digging out of a stinky pile of debt after realizing we are well past fucked

A few days before Thanksgiving I had the misfortune by being pulled over by a cop in Burbank, which I wrote about here. In the time since that I have changed over my registration, gotten my California license (they have THE hardest written test EVER), and answered the question how much does a California smog test cost? Then last week I headed over to the Burbank courthouse to pay my fees. That is when I learned that the 12500(a) v.c. was charged as a misdemeanor! And that means that I could not just go up to a little window and make a payment. Instead I had to appear in court and be arraigned!

My court date and time was scheduled for Christmas Eve at 8:30am. What a bummer, eh? I searched the internet for info on what to expect. What I found was a lot of conflicting info. One place said that I would have to post bail before the court appearance but there was no mention of how much. One told me that I just needed to go before the judge with my new license and registration and ask for the charge to be reduced or dismissed. And that was pretty much the extent of info I found.

Not knowing how much money I needed or if they took debit cards I took out $300 in cash the night before.

ON THE COURT DATE

The day of court I arrived a bit before 8:30.  There were two courtrooms and there were papers posted on the outside of the doors of each. You had to go up and see if your name was listed on the papers. I found my name on the first one. It also listed the charge and that I was there for arraignment. There were about 30 names on the paper. A bit after 8:30 a stern looking older woman, who was the bailiff, opened up the courtroom and let us in. She then set up a TV and told us we had to watch a video on our rights. The video lasted about 20 minutes and went through things like how you could plead, what pleading ‘no contest’ meant and the like. When that was over a few people got yelled at for wearing hats, a few for having food in the courtroom, a few for having kids with them, and a few for chewing gum. The bailiff brought out a stack of files and called out people’s names. When she called your name you had to answer if you had a lawyer, wanted a public defender or were going to represent yourself.

Once all of that was done, the bailiff cautioned us about the way the judge liked his courtroom. Apparently there was to be no talking out of turn or arguing or you would be arrested for contempt. It was then announced in what order cases would be heard. First would be people with private attorneys, then people that had to deal with the city attorney, then public defenders and then people representing themselves.

The judge came in shortly after that. He was the meanest, rudest, most foul person I have ever encountered. He would ask someone a question, they would answer and then he would cut off the person speaking. If the person did not stop speaking immediately they would get yelled at by the judge something to the effect of “Don’t interrupt me! Have some respect!” He later yelled things like “Can’t you see I’m reading” and “Listen to me when I’m speaking to you!”

I got to see someone charged with meth possession, someone charged with less than an ounce of marijuana (he had a note for medical reasons but apparently while it is legal here for medical reasons it is illegal to transport it!), there were people that were there for speeding, not wearing a seatbelt, using a cell phone while driving, making illegal u-turns, turning from the wrong lane and failure to appear.

One other guy was there for the same thing as me. He was up before me and I got to see what would have happened if I had been a black guy when I got my ticket.  His charges were the same as mine only the cop that wrote him the ticket also impounded his car. Apparently he could not afford to pay the fee to get it back so the city took possession of the car and sold it. As a result he could not provide his proof of registration and the judge fined him $250!

By this point I was getting pretty nervous. The lowest fine I’d seen anyone get was $174. It was not too long before I got called up. The judge asked how I wanted to plead. After seeing how others has pleaded I said “Guilty.” The judge then asked if I had my license and registration, which I handed to the bailiff. And confirming that I was all legit, the judge announced he was dismissing all charges and that I needed to go next door to pay  $10 administrative court cost! Hooray!

I also learned that they do take credit cards at the courthouse.

On Friday I braved the DMV to get my driver’s license and car registration transferred over to California.

Guess what? Contrary to what the DMV website says, it doesn’t matter what year your car is – if it is from out of state then you have to get a smog test.

Today I set out to get a smog test. How much is a smog test? Well, that depends on where you go. It can cost anywhere from $8.95 to $60. Yes, you read that correctly. Apparently the state wide fee is $8.95 but wanker places are allowed to charge up to $60 for the test.

You can get a list of smog test stations on the DMV page. The first place I called based the amount of the test on the make/model of my car. The quote was $60.

Fortunately I kept looking and found Joe’s Smog Check & Test Only station in North Hollywood. I actually found it on Yelp.com. It had loads of good reviews and the mention of a coupon on the website. Hooray! Joe was just as nice as the reviews mentioned. And there was only one other car there when I arrived. Be warned, this is one of those “blink & you miss it” type of places. So make sure you are on the lookout when driving around looking for it. I was out of there in about 40 minutes. And it only cost me $32 with the coupon!

So, if you want to get a cheap smog test in the Los Angeles area, check out Joe’s Smog Check & Test Only station in North Hollywood. It is Bumblefucked approved.

The Bumblefucked household ended up the victim of the budget crisis in California. And all because my car was dirty due to the forest fires a few weeks ago.

Two days before Thanksgiving I got pulled over by the LAPD. My car is still registered out of state. I honestly was working on getting that changed. In fact, I had spent an hour the prior Friday at an Allstate office trying to get my car insurance changed over. Mr. Motorcycle Cop did not care though. Instead he gave me a ticket that is over $600.

That’s the bad news.

The good news is that if I pay to get my registration changed over, my license changed over, and my insurance (already done) by 12/24/08 then I only have to pay court costs. And according to what I have read online that is anywhere between $10 and $50.

If you are moving out to Cali then here is my tip for you – keep your car washed. Seriously. The reason I got pulled over was because the car was dirty. This is no joke. The cop pulled me over, I put down my window, his opening line was “I can tell by how dirty your car is…” wtf?

PS – I officially hate you, California.

CNN is pimping an article titled Unusual — and legal — ways to make money. I took the bait and clicked on it.

I was disappointed to only see three “ways” to make the moolah. I’m always up for ways to make some extra cash but I was less than impressed with this short list.

1. Sell your hair.
2. Sell your body/health for medical research trials
3. Sell gold you have in your home/tooth.

I have heard of the selling your hair thing before. What the article on CNN leaves out is that you have to take super good care of your hair to sell it. No blow-drying it, no hair coloring, regular trims and so on.

Where was blogging/web site tinkering on this list?

Oh wait – that takes work, I forgot. If you look at the list it is clearly for the lazy for the most part. And when you look at #2 I am tempted to also say the list is for the stupid. Think about it – drug companies pay you to test meds that they aren’t even sure are safe for everyone else.

If you are not going to be cooking this Thanksgiving and want to go out for Thanksgiving Dinner it looks like Ruby Tuesday is a pretty good choice.

Participating Ruby Tuesday restaurants are offering a Ruby’s Traditional Feast of Thanksgiving for $9.99 per person. The meal includes roasted turkey with stuffing and gravy, green beans, and mashed potatoes.

Oprah is offering a free download of 8 holiday classics performed by popular artists for the next 48 hours.

The songs are:

• Faith Hill “Joy to the World”
• Tony Bennett, “I’ll be Home for Christmas”
• Il Divo, “O Holy Night”
• Josh Groban, “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear”
• Brian McKnight, “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year”
• Amy Grant, “O Come All Ye Faithful”
• Harry Connick Jr., “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas”
• Aretha Franklin, “Silent Night”

To download, visit here.

I think it is pretty well known that if you go overseas and are using a credit card that you are going to get hit with some foreign currency conversion transaction fees. What you might not know is that you can get hit with those shopping from home on your computer!

Last month I thought we had been bumblefucked by Wachovia in an attempt by their broke asses to get some extra cash from us. But apparently Wachovia is not the super evil bank I thought they were. They’re just plain evil. (but aren’t all banks?)

Seems Visa & Mastercard decided back in April to change the game when it came to foreign currency transactions. The change was that you can be hit with a foreign transaction fee even if you’re not in a foreign country! Evil, I know!

The new rules are that if you make a purchase that involves a foreign bank then you get charged the fee – even if your purchase is in US dollars!

Last month we made a purchase on Aerlingus.com and were hit with an “INTL SERVICE FEE” by Wachovia to the tune of $15.60. A quick Google search showed that other people that had gotten this had called Wachovia and been told that Visa did it, not them.

Fact: Wachovia tells half-truths.

Visa/MC does not charge merchants and consumers the fees.  Visa and Mastercard charge the bank/ credit card company the fees. Then the evil bank passes on the charge to the consumer. So yes, the charge does originate from Visa but it is charged to the bank (Wachovia in this case).

Seems that are some banks that are not evil when it comes to this and do not pass on the charge. Oddly enough, evil superpower Bank of America is supposedly one of them. And of course Capital One.

On a side note, American Express and Discover Card are not evil in this regard as they levy no foreign currency conversion fees on anyone…or so they say.

image credit: Andrea_F

Last week I learned of the awesomeness that is Amazon.con’s MP3 Daily Deal. That day I score the new Jesse McCartney album for $1.99. Sweet!

Today’s deal is pretty awesome as well. You can get Taylor Swift’s new album, Fearless, today only for $3.99. This is for the entire album

What is so cool about this is that the album JUST came out today! If you’re a fan, check it out but the price is good for today only!

Better late than never, right? In the spirit of that, I have this to say -

Thanks to The Sun’s Financial Diary for including one of our posts in last week’s Carnival of Personal Finance.

If you do a search on the web on Sallie Mae’s customer service you will get a ton of results telling you how bad it is. It’s true. I know because I had the misfortune of having to call them yesterday.

As previously mentioned our student loan payments are crazy and I was hoping to get the payments deferred or temporarily halted in order to pay off the credit cards and then focus on the student loans. However, I have some of those nasty little buggers called private loans. Oh how I loathe thee.

In order to defer private loans you have to pay a fee. Um, riiiiiiiight. However, I knew this already. And that was not what I wanted to do. Instead, I wanted to change my payment plan. See, Sallie Mae has (had) this nifty little thing where once you logged into your account you could select  ‘Lower Your Payments’ under ‘Repayment Options.’ From there you could see something like this (click image to enlarge):

And if you click on ‘lower your payment amount you would get a break down of something like 100 payments at $xxx.x, then 48 payments of $xxx.xx, then 12 payments of $xxx.xx and one payment of $xx.xx. It would tell you the end amount you would have paid them. So, it was a great way to see which way was the least interest paid and so on. It showed you this for your current plan and for the available repayment plans in case you wanted to change things.

I know this because I had looked at it last month. And of the 4 repayment plans I could change to there was one that would lower my private loan payment from $305.01 to $189 and some change AND it only added like $2,000 to the end total. After some thinking I decided I wanted to change to that plan. But I did not know which plan that was. I went back to the Sallie Mae website and saw this instead (click image to enlarge):

Hrm. I hoped it would be fixed in a couple of days and waited. I continued to get this message and called them yesterday. What a mistake!

To start, I got someone that barely spoke English and had a hard time understanding me! I kept having to repeat myself and rephrase things so that she could understand. Once I finished explaining my needs to her she tells me this -

Private loan payment plans can only be offered once. I see you have had all of the plan before so I cannot change your plan.

What?!? The Sallie Mae page plainly states that you can change payment plans at any time.  (click image below to enlarge)

There it is. Plainly stated in English. Looks like I can change my payment plan daily if I want. Of course, there is part of a sentence in there that gives me pause, and likely gives them a way out of changing payment plans…

“…and all eligibility requirements are still met. “

Note how in the image above there is no link to see what those phantom eligibility requirements are.

So, now I am thinking maybe I should change plans. Maybe those wanker private loans should be first on the payoff list, even though the interest rates are only 7%. The relief of not having to deal with them any longer seems almost worth it. Then I would only have the federal consolidation loan left with them. And now, I say a silent thank you to EdFinancial for having the remainder of my student loans.