much). My friend and her kids are all fine, though, so I don’t think I could have picked any of it up, either.

Tonight, as I was cleaning out my cat’s brush, it hit me: Maybe I have developed an allergy to my cats’ dander. It would make sense. I pinned down that my bathrobe was making me the most itchy. It is 100% polyester, but none of my other polyester or polyester-blend clothing makes me itch. However, my cat slept on it every night for about a week. I’ve since washed it in hot water, and although I haven’t worn it, I’m willing to bet that it won’t make me itchy anymore. I also washed my sheets, comforter, pillow cases, afghan, and fleece blanket — yes, I sleep with a lot of blankets — recently, and the itching got a little less itchy.

I hate to admit that I could be allergic to my furry little child, but it’s kind of looking like it. I’m having visions of having to give Squirt (my baby) and Apollo (my parents’ baby) a dander bath, and of Squirt clawing my face off because she hates water. (The one and only time we had to give her a flea bath — because the people who gave her to me let their cats go in and outside without ever giving them flea treatments — she was pissed. And this was when she was a kitten; I’d hate to see how she’d react now.)

Blaine — thank you, Blaine! — suggested I try an antihistamine. I need to refill my Claritin-D pretty badly, anyway, so hopefully that will do the trick. I cannot believe I may have developed an allergy to my cats, but I feel lucky that I’m not swelling up or anything.

The other alternative is that Mike is right and it’s dust mites, which creeps me out so badly that I’d rather be allergic to my fuzzball.

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I’m so ashamed, I’ve been so mean
“Simple Kind of Life,” No Doubt

This song is pretty close to summing up the last few days for me. I want to go back to Friday and slam my self-absorbed little head into the wall. Okay, so maybe I don’t want to hurt myself, but I’m pretty ashamed of that girl. That is not me, and I am disgusted at my own behavior. I didn’t mean it, at all, but I’m still ashamed.

♦

I’ve been writing like mad. I fell behind for a little bit, and honestly it was partly because I was too tired to write, and partly because I lost faith in my story. A handful of awesome people — Blaine, Jess, Becky, Sanya, and Veronica, to name a few — have been encouraging me to keep going, and have (just today) made me realize that I need to have faith in my story. I’ll be honest: for a little while there, I thought it sucked and that I should stop and do something else. I was afraid that I’d failed to create the strong characters I wanted to create. They’re still not as strong as I’d like them to be, but when Jess BBMed me tonight and told me how much she loved the story and the characters, how strong they are, I said to myself, “You need to trust your story and your own writing; you are doing better than you thought you were.” (I may have actually said, “I need to trust my story…” but most likely, this conversation took place in the third person. Sigh.)

Tonight — or, okay, this morning, apparently; it’s after midnight now — I plan on breaking 13,000 words, but it’s become less about the word count and more about finishing it** and then editing it, because holy shit, there are actually people reading who expect a new chapter every day. I was, in a daydreaming sort of way, entertaining the idea of self-publishing the edited, complete version, but at the time told myself that that would be putting the cart before the horse… Now, it’s still putting the cart before the horse, but it’s a lot less of a daydream and more of a thought; I’m really thinking about it now.

♦

I may be rich with word count and chapters, but I am broke. I just finished a client’s website and am starting a new one, though, and am expecting payment from another client soon, so hopefully in another week or so I won’t have to worry about my bills. I feel horrible that Mike is the only one putting gas into the car, and that I haven’t given my mom money toward our car insurance, and that two major bills are coming up — one of which I’m not sure I can afford at all; it will all depend on how soon I next get paid.

Honestly, I’m kind of thinking of getting a part-time job somewhere. I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately, to be honest, but there are a few things that hold me back. I definitely don’t think I could handle two jobs right now. I want to stick this self-employment thing out, really, but the longer I go in this position, the more I miss having that secure weekly or bi-weekly paycheck (among other things). Maybe I should give it until the beginning of the new year, and then decide.

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So what’s new with you?

*No pun intended.

**I especially want to finish this because it will only be the second novel I’ve ever actually finished writing. I still haven’t finished The Cure Program or Secondhand Mom. I really suck at finishing things; it has to be done right away, or it gets harder for me to come back to.

Winner, winner, fettuccine dinner

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How can you not wake up in a good mood when, the night before, your team made a comeback in merely seconds to beat their biggest rival? Even though I woke up exhausted from staying up late watching said game and then celebrating afterward, I bounced into work with an energy that no one else had. (Literally; my boss is a Patriots fan and my co-worker is recovering from the flu.)

After work, I dragged Mike with meMike came with me to the rheumatologist, which sucked a little because I ended up being late and I couldn’t pay my copay because I am so horribly broke. I made a promise to bring them a check on Friday (AKA Pay Day; biweekly pay SUCKS), and then sat down to wait. While we waited, he flipped through an old issue of Sports Illustrated with Tom Brady on the cover and I edited some of my novel. We laughed at Tom Brady, especially because the cover said something about how awesome the Patriots are (but really, they lost to the Colts Sunday night, mwahahaha). I kept editing, he occasionally found himself accidentally watching General Hospital (it was on TV in the waiting room), I confessed my childhood crush on both Maurice Bernard (Sonny on GH) and Steve Burton (Jason on GH), traumatizing Michael forever.

Miraculously, even though I was late, I actually got in pretty quickly. Usually I have to wait forever to get in to see Dr. Greco. He did the same routine as always: asked me where the pain is, checked the fibromyalgia points and got nothing, talked about my symptoms, and then we moved on to the different doctors I’ve seen and he also asked me how the Cymbalta worked for me.

“It kept me up. For four days in a row. And I was all jittery and hyper. So I stopped taking it, ’cause I needed some sleep,” I said, afraid that he might tell me I needed to keep taking it. I prepared myself to argue.

Instead, he just said, “okay” and we talked about the other medications I’ve tried. The only one that hasn’t made me crazy and does slightly work is Tramadol — but it makes me HIGH. Like, so totally stoned. I cannot stress enough how HIGH it makes me. (It’s kind of awesome because it’s relaxing, but kinda not awesome because I’m only good for sitting around and watching DVDs or TV, or sleeping. I feel like I’ve said this before.)

Anyway, he asked me to call all of my doctors to get all of my records transferred to him. Then he wrote fibromyalgia on my paperwork for yesterday. “I’m gonna write fibromyalgia here, even though that’s not what you’ve got,” he said. I didn’t argue it, even though I so desperately want a real diagnosis, not a stand in. He said that I’m harder than an episode of House, and that this is going to take some detective work. I said that every doctor I’ve seen has dropped me or handed me off to someone else, and he said that he’s not going to do that, that he’s going to do the detective work.

Mike and I left the office and medical building shortly after. I asked him if he minded going to Southern with me so that I could sell my textbooks, and we went. I ended up getting $198 for them, which is good considering I paid about $300, maybe $400 altogether. I even sold the Praxis workbook I’d bought at Barnes and Noble; their return policy is fourteen days, and it’d been well past two weeks when I dropped out of school. I got $2 back for it, which is better than nothing.

As we got closer to his house on the way back, I asked him what he wanted to do next. Even though we’d spent the afternoon running around, I liked being with him. My novel called, but I also didn’t want to leave his side just yet. It’s rare that we get any kind of alone time together, since we both have big families and live in crowded little houses. We decided to go to Olive Garden, because we both craved pasta and I had the extra cash. We had a funny waiter and got the chance to just relax and hang out. We talked about our grandparents and our favorite childhood memories, and our waiter made fun of me because I couldn’t finish my dinner after soup and bread.

After eating, we were both exhausted so I dropped him off and went home to take a shower and do some writing. I didn’t do a lot of writing. (I forgot to post the daily toll last night, too, so I’ll try to remember to post it later.)

I had a good day, though, and hope today will be another good day (and more productive with my writing)!

Going crazy, wanna come?

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I’m broke. My pharmacy tried to kill me. My uterus feels as if there were a kitten inside of it trying to claw its way out.

Ah, yes. It’s good to be me.

Between doctors appointments and being sick, my check was… a lot less this week, and will be… even more less next week. Normally, I’d tap into my savings account, but I’ve already done that. The money in there is supposed to go toward repairs for my car: mounts, brakes, blower motor. I have a little money left in my business account, but tax season will soon be upon us and I would sort of like to be able to pay said taxes without scrambling or resorting to selling oregano as marijuana. (I’m totally kidding about that last part. Please don’t come after me, FBI.)

So I’m a little tight for money. I have yet to buy my mom a birthday present, even though her birthday was two weeks ago. I feel like the biggest jerk alive, even though she says she doesn’t care. Of course she doesn’t care! She’s my mom. But I still feel like she deserves so much, and I can’t even give her one little birthday gift.

On top of all of the being broke, my pharmacy has it out for me. Somewhere along the line, someone screwed up my birth control dosage — which explains why, for the last few months, I’ve had awful cramps. As in, I don’t ever get cramps. As in, they fucking HURT. (Did I mention the kitten? Yeah. Enjoy that mental image.) To make a long story short, I’m supposed to be on a higher dosage birth control that does NOT have a generic version, and someone fucked up and gave me the generic version — of a lower dosage, and lower price. So tomorrow, when I go to pick up the correct, non-kitten-clawing-its-way-out-of-my-uterus version, it’s gonna cost me $40. I also have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow that is going to cost me $30. I so miss the insurance we used to have, the one with no co-pays that covered EVERYTHING.

I keep trying to figure out why, as a person with a normally high-paying job, I have no money. It’s not like I blow it away on stuff. I’m pretty good with a budget. I mean, there is my Target addiction, but I have mastered getting my fix without going broke. (Ask me about their dollar aisle. Do it now!!)

I have to get the birth control, because without that I’ll probably end up with a baby instead. And I’m having a hard time imagining having a baby when I am broke as it is and sleep in a dining room. (Someday I’ll get to that.)

I have to go see the rheumatologist tomorrow, because he has my blood test results and I’d kinda like to know what the fuck is wrong with me. That would be nice. (Too bad he can’t just give them to me over the phone, like Pam the PA does. But I digress.)

And the car? Yeah, I might want to have those repairs done, since I drive about forty minutes away from my city three times a week to go to school. I don’t know why, but I don’t exactly want to break down (or go without heat when the frost hits). So those repairs are kinda important.

But don’t worry. I’ll figure it out like I always do. It’s not like anyone who has ever borrowed money from me is willing to help right now (you know who you are), so I’ll just take care of it myself.

Did I mention that I’m also really stressed out right now because it turns out I have a million things to do — including taking a HUGE test — so that I can get into the Education Department at my school (so I can be a teacher)? Yeah. I won’t even get into that right now.

So how are YOU doing? :)