Consumer credit counseling or credit counseling is a booming business but you do not need expensive advice from a stranger to tell you what your problems are. You already know you are a victim of a depression and out of money!

It doesn’t take a genius, certified counselor to tell you you’re the victim of a “pink slip hurricane” produced by a depression which was initiated by greedy big banking schemes and other big money institutions that rewarded top executives millions in bonuses for devising their worthless schemes.

Some high paid counselor is going to tell you they will provide high quality, certified help to design a debt management program that will lower payments, percentage rates, provide financial education and here is the best part of all, find you a debt consolidation loan!

In simplified terms they are going to ask you to “rob Peter to pay Paul” or to just keep paying “Paul” by sending them the money, adding their 15% handling fee and they will send your money in for you to make sure you are doing it. Wow!

The “can of worms” they’re trying to sell you is way out of date. Everybody knows you cannot borrow yourself out of debt. You cannot make the payments now so how are you going to make them when they add their 15% fee to the debt they’ve negotiated down to 60% for you?

Stop paying your credit card debt and stop worrying about it! You’ll have six months with a few late payment reminders before the bank is required to “write off” your account. Use those months to familiarize yourself with the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.

The FDCPA is Uncle Sam’s consumer credit counseling manual available totally “for free” on the Internet. The manual will tell you what you “can do” and what debt collectors “cannot” do. There are two main points to memorize to become your own credit counselor.

The first is “never give a debt collector any information over the phone” and accomplish that task by telling the collector to “communicate with me in writing only” and hang up the phone. The only way a collector can coerce money from you is by your “admission” that you actually owe him money and you do not!

The second thing you absolutely must do is to answer any collection letters. You must “demand proof” from the collector that you owe him anything. Send a copy of his letter with your demand by registered mail with return receipt and keep a record of that communication.

When you do not answer a debt collector’s letter by demanding proof that you owe him money, the “wording” in his letter is legally designed so that you “admit” you owe him money if “you do not answer” his letter and his recorded phone communication is designed to get your “verbal” admission.

There are two other interesting things you may not have realized that you’ve learned. You’ll probably have enough knowledge to pass the “certification” test to become a consumer credit counselor if you like being nice to people and putting them into programs with a 90% failure rate.

The second thing you will have learned is how to become a debt collector, that is if you enjoy being mean to people on the phone and harassing them constantly but as Forest Gump says “that’s all I got to say about that.” The important thing is that you know how to get out debt.

Deciding whether or not you can stay at home after you have a baby can be a big decision. Emotions play a big factor, especially after holding your precious newborn for the first time. It’s hard to imagine leaving this tiny little thing with a stranger. On the other hand, you can gain a tremendous sense of accomplishment from your job that you couldn’t feel after a day of changing diapers and wiping up spit up. No matter how you face it emotionally, if you are considering becoming a stay at home mom at all, you first need to figure out if you can financially afford to do it.

Make a Budget

The first step you should take is to record your expenses. For at least one month,
better yet three, record everything you spend from latte’s to toilet paper to dinners
out. Everything needs to be accounted for. There is no need to go on a budget diet
yet, the goal is to find out how much you currently spend and on what items, so that
if you find you do need to scale back, you can recognize where to do so.

There are a couple of ways you can go about recording all of your purchases. One is
you can carry around a little notebook and make a note every time you buy
something. The other way is to charge everything you purchase with your debit or
credit card and use your monthly statement as your notebook of purchases.
However, if you choose to charge everything to your credit card, you must promise
yourself to pay off the full amount when your statement comes. Going into credit card debt is not going to help you achieve your goal of becoming a stay at home
mom.

Once you have every cup of coffee, every grocery trip and every pair of new shoes accounted for, it’s time to write it into a budget worksheet. Use a budget spreadsheet that will add up all of your expenses and subtract them from your income.
When you have the form filled out, look at your bottom number. Hopefully this will
be positive. Now go up and delete your income at the top. Don’t forget to delete any
expenses that occur from you working (dry cleaning bill, gas costs, lunches out,
etc.). Remember also that your taxes will change once you drop down to one income
and you may be able to change your withholdings to bring more monthly income in.
Go to the IRS website and use their tax withholding calculator with only your
husbands paycheck information to see how much you can change your
withholdings. If your bottom number is still positive, then you are fortunate enough
to be able to be a stay at home mom without much fiscal sacrifice. However if it’s
now dipped to a negative number, do not despair, it’s time to look over your
expenses and find ways to minimize them.

Saving on Your Expenses

Saving money doesn’t always have to be painful. Many women say that one of their
biggest jobs as stay at home moms is to seek out bargains and make sure the
family sticks to a budget. Consider this a lesson in what could be part of your new
job description. Below are four big-ticket expenses that most households face. Let’s
take a look at these and see if we can’t save a couple hundred dollars right off the
bat.

o Mortgage or Rent. This is often a couple’s largest monthly expense.
The obvious way to reduce this cost is to move to a less expensive place to live, but
that’s not always the best option for your family. Try looking at refinancing. That
can be a fantastic way to lower your monthly mortgage payment and may make it
financially feasible for you to be able to become a stay at home mom. Plug some
numbers onto an online refinancing company to see if this might make sense for
you. If you rent, ask your landlord if there is anything you can do around the
property that could reduce your monthly rent. Ask if you can help manage their
other properties, take on the yardwork, do other chores or even sign on for a longer
lease for a reduction in rent.

o Credit card, car payments and other ‘bad’ debt. These kinds of
debts you want to try and get out of as soon as possible. Make is a goal to get out
of credit card debt before you decide to become a stay at home mom. There are a
number of credit cards that offer zero percent interest for a specific amount of time.
Take advantage of these offers to reduce your monthly bill and use the amount you
would have paid with your old card towards paying off the principle. Condense your
monthly expenses and throw everything you can towards paying your credit card
debt and car payment off so that your time for being a stay at home mom will be
less stressful.

o Grocery Bill. You can easily reduce your grocery bill by planning a
weekly menu and making a shopping list. Designate one night a week for sitting
down with the grocery ads and your cookbooks. Come up with seven different meals
that take advantage of the weeks grocery sales and write down the list of
ingredients you will need. There are many great website services that will plan your
weekly meals and e-mail you a weekly shopping list too. Make sure to clip coupons
from the Sunday paper and from coupon websites. Also try the generic version of
your favorite brand. Chances are you’ll never notice the difference.

o Utilities. Take Dad’s advise and start turning off the lights when you
leave a room. Replace incandescent lights with florescent, get a hot water heater
blanket for your hot water heater. There are a number of different ways you can
reduce your energy bill. Don’t hesitate to call your utilities and ask how you can save
money on your monthly bill. You phone company can find a more efficient and
cheaper plan for you and the garbage company can suggest a smaller garbage can
size. Also ask yourself if you really need all of the gadgets you’ve become
accustomed to: Do you really need that cell phone now that you won’t be
commuting? Do you really need the fancy cable TV package or can you live without
it for a few years?

Keep moving down each category on your budget worksheet and ask yourself how
you could reduce costs. In this day and age most families have to make sacrifices
for a parent to become a stay at home parent. Remember that it’s temporary
though. Children grow up before you know it and being a stay at home mom may
just be more satisfying than any payroll job you could ever have.

(A Huancayo Chicken Franchise)

Part One
The Stranger

Federico Cristobal Palacios, he looked persistently interested in something, exactly what he didn’t say, and no one exactly asked him what he was doing there, having nothing to do with the charge of the large chicken franchise. He sat down by the time card, near the office, in the back of the largest chicken café in Huancayo, Peru. The weather outside was damp, it had been raining, the October rains had started, and had you asked him, by the look on his face, it didn’t seem to interest him anymore than the women bringing up chicken to the a certain other woman who was doing the checking of the chickens, the woman had a cigarette in her mouth. “I think,” she said to the young lady with a rotting and green looking chicken, “we’ll use this one for chicken soup, chop it up,” she demanded.

The law was something-so it appeared-outside of her mind, not fearful of it one iota, and the look on her face told Federico, had an inspector asked her who allowed this chicken to be put into soup for public consumption, she’d decline to have anything to do with the order.

She kept that cigarette in her mouth without smoking it all during Federico’s deliberation of this, or perhaps it was more like contemplation.

This is the sort of thing I mean he was seeing-one person after the other came to this section, some eating chicken, then having it inspected, then putting it into the soup, or re-cooked, or used for other plates to be served to the public.

In a way it wasn’t all that puzzling to him, just pay the judge or the inspector or the police officer a small sum of money, and they’d look the other way, such things happened in Huancayo everyday on a regular bases, the bribing was cheaper than fixing the problem, and heck, no one went to jail. And if anyone died because of the rotting and rat bitten meat, no one talked about it, and if they did it was forgotten the next day.

Anyhow, the man’s name was Freddy Sali, and he had come near the stranger, he might once have been a sheep herder or something of the sort in the near by Los Andes, in the Mantaro Valley, there was a peculiar abstract air about him. About himself and his past, he wore a dark suite, and a pin to that, a golden pin, and a nice tie, short trimmed hair, perchance, in his late forties.

“If you sit over there, by those other fellows you’ll have a better chance in getting a job,” Freddy told the stranger, in a hurry. What was not known was he had not come there for a job. As to his story, Freddy didn’t ask, and the stranger didn’t say. He knew anyhow, the stranger that is, knew, the devil was there-it doesn’t matter then-men can’t tell the truth in that direction, so let it go.

To be a little more indefinite about this stranger, he got up and walked over to that place Freddy pointed to, and a dozen men were sitting at, waiting. Freddy was there with a few other fellows, handing out cards, brown thin cards, cards like perhaps a traveling agent might give. Freddy had been some sort of a small official, he had given one man two cards, then took one back, gave it to Federico. Then walked away, next, the man who Freddy had give the two cards to, and had taken one back leaned over the shoulder of Federico and his chair, and grabbed it from Federico, said, “It belongs to my friend,” which it would have seemed, his friend had disappeared, if indeed there was such a friend, perhaps he wanted to sell it. It was in his blood, Federico knew, and then the stranger in front of him asked, “You got a license to drive a truck?”

“Yes,” said Federico, looked at this frugal man and after a short time said, “I wonder if that robber, who took the card from my hand ever pays taxes?”

It was just an off the wall statement, nothing more -the man was strong and well-built, but now grew thin and nervous. Yet he carried himself well with a sort of dark air surrounding him. He had something that appealed strongly to men, a roughness, a seedy kind of roughness, trying to get, or have it creep out of Federico, who he was, and what was he doing there. You know how such things are done. You say such and such, and expect the other person to tell you what you want to know, if indeed you are willing to talk things over with a stranger, but Federico wasn’t willing, and this annoyed the other man. And he grew angry and tramped off to the bathroom hoping Federico would disappear before he got back.

The other men talked and talked after that, and life in the chicken hiring area of the franchise, had been jaded somewhat, and grew habitually more silent, and when Federico was silent, the other men become evermore silent. Prior to this, they had all talked for two hours and then someone waved from an open door, only Federico noticed it, he picked up his few belongings, his hat, and newspaper and walked to the opened door.

Part Two
The Stranger’s Story

He had come in from out of the October rains. You see at first everyone who saw him thought he had something to do with something at the Chicken Franchise. Some were even convinced he was, more than what he was, perhaps the tax man, or law, or a judge-whose to say, just because he sat there silent most of the morning, breathing in that chicken air of indifference, everyone began wanting to do something for him, or find out something about him. Word of mouth among the folks there, which came in confusion, also came in whispers and murmurs, likened on a crazy little stage, no one broke out into cheers, but most wanted to make sure he was not the law, for one reason or the other, to stay clear of the law.

To him, to Federico Cristobal Palacios, the door was open to the side of the chicken franchise, and thus, this was simply a location among many he saw, one might go to avoid the rain, as he had done. For him, there was nothing important in life to talk over with strangers, he was sixty-one years old, looked perhaps like fifty, looking for work, and while he sat there he saw a good deal of how people in the city -some with glasses others without glasses turned a cheek, when it came to their needs and wants, perhaps when they got home they complained to their wives of the dirty, rotting chickens they were serving: had they got the job, surely they said nothing, or if something, perhaps on the order of something more casual, less brutal for the company.

As Federico, arrived at the door, he hugged his wife, happily, she had been looking for him, “I have dear a very small amount of money on me left (she had done some shopping), barely enough to buy a meal for me, I feel miserable poor,” she said, adding, “I’m hungry, why not eat some chicken at this franchise?”

“No…no, never-we can’t eat here!” he said. She looked at him surprised, knowing she’d be unable to break his resistance.

“I had stopped to simply get out of the rain, and oh well, it’s a long story, and unbelievable, let’s go to the Mia Mamma, they have some great choices, like the Denver Sandwich, or Irish Soup, and you can be sure nothing looks or tastes, or is, like dirty lace curtains.

And so they stood there for a moment, near this peculiar grey greasy chicken building waiting for the taxi, cold and cheerless.

No: 454 /8-24-2009 (from a dream) Note: I love the city of Huancayo, Peru, and its people, but there are a few problems here, and why avid them, and this story that came out of a dream, kind of spells out some of it, like it or not, and I’m sure a few folks will not like it… corruption in this city starts from the top, and goes to the very bottom, and that goes for El Tambo as well…!