Hey guys. Just wanted to pass along some moving advice from my friends at Careful Movers:
First time buyer? Looking to move inside the Calgary area? Now is the time.
With the Bank of Canada maintaining its interest rate freeze at a near record low mark of 1%, homebuyers can now lock into mortgages at rates that will probably never be seen again in our lifetime.
This is the year to take the leap from renter to owner. With the economy starting to show signs of recovery, it won’t be long before the banks decide to raise the rates.
And with the West Coast market spiking, Calgary seems like the most affordable option for a first class city to live in.
With your new home purchased, you will need a first class moving company to transport your furnishings from your old dwelling to your new home. Careful Movers is your best option for a reliable, competitively priced moving company in the Calgary area. Our staff will handle your belongings with kid gloves. We will show up on time, with all the resources needed to move your items safely.
When the purchase of your new home is finally processed, your next move is to call Careful Movers – Calgary’s moving company.
Is the Grass Greener On the Other Side of the Rockies?
Before I turn you back over to Eve to continue her story, let me just say that the number one inquiry we get here at Full Circle Debt Solutions is due to bad credit loans BC and bad credit loans Alberta.
If you are interested in getting a loan to consolidate your debt but your credit is bad, you might want to look into a home equity loan.
If you own your home, we can help you get the money. No matter if you have bad credit, no credit. The banks won’t lend you money if you can’t verify your income, or if you are too old, or if your credit is bad.
Imagine that, being too old to get a loan. That is ageism front and centre. So if you have a home, talk to us about second mortgage options – we can put you in touch with the right people so you can consolidate your debt once and for all, and get those payments down as much as 50%.
I was getting none of it a couple years ago, when Mark and I were clawing our way out of debt. But ever since we got in touch with our debt management consultant at Full Circle, I’ve been able to sit back and relax. Our debt was in good hands, and all Mark and I had to worry about was making our newly lowered monthly payments.
Not only were we able to consolidate our debt, we even started to save some money (finally!). Weights off our shoulders, we were finally able to focus all our attention on our careers – and that’s when Mark got his job offer in Vancouver. Our finances were finally back on track, I was finally getting some beauty sleep, and the rest is history.
I love my job. As a legal assistant at a law office that does a lot of great work in First Nations economic development, I’ve been learning a lot of Aboriginal law and the ins and outs of the Canadian justice system. Who knows? Maybe I’ll go to law school one day, when the kids are older. And to be honest, anything is better than my job in Calgary, where I was essentially a bona-fide document filer at a law office.
But as much as I love my job, I have days when I wake up and the only thing I want to do is lay on my couch and watch trashy soaps and infomercials. As soon as I go to wake up the kids, though, all those thoughts wash away and my work ethic kicks back into overdrive. After all, the last thing I want to do is to fall back into debt, and have to struggle to raise them.
Last week, my friend Vicky asked me for advice. She had just gotten laid off at work, and was freaking out because she was receiving all of her monthly bills, and had no clue how she was going to pay them off. I could tell she was real upset, right when I picked up the phone and heard her voice. And boy, did I know how she was feeling. After all, when Mark and I first fell into financial trouble, we even considered skipping town. But I knew Vicky, and I knew she would never even think about defaulting on her debt – after all, she has a little one to consider.
At first, I guess I was surprised that she would think of me to reach out to, of all people. But then I remembered that nobody really knew about what Mark and I had gone through in our younger days, except for my family. I realized, at that moment, that I had to be there for Vicky, 100 percent of the way, just like my sister was there for me, in my time of need.
The first thing I suggested to her was to call my debt management consultant at Full Circle and get his advice on how she could consolidate her debt. All I can hope for is that she’ll be able to get all her bills and debt under control, just like Mark and I did, and be able to live stress-free again.
For the first couple of months after I called Full Circle and finally got my debt under control, I was walking on eggshells. I was so worried about falling back to my old habits of overspending and underpaying that I would avoid social situations almost altogether. I knew that if I went out with my girlfriends to the mall, I’d be itching the whole time to splurge and I knew that if I did, after my prolonged period of saving, I would end up binge buying. And if I went out for a casual dinner with my coworkers, I would end up dropping at least $50 – I mean, if I’m going to dine out, I’m going to dine well). I even stopped wanting to go out on date nights with Mark anymore, and subjected him to many of my home-cooked meals.
Before long, Mark called me out on my hermit-status and convinced me that staying home all day was no way to live, even if I was living free of debt stress. So slowly but surely, I started to go out again, with my friends and with Mark. And sure, I slipped up a couple times and ended up buying something I shouldn’t have, but I was buying less, and buying less often. But I really should have give myself a little more credit – after all, I was doing pretty well for a recovering spendaholic.
As you probably already know, I’m somewhat of the black sheep of my financially responsible family. My mother and my sister both, are constantly aware of how much money they are spending and how much money they can afford to spend. I, on the other hand, seem to have been born with an awful predisposition to overspend.
But after my debt management consultant helped me wrangle my debt down to a low, manageable monthly payment, I was finally able to call my mom and just chat. Before, I avoided talking to her on the phone, and when I did, I would have to skirt around any issues that had to do with money, for fear of getting another earful of nagging. And it wasn’t that I was trying to be a bad daughter, you know, never calling my own mother. It’s just that I didn’t want to disappoint her and have her worrying about my money situation.
You can imagine her surprise when she received my call that night. I came clean about all the money trouble I had been in for the past couple of years, and how much stress I had been under. I rambled on and on, not wanting to interrupt before she understood that I had it all under control now, and that I had finally consolidated my debt, with the help of my debt management consultant at Full Circle. When I was done and a little out of breath, there was a moment of silence from my mom’s end. When she spoke, it was very quietly. “I’m proud of you,” she said.
There was this one month when Mark and I were living in Calgary, when we were really down and out on cash, that we considered skipping town to escape our debt. And the calls we were getting from those annoying creditors did nothing to make us want to stay. We were broke, and getting desperate.
It’s a good thing my sister called one day to check in on us. She convinced us that running away from our debt was not the way out, pointing out that our credit scores would be ruined (and where would we run away to and what money would we live off of?). Thank goodness for older sibling wisdom.
So we decided to stay put and slowly work off our debt, which in retrospect was a good idea because a couple months later, we heard about Full Circle Debt Solutions. They helped us consolidate our debt, and even got rid of the annoying calls from creditors. If you find yourself in a similar situation that Mark and I were in, wanting to bail on your debt, give Full Circle a call before you make any drastic moves.
Mark’s always been the responsible one. And when we first met, he seemed to have it all together – spacious apartment, nice (aka functioning) car, and a stable job that was going somewhere. Once I got to know him, it became very apparent to both of us how different we were when it came to money management. Where Mark was diligent about paying his bills, I was getting late fees and overdrafts. Where Mark only had only one credit card, I had five. Needless to say, he was pretty much free of debt while I was swimming in it. The poor guy, he always had to foot the bill whenever we did something nice, or for that matter, whenever dined at an establishment posher than Pita Pit.
But when Mark lost his job, everything else seemed to unravel along with his career, including his good habits. Instead of opening his bills as soon as he got them, Mark would let them pile up on the desk. So much so that his tower of bills started to compete with my own. Pretty soon, he was swimming right along with me in our ocean of debt.
Our saving grace came when my sister suggested we call Full Circle Debt Solutions. I was skeptical, but at her insistence we gave them a call. I got connected right away to one of their credited debt management consultants who outlined a debt consolidation plan specifically for our situation. Miraculously, he minimized our payments to one so we wouldn’t have to worry about paying so many creditors at the end of the month. I guess it just goes to show that even the best of us can get into money trouble, and only the best can get us out.
I’m sick of paying bills. I know it’s all part of being an adult an all, but sometimes I wish I could go back to my sandbox days. Sure, I wouldn’t have a car to drive, credit card to use, or cell to text with, but I’d be totally debt free. (And I’m sure my mailman wouldn’t mind.)
But seriously, how nice would it be if the biggest worry in your life were the guest list at your next play date? Instead, I have to worry about how I’m going to make my next mortgage payment and how I’ll pay for my car insurance.
My mom is the thriftiest woman I know. My dad worked all the time, and since my mom was a stay-at-home mom, she took it upon herself to manage our family’s finances. Every purchase, payment, and deposit was balanced in her checkbook, which seemed to be a permanent fixture in her handbag. All receipts – even those from buying a pack of gum – were stored in a tiny drawer in the kitchen desk and dutifully checked whenever the credit card bills came at the end of each month.
When my sister and I were growing up, mom tried to instill in us a sense of financial responsibility. The earliest lesson I can remember was when she gifted us with piggy banks when we started getting our allowance. While my sister would carefully deposit half of her weekly $5 into her pig, I would be at Seven Eleven on Monday shoving my hand into the 5-cent candy jars. Needless to say, her pig got fat while my stayed painfully thin.
In retrospect, that was a pretty good predictor that my sister would be the one to guide me out of my financial rut. Which is exactly what she did 2 years ago when Mark and I found ourselves close to bankruptcy and ready to skip town. She told us to call Full Circle immediately, assuring us that their debt management consultants would help us reduce our debt. We called, and surely enough, our consultant helped us consolidate our debt to one manageable monthly payment.
When Mark and I first moved in to our new apartment in Calgary, it was not all sunshine and roses. Both of us had been struggling a bit with our finances, trying to keep up with rent, bills, and student loans. So it was sort of a no brainer for us to live together so that we could split our living expenses.
But just when things started looking up, Mark lost his job at the architecture firm and had to go into freelance consulting. Our cash flow reduced to a meagre trickle, what with my pay as a legal assistant and his inconsistent employment. Add that to the trail of personal debt that had followed me from Vancouver, and we were in serious trouble.
That’s when the fighting started. And it was always about money, even if it wasn’t explicitly expressed. As you can guess, passive aggressiveness was usually my weapon of choice. Despite the fact that my finances were in a worse state than Mark’s, I picked fights over just about anything – not putting the toilet seat down, his gym membership fees, and the flavor of ice cream he’d buy – everything was fair game.
During one particularly ridiculous argument, while bickering about the recyclability of a pizza box, Mark’s pressed his lips together and his grinning eyes caught mine. In that instant, it dawned on me how crazy we had become, and I burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter.
Looking back at those days now brings a smile to my face, but only because we decided post-pizza box, to do something about our debt. We called Full Circle, and one of their debt management consultants guided us through the process of debt consolidation. We reconfigured our monthly bills to one low monthly payment and never looked back.
Ever heard that song by Johnny Cash – I’ve been everywhere?
That’s what Mark and I were like. It was straight out of a song – we didn’t have any money, any future or a clue, but we were born to run and we hit Canada like two crazy kids with the wind in our hair and nothing to lose and a whole wide world worth seeing.
We went everywhere, man. We went to Vancouver, Victoria, Nanaimo, Port Alberni, Port Coquitlam, Cranbrook, Creston, Nelson, Kelowna, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Brampton, Thunder Bay, Toronto, Montreal, Halifax, St. John’s, Charlottetown.
We went everywhere, man! Debt or debt beware, man! We went everywhere!
I met Mark, we hooked up, and my job got better. We moved into a flat, and everything got better. Then, we moved to Calgary, Alberta of all places – to the bustling capital of cows and hats.
We lived right downtown. Mark worked at a big architectural firm. It was okay. No tax there, which was nice.
I kind of kept my credit card statements from him, which I felt a little dishonest about, but I didn’t want him to see that I had maxed out my Visa and I was quickly getting there with a Sears card too. A Sears card! I really wanted to get us a good bed though – but I should have got a mattress in Vancouver. They don’t have Simmons like they do out West!
That summer we made plans to get married. He had a good job. I was doing okay at the legal assisting firm.
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