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I may have mentioned this before, but my divorce hearing is December 10--everything's signed, the lawyer and filing fees are paid, and it's just a matter of waiting for the gears of the legal system to turn now.
Part of our divorce papers is that Amy gets to keep her MINI; we still owed about $9000 on it, so she was supposed to take over the car payments (the car and the loan are in my name, because of her credit). Except she's not good enough with money to take over car payments, so I had to pay my half of the final tax bill early in order to make October's car payment, AND she bounced November's car payment. Mind you, Amy makes MORE than enough money to handle this--her take-home pay is over 4 grand a month, so a $540 car payment shouldn't be a problem.
Because of whatever mental block prevents her from paying bills on time, and the fact that the MINI is a certifiable piece of shit, she decided to trade it in to buy a Mitsubishi Montero (never mind that there's a strong possibility that Mitsubishi might pull out of North America soon, and that it gets gas mileage that means she's not saving that much money over the high-car-payment low-petrol-payment MINI, especially when gas prices go back up) from CarMax.
She got the blue-book value of the MINI, a payoff quote (before she factored in bouncing the last payment) and brought me out to CarMax to sign it over--she was waiting for the appraiser to arrive with her quote when I got there, and the salesman was busy trying to talk over the details of the arrangement, not knowing that I was just there to sign my name and be rid of the financial obligation. Until she got the actual appraisal, which was $2500 less than she owed on the car, and meant she would have to come up with $2500 in order to "sell" it.
She looked at me, as if I was gonna write a check.
I tried not to laugh in her face.
Four days and several phone calls to her daddy later, she had come up with $2000 of the $2500, and told me that they were adding $500 to the appraisal to make up the difference, and would I come back out there and sign it over. Only the $500 was phantom, and once again she didn't have the money. She asked if Mandy (who was there--we'll get to that in a moment) could write a check for the difference. They told her she could write a check for up to $250, but they wouldn't take one for more than that. So she asked me if I'd go to the ATM and get the difference.
I should have laughed in her face, but because the MINI is my obligation, and goes on my credit report, there's a risk that if I behaved like a bastard she would come over, park it in my front yard, and leave it to me to handle it. I think if she had realized she COULD do that, she might very well have. So I coughed up what ended up being $163 to cover the difference in order to not have to call her every month for the next 18 months to make sure she was still making her car payments. She says she'll pay me back in a week--we'll see how that works out.
Mandy wrote her check for $250, I signed all the paperwork, and walked out of the building with one less tie to my soon-to-be ex-wife.
But not before noticing that Amy isn't actually buying a Mitsubishi Montero.
Mandy is.
I hope they love one another for at least the next 66 months.
Having been the chump in my marriage, I wondered who was screwing whom in the Mandy-Amy relationship (besides the obviousness of their screwing one another). Was Mandy using Amy as a sugar-mama (Mandy doesn't really make much)? Was Amy using Mandy as something? Last night I think I found out. I had half a mind to send Amy out of the room and let the grown-ups do business.
I feel a little, a little, sorry for Mandy, who got wined and dined and romanced with our combined money, and who now has to come to the realization that that dream of crazy financial success was just a fantasy, and now she has a teenager to take care of. At least I think she's coming to that realization. It actually took me years to figure that out myself, so maybe not.
Part of our divorce papers is that Amy gets to keep her MINI; we still owed about $9000 on it, so she was supposed to take over the car payments (the car and the loan are in my name, because of her credit). Except she's not good enough with money to take over car payments, so I had to pay my half of the final tax bill early in order to make October's car payment, AND she bounced November's car payment. Mind you, Amy makes MORE than enough money to handle this--her take-home pay is over 4 grand a month, so a $540 car payment shouldn't be a problem.
Because of whatever mental block prevents her from paying bills on time, and the fact that the MINI is a certifiable piece of shit, she decided to trade it in to buy a Mitsubishi Montero (never mind that there's a strong possibility that Mitsubishi might pull out of North America soon, and that it gets gas mileage that means she's not saving that much money over the high-car-payment low-petrol-payment MINI, especially when gas prices go back up) from CarMax.
She got the blue-book value of the MINI, a payoff quote (before she factored in bouncing the last payment) and brought me out to CarMax to sign it over--she was waiting for the appraiser to arrive with her quote when I got there, and the salesman was busy trying to talk over the details of the arrangement, not knowing that I was just there to sign my name and be rid of the financial obligation. Until she got the actual appraisal, which was $2500 less than she owed on the car, and meant she would have to come up with $2500 in order to "sell" it.
She looked at me, as if I was gonna write a check.
I tried not to laugh in her face.
Four days and several phone calls to her daddy later, she had come up with $2000 of the $2500, and told me that they were adding $500 to the appraisal to make up the difference, and would I come back out there and sign it over. Only the $500 was phantom, and once again she didn't have the money. She asked if Mandy (who was there--we'll get to that in a moment) could write a check for the difference. They told her she could write a check for up to $250, but they wouldn't take one for more than that. So she asked me if I'd go to the ATM and get the difference.
I should have laughed in her face, but because the MINI is my obligation, and goes on my credit report, there's a risk that if I behaved like a bastard she would come over, park it in my front yard, and leave it to me to handle it. I think if she had realized she COULD do that, she might very well have. So I coughed up what ended up being $163 to cover the difference in order to not have to call her every month for the next 18 months to make sure she was still making her car payments. She says she'll pay me back in a week--we'll see how that works out.
Mandy wrote her check for $250, I signed all the paperwork, and walked out of the building with one less tie to my soon-to-be ex-wife.
But not before noticing that Amy isn't actually buying a Mitsubishi Montero.
Mandy is.
I hope they love one another for at least the next 66 months.
Having been the chump in my marriage, I wondered who was screwing whom in the Mandy-Amy relationship (besides the obviousness of their screwing one another). Was Mandy using Amy as a sugar-mama (Mandy doesn't really make much)? Was Amy using Mandy as something? Last night I think I found out. I had half a mind to send Amy out of the room and let the grown-ups do business.
I feel a little, a little, sorry for Mandy, who got wined and dined and romanced with our combined money, and who now has to come to the realization that that dream of crazy financial success was just a fantasy, and now she has a teenager to take care of. At least I think she's coming to that realization. It actually took me years to figure that out myself, so maybe not.
