payment agreement

Despite having parents who are by all accounts financial geniuses, I have always been rather lousy with money.

During college, I wracked up $2,500 in credit card debt which was a LOT for me at the time. To blame was a gambling addiction which I have since kicked. I made good on the $2,500.

However, I wasn't able to kick my bad financial habits.

I dropped out of college in 2005, and this is where things REALLY got fun. I failed to take the gas & electric out of my name when I vacated my college apartment - $1,350 collection, of which I still owe $1,000 (I paid $350 off a year or so ago as part of my "payment agreement" which I fell out of, for reasons I will get into later.)

I also ran my college student bank account into the red by about $350.

I came home and began working with some friends at a local restaurant. It was great...smoked a lot of pot, drank a lot of alcohol, spent a ton of dough and basically neglected all responsibility - financially and otherwise. Moved into an apartment with one of my friends...outside of our ridiculously low rent every dollar in the house was spent on pot. Electricity & gas once again was in my name - left apartment without taking this out of my name, and today am stuck with a $350 collection.

Oh wait, I have to make payments on my student loans even though I didn't graduate??? DOH!!! I have a $3,000 loan in default and a $5,000 loan about ready to go into default. I haven't made payments on either in over a year.





But wait, it gets a lot worse.

A year and a half ago, a "friend" approached me with the idea of opening a takeout/delivery restaurant. I should've known from this guy's blatant alcoholism & financial mismanagements that he probably wasn't a suitable business partner. However, I had problems of my own and figured why the hell not - what's the worst that can happen. If only I had known....

A period of manic behavior took over me in anticipation of the riches this business would shower me with. I had one account (the gas & electric from college) that I had to show I was making payments on just in order to get a credit card processor for the store. So I made ONE payment in order to get the documentation I needed to present before clearing out my personal bank account. I now owe this bank $450.

I'd really rather not rehash the painful 9 months of operation. Let's just put it this way - it's amazing we stayed open 9 months because we were on the brink of financial disaster the entire time due to under-capitalization.

I ceased communication with my business partner 2 weeks before we closed. He was in la-la land thinking we could take on more and more debt via favors to keep the place afloat...and I knew we needed to get out about 6 months prior.

Fast forward to today, and my partner has apparently skipped town, sticking me with a boatload of business debt. It's tempting to skip town myself (in fact, I plan on moving) but I have too much of a conscious to bail on my obligations.

So in addition to my $10,000 in personal debt (probably more, I don't even honestly know what all is out there and I don't think my credit report is revealing everything), I now owe: $4,200 in back rent, $3,000 in overdraft fees from our business bank account, at least $1,000 for gas & electric and $500 to the phone company.

Knowing my partner he has no intention of making good on ANY of this. I rue the day I decided to go into business with this deadbeat scumbag. If anything I've learned a very important lesson about trusting my own intuition about people.

I'm not sure if I have any legal recourse regarding this matter or not...but surely the legal fees would end up greater than the amount of money I'd be asking for.

So where do I go from here? I don't know. That's kind of why I posted my story. I'm hoping somebody has a morsel of advice that could possibly bring an end to my sleepless nights. At the very least, I feel a bit of a weight has been lifted by posting my story.