I am not afraid of heights, but I am afraid of widths.

Yup, this is a fat girl story.  I’ve been up and down in my weight, more up lately than down. And entering into a recession is not a good time to be fat. First, if you lose your job you’ll be home all day snacking. Then when you go on a job interview looking like Kirstie Alley (after she got fired by NutriSystems), it’s a ding against you.

So while I hold onto my job at Motorola by the skin of my teeth, I hope, I hired a trainer and went on a prepared meals diet program.  All told, it’s costing me $2000 per month.  Which is $1000 more than I can afford. But I think it’s an important investment. So I had to find a good source of the additional money – this is a three month program, and it’s already working – so I went on the Internet and found Vernon Hills Title Loans.  I’m borrowing against my Cherokee, which is paid off now, and I’ll pay it off by the time I’m down to 135 pounds.

And I promise not to celebrate by ordering a Deerfield cake.

By the way Vernon Hills is near Buffalo Grove, Indian Creek, Libertyville, Lincolnshire, and Mundelein.

My brother the psychologist once told me to borrow money from a pessimist, because they don’t expect the money back.

My problem is I only seem to know these annoying, happy optimists. Oh well. Anyway, that was a problem for me last year when I needed some cash and didn’t have reserves. A storm in the summer knocked a tree down on the garage, which just so happened to be my man cave with refrigerator, TV and old furniture hangout place. Insurance covered the building but not the TV and fridge. And my wife seemed to lack an understanding that this place had a serious impact on my psychological well-being (I even tried to get my brother to vouch for me on this). I needed about $1000 and wifey made a big deal about the economy blah blah blah kids’ tuition blah blah blah new dining room table blah blah blah …

So I realized I was going to have to find the money in my own way, on my own terms. My pickup is mine, all mine, mine mine mine. And I knew I could get one of those car title loans somewhere. I searched online for one, thinking I might drive to Waukegan for one (you don’t exactly see any in Mundelein or Steeple Chase or the Colony of Long Meadow). That’s when I found Mundelein Title Loans on the Internet. Perfect! I got the cash in one day from their website, just filled out the application and had the money transferred to my checking account (MY checking account). A car title loan on a pickup truck is a great solution for fixing a garage with the proper man cave accoutrement.  So I guess I’m an optimist too.

By the way Mundelein is near Libertyville, Vernon Hills, Gurnee, Grayslake, and Hainesville.

There are three things about myself that I’ve noticed lately that say I’m not a kid anymore:

1. My back goes out more than i do.
2. I quit trying to hold my stomach in, no matter who walks into the room.
3. I am proud of my lawn mower.

And that’s just the beginning of it. But I really knew I am not a kid anymore because I’ve been dealing with the kind of financial worries that my parents and grandparents used to talk about. Not only do I see my 401K account getting ripped to shreds, but with no home equity cash left and maxed out credit cards – thanks kids – I have to scratch around to take care of basic expenses.

I work and so does my wife, but we’ve found our emergency cash is in our cars. It’s true — when we need some money to handle a particular problem, we go to a car title loan firm, Libertyville Title Loans, which gives us emergency money based on the value of our autos. This might seem like an unorthodox way to finance something, but hard times make you think a little harder. We always pay the loan back in less than a month, and the interest rate hardly looks bad compared to what our credit card companies are charging.

Yeah, not a kid anymore. I’m a grown up with financial challenges that need to be tamed.

By the way, Libertyville is near Mundelein, Vernon Hills, Grayslake, Gurnee, and Hainesville.

Because I’m a man, when I lock my keys in the car I will fiddle with a wire clothes hanger and ignore my girlfriend’s suggestions that we call a road service until long after hypothermia has set in.

And because I’m a man, I held onto that “flip” property I bought in Waukegan, holding out for a better price back in late 2007, not realizing the market would crash and I’d be holding this over-renovated gem that I’m now renting out at a $600 loss per month. And because of that, I wasn’t able to afford to fix the Infinity when all the brakes needed replacing and my credit cards were maxed out.

But because I’m a man, I don’t cry. I don’t give up. I don’t give in to loser thinking. I took to the wires, the Internet, to find the solution to this little problem (getting my car working enough that I could continue driving to my job in Glenview without having to carpool with Clay, that annoying guy in HR who lives west of the 94).

That’s where this man, this person of honor and integrity and creative problem solving, found Lake Bluff Title Loans, a car title loan company that allows me to use my car’s value to pay for car repairs. (You can use car title loans for anything, but in my case it was the car itself.)

A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.

By the way, Lake Bluff is near North Chicago, Park City, Libertyville, Lincolnshire, and Lake Forest.

I saw a woman at the Metra Station wearing a sweat shirt with “Guess” on it. So I said “Implants?”

Both she and my wife weren’t too happy about that. Oh well. I used to do stand up at open mike nights in Chicago in the 1990s, but as you might guess my career didn’t go in that direction. Thank goodness I had my accounting degree. Too bad I worked in print media. I’ve been out of work for seven months now.

The worst part was when the water heater broke down and I wasn’t sure where the money to replace it would come from. So I searched online and found Grayslake Title Loan, a car title loan business that allows you to borrow using your auto as collateral — car title loans are more or less like how a home equity loan borrows against your home value.  You go online, fill out the forms (takes less than 15 minutes), and the money arrives the next business day in your checking account.  We ordered that water heater as soon as we were approved.

It was the thing I needed to keep my family warm this winter. And that’s not a joke.

By the way Grayslake is near Libertyville, Millburn, Wadsworth, Hainesville, and Lake Forest.