payday

I got my paycheck, which was $165 bigger because of the furlough hours I made up. I am now current on everything including utilities, credit cards, and car payment. The only thing I am not current on is my student loans. If I get the Pima paycheck then I can make a payment on that debt, but probably not enough to get current. I applied for an income-sensitive payment but I haven't got an answer yet. I also put away the $400 I will need on January 2nd for my first payment to CCCS. Now the calls from Capital One will finally stop. It's been averaging 2 to 10 calls a day, starting about 8 a.m. and ending about 8 p.m. for the last 6 weeks or so.
I tried to listen to the 2nd CD in the series of Financial Peace University or whatever it's called. It is about money and relationships. I had to turn it off after about 5 minutes. I will just skip that one... it's not relevant to me anyway. In the first 5 minutes of the lesson, Ramsey quotes John Gray, the bible, Stephen Covey, and Rick Warren. It is all about how women and men think differently about money, and how your wife won't be pretty unless she has financial security. He says, out loud, that if the man has the finances in order, the woman will be prettier because she isn't stressed out about money, and her face won't scrunch up like this (insert some visual aid that thank GODDESS I couldn't see because it's an audio CD). Ramsey is a card-carrying charter member of the good ol' boys club. When he is talking about things that can't be gender specific, like how to actually save and budget money, then he is bearable to listen to. His problem, of course, is genderizing everything. Maybe when I get done with this program, and I have learned how to budget and save and give appropriately, I will write my own book and go on my own tour, giving classes about how to build a secure financial future. Except I won't genderize it. Well, maybe I will... maybe I'll only let single women come in to my classes. Maybe I will say my program is specifically for single women, kids or no kids. Because the last thing we need to hear about is a program that assumes we have a man, and that we are dependent on that man to help us make the right decisions. And Ramsey includes all this sexist bullshit in his lessons, despite the fact that almost every story featured in the book has the man being responsible for getting the couple into all that debt in the first place, because he was the one that "took care of the finances."
Psh. Ramsey has a lot of good ideas about money, but what a tool.