My favorite childhood toy - Wow.  I haven't really thought about it for years.  When I was a kid, I was all about two different toys:  Lego's, and Transformers.  Transformers and Lego's were my favorite because they were mentally stimulating.  I mean, if you get a GI Joe you get everything once its out of the package.  It won't ever do anything different.  I think Legos really take the cake for me.  I would build what they showed you first, and then I'd branch out and make whatever I wanted afterwards.  Get creative!  Lego's really were my favorite, and hardly anything else provided the same amount of stimulation and interest.
   

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 One of the uglier sides to personal finance is learning things the hard way.  I made some pretty big mistakes along the way, and I'm paying for them now.  There is some light at the end of the tunnel, but I had to resort to no credit payday loans to get through a small rough patch.
 When I was at university, there was all kinds of fliers and offers for credit cards.  (That's were I got my first application; through my mail box in my dorm sophomore year.)  I was obviously not thinking clearly and tired of living like a monk 9 months out of the year when I worked in the summer and could actually buy things.  I gave in to temptation and got a credit card. 
 I could say things like, Oh gosh, why didn't my parents warn me about this stuff, but that's really just a cop out.  I'm definitely going to be lecturing my children about it when they get old enough, for sure.  Oh yeah, and I actually have to have some children first, but I'm digressing!  I went on a spree, and at the time, I thought I was flying high.  I can';t say I regret all of it completely, because I did have a lot of fun, and a working stiff like me does not get to enjoy himself that often.  However, I regret it now because of all the damage it has done to me. 
 Eventually, I graduated, got a decent job and got the collectors somewhat off my back by getting on a payment plan.  However, because my credit is so far in the tank, I can't use a credit card at all, which means building up an awesome apartment for me and my girlfriend to live in has been slow going.  I got a decent place, but the thing is that when her mother's incontinent dog uses our living room carpet as a toilet, there is a big problem.  My FICA score is so low that it technically resides in a mine shaft, and payments would have been almost impossible for me to make, on top of paying my share of rent, utilities, cable, internet, AND my student loans AND my credit card payments to boot.  I ended up getting a no credit payday loan to pay for the carpet cleaners, because a steam vac just wasn't going to suffice, and if I didn't have it done by a professional then I would lose my deposit.  The no credit payday loan saved my living room, and the company I used was great about getting me on a payment plan, and I had it all paid for in about a month.  The company I went through even direct deposited the funds into my bank account for me.  I just still find myself wishing I never got that damn card in the first place.
 How do the rest of you deal with emergency expenses when you're in the midst of credit repair?