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Location: Home.
Listening: Superman: The Director's Cut.

A few weeks ago, I determined to order my credit report and try to get some kind of idea where I stood, financially. I've known for some time that my credit isn't what it should be and wanted to go about setting things straight, now that I'm starting to consider notions like trading in my car and purchasing property within the next few years.

In short, I owe roughly $2,500.00 to various institutions. Not as pleasant as it could be, but certainly not as bad as it could be. Strangely enough, none of this is from credit cards. I have never been a fan of credit and have only ever held two cards in the past. Both of these I lived on during two very lean summers in which I was making $5.50 per hour before taxes working security at USC and was receiving no assistance at all from my parents (who were displeased that I had opted to stay in LA rather than come home and refused to support me in any way as a result). Both of these accounts have long since been fully paid off. The debts I'm dealing with now are hospital bills left over from the two times in which I haven't been covered by medical insurance--both times, I had to be rushed to the ER for fairly serious conditions. I wasn't as responsible as I should have been and did not pay them off promptly, and now I'm dealing with the consequences. The bright side of this is that hospital bills do not accrue interest over time and that I'm dealing with them and not letting them continue to plague my credit history.

I've done some rough calculating and figure that I can pay this amount off by saving a little under $300 a month for the next year--or, if possible, about $450 a month for the next six months. I then will need to wait (and not accumulate any more serious debt) until early 2006 for my record to be completely clear of negative marks. I'm actually comfortable with that timeline, as I figure that that is precisely when I'll be looking to purchase land. My parents were good enough to pay off all of the loans that I needed after scholarships when attending USC, so I have several very positive marks from those payments (which were made in my name). I simply need to clean up my side of the record and all will be well.

Reflecting on all of this, I remembered several friends of mine from college who had managed to rack up over $15,000.00 in credit card debt while in school. Considering the card companies that are constantly soliciting on campuses and the eagerness of many student to get their hands on that kind of "easy money", this can hardly come as a surprise. I'm thankful, however, that, as reckless as I was in other areas of my life, I always balked at issues of financial excess. I have always preferred to eat ramen and sleep on a mattress than to not pay for something with the cash in my pocket. I have borrowed money only once in my life (and eventually regretted doing so) and that was only in an emergency situation under absolute duress, after I had pawned a few small things and still come up short. I have no idea where these particular preferences come from (although my father is largely German and has always been very adamently opposed to "living beyond one's means"), but I'm thankful for it now. It's the small things, after all.