Debt Dumpers - 2016

[DisneyMandC]

I feel like I'm hemorraghing money!

Car repairs $1300 estimate
School district in upheaval so no clue what to do about moving (we just decided to stay)
Rent increase of $10 a month
Garage increase of $20 a month
Medical bills are rolling in about $1400 out of pocket total for all the craziness
Really awesome bday party coming up b/c I feel awful for my son $200 (way less if I can help it)
Feeding a teenage boy $527 in food last month. I meal prepped on Sunday for 3 days and almost everything was gone by Tuesday. This boy can eat.

I feel like there is not enough time in a day. Not enough time in a week to plan. I feel so discouraged.

I have paid almost all of one card off (1400 total paid off) but I need to stop and regroup. I had to charge new work clothes because my old
Stuff is looking really bad and no money for clothes. Argh! I'm going to stop debt dumping until next year unless I can figure out a way to get this food bill under control.

So sorry This doesn't really solve your not enough time in the day problem, but do you coupon at all? We may have discussed it before and I've just forgotten. It really doesn't take an obnoxious amount of time like some tv shows (ahem) portray. There are websites out there for pretty much every major grocery store that can you show you how to save more money and provide you links to coupons. I shop at Kroger and use the website Kroger Krazy. She posts a list each week of the matchup deals between the Kroger ad and coupons, so literally all you have to do is go through and pick out which items you would normally buy and print the attached coupons. It takes a little time to get into the groove and learn everything, but once you get going it is very, very easy.

In the meantime, maybe a lot of pasta dishes for him? A big pan of baked spaghetti or lasagna can go for a while and provides a lot of carbs.

 

[Ngwira]

I feel like I'm hemorraghing money!

Car repairs $1300 estimate
School district in upheaval so no clue what to do about moving (we just decided to stay)
Rent increase of $10 a month
Garage increase of $20 a month
Medical bills are rolling in about $1400 out of pocket total for all the craziness
Really awesome bday party coming up b/c I feel awful for my son $200 (way less if I can help it)
Feeding a teenage boy $527 in food last month. I meal prepped on Sunday for 3 days and almost everything was gone by Tuesday. This boy can eat.

I feel like there is not enough time in a day. Not enough time in a week to plan. I feel so discouraged.

I have paid almost all of one card off (1400 total paid off) but I need to stop and regroup. I had to charge new work clothes because my old
Stuff is looking really bad and no money for clothes. Argh! I'm going to stop debt dumping until next year unless I can figure out a way to get this food bill under control.

I hope things get better for you. I reckon alot of people will stop debt dumping until the New Year so don't feel too bad. Can you ask his Dad to contribute more? is that an option? can you buy a chest freezer? do you belong to costco or bjs or sams? Is picking up a seasonal job an option for either of you?

 

[Eureka]

I feel like I'm hemorraghing money!

Car repairs $1300 estimate
School district in upheaval so no clue what to do about moving (we just decided to stay)
Rent increase of $10 a month
Garage increase of $20 a month
Medical bills are rolling in about $1400 out of pocket total for all the craziness
Really awesome bday party coming up b/c I feel awful for my son $200 (way less if I can help it)
Feeding a teenage boy $527 in food last month. I meal prepped on Sunday for 3 days and almost everything was gone by Tuesday. This boy can eat.

I feel like there is not enough time in a day. Not enough time in a week to plan. I feel so discouraged.

I have paid almost all of one card off (1400 total paid off) but I need to stop and regroup. I had to charge new work clothes because my old
Stuff is looking really bad and no money for clothes. Argh! I'm going to stop debt dumping until next year unless I can figure out a way to get this food bill under control.

I'm sorry you're feeling overwhelmed. I forget exactly how old your son is but I think he's around my sons' ages (they are 13.5 and almost 16). Anyway, don't laugh but when I find good deals on snacks I stock up and then I hide a bunch in my closet. It's the only place they either haven't caught on to or at least they know not to go into my closet. I put some in the kitchen cupboard but if I put everything there at once, it would all be gone in 3 days. If they run out now, they eat the "lesser desirable" stuff. Yes, I'm evil

 

[LilSweetPeaPhoto]

Our refi cash out hit our bank account yesterday. Nice to log into my bank account and see $76k balance! DH was so excited he HAD to pay off 2 credit card balances last night. I'm sure before the weekend, we'll have all of our balances paid! WOOOOOOOO!

I know MANY MANY don't like the idea of refinancing to help debt. And since we could do a VA refi we took the max out of our house. But we did appraise about $20k less then houses are selling for. So I feel like we have a bit of a buffer. We also locked a lower rate then we had. So even with our payment now on a larger balance, we come out ahead every month now from what our mortgage + credit cards payments were each month! After 12 years (this month) in our house, it's finally up over what we paid (at one point we were $100k upside down, thank god the market recouped).

So now the real work starts. The CC's will be wiped clean! We will be coming out cash ahead each month. (Not to mention we don't pay a mortgage payment this month or next month). Plus I will HOPEFULLY get a raise soon....We need to really work on SAVING money. We can totally "live" on what we've been doing. So we need to not stupidly spend our excess now!

So what are your best tips for saving? Our problem is, we will look at our checking account, if it's there, we will spend it. If it isn't we don't. I know it should be easy to just not spending it right? LOL.

I was thinking maybe setting up a transfer of $200 (that's about the amount we're coming out ahead on the cc/mortgage combine) into our savings each month. Or maybe $50/week instead. But it's also easy to transfer that money right back into our accounts as needed. I guess I need something I need more hoops or a delay on getting money from. I used to have an ING and that kinda worked as it took a few days to get the money.

Help us not get back into this trouble again. As we won't be able to just take $75k out of our house again (BTW, our CC debt wasn't $75k lol)

 

[Jen and Ashwin]

Our refi cash out hit our bank account yesterday. Nice to log into my bank account and see $76k balance! DH was so excited he HAD to pay off 2 credit card balances last night. I'm sure before the weekend, we'll have all of our balances paid! WOOOOOOOO!

I know MANY MANY don't like the idea of refinancing to help debt. And since we could do a VA refi we took the max out of our house. But we did appraise about $20k less then houses are selling for. So I feel like we have a bit of a buffer. We also locked a lower rate then we had. So even with our payment now on a larger balance, we come out ahead every month now from what our mortgage + credit cards payments were each month! After 12 years (this month) in our house, it's finally up over what we paid (at one point we were $100k upside down, thank god the market recouped).

So now the real work starts. The CC's will be wiped clean! We will be coming out cash ahead each month. (Not to mention we don't pay a mortgage payment this month or next month). Plus I will HOPEFULLY get a raise soon....We need to really work on SAVING money. We can totally "live" on what we've been doing. So we need to not stupidly spend our excess now!

So what are your best tips for saving? Our problem is, we will look at our checking account, if it's there, we will spend it. If it isn't we don't. I know it should be easy to just not spending it right? LOL.

I was thinking maybe setting up a transfer of $200 (that's about the amount we're coming out ahead on the cc/mortgage combine) into our savings each month. Or maybe $50/week instead. But it's also easy to transfer that money right back into our accounts as needed. I guess I need something I need more hoops or a delay on getting money from. I used to have an ING and that kinda worked as it took a few days to get the money.

Help us not get back into this trouble again. As we won't be able to just take $75k out of our house again (BTW, our CC debt wasn't $75k lol)

Congrats on the refi and eliminating some credit card debt. If you want to save money that you will not be tapping into, then I would recommend putting money into a 401(k) or IRA. If your employer has a retirement plan, put more money into that. Even max it out, if that is possible. If you are already maxing it out, then open an IRA (traditional or Roth, depending on your situation) and put money into that. You can set up a direct deposit from your paycheck so that you never even see the money. And since early withdrawals are subject to penalties, you will be highly disincentivized to withdrawal the funds. You will get the benefits of federal tax breaks on a traditional 401(k) or IRA which will help you save even more money in the long run.

Another option is to open 529 accounts for your kids or increase contributions if they already have such accounts. Not sure where you live, but many states offer state income tax deductions for your contributions, so this also helps you save more money.

And if you are looking at just setting up some emergency funds, I would consider opening a money market account that you can make regular deposits towards through direct deposit, but will be harder to access than a regular checking or savings account.

 

[Jen and Ashwin]

Another update on our situation. I spoke with the financial counselor at the IVF clinic a week or so ago. She mentioned that since our insurance covers IVF treatments, that everything would be processed through our insurance (even non-covered services) and that our co-pay and bill for non-covered services would arrive about 4-6 weeks after the retrieval procedure. This means that we won't have to pay anything until the end of December or beginning of January for the costs through the clinic.

Also, the implantation procedure won't happen until January, so I can put money into my FSA to cover that and the embryo storage costs. This means we only need to save another $1500 for the IVF. But the $2000 for genetic testing will still be due to the testing lab at the end of November. Since we already have a huge chunk of money set aside, that means we only have to worry about coming up with the other $2000 by January. We could have set this money aside this month from DH's pay checks, but we decided that since we now had some more time, we would work on paying off our credit cards instead.

So I took DH's last two paychecks and I completely paid off two of our credit cards! We now only have a balance on one credit card, with the remainder of DH's student loan. That means that we should be able to eliminate that credit card completely next month as long as we stay frugal. And we would reach of goal of being out of credit card debt by 2017! And then we will shift our money towards saving up the extra $1500 for IVF and replenishing the $3000 that we borrowed from other savings categories for IVF. I think we can accomplish this by the end of January and be in great shape for next year.

 

[Ngwira]

That's awesome. Good luck on your procedures.

 

[arlinar]

That $7,000 debt collection that appeared on my credit report that didn't belong to me has been removed! Now I can breathe again.

Going to start calling debt collectors for settlements!

 

[DrummerBoy523]

Our refi cash out hit our bank account yesterday. Nice to log into my bank account and see $76k balance! DH was so excited he HAD to pay off 2 credit card balances last night. I'm sure before the weekend, we'll have all of our balances paid! WOOOOOOOO!

I know MANY MANY don't like the idea of refinancing to help debt. And since we could do a VA refi we took the max out of our house. But we did appraise about $20k less then houses are selling for. So I feel like we have a bit of a buffer. We also locked a lower rate then we had. So even with our payment now on a larger balance, we come out ahead every month now from what our mortgage + credit cards payments were each month! After 12 years (this month) in our house, it's finally up over what we paid (at one point we were $100k upside down, thank god the market recouped).

So now the real work starts. The CC's will be wiped clean! We will be coming out cash ahead each month. (Not to mention we don't pay a mortgage payment this month or next month). Plus I will HOPEFULLY get a raise soon....We need to really work on SAVING money. We can totally "live" on what we've been doing. So we need to not stupidly spend our excess now!

So what are your best tips for saving? Our problem is, we will look at our checking account, if it's there, we will spend it. If it isn't we don't. I know it should be easy to just not spending it right? LOL.

I was thinking maybe setting up a transfer of $200 (that's about the amount we're coming out ahead on the cc/mortgage combine) into our savings each month. Or maybe $50/week instead. But it's also easy to transfer that money right back into our accounts as needed. I guess I need something I need more hoops or a delay on getting money from. I used to have an ING and that kinda worked as it took a few days to get the money.

Help us not get back into this trouble again. As we won't be able to just take $75k out of our house again (BTW, our CC debt wasn't $75k lol)

The only thing that is going to help you stay out of this trouble again is self discipline. I'm not being judgy, I'm just being truthful. I know, I got into a bunch of debt and did about 5 ReFis before I realized that I was just moving my debt from one place to another. I've been in my house for 10 years and could've had it paid off in 5 more had I been disciplined. Instead, we had to ReFi 2 years ago to a 15 year, so I still have 13 years. That's 23 years in this house that I'll be paying off debt. Bad choices on my part and spending money that I really didn't have.

So, my advice to you is to do what I did. Get some financial help. I finally decided enough was enough. Even though I was NOT a fan, my wife and I went to a Dave Ramsay Financial Peace class and it changed our lives. I would encourage you to consider one. Even if you don't, my advice would be that you need to set up a written budget and stick to it. I have a spreadsheet that I use to figure ours out initially. My wife and I sit down at the end of every month and talk about what is coming up in the next month. We budget for the mainstays (Mortgage, Food (Groceries and Eating out), Clothing if needed, Gas, Utilities and then we try to figure out what to do with the leftovers. Put your savings in your budget. Don't touch it. You have to be disciplined. After we are done with our budget, we put it in a website called Every Dollar to track our spending. There is an associated APP that you download and when you spend $$, you enter it in the APP.

Good luck in whatever you choose!

 

[Jen and Ashwin]

The only thing that is going to help you stay out of this trouble again is self discipline. I'm not being judgy, I'm just being truthful. I know, I got into a bunch of debt and did about 5 ReFis before I realized that I was just moving my debt from one place to another. I've been in my house for 10 years and could've had it paid off in 5 more had I been disciplined. Instead, we had to ReFi 2 years ago to a 15 year, so I still have 13 years. That's 23 years in this house that I'll be paying off debt. Bad choices on my part and spending money that I really didn't have.

So, my advice to you is to do what I did. Get some financial help. I finally decided enough was enough. Even though I was NOT a fan, my wife and I went to a Dave Ramsay Financial Peace class and it changed our lives. I would encourage you to consider one. Even if you don't, my advice would be that you need to set up a written budget and stick to it. I have a spreadsheet that I use to figure ours out initially. My wife and I sit down at the end of every month and talk about what is coming up in the next month. We budget for the mainstays (Mortgage, Food (Groceries and Eating out), Clothing if needed, Gas, Utilities and then we try to figure out what to do with the leftovers. Put your savings in your budget. Don't touch it. You have to be disciplined. After we are done with our budget, we put it in a website called Every Dollar to track our spending. There is an associated APP that you download and when you spend $$, you enter it in the APP.

Good luck in whatever you choose!

This is all completely true. We have been making so much progress because we have been really disciplined. You Need a Budget (ynab.com) has really changed our entire relationship with money. When we started using the program back in June (just 5 months ago), we were about $2k in the red. Over that time we have worked hard to cut out unneeded things, pay down our debt and increase our savings. We are now over $8k in the black and we have paid off all but one credit card, which we hope to knock out next month. It hasn't been easy, but honestly, it wasn't as hard as I thought either. The victories have kept us really motivated to keep going and start out our marriage on the right financial footing.

 

[arlinar]

Been facing a dilemma between finishing pre-pharmacy and my new promotion.

My new promotion has me working Monday thru Friday ( I use to work Tuesday thru Saturday) from 6am to 2:30pm. A class I need has a lab I must take but the problem is it's only on a Monday. Right now the problem is I can either take this 7:30pm to 10:30pm class (then wake back up at 4am to get ready for work) or I can take the pay cut and go back to my more flexible schedule (Going back to my more flexible day off schedule allows me to change when I need a day off based on my school schedule) and take a morning lab. It's not just one class either that is causing this and having at least a Monday off will allow me to fit 2 in person classes into my school schedule.

I will feel terrible asking my manager if I can go back to doing my old position as I just got promoted not to long ago. My boyfriend says I should just take the paycut since in the end becoming a Pharmacist will allow me to make more money. (The paycut is a $1.50 difference) Other people tell me to stick it out and just keep the promotion and try to take night classes (These people also don't have a 1 year old).

Has anyone tried doing the the late evening class thing while going to work the next morning? Or should I follow whats right and go back to my old flexible schedule.

 

[PrincessKymm]

Been facing a dilemma between finishing pre-pharmacy and my new promotion.

My new promotion has me working Monday thru Friday ( I use to work Tuesday thru Saturday) from 6am to 2:30pm. A class I need has a lab I must take but the problem is it's only on a Monday. Right now the problem is I can either take this 7:30pm to 10:30pm class (then wake back up at 4am to get ready for work) or I can take the pay cut and go back to my more flexible schedule (Going back to my more flexible day off schedule allows me to change when I need a day off based on my school schedule) and take a morning lab. It's not just one class either that is causing this and having at least a Monday off will allow me to fit 2 in person classes into my school schedule.

I will feel terrible asking my manager if I can go back to doing my old position as I just got promoted not to long ago. My boyfriend says I should just take the paycut since in the end becoming a Pharmacist will allow me to make more money. (The paycut is a $1.50 difference) Other people tell me to stick it out and just keep the promotion and try to take night classes (These people also don't have a 1 year old).

Has anyone tried doing the the late evening class thing while going to work the next morning? Or should I follow whats right and go back to my old flexible schedule.

I've done it and have found it's easier when kids are younger. DS was 3 or 4 the first time I went back to school. It was easy because his bedtime was so early and it became a new normal to not see me 2 nights a week (my mom put him to bed). When DS was 7 or 8 I tried school again and barely made it through a semester with all the work and trying to stay active in his life (sports, school, cub scouts). This whole time I worked jobs starting at 8 so i would get up at 5:30/6. I was still getting roughly 6 hours a night which is my minimum to function.

Having said that, consider what your needs are to function, what your child's needs are, what you get help with and what help you would need. Sometimes taking the pay cut would make more sense to have flexibility. Would I change going back to school when DS was so young? Nope but I'd definitely stick it out to finish so I would've had more time later and more stability for my family.

If it makes sense in your life, go for flexibility and finish schooling.

 

[PrincessKymm]

I financed my new tires but it's 0% for 6 months so $75 a month and they will be paid off. Still need a lot of work on my car but mathematically it's cheaper to keep it so I'm fixing it. Thankfully it will be over soon...right?

I changed my budget structure and just need to make my child support stretch to 10 days instead of 7. Just sucks the way my checks fall this month. My city taxes are past due (oops!) and I need to buy renters insurance. This totals about $250 which is almost the exact amount of my child support payment that is due to come this week.

I'm pinching pennies as much as I can. DS has been a trooper and is taking our no spending to the extreme. We needed milk (for his cereal mind you) and he yelled at me for spending money! I laughed really hard and tried to explain necessity over wants when it comes to food. Oh and stretching the dollar to get the most meals for the least amount of money. He likes math so I think I piqued his interest.

I took Friday off which helped me clear my head and rework my budget for the zillionth time this month. Still need to work on November and December but I think I'm getting close to figuring out a new plan to stay afloat.

 

[LilSweetPeaPhoto]

I know. Many think refi to erase debt is bad. But in our case we haven't added to our CC debt in years. We just couldn't do much more then pay the minimums across all of them. I moved around zero to zero to zero as much as I could to help us out. But when the number is $30k...it takes more then that to get ahead.

I'm pretty confident in our ability to stay with it this time. My husband wants to even go as far as to close all our accounts. But I've explained we need to keep some open (esp our oldest) to keep our credit score high (it's high 700's). But for sure, some of these are going away ASAP.

We've finally grown into our expenditure and lifestyle, LOL. We can afford the travel sports, the 2 newer leases on our jeeps, the nice house, etc. Daycare was a killer (at $10k/kid) as everyone knows. So to have that almost 100% gone (my 2nd grader still does after care) is HUGE! My husband finally left public accounting (CPA) where he made NOTHING! Seriously as a TEACHER (granted a teacher in Michigan, which used to mean a lot more), I made SIGNIFICANTLY more. He's now private and making closer to what he should. I'm almost back to the top of the pay scale myself (I moved around the last few years and had to take a few paycuts). My commute has gone from 50 miles/day to 22 miles/day. So that is huge in gas savings!

All the little things add up. And now my goal is to get us to start saving all the little things

 

[Eureka]

Been facing a dilemma between finishing pre-pharmacy and my new promotion.

My new promotion has me working Monday thru Friday ( I use to work Tuesday thru Saturday) from 6am to 2:30pm. A class I need has a lab I must take but the problem is it's only on a Monday. Right now the problem is I can either take this 7:30pm to 10:30pm class (then wake back up at 4am to get ready for work) or I can take the pay cut and go back to my more flexible schedule (Going back to my more flexible day off schedule allows me to change when I need a day off based on my school schedule) and take a morning lab. It's not just one class either that is causing this and having at least a Monday off will allow me to fit 2 in person classes into my school schedule.

I will feel terrible asking my manager if I can go back to doing my old position as I just got promoted not to long ago. My boyfriend says I should just take the paycut since in the end becoming a Pharmacist will allow me to make more money. (The paycut is a $1.50 difference) Other people tell me to stick it out and just keep the promotion and try to take night classes (These people also don't have a 1 year old).

Has anyone tried doing the the late evening class thing while going to work the next morning? Or should I follow whats right and go back to my old flexible schedule.

Can you ask to switch your day off without giving up your promotion?

When I was in grad school (many years ago now!) I had a 6-9pm class, got home between 9:30 and 10pm and then left for work the next morning at about 8am. I worked full time and went to school part time for two years and it was tiring, but time-limited. Good luck with whatever you choose.

Edited to add that I had no kids at the time, and actually this busy time was of course when I met who would become my husband. I even managed to find time to date

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

I know. Many think refi to erase debt is bad. But in our case we haven't added to our CC debt in years. We just couldn't do much more then pay the minimums across all of them. I moved around zero to zero to zero as much as I could to help us out. But when the number is $30k...it takes more then that to get ahead.

I'm pretty confident in our ability to stay with it this time. My husband wants to even go as far as to close all our accounts. But I've explained we need to keep some open (esp our oldest) to keep our credit score high (it's high 700's). But for sure, some of these are going away ASAP.

We've finally grown into our expenditure and lifestyle, LOL. We can afford the travel sports, the 2 newer leases on our jeeps, the nice house, etc. Daycare was a killer (at $10k/kid) as everyone knows. So to have that almost 100% gone (my 2nd grader still does after care) is HUGE! My husband finally left public accounting (CPA) where he made NOTHING! Seriously as a TEACHER (granted a teacher in Michigan, which used to mean a lot more), I made SIGNIFICANTLY more. He's now private and making closer to what he should. I'm almost back to the top of the pay scale myself (I moved around the last few years and had to take a few paycuts). My commute has gone from 50 miles/day to 22 miles/day. So that is huge in gas savings!

All the little things add up. And now my goal is to get us to start saving all the little things

The only thing that is going to help you stay out of this trouble again is self discipline. I'm not being judgy, I'm just being truthful. I know, I got into a bunch of debt and did about 5 ReFis before I realized that I was just moving my debt from one place to another. I've been in my house for 10 years and could've had it paid off in 5 more had I been disciplined. Instead, we had to ReFi 2 years ago to a 15 year, so I still have 13 years. That's 23 years in this house that I'll be paying off debt. Bad choices on my part and spending money that I really didn't have.

So, my advice to you is to do what I did. Get some financial help. I finally decided enough was enough. Even though I was NOT a fan, my wife and I went to a Dave Ramsay Financial Peace class and it changed our lives. I would encourage you to consider one. Even if you don't, my advice would be that you need to set up a written budget and stick to it. I have a spreadsheet that I use to figure ours out initially. My wife and I sit down at the end of every month and talk about what is coming up in the next month. We budget for the mainstays (Mortgage, Food (Groceries and Eating out), Clothing if needed, Gas, Utilities and then we try to figure out what to do with the leftovers. Put your savings in your budget. Don't touch it. You have to be disciplined. After we are done with our budget, we put it in a website called Every Dollar to track our spending. There is an associated APP that you download and when you spend $$, you enter it in the APP.

Good luck in whatever you choose!

I couldn't agree more. Around 5 yrs ago we pulled a ridonculous amount of equity to cover debt and "eliminate" our credit card bills. Prior to that our mortgage should have been done in 2015 when ds19 graduated HS. Instead we still owe more now than what we paid for our house and we've lived here almost 20 years.
This "easy fix" doesn't teach you how to budget.

Many of you have heard this so many times but I liken the whole process to someone trying to lose weight. If you lose weight by making better eating choices and exercise, you learn how to do it. You become disciplined for such a long time that it becomes a habit. OTOH, if you go get liposuction, you have instantly lost many pounds, but the good habits never were learned and it's easy to gain it all back, and then some.
I was warned back then that it was a bad idea and I was shocked at the thought of going through "all that" only to charge more in the future but that's exactly what happened. It's only through doing it hard way now that I'm getting better and curbing our spending and being frugal. This doesn't happen overnight.
I'm not here to lecture you but just stating my own experience & opinion. I wish you all the luck in the world.

 

[DisneyMandC]

Second car payment of the month came out towards DH's car! Never thought I'd be so happy to see money come out haha.

Of course, we had a small Murphy attack last week. There is an metal "cap" (for lack of a better word) on top of our shed at our house. It came detached and blew off during the hurricane last weekend and you can see daylight through the roof as a result. I called a roofer and they came out to look at it last week and are supposed to send me an estimate. Haven't gotten it yet, but I know they are swamped handling storm damage. I did talk to the guy and he said those caps are pretty junky and often let water seep in, so he's recommending we just do singles like the rest of the roof has. Hoping the price isn't too much on that!

 

[yupikgal]

Back to this thread after a long hiatus! We have tried eliminating debt in the past by refi, I had an inheritance at one point and paid off all but 1 card, and then many years of denial, foolish spending and old habits got us back to square 1 again. Earlier in the spring I finally decided enough is enough. No Disney trips in the near future, no major spending of any sort, I got a full time job (that helps so much) meal planning, cheap entertainment (netflix, no cable) has helped so much! Also we are going to stay put until DH retires in 4 years. In late 2013, we moved for his job, and although they paid for the move there, when he decided to bail after 2 years and move back here (he had a job offer, long story as to why he decided to take it) they didn't pay for the move back, and where we live, you can't just drive, so we paid over $4k just for our truck freight alone!!

My question is...we have 4 credit cards we are tackling. Really, 5, but Discover is down to $300 and will be paid off next month. (I'm not even going to factor in our 2 car loans, one of the balances is under $5k and will be paid off Aug. 2018, which is fine with me because extra $$ are going towards cc at this point) We have one card @ 0% for 18 months (just opened recently) which is the lowest balance. Interest rates are at 13.49, then 12.74, then 10.5%. Once I pay off the Discover card, we will have $12,500 credit to transfer over one of the other balances from. They either have a 12 month, 0%, 3% transfer fee or 18 month, 4.99%, no transfer fee option. Should I transfer over one of my balances from another card (I'm thinking Disney Chase or BOA, both the highest interest rate ones, but they aren't the highest balances, although BOA is the 2nd to the highest) If I do make the transfer, then which one(s) do I start paying the most $$ on, the lowest balance or the highest balance with the highest interest because it has the highest balance (last interest charge was $153 on the highest balance card) I kind of like that snowball idea, to see the lowest balances go away first to give momentum. I just want them gone!! They don't allow for peace in my life, they are like a ball & chain around my ankles, weighing us down. I'm just glad we finally made the decision to be done with this.

Thanks for your support!!

 

[piccolopat]

Anyone want to share how to tackle this?

We are not investment/finance peeps. We are refinancing our house, and getting $75k out of it. $32k will go to credit card debt. . Buh-bye credit card debt!

The remainder is for a pool. But the company is now booked through till winter (I'm in Michigan). We'll be putting down a small deposit for a spring spot.

We'll have $43k just "sitting" till spring. I know us, it will disappear. Not all of it, but we need as much of that money as possible. And I know we will dip into it, if it's just there.

Not gonna lie, it would be nice to possibly make some money off of it while it sits. Something SAFE! And preferably more then the crappy savings interest rate.

Suggestions?

You're not going to earn much on that money over a few short months so your goal should be to put it somewhere relatively hard to access so you don't spend it. I am a bit worried for you though. You already have high CC debt and you are already concerned about spending a lot of your pool money before spring. It sounds like you really have a spending issue that you need to really tackle or you will be right back where you are now but with a larger mortgage. If you don't think you can control your spending for a few months, you might rethink spending so much for a pool (especially with short summers in Michigan) and just refinance with the extra out to pay off your current CC debt and perhaps buy a much less expensive above ground pool.

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

Back to this thread after a long hiatus! We have tried eliminating debt in the past by refi, I had an inheritance at one point and paid off all but 1 card, and then many years of denial, foolish spending and old habits got us back to square 1 again. Earlier in the spring I finally decided enough is enough. No Disney trips in the near future, no major spending of any sort, I got a full time job (that helps so much) meal planning, cheap entertainment (netflix, no cable) has helped so much! Also we are going to stay put until DH retires in 4 years. In late 2013, we moved for his job, and although they paid for the move there, when he decided to bail after 2 years and move back here (he had a job offer, long story as to why he decided to take it) they didn't pay for the move back, and where we live, you can't just drive, so we paid over $4k just for our truck freight alone!!

My question is...we have 4 credit cards we are tackling. Really, 5, but Discover is down to $300 and will be paid off next month. (I'm not even going to factor in our 2 car loans, one of the balances is under $5k and will be paid off Aug. 2018, which is fine with me because extra $$ are going towards cc at this point) We have one card @ 0% for 18 months (just opened recently) which is the lowest balance. Interest rates are at 13.49, then 12.74, then 10.5%. Once I pay off the Discover card, we will have $12,500 credit to transfer over one of the other balances from. They either have a 12 month, 0%, 3% transfer fee or 18 month, 4.99%, no transfer fee option. Should I transfer over one of my balances from another card (I'm thinking Disney Chase or BOA, both the highest interest rate ones, but they aren't the highest balances, although BOA is the 2nd to the highest) If I do make the transfer, then which one(s) do I start paying the most $$ on, the lowest balance or the highest balance with the highest interest because it has the highest balance (last interest charge was $153 on the highest balance card) I kind of like that snowball idea, to see the lowest balances go away first to give momentum. I just want them gone!! They don't allow for peace in my life, they are like a ball & chain around my ankles, weighing us down. I'm just glad we finally made the decision to be done with this.

Thanks for your support!!

Personally I found success with the snowball method, starting with smallest balance and ending with the largest. The reason it worked so well for me is that getting through the smaller ones early on really boosts confidence that you can do it. Sort of instant gratification. As you pay off more and more bills, the snowball grows so that by the time you're attacking the largest one, your snowball is pretty fat and each month takes huge bites out of those bigger bills. Instead of feeling like an ant climbing a mountain, you feel more like you're driving a Hummer up.