New Life Binder: Filofax

Adding Insult To Injury.

I endured five years in an abusive relationship. I was 24 when I finally got away from my ex husband. It took a lot of courage to leave. To stand up and actually tell people what was going on. It took SO MUCH to get some of them to believe me. When people met me, or talked to me on a daily basis you would have never known that I was hiding such a dark secret. It is a part of my past that I'm not proud of. I'm more proud of myself for being able to leave and finally get away from him. Or so I thought. 

To this day, he is still screwing my life up. To this day I still have to try and clean everything up. Back when we were together, and/or married, he was horrible not just with how he treated me, but with money, secrets, eating, etc. He was all in all a terrible person. He over drafted our (my) bank account by $2000, and overcharged a credit card of mine by $500. I managed to pay them off while we were still together. I sent in my payments every month till it was all gone. OR SO I THOUGHT. 

It wasn't till a couple years ago that I learned that I still owed money on the bank account. He had gone out and cashed the last payment instead of sending in the money order. And that wasn't the only thing sneaky he was doing either. He hid paperwork and mail from me constantly. He had told me that he turned in the medicaid paperwork from my pregnancy in 2009, which would have written off that debt completely. It got denied a few weeks later. It wasn't until I was moving out of our last address together that I found the paperwork, folded up and shoved in a box in the closet. So frustrating. 

Today though, I'm writing because I'm heartbroken. Back in 2009 I had gone to a Dr for a consultation. I wanted to become pregnant. I didn't feel that Dr was a good fit for me, so I looked elsewhere. Fast forward to last week. I've been shopping around for a good dr. It landed me back in the same office, but with a different Dr. I LOVED this Dr. I was so happy after our visit. We had a plan.... HAD.

Yesterday I got a letter in the mail. It stated that I had a bill from them in collections from 2009. Due to the outstanding balance ($100... yippy skippy) I would no longer be able to see my new Dr. I called to see if there was a way around this. I explained my living situation, and told them about the sneaky side of my ex. I told them that had I known there was any sort of balance, I would have paid it off. Unfortunately I was unable to sway them to let me come back. Once again my ex has screwed me out of something I want. 

But what really gets me, is how unsympathetic the office was. Here I am, a previously abused woman, who's ex husband hid EVERYTHING from her. It's bad enough that I had to go through the abuse, now I'm having to deal with everything after the fact to. 

More Money... More Problems

Lets talk economics. This is one of my least favorite subjects, and I hated taking the macro and micro classes at BSU. So you know when I talk economic it's about to get real. There has been lots of talk about raising the minimum wage. And honestly I cannot see this going well at all if it goes through. I foresee people losing their jobs, not getting jobs, and the unemployment rate skyrocketing. Here is why I think so.

Let's start with supply and demand. Say I have a taco stand that I hire someone to run. I sell each taco for $5 and during one lunch hour I sell 10 tacos. So that is a gross earnings of $50. If the minimum wage is $7 then it's more like $43 (we are leaving out cost of supplies because that's just going to start getting confusing). But that's just for my current city. Let's say I send my taco stand out to a city that has a lower population.

Because of the lower population, I can speculate that the demand for my tacos will be less. Less people means less opportunities for sales. In the lunch hour, let's say I only sold 2 tacos. That means my profit after paying wages is only $3. At this point I'm going to start losing money. The supply and demand of jobs is far less in lower populated areas whereas in huge cities like New York, the population is higher, and the profit margins etc reflect that minimum wage can be higher. On top of the fact that many people will not hire someone with no experience for a higher wage. Making the unemployment rate much higher. For example….

Let's say the minimum wage is raised to $9/hr. I'm still just a taco stand. But my employee finds a different job that pays better than minimum wage. No hard feelings. So now I'm in need of a new employee. The one application I get is for a high schooler who has no job experience at all. No experience cooking, no experience with customer service, nothing. I have no desire to hire this person for $9 but because federal law states that I cannot pay less than that, I am stuck. I would much rather pay him a generous $7 for his non existent skill set. So when I get another applicant with some actual experience, I will pass over the high schooler and gladly hire said person for $9/hr. In retrospect how is the high school kid supposed to get experience, and get a job that will hire him for $9/hr? Schooling, certificates, etc.

On top of this, to keep my profits the same, I’m going to have to raise my prices. As does everyone else who wants to keep their profits. What do you think that will do for your $2 raise? It will be equally as hard to cover your expenses. The price of everything just went up. You will essentially be making the same, struggling the same, etc etc. The price of living will go up with the minimum wage. If you have a minimum wage of $9/hr the lower populated areas will either lose workers, or cut hours. Heck it might even run some places out of business.

Life Binder Reorganization

I am not OCD. Anyone who comes to my house would call me everything but OCD, and quite frankly organized. I didn't always use to be this way. As a matter of fact, I actually used to be super OCD and organized. When I first moved out on my own I had asked the guy I was dating to bring over a mop for me to borrow. I ended up on my hands and knees scrubbing the floor with a sponge because it wasn't clean enough. "If I can't eat off this floor then it's not clean!" I also used to iron ALL my clothes. Underwear and jeans included. I used to have a binder that I put everything in. Meal plans, Cleaning schedules, work schedules, recipes, etc. Everything you can think of was in this binder.

These days, my husband is lucky if his clothes make it to the "put away" stage. My dishes end up piled in the sink till it's intolerable and we have to order out because there isn't anything to cook with. I wouldn't say I'm lazy. More tired, unorganized than anything these days. My binder isn't put together like I want it to be. Between moving several several times, and life changes... my binder is now.... very sad and unorganized. This week I am tackling the task of getting that sucker back to the way it's supposed to be.

I have sketches of what I want my sheets to look like. I've looked up things like how to keep a good life binder. I've even thought of doing two separate binders so it's not so... bulky. I want a budget binder, and a JuJuBee Stitches binder. I may even make a binder for this blog. (I tend to write things out before putting them on the blog. I have ideas jotted down but nothing beyond that at the moment) I used to use excel for all my budgets and all my sheets but I somehow no longer have office on my computer. So I'm going to probably do most of this free hand or on graphing paper with sharpie. I love love LOVE Sharpie!

So wish me luck. I'm thinking once I get the life binder in order that my actual life will just fall into place, hoping anyways.

Oh... and I discovered what a FiloFax is... that's totally the number one item I want for Christmas!

New Year, New ME

I started out my new year by cleaning. I cleaned an organized my room. Threw out all the piles of junk and made room for the things that matter. I've spent so much time cleaning my house and removing garbage the past few days. It's nice to look around and see empty space and simplicity. It's nice to have my house back.