Reaching a life milestone

On Friday, June 24, I wrote a check (well, an electronic transfer) to the former Mrs. SF_Express for $225 to complete a transaction I started Thursday, when I found out you can only transfer a certain amount of money between accounts in one day.

The payments were for my regular "child support" payment (even though my youngest is 23), and his car insurance for the next six months. My legal obligations ended in December, but I agreed to keep paying through the end of his college, which is July 15. This was the second of my July payments.

And with that, I'm done. It's the first time in 28 years or so that I have been unencumbered. Because even before the divorce, I wrote regular checks to my wife every month and she paid house payments from them (our finances were always done separately). The difference during the divorce, of course, is that I paid her AND for my condo.

So the end of a financial obligation that began in about 1983 is here, meaning a huge "raise" for me and perhaps the beginning of the end of my long national nightmare of horrifying debt. The intention is to turn around and make those monthly payments to my creditors, but since it will all be on top of the regular payments, if things get tight for a month, no worries.

This is an incredible thing for me, like paying off the mortgage on a house. If I still drank, I certainly would have been drunk on Friday night. But, oh well ..

 

Congrats, SF...that's gotta be pretty indescribable. And good luck getting back on track.

 

Congratulations, SF. You're a good man.

 

Your obligation was older than me. Ain't that sumthin'.

Glad you can put those payments to bed, SF. If I'm able to make an accurate judgment of character from your activity here, you're a reasonable, fair-minded fellow. Good luck at taking care of the rest of your debt. Lord knows it creeps up on most, if not all, of us.

 

And as SF exits from one side of the roller-coaster, I slide into his seat to begin my own ride.
My kids are in their teens, so I'm looking at about 10 years until kids through university.
But I understand the debt SF talks about.
In the year since I moved out, I've racked up about $25,000 in debt because, even without an agreement, I was paying all her household expenses, as well as my new ones.
Glad to know that the train will indeed one day return to the station.

 

Congratulations on your milestone and your improved posture. You carried a lot of weight for many years, and I hope you are able to enjoy a little more financial freedom. Best wishes to you.

 

As I was going through my divorce last year, a divorced friend told me, "It's all about money. You can forget pretty much everything else at this point; all of the emotional stuff, all the he-said-she-said, none of that shit is going to matter. It's *all* about money." And she was 100 percent correct.

I'm one of the lucky ones: My alimony payments end in 2014 and my kids are older, so I only have a decade or so left of child support. But it still bites to see 60 percent of my paycheck going to her every month. Thank god for direct deposit; at least I'm not actually having to *write* those checks.

 

Wow, how can you survive on 40 percent of a journo's salary?

 

I'm proud that I pretty much never missed a payment or an obligation, although a lot of juggling and balance transfers and ransacked 401ks -- the famed Hurricane Wilma hardship withdrawal -- got me to this point. Because of it, though, my ex and I remain friends and on completely good terms. And that saves a lot of stress in that little corner.

I've got 12-14 years to set up for some semblance of retirement.