u/ThisGuyTrains

I feel like we’ve all been there but I’ve struggled with it in the past. There are plenty of scenarios you can plug in here that all apply. From being out on a date night and she has quite a bit more to drink than you, or coming home from a girls night, or you pick her up from a function she had a lot to drink at.

The same scenarios can apply to either partner.

Most of the time these scenarios have happened when I’m either really tired or I’m just not in a super energetic and fun mood. Unfortunately, when my girlfriend is buzzed up like this she’s almost always energetic and wanting to be fun and I feel like I’m just a major mood killer because I don’t match with her. It even turned into a drunk fight one night.

What kind of advice do you guys have when in those kinds of scenarios? I hate that I’m not able to match her energy and it’s not like it’s always 3am when this happens so there’s lots of time together afterward, and the fact that she’s pretty buzzed up makes any negative reactions from me really amplified to her.

I'm gonna skip a lot of backstory on how I got here involving my Mother passing and a divorce, so try not to get to judgmental with why I'm asking for help in a problem I 100% created myself.

I basically need advice on how to handle my account situation. I've got a whopping $200/mo leftover for food and unexpected expenses, the rest ALL goes to loans and credit card payments.

Simplified I've got: a couple credit cards, one with a large monthly payment; 3 personal loans, a large, medium, and small payment; a car, large payment and I'm upside down.

My credit my entire life has been great up until about a year ago which dropped it down into the 600's for the first time ever. I just have no breathing room anymore, I cant make extra payments, I have no savings, I literally sold my musical instruments recently which are my only assets worth anything.

Talking to a friend who almost filed bankruptcy a few years back, told me to evaluate which of those personal loans you can afford to NOT pay on for a month or two and just do that. Or, don't pay ANY of them for a couple months.

His logic is that will harm your credit history a little bit, sure, but it's better than letting your bank account go negative and then you cant make payments on ANY of your accounts for a cycle or two.

If I dont pay on a my personal loans I'll actually have breathing room for a little bit to get caught up but I dont know what to do here. I reached out to Accredited Debt Relief and good lord that sounds like trading one nightmare for another one.

Advice?

So I’ve accomplished what a lot of people have done despite it being a well known pitfall, I lived well beyond my means.

My divorce last year cost me a ton, still carrying a lot of that. Lost my Mom on Thanksgiving, so there was a lot of grief-spending around then.

I have a great paying job BUT overtime went away entirely and it’s so demanding of both my time and body that the idea of a part time job on top of this literally makes me sick to my stomach.

I’ve nailed down my monthly financial obligations to leave me with $550/mo left over. That’s only bills, so it doesn’t include any variable stuff like food, gas for my car, etc.

The nearest debt that I can pay off with a high interest payment would only gain me $40/mo in my pocket. The one after that would be $330/mo… but I’m years away from paying that off.

I’ve contemplated looking into filing for bankruptcy just to escape this suffocation I’ve gotten myself into, but I haven’t taken that seriously.

I know about pay down methods, believe it or not I was really good with my money prior to all of this, but I’ve never dug myself into a hole where I don’t know how to dig out of without something drastic happening.

Cant refinance my car, I don’t really have anything of value to sell, can’t move into a cheaper place, I can’t get approved for any consolidation loans even tho that wouldn’t solve anything.

Can you guys recommend any resources for me to check out or paths out of this? Or is it as simple as “eat ramen and meticulously manage every penny you have for the next 5 years, sorry.”