Regularly scheduled once monthly Finances update and donation begging

So remember how I looked into to the slim, slim chance I might be able to get a loan that I could use to pay off my credit cards?  Remember how just talking about it resulted in a hard inquiry that knocked my credit score down a bit?

Well I didn't notice it at the time, but all of my minimum monthly payments went up.  As in, I can't cover them with my income up.  That's not unusual, every month has involved things getting worse since my SSI got cut.  It is, however, worse than it was before.

At standard rates if I got a five year loan large enough to pay off my credit card debt the monthly payment would be approximately $185ish.  The minimum payments on two cards that I never use anymore are in the $160 range.  There are more than two cards I never use anymore.

So the loan idea is in fact really really good as it would involve paying less, getting the debt paid off much, much faster and having freedom on the horizon.

But I can't get the loan.

I asked my mom, who has collateral and a decent retirement income, if she could get the loan for me.  My mom has had bad experiences with debt in the past and isn't willing to add any debt in her name so she said no.  However, she's letting me slide on the insurance payment ($267.50 that I can't afford right now) and she's loaned me $1,500 of her own money so I can completely pay off a couple of middling cards.

There's a decent chance that paying that much of my remaining debt (remember that I used passed donations to pay off debt instead of saving them for filling later holes in my finances) off would cause my credit score to actually rocket out of the poor range into the vaguely passable range which I hope would mean my minimum monthly payments going back down.

It's a loan, not a gift, but it's a loan with an interest rate of zero and no set time for repayment, so that's good.  Mind you she doesn't have that much money so fifteen hundred is a big deal and I'd really like to be able to pay the $267.50 insurance because that's my job not hers.

And I'm hoping that the SSA will reconsider my SSI amount when they see that I'm not raking in the $4,000 dollars a semester that it looked like I was when people were helping me be a full time student.

So everything's a muddled mess and it's hard to pin down exactly how things are going.  A lot more than I'd like is in the "wait and see" category.

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As always the donate button is in the upper right-hand corner.  Or, and I think this actually gets me more of the money you send, you can use Paypal to send money to me via my email address: cpw (at) maine (dot) rr (dot) com.

Also as always, do not under any circumstances give me anything if you really need it for yourself.  I estimate that about half of my high interest debt (so not the student loan) is a result of me doing stupid things.*  I don't want my stupidity to hurt anyone.  Don't give me a cent if doing so would put you in a markedly worse place.

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Yes, the schedule says that I should have posted this on the ides of March.  I fucked up.  Oops.

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* Technically the things themselves weren't stupid.  In fact, they still might pay for themselves and then some if I can just manage to actually fucking do shit.  The stupid part was thinking that I'd be able to actually fucking do shit.

So far the only thing where I spent money to make money that actually worked was buying The Princess Who Saved Herself in bulk and selling it for cheaper than you could buy the individual book but more than the bulk cost.