Financial Help Short Term Solutions To Bills And Shut-off Notices
I went from living in a nice house on Long Island to getting a second mortgage to help us get out of debt, to watching my business go downhill, to going bankrupt, losing my house, having to move to a place that was less expensive in which to live, and to falling upon harder times in our new space. I was not familiar with shut-off notices, phone threats of utility disconnect, or landlord 10-day eviction notices, but now I am very familiar with all of those things. Through trial and error I have learned how to push the envelopes with these issues to stretch and float whatever shrimp money we had during our difficult times to find us to a point where we could inaugurate to turn things around. During this trial and error we’ve had our water shut off twice, our cable shut off multiple times, our electric pushed to the brink of shutoff too many times to count, have been sued by our landscaper, and have almost been evicted. And now, I will impart what I have learned so you can push the envelope, if necessary, to earn through a few rough months.
The first bills I am going to focus on are mortgages/rent, auto loans, and major utility bills, since they are of utmost importance, and are also some of the largest wallet crashers.
Your Mortgage or Rent – Very important, but usually easy to float for a couple months, at the expense of your credit rating.
Your mortgage company will usually allow you to fall a couple months leisurely before they really start getting angry and threatening foreclosure. They do not want to foreclose on you, they would just rather see you pay, so they will work with you more. The foreclosure process is not an easy one for a bank, especially if you have children living in the house. In some states it can take upwards of six months to a year to acquire people out of a house, so it’s in their best interests to work with you.
The fix: No real fix here, just talk to your mortgage company and push the envelope as far as you can, provided there is more money for you on the horizon. If there isn’t then think about selling, and quick.
Note: Delinquency on your mortgage payments have a profound effect on your credit rating, so this should really be high priority for you.
Rent – Your lease agreement will usually have a grace period of anywhere between 5-10 days. If you are later than that your landlord has to launch the eviction process (even though he may have no intentions of evicting you) by giving you a notice stating that the reasons for evicting you and when you have to be out by.
The fix: What really happens is that your landlord has to file with the local magistrate, get a hearing, prove his case, and then the contemplate places an order for eviction and gives you 10 days or so to get out. This whole process can engage over a month in most states and by that time you can round up the money owed him. Most states also give you the right to ‘pay and stay’ which means that should you end up in court you can simply position to the judge that you’ve had some hard times and that you now have all of the vital monies (including court fees) to catch up, and the believe will let you ‘pay and stay’ and throw out the eviction seek information from.
Auto Loans – This one is also important because you do not want your car to be repossessed. Most banks will allow you to float your car payment until you are several months behind, and will refrain from taking measures to repossess as long as you are making somewhat regular payments. This being said, do not push the envelope very hard because there is a breaking point and they will quickly and efficiently glean your car and you will end up paying through the nose to gather it back.
No real fix – Pay it.
Your local energy/electric company - How strict and/or aggressive these companies are can vary greatly. For example, on Long Island LIPA was not very forgiving and would quickly take action after usually only a couple months of not paying. They would send someone to the house who would either collect what you owed them or shut off your electric. There was little chance of any payment notion, and there was no chance of talking your way out of it once the guy showed up. The actual guy who visited our house was a man of small stature who had seemingly had any semblance of a heart removed upon completion of his LIPA training program (similar to the state troopers in NY). It was either write him a check, give him cash, or the lights went out. The fix? We were able to write him a postdated check which bought us an extra 2 weeks as he was happy unprejudiced to get a check in the first position. The bad news of course is that if we couldn’t come up with the money by the time the check was presented we would be out $35 for the bounced check, and the guy would come back anyhow and turn us off. And this time I don’t think he would accept another check.
In Pennsylvania our electric company is PPL. They are a very reasonable company and agreed to put us on payment plan after defaulted payment plan as long as it seemed like we were making some kind of peril to get back on our feet. They would send us a 10-day shutoff notice every time, and we would wait until day 10 before calling and negotiating a payment plan. Not only that, but the payment view would usually be another week or two off, buying us some valuable time.
Ask your electric company representative exactly what will happen and when it will happen. Tell them that you need to know exactly the least amount of money you can pay and not get turned off, and the farthest date that you can pay this amount. Most of the time these are tall companies with reps who won’t give you an attitude and can even provide you with this information without problem. Some of these people are very sympathetic and will want to help you.
Also, many electric companies are required to go ask permission from state organizations before turning off a customer during the winter months, so keep this in mind and search for the laws in your area. We were able to skate 3 months without paying PPL (unfortunately we owed a whopping amount come April, but we had come into some money by then so everything worked out fine).
Electric is something you really can’t afford to have turned off, so make this a priority.
Your local heating oil or propane company – These companies’ policies can vary greatly because a lot of them are small businesses. The good news is that a lot of these companies allow you to order oil and they bill you. In other words it’s harder for them to ‘turn you off’ so their only recourse is to sue.
The fix: Find a company that will allow you to order a spacious amount of oil or propane (enough to cover a couple winter months for example) and then simply don’t pay them upright away. They won’t be happy about it, and you might have to ultimately extinguish up switching companies, but it will float you a couple months until you can round up some money to pay them. In the worst case scenarios, you could even switch companies and order more oil or propane from the ‘new’ company while still owing the other. While I do not condone this as a general practice, in a pinch when you’re children are wintry because there is no heat you do what you have to do to survive. Support in mind that depending on how long you’ve owed them and how much you owe them the company might be inclined to catch you to court to expediate their collection process, which could end up costing you more in court fees.
Your local water and sewage company – Water is something that you really do not want to have turned off either, as it causes all sorts of annoying problems, not the least of which is not being able to flush the toilet. Dealing with the water company is not so different than dealing with the electric company in that you can usually station up some kind of payment opinion should you descend late. They also send shutoff notices and are usually very punctual with respect to these notices, so don’t acquire that because the notice says ‘can be shut off any time after 8am on October 1st’ that you might get several days reprieve. Usually they are there that day because it’s relatively easy for them to turn it off and there is no extra steps they have to take to catch it turned off, unlike most electric companies. You can typically float the water bill 1-2 months late before they start getting ancy and send you a shutoff notice, so keep that in mind.
Because it is so important that these utilities do not get shut off, it is necessary to use extreme action to keep them on! Examples include:
Fixes:
Writing a post dated check (a couple weeks if possible) you know might bounce just to buy you a few days. By the time the check bounces you have bought yourself the two postdated weeks plus possible an extra week before the electric company gets around to sending the guy befriend to your house. Inbetween you can exhaust all sources, relatives, whatever it takes to come up with the money. Exercise this only as a last resort if you can’t collect the money anywhere else.
Writing a check you know your bank will honor even though the funds aren’t there. Sometimes, banks will cover a bad check by allowing the transaction, charging you a bounce check fee, and putting your account in arrears. Wachovia Bank does this and it has helped me on a couple of occasions. This seems to work better with checks by phone for some reason. For example, I’ll have $150 in my account, do a postdated check by phone (which buys a couple weeks) for $300, the bank covers the difference upon presentment of the check, puts my account -$150 and charges $35 for a total of -$185 that I owe the bank. Well, I’d rather owe the bank the money and retain my electric on, so it’s the lesser of two evils (I can usually float the bank for months before paying back the account if absolutely necessary). Exercise this also only as a last resort.
Get a doctors note – Believe it or not, many electric and water companies will allow you more time and be more forgiving if you can provide them with a doctor’s impress stating that the turning off of such utilities will have an adverse effect on the health of individuals in the household. So, get chummy with your local doctor and convince him that little Jimmy needs a regulated home temperature otherwise his asthma acts up. Have him do you this favor to buy you some time.
Now we will discuss some of the other less essential bills, but ones that also will pinch your wallet.
Car Insurance – This one is actually very important, and sits just unhurried the utilities in terms of priority as you certainly do not want to be driving without car insurance. Most car insurance companies will give you a grace period of 2 weeks to 1 month before they officially lapse your coverage, with several warning notices sent warning of the impending lapse. With the conventional car insurance companies a lapse in coverage could easily mean that you have to get unique insurance elsewhere as your company will probably not renew you very easily once it gets to that point. The online insurance specialists such as Progressive and Esurance will usually let you reup once you have the money without powerful problem.
The fix: If you absolutely cannot pay your car insurance you can simply switch to one of the online companies that make it extremely easy to get insurance nowadays. Within 10 minutes I had my temporary insurance cards printed out on my home computer after visiting progressive and giving them all the necessary information. I had previously owed $600 to Status Farm, but they would have to wait for their money (we actually ended up going bankrupt so they ended up waiting for nothing). After running into some tough times while with Progressive I fell behind and switched to Esurance, still owing Progressive some money. Maintain in mind that while these fixes bandaid the problem, they do cause other problems (credit, etc), so like I said, only as a last resort.
Car Registration – So your car registration is expired and it will cost about $100-$200 to register it again. Well, this is an easy one.
The fix: You don’t have that kind of money, so don’t do it. Take the chance, drive carefully, make sure you are INSURED, and do not urge or give the police any reason to pull you over. Also don’t tend to park near police cars as they will certainly notice the registration and ticket you. When you derive the money, register your car. While driving without registration is not usually a good idea, it won’t gather your license taken away from you (at least not for a first offense).
Car Inspection – So chances are if your registration is expired that your inspection is also due for renewal. If you know your car will pass inspection bite the bullet and procure it inspected. It’s not worth the price of the ticket you’ll score to not spend the $40-$60 it might cost for the inspection sticker, so just scrounge up the money and pay it.
The fix: In some states the police will give you a ticket, but allow you to show up in court with documents proving that you went that day (or within a couple days) to get the inspection and will lessen or squash the ticket all together, so if you can’t even spare the $60, don’t do it.
If you do not think your car will pass inspection and that you will likely have to fork over a couple hundred to get the car to pass, certainly don’t do it. Drive carefully, take the risk, and get it inspected once you have the money. Nowadays it is harder, but you might be able to find a mechanic who can cheat the machine for you and slap the sticker on.
Note: Do not under any circumstances drive your car if it is not passing inspection because of safety reasons e.g. Brakes, etc. Your life is more important. Take a bus.
Cell Phone Bill – Cell phone bills can be downright brutal, and there is very tiny one can do to circumvent them because the cellular companies are very quick to turn off your service when they don’t get paid. The most you can float this bill is maybe 3-4 weeks behind, depending on your company, and then they will just shut you off (after many automated calls reminding you to pay). The only ‘hack’ for this cell phone situation is to bite the bullet and net a prepaid phone instead. Prepaid phones can be much easier on your wallet. Cingular GoPhone cards go for $15 (for approximately 60 minutes worth of calls) and expire in a month. So you are looking at $15/month for the very minimum in cel phone service, but just enough for emergencies when money is tight. So, while this is not an article about how to save money in a conventional way, this is the only advice given here which doesn’t really involve a fix or hack, but it is good advice.
The only possible fix: The one thing you can do, if you are against the idea of a prepaid phone and you owe your fresh cel company a good deal of money (from a large recent bill for example) is you can simply sign on to a fresh service (sprint, at&t, etc) before the late bill gets to your credit portray. After the credit report shows the late payments or delinquency, or if it is just in bad shape in general, most cel companies will ask you for a hefty deposit before forking over a free phone and a contract.
Note: Unpaid Cell phone bills are like cockroaches. You unprejudiced simply can’t score rid of them easily. The cell phone companies will hound you forever, calling you constantly, leaving nasty messages, before finally turning the account over to a collection agency which will do more of the same. If you can afford to pay them off eventually, it’s in your best interest to do so.
Cable TV/Satellite Bill – This is the age of new technology, which includes the two major types of service we will be talking about here. Those two services are Digital Cable and Satellite TV. The contrivance to deal with each of these is different, so I’ll talk about them separately.
Satellite TV – The major satellite companies are DirecTV and DishNetwork. The arrangement these technologies work is that they beam the programming to a dish sitting on your house and a converter box converts the signal into something your tv understands. There is very little we can do to put off the Satellite TV companies because turning us off completely is as easy as pushing a button. You can maybe float them about a month before you flip on your TV and see a message telling you to call them to turn it abet on.
No real fix
Digitial Cable – Your digital cable company can vary greatly in how they deal with delinquency. Signals are sent through cable wires into your home, into your converter box where they are converted to signals your TV can search for. But what most people don’t know is that most cable companies, while sending the digital signals through the cable wire, are still sending the analog signals through them as well.
The fix:Because of this, with some cable companies there is an easy but temporary fix to them turning off your digital cable. Simply unplug the cable from the back of the converter box and plug it directly into your TV. You will not have the features of digital cable, but you will have regular cable for a couple more weeks until you can get some money to pay them.
Phone Bill – It is very difficult to live without a telephone, but luckily there are many options available to you. Typical phone companies will allow you up to a month and sometimes even two months in arrears before they turn you off, so that is the good news. The other suited news is that it is very easy to switch from one phone company to another for both local and long distance. The third top-notch news is that if you have a high speed internet connection you can easily switch to less expensive VOIP services like Vonage or Packet8, or even use Skype.
The fix: If you have fallen behind a couple months and your phone company is about to shut you down, simply call another phone company and switch. IDT for example makes it very easy to switch over and it usually happens within a few days. They are also very reasonably priced. You will still owe your old company, but you’ve Band-Aided the quandary for now and can continue to talk freely.
The other option is to exhaust your internet connection and note up with Vonage or Packet8. While these companies are not perfect in terms of sound quality or reliability they do come stop, and at half the mark of the larger phone companies. This option is better because it also solves the problem that you had before, of not being able to afford the phone bill. Prices speed about $30 per month which includes unlimited long distance, call waiting, etc.
Life Insurance – Life insurance is something you absolutely cannot let lapse. This is your family, and you do not want to leave them hanging in the event of your unfortunate demise. Many life insurance companies will allow you up to a 30 day grace period before lapsing your coverage. Call them nearing your due date and ask them about this. Most of the time they will be glad to tell you exactly what day you will lapse and if there are any other ways around it.
No real fix – honest pay it. The hassles of switching to a new life insurance company together with the relatively low costs of term insurance make it not worth switching.
So there it is. Please keep in mind that these fixes are temporary band-aids for a much larger quandary and should only be used as an absolute last resort to buy you time until you can get some money together. These methods can negatively impact your credit relate, your relationship with utility companies, and some are illegal or close to it, so use common sense and good judgement when in deciding what you want to do, and what you feel you need to do.
Take care, and good luck.
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Filed under Vonage Business Solutions by on Nov 4th, 2010. 
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