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Hello ladies and gentlemen,
I'm 29. I currently hold two part-time jobs which add up to one full-time gig at 44 hours total a week. I work twenty-four hours a week in a kitchen at $12/h, and I'm a research assistant at a university at $20/h. I was a long-term alcoholic and drug addict (opiates) from the age of 16 to about six months ago, when I was still 28. While I was a functional addict for the most part (I held down jobs - though I lost a few of them and did some damage to my reputation that way - and went to school while I was still using), I still dug myself a fairly deep financial hole. Presently I owe just over $8000 to VISA, but haven't made a payment in three years. I got myself a Capital One credit card in 2010, the kind that charges you $20 a year just to have it, but I never made any purchases on it.
I assume I owe some money to them as well. How would I go about finding that out?
I also owe $39 000 in student loans, though I won't have to start paying that down until September 2016. I have no assets whatsoever, as I sold anything of value I might have owned to pay for drugs and booze and cigarettes (I've since quit the smokes too).
I have an B.A. in History and English (Honours) and an M.A. in English, and while I've done a lot of freelance editing work, I hold no delusions about the grim employment prospects one with my kind of education currently faces.
I opened a TSFA last October (my first savings acct ever) with an automatic deposit of $80 a month from my chequing acct. At this point I feel reasonably confident that I won't go back to my old ways, and I'm trying to put a plan together for crawling out of the hole. Obviously my credit is very poor, but would I be better off putting that $80/month toward my credit card debt (I believe it went to collections but haven't heard from an agency yet, as I just recently got myself a phone again), or should I reduce my monthly contribution to my savings acct by half and put the other $40 towards investments, then use whatever return I might get to slowly chip away at the VISA bill?
I'm 29. I currently hold two part-time jobs which add up to one full-time gig at 44 hours total a week. I work twenty-four hours a week in a kitchen at $12/h, and I'm a research assistant at a university at $20/h. I was a long-term alcoholic and drug addict (opiates) from the age of 16 to about six months ago, when I was still 28. While I was a functional addict for the most part (I held down jobs - though I lost a few of them and did some damage to my reputation that way - and went to school while I was still using), I still dug myself a fairly deep financial hole. Presently I owe just over $8000 to VISA, but haven't made a payment in three years. I got myself a Capital One credit card in 2010, the kind that charges you $20 a year just to have it, but I never made any purchases on it.
I assume I owe some money to them as well. How would I go about finding that out?
I also owe $39 000 in student loans, though I won't have to start paying that down until September 2016. I have no assets whatsoever, as I sold anything of value I might have owned to pay for drugs and booze and cigarettes (I've since quit the smokes too).
I have an B.A. in History and English (Honours) and an M.A. in English, and while I've done a lot of freelance editing work, I hold no delusions about the grim employment prospects one with my kind of education currently faces.
I opened a TSFA last October (my first savings acct ever) with an automatic deposit of $80 a month from my chequing acct. At this point I feel reasonably confident that I won't go back to my old ways, and I'm trying to put a plan together for crawling out of the hole. Obviously my credit is very poor, but would I be better off putting that $80/month toward my credit card debt (I believe it went to collections but haven't heard from an agency yet, as I just recently got myself a phone again), or should I reduce my monthly contribution to my savings acct by half and put the other $40 towards investments, then use whatever return I might get to slowly chip away at the VISA bill?
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