Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Paying the bills

SRS itself cost me around $17,000. The labiaplasty added about $4500. I put the first amount on a very fortunate credit card that had low interest for anything purchased during a certain window...which for me just happened to be the window around my surgery. I paid for labiaplasty via money I had in other funds. So, that left me with the $17,000 credit card debt at around 3% interest. I’ve been paying it off about $500 per month...on top of the $600 a month I’m still paying on my FFS debt. Yes, it hasn’t left me with much outside of rent the past 2 years.

It’s been 28 months since I had SRS, which at $500 per month, left me with about a $2600 bill. I figured I’d go ahead and pay all of it off since I had a little extra in the bank account.

Ahhhh...it’s nice to finally pay off one of them. I still have FFS to go, but it’s down under $10,000 now. Since I’ll now have $500 a month extra to work with, I can try to get it paid off soon, too.

So, yes, I’ve been on a spending crunch the past few years...trying to get through the financial hardships of transition. Going all the way back to January 2002 with my first electrolysis, I’ve spent over $100,000 on all of it...spread out over the past 5 and a half years. I’ve paid all but about $10,000 of it. That’s a lot of money...considering it could have gone toward a house or something, but, oh well, that’s transition.

Of course, I’m still looking at a few procedures. I figure to hit Dr. O later this year for a little jaw touch up on one side. After recovering from that, it should be on for some type of face lift dealing with the extra skin around the chin, capped off with hair implants along the front portion. I’m still up in the air about who to see for the facelift, but do have a couple of leads for the hair transplants.

There’s also a few items I’d like to buy that don’t deal with transition. My car is now over 12 years old. I could use new living room furniture and entertainment system. A new computer is also on the horizon...but, I’m just now coming out of debt...it would be nice to breathe some fresh air for a while before tunneling back down.

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