Thursday, January 5, 2012

upward mobility

So it's 2:15 in the morning. I haven't slept. It's one of those days that takes a lot of winding down.

Yesterday (by now), I gave $208.00 to the bloodsucking collection agency that takes over all of the court fines for those of us who don't always have the money to pay all of the fines that the system doles out for parking. I didn't ignore the tickets; these were parking tickets that I actually went to court for, and got reduced. But when you don't keep up with the payment plan (let's say you have rent, utilities, a cell phone, food and gas to pay for with only a part-time job in a failed economy), then the court adds a $25.00 penalty and sends the ticket to AllianceOne (that's the name of the company), which adds $15.00 to each individual ticket and begins to charge interest at 12%.

They'll be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes.

So those of us who can't pay in the first place have to somehow outperform inflation (which is fabled to be 5%) and come up with twice the amount that we originally owed. That's exactly what I did, and then I was shocked to find that I wouldn't be able to afford the tabs for my 13-year-old car because Seattle has a new plan to charge everyone an additional $20 for (you guessed it) parking services, an additional $20 for road construction, an additional $20 for mandatory new license plates, and yet another $15 for not paying my parking tickets on time, for a whopping total of $115.00.

$323.00 is not a drop in the bucket for me. In a good month I bring $1,400.00 home; in a bad month, around $1,000.00. My monthly expenses average around $1,000.00. I'm really lucky this will be a good month, but I still won't be able to get my tabs until my next check comes through in about a week. Let's hope nothing goes wrong between now and then.

I have to give myself credit, though. In 2009, I paid over $1,000.00 in a roughly similar circumstance when I was driving my old Volvo. I guess that shows improvement--I'm either doing a better job of not getting parking tickets, or a better job of timely dealing with bureaucracy. I should have just sold the car to avoid paying the tickets, but I loved that car. It is now somewhere in Oregon, hopefully being well taken care of. Miss you, Tiger.