Relocation and Credit Card Blues

I’ve been moving from Bosque Farms to Cedar Crest for over a month now and I’m tired of it. I haven’t been able to settle into my daily work routine, mainly because I still don’t have internet service at the new place, for some ridiculous reason.

However, I love the new place and believe I may have finally found my home. Cedar Crest, too, seems to be a great place to try out my new job as local coordinator for Academic Year in America (AYA).

As I drove back and forth, back and forth through Albuquerque from one house to the other, I usually chose to drive along Coal Avenue, which turns into Zuni, which empties out on Central a little past Wyoming. It’s an interesting drive. I like to see the unusual businesses, like Diamond Publishing, a business that seems to take up a whole building that could be a small strip mall yet only ever has one car parked in front. I googled it and only found a phone number. I wonder what I would discover if I just called one day. Maybe they could publish something of mine. You never know.

There’s also an iron store with metal all over the place, inside and out. It would be fun to spend a couple of hours just looking around. On Central somewhere on the east end, I see a small, closed-up shop that says, “Lapidary”. What’s that? I wasn’t sure but thought it had to do with rocks and gems. It does. An obvious clue is the large rock in the window but it doesn’t look like the store is still in operation, which makes me wonder…what happened? Why did the owner just leave his stuff there to gather dust? I also wonder about those businesses that leave behind their wonderful signs. Don’t they want a souvenir or at least to take home what they paid for? I would take my sign.

There are a couple of taxidermy shops as well, small, dusty, and dark, tucked between gas stations and fast food restaurants. I can’t tell if they are in business or not. I’m betting they aren’t. And don’t get me started on the number of closed up barber shops I saw.

That is what I’ve noticed most in this move – that not only are there an incredible number of businesses that aren’t businesses anymore between Abq and Los Lunas, but also between Abq and Moriarty. It’s scary how many empty buildings there are. What does this mean? Who owns these buildings? Big corporations or people who live in the area and need the rent the buildings should be generating?

Which quite logically leads to my next gripe – my credit score and the futility of trying to raise it. Several years ago, when the credit/lending laws were about to change, all of my creditors notified me that my already high interest credit cards were going to go up even more unless I chose to close my accounts. However, if I closed my accounts, my credit score would go down. I decided to work in my own best interests and closed all but two of my credit card accounts. I paid them off one by one over the years. Sure enough, my score went down but I personally had a better handle on my finances and did not regret my decision.

I would think that, after paying off one of my cars early and paying off/closing three or four high interest credit cards, my credit score would go up but it plummeted by more than 20 points. I was greatly dismayed at first and then I decided to not go down quietly. My mission now is to see how much better I can make my personal financial situation while at the same time lowering my credit score as much as possible. I’m not kidding. I’ll let you know how it goes.

I plan to pay off my second car, pay down the two credit cards I held onto but not close them, and live a simple life, free of major debt. This, of course, will not meet the requirements of the credit card companies for good credit but I really don’t care. I need to work on my financial health, and that means I have to go against what the credit card companies are telling me to do to raise my credit score. Capitalism just isn’t working for me.

Okay, I digressed (but it all connects)…now that I live in the East Mountains, I will be taking the Turquoise Trail when I meet my friends for lunch in Santa Fe. I much prefer that to my usual I-25 drive. I will be taking pictures and blogging about even more New Mexico towns, I’m sure. I hope you will  join me.