Debt Dumpers - 2015

[Dentam]

Yep - same here! I pay my rent and utilities using my online banking also.

 

[dayvewc]

Something else I do - it's how I'm paying things down - is on my CC's since I am scheduling the payments in advance, I know how much I am able to pay each month. I then try to find ways to reduce what I spend on the CC so that the total of new charges (and any interest) is less than the payment I am able to make that month. My goal (other than the obvious to pay off all CC's) is that the payment > charges + interest x 2. For example, I use one card exclusively for gas - I get an extra 10 cents off per gallon if I use it, and my gas averages around $300 a month. If last month I had interest charges of $25 (just pulling numbers for explanation, these are not representative figures) I try to pay at least $350.

Overall, it has worked to help me reduce my balances. Since I set the payment up as soon as I get paid, I know about how much I am able to charge and be under my payment amount. This helps keep me focused on only charging what I absolutely have to. And it worked, for me, until all of my medical bills and extra travel to the doctor and therapists this summer. I managed to pay off 3 CC's using this plan and any "found" money for extra payments. If it hadn't been for the unexpected (and the fact that I've been neglecting my emergency fund to pay things down/off) I would not have any balances on all but 1 of my CC's right now. (I currently have balances on 5, though 3 of them are in 0% promotions).

And with the 0% promotions, I figure out the minimum monthly payment to pay it off 1 month early, and that is scheduled from the charge day. So, where I had $805 for therapy with an 18 month promotion, I divided the $805/17 = $47.35, and on the day I made the charge I went to the website and scheduled $50 payments beginning that month. That way, I should be paid off about 2 months early (made the 1st payment during the grace period, and making 1 less payment than the full allotted time), to avoid any chance of getting hit with that "full deferred interest" at the end.

Of course, as I get things paid off, I snowball it over to the next payment, though sometimes the snowball goes to the highest rate, sometimes to the lowest balance, and sometimes to the highest balance. That decision is made when I have the snowball available, and once it's committed to a payment it stays with that payment until the balance is $0.

I feel like I'm rambling, but just wanted to post the method I'm using - that is/has worked for me - since it isn't quite like any other method I've seen out there. Though it does take bits and pieces from lots of different ones.

 

[crazycatstacy]

I'm a late joiner. I was on last years thread (at least I think it was last years). We had some house expenses last year and then honestly we just got stupid with spending. My husband and I had a long talk today about plan and are seemingly motivated to get out of it. We have a Disney vacation already booked and paid for (we booked last July and made monthly payments to pay it off so it didn't go on a credit card) and we are unwilling to cancel. Our five year old nephew moved to Florida in March and his parents are bringing him to Disney to spend a weekend with us while we are there. I am hopeful we can stay strong and pay stuff off without accumulating anymore

 

[dayvewc]

I'm a late joiner. I was on last years thread (at least I think it was last years). We had some house expenses last year and then honestly we just got stupid with spending. My husband and I had a long talk today about plan and are seemingly motivated to get out of it. We have a Disney vacation already booked and paid for (we booked last July and made monthly payments to pay it off so it didn't go on a credit card) and we are unwilling to cancel. Our five year old nephew moved to Florida in March and his parents are bringing him to Disney to spend a weekend with us while we are there. I am hopeful we can stay strong and pay stuff off without accumulating anymore

Welcome Back!!! You can do it, just have your plan and stick to it. And keep on swimming. Sounds like you've already got a good start by paying out the vacation instead of putting it on the CC. Just throwing it out there, but I'd recommend using what you were paying each month for the vacation as the beginning of your snowball since you are already accustomed to paying that amount out already.

 

[crazycatstacy]

Welcome Back!!! You can do it, just have your plan and stick to it. And keep on swimming. Sounds like you've already got a good start by paying out the vacation instead of putting it on the CC. Just throwing it out there, but I'd recommend using what you were paying each month for the vacation as the beginning of your snowball since you are already accustomed to paying that amount out already.

That was our plan but somehow the minute we finished paying for it that money got absorbed somewhere! My husband has the option for overtime and is going to try to work a lot of it to help out

 

[LilSweetPeaPhoto]

Are you looking to do the debt consolidation for your cc? I'm too chicken to have an adjustable mortgage. It may make more sense to maybe keep transferring to 0% cards so your not paying interest, just the transfer fees?

We came out of our adjustable 5 years ago and every year it's gone down. This is the first year it's gone up but from 2.75% to 3% so still less then we can lock in at. We'll gamble atleast one more year.

I'd love to consolidate the CC debt. Student loans we're okay with. I'm just wondering how many more 0% cards I can open and move things around to before we start getting denied, LOL.

 

[LilSweetPeaPhoto]

I'm not far from New Baltimore, actually. Marine City, if you know where that is - not many people do! I commute to Rochester for school and I can't imagine doing that every day! Two days a week is more than enough for me.

What we did wrong - if you can call it that, because I really like where we live even though I feel like the schools are in something of a "down" period right now - was sticking to what we knew. We're both lifelong eastsiders so at first we didn't even look outside of Macomb Co and then when we weren't happy with what we were finding there we went just across the county line into St Clair County. We likely would have done better to look at the west side or downriver, but we really didn't venture far from our comfort zone. And it has been nice having our parents close while the kids were small.

The east side wasn't for me, LOL. I was born in Warren, grew up in Waterford on the West Bloomfield border. I'm an Oakland County girl (though we live right on the Oakland/Wayne border in Wayne). You'll have to pry my dead body from Northville. Just WAY WAY WAY too many good things here. When my parents divorced my mom moved back to Warren (she works in Detroit) but after 2 grandkids she finally got out and now lives a mile from me in Livonia It's nice but I don't see her often, she's such the busy lady.

 

[LilSweetPeaPhoto]

Welcome Back!

I would start hammering on those 0% cc's before the 0% runs out. Most cc's will let you choose a due date so I would look into that. Or just pay it a week early. I do that with our mortgage every month. I can't spend that money and it's not earning much in my bank account so I might as well get the payment in and keep lowering the amount of interest being charged.
I personally don't know of any consolidator nor would I trust any. That's just me. I followed DR's snowball method though I didn't cut back so extreme like he recommends but the snow ball definitely works! The more you can cut back, the sooner it will be paid off.
In the beginning when it was harder, (overall more overwhelming & harder to resist temptation) I would transfer my snowball to my Capital One 360 checking account and pay from there. The sooner I got it out of our regular checking account, the better.

As time went on and I got more motivated and better at sticking to the plan, I just left the $ in our regular checking account but scheduled the payment online to occur the day before payday. So then on payday, the direct deposit would go in during the wee hours of morning, and the cc payment would come out by noon. I'd schedule them all for the month so I don't get any silly ideas about doing otherwise.

It took me just under 2 yrs to pay off $22k. That's with doing a few short cruises, long weekends in WDW, and a trip out west. If I gave up travel completely, I'd be miserable.

Thank you for your honesty! We have moved some dates around. We need to work on making all the rest of them work for our new pay cycles (I say new, it's almost a year now).

I fear consolidation taking a hit on us. We're not huge travelers (not by choice, because we're broke, LOL). But I am a new car junkie (I know, I know, I know....not good for people watching budgets....but I'm addicted to that dang new car smell). My lease is up next June, but I need to pull out of it hopefully this fall. So I don't want to mess up our credit. We can make payments now...but getting the total down, or negotiated into something that works better (like one payment) would be nice too.

 

[LilSweetPeaPhoto]

Something else I do - it's how I'm paying things down - is on my CC's since I am scheduling the payments in advance, I know how much I am able to pay each month. I then try to find ways to reduce what I spend on the CC so that the total of new charges (and any interest) is less than the payment I am able to make that month. My goal (other than the obvious to pay off all CC's) is that the payment > charges + interest x 2. For example, I use one card exclusively for gas - I get an extra 10 cents off per gallon if I use it, and my gas averages around $300 a month. If last month I had interest charges of $25 (just pulling numbers for explanation, these are not representative figures) I try to pay at least $350.

Overall, it has worked to help me reduce my balances. Since I set the payment up as soon as I get paid, I know about how much I am able to charge and be under my payment amount. This helps keep me focused on only charging what I absolutely have to. And it worked, for me, until all of my medical bills and extra travel to the doctor and therapists this summer. I managed to pay off 3 CC's using this plan and any "found" money for extra payments. If it hadn't been for the unexpected (and the fact that I've been neglecting my emergency fund to pay things down/off) I would not have any balances on all but 1 of my CC's right now. (I currently have balances on 5, though 3 of them are in 0% promotions).

And with the 0% promotions, I figure out the minimum monthly payment to pay it off 1 month early, and that is scheduled from the charge day. So, where I had $805 for therapy with an 18 month promotion, I divided the $805/17 = $47.35, and on the day I made the charge I went to the website and scheduled $50 payments beginning that month. That way, I should be paid off about 2 months early (made the 1st payment during the grace period, and making 1 less payment than the full allotted time), to avoid any chance of getting hit with that "full deferred interest" at the end.

Of course, as I get things paid off, I snowball it over to the next payment, though sometimes the snowball goes to the highest rate, sometimes to the lowest balance, and sometimes to the highest balance. That decision is made when I have the snowball available, and once it's committed to a payment it stays with that payment until the balance is $0.

I feel like I'm rambling, but just wanted to post the method I'm using - that is/has worked for me - since it isn't quite like any other method I've seen out there. Though it does take bits and pieces from lots of different ones.

Thank you for sharing this. Right now I don't think we have ANY wiggle room on our payment above the minimum. But I think we need to change that. We've been stupidly "absorbing" any money we do get (like my husband's bonuses). I think we HAVE to get better about allocating that money to debt rather then let it sit in our checking and disappear like we've been doing!

 

[dayvewc]

Thank you for sharing this. Right now I don't think we have ANY wiggle room on our payment above the minimum. But I think we need to change that. We've been stupidly "absorbing" any money we do get (like my husband's bonuses). I think we HAVE to get better about allocating that money to debt rather then let it sit in our checking and disappear like we've been doing!

Finding that first bit is almost the hardest thing to do. I started by identifying which card had the most money available to charge, and took all the rest out of my wallet so I couldn't charge on them at all. I didn't cut them up, I just didn't carry them so couldn't be tempted. Then, on that 1 card, I made a checklist on a post-it note that I stuck on the card. If the purchase didn't pass the list, I didn't charge it. ( 1. Is this a need - will I die if I don't get this. 2. Is it immediate - will I die if I don't get this today. 3. Is this the only way - do I have uncommitted cash in checking instead). That helped me cut down on unnecessary charges. Then, it was a matter of figuring out how much of my paycheck had to be committed. Rent, food, utilities, insurance, automobile gas, CC payments, phone, etc. Anything left after all the committed bills was divided so half went to lowest balance credit card, and the rest was my "uncommitted" funds. For a short while, I kept 2 checkbook registers, the one at the house with all the bills, and one I carried with me that only showed my "uncommitted" funds. When I got Quicken, it got a lot easier to track (for me).

The other thing I did that actually has been helpful was opening a checking and saving account at a different bank (I actually used a credit union) in a different city and every paycheck just deposited $20 ($5 to checking and $15 to savings) using the bill-pay from my primary bank (actually, a single check that deposits in savings and an ongoing online transfer monthly to checking). Registered online, and then threw away the checkbook and debit card. This way, the only way I had access was to physically go to the bank, which was a 30 minute drive making it really difficult to get there before they closed in the afternoon, or go online and have them send me a check using bill-pay, which would take up to a week to process, mail, get delivered, and then deposited into my primary account. This helped me build a small savings amount, and prevented me from using it for spur-of-the-moment purchases.

None of these ideas may help you, but they helped me get started. Good luck, and keep on swimming!!

 

[mom2t]

Started a new habit yesterday. Charged something we needed because it was the only way to receive - we could not go in a store for this purchase. Turned around and made an extra payment on my credit card paying that amount off. Going into my bank today and paying off another credit card today. A second will get paid off this week leaving me with 2 with small amounts I can take care of next month and one big one that will take a dedicated commitment to pay off by next June when I retire! We also refinanced our house last week cutting 2 years off and lowering our interest rate. Have all cash for our upcoming trip next week. We will be eating in some we have a cabin and I have all food bought except a few things we will purchase nearby like eggs, etc.

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

Joining in! Been reading through here and really amazed by everyone's progress!

DH and I are very fortunate to not have credit card debt, which is great! Unfortunately, I make up for it in my student loans... it's a number I'm not even fully comfortable disclosing. Let's just say I went to law school... so you do the math. I am very fortunate though that I got a job straight out of law school and am starting a new, much higher paying job in a week! So that will help a lot, but unfortunately will also mean my student loan payment will increase considerably. I did the math on my payment each month once DH and I and start filing our taxes jointly (we just got married). Uhhh... let's just say I think we'll be filing separate for a while! It's $500/month EXTRA over what my payment would be with filing separate! I can't imagine the benefits of filing jointly will be enough to outweigh the additional $6000/year in payments.

Additionally, I am on track for the Government and Public Interest Forgiveness Program. My next job is a two year contract term, so that means I'll have 32 of the 120 payments required done at the end of it! May not seem like a lot, but it's 25% of the way there!

I do have one other smaller student loan. The payment on it is $85/month, and it has the lowest interest rate of all of them. I upped the payment to $100/month recently because it's not eligible for forgiveness. I hate looking at it and seeing that it accrues $1 per day in interest! I'm considering upping it to $130/month so at least I know I have a solid $100/month going to principal. We'll see.

Our only other debt is DH's car payment. He's actually been considering trading his car in for something with a lower payment recently, but I'm not sure that will become a reality. We were fortunate to be able to purchase a new (to me) car in cash a couple months ago after my car finally bit the dirt at 265,000 miles

So just plugging along right now! I'll keep lurking on here and post if we have any updates!

Somehow I completely missed this earlier! This will be my ds18 soon. He isn't going to law school but the school he chose is crazy expensive. We did save some over the years but of course not nearly enough, more like 1 semester. Even with a decent merit scholarship he'll have a small mortgage when he graduates.
I feel bad for him and plan to help him out as much as possible by paying them down some while he's still in school. The only reason I even followed along with his plans is that it's one of a very few schools that offer software engineering with an optional 5th year master's degree. Right now there just aren't enough SEs in the world so there are plenty of jobs. When we toured we met one of the SE professors and she said in that particular major, NONE of their graduates can't find a job in their field. So at least that's a relief. I so wish he could get a job with loan forgiveness.

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

We are still swimming here.
I paid back the quickie loan from dh's slush fund from side jobs that helped to pay off our cc's. In a week from Thursday I'll have saved up the amount needed for next car insurance bill which comes every 6 months. I pilfered from that account too.
Then time to start beefing our $1000 emergency fund back up. Yes, that one was not spared either.
If I can stick to The Plan I will have $3k set aside for Christmas by the end of October.

Keep up the good work everyone!

 

[BernardandMissBianca]

Now it's my turn for Murphy.

1 car payment left - check
DH gets his quarterly bonus this month - check

stupid brake pad warning lights go off last week, and 2 nights ago the glow plug indicator came on, again. I just replaced this part like 2 summers ago. I am not happy!!! I swear my car talks to my bank account and when a little extra money comes in, KABLAM! I get hit with something major.

 

[Miss Whimsy]

Checking in to give myself a pat on the back. I got through 6 weeks that included 2 work trips, 2 wedding trips, and 1 random friends reunion trip, and I did NOT end up adding to my debt even a little to get through it all! (I include the work trips because even though most stuff is reimbursed not everything is and I always end up spending my own money.) I feel like this was quite an accomplishment, because I usually am not able to handle a lot of little one-off trips without "borrowing against next week's paycheck" at least a little. So yay! Not really debt dumping, exactly, but not adding debt is also an important factor, right?

That's a good idea! I don't really ever use my Pinterest account but my work computer has two screens, one of which I only use occasionally, so maybe I'll try to set up a rotating slideshow or something.

So I did this, I put together a folder of pictures of me and the BF at DW and of places I have been and want to go, and it rotates my desktop picture everyone half hour and I don't know if it has affected my spending at all but it is actually making me a lot happier to look at those images every day. So that's an unexpected benefit.

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

Checking in to give myself a pat on the back. I got through 6 weeks that included 2 work trips, 2 wedding trips, and 1 random friends reunion trip, and I did NOT end up adding to my debt even a little to get through it all! (I include the work trips because even though most stuff is reimbursed not everything is and I always end up spending my own money.) I feel like this was quite an accomplishment, because I usually am not able to handle a lot of little one-off trips without "borrowing against next week's paycheck" at least a little. So yay! Not really debt dumping, exactly, but not adding debt is also an important factor, right?



So I did this, I put together a folder of pictures of me and the BF at DW and of places I have been and want to go, and it rotates my desktop picture everyone half hour and I don't know if it has affected my spending at all but it is actually making me a lot happier to look at those images every day. So that's an unexpected benefit.

Great job! I think when one has several obligations close together, it's hard to not add new debt so I agree. That is an accomplishment.

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

Now it's my turn for Murphy.

1 car payment left - check
DH gets his quarterly bonus this month - check

stupid brake pad warning lights go off last week, and 2 nights ago the glow plug indicator came on, again. I just replaced this part like 2 summers ago. I am not happy!!! I swear my car talks to my bank account and when a little extra money comes in, KABLAM! I get hit with something major.

That stinks. It is so frustrating. It is good to not delay in replacing brake pads or you'll end up needing new rotors too. Then that gets really expensive.
Grab that Murphy and kick him to the curb!

 

[PrincessKymm]

I am struggling.

I restarted my 401k contributions, I stopped them last year when I knew I would be moving and needed the extra cash. I told myself it was for one year only and no matter what I'd restart them at the end of July. Well that time has come and gone and I restarted them and I just can't believe the difference in pay. I mean I calculated everything out but oh man it still hurts.

I have to do school shopping but will be having a talk with DS about the budget. Mainly the food budget. I can afford his needed supplies and will purchase those tomorrow so I can take advantage of our tax free weekend, our tax is 8% where I live so it is a bit of savings. Most everything he needs is on sale at Target and I'll use my red card to get 5% off in addition to that. We went through his clothes and he has outgrown a bunch but still has enough. He needs new socks and new running shoes for cross country. I have to charge these. It kills me. I've been doing so good and now because I just had to think about my future I need to add a small amount to my debt. I am hoping that if DS and I meal plan and cook more at home (he will definitely be helping!) and do our best to not eat out I can pay that charge off next month. The problem is it's my busy season at work and sometimes I'm working 60 hours a week and it's just easier to hit the drive-thru. I am really going to try to not do this. Maybe on Fridays when I'm exhausted or the Saturdays I have to work. If I can limit it during the week I think we can stay in budget.

I'm excited DS is trying something new (cross country for his school) but I am just exasperated at how much this stuff costs. He also needs to eat better so hopefully we can both eat better and save some money in the process. I wouldn't mind losing some weight either!

I need a Disney trip.

 

[BernardandMissBianca]

That stinks. It is so frustrating. It is good to not delay in replacing brake pads or you'll end up needing new rotors too. Then that gets really expensive.
Grab that Murphy and kick him to the curb!

I need to do my rotors anyway. We always replace them every other brake job. My car is just so stupidly heavy, the thing eats brakes and tires. This will be set number 5 going on the car including the original brakes.

 

[dayvewc]

I am struggling.

I restarted my 401k contributions, I stopped them last year when I knew I would be moving and needed the extra cash. I told myself it was for one year only and no matter what I'd restart them at the end of July. Well that time has come and gone and I restarted them and I just can't believe the difference in pay. I mean I calculated everything out but oh man it still hurts.

I have to do school shopping but will be having a talk with DS about the budget. Mainly the food budget. I can afford his needed supplies and will purchase those tomorrow so I can take advantage of our tax free weekend, our tax is 8% where I live so it is a bit of savings. Most everything he needs is on sale at Target and I'll use my red card to get 5% off in addition to that. We went through his clothes and he has outgrown a bunch but still has enough. He needs new socks and new running shoes for cross country. I have to charge these. It kills me. I've been doing so good and now because I just had to think about my future I need to add a small amount to my debt. I am hoping that if DS and I meal plan and cook more at home (he will definitely be helping!) and do our best to not eat out I can pay that charge off next month. The problem is it's my busy season at work and sometimes I'm working 60 hours a week and it's just easier to hit the drive-thru. I am really going to try to not do this. Maybe on Fridays when I'm exhausted or the Saturdays I have to work. If I can limit it during the week I think we can stay in budget.

I'm excited DS is trying something new (cross country for his school) but I am just exasperated at how much this stuff costs. He also needs to eat better so hopefully we can both eat better and save some money in the process. I wouldn't mind losing some weight either!

I need a Disney trip.

YAY!!! On restarting the 401k contributions. It can definitely eat into your available funds when you do that.

Good thing you can get the 5% on the red-card on top of the tax-free weekend. That will help some. I goofed and didn't pay attention and missed the tax-free weekend here last week. I didn't need anything, but I wanted to get a few more clothes to wear, and I'm a sucker for notebooks, paper, and extra pencils.

On the food front, have you ever done slow-cooker / crock-pot recipes? I find them super easy to use, especially when I know I'm going to be out all day. Just drop everything in it in the morning, set it on low, and it's ready when you get home. (Ok, sometimes I have to make noodles or rice, but that's 20 minutes max. And most of those recipes work well [for me] spooning them over slices of bread). The other option is to make like a weeks worth of rice or noodles on the off day, separate them into serving portions in the Gladware tubs, and freeze them. Then it's just a matter of popping a tub in the microwave for 3-5 minutes. My only problem with crockpots this time of year is I don't like hot food while it is hot outside, so I do lots and lots of sandwiches in the summer months.

Good luck to DS on the cross country, and also on the healthier eating/money saving/weight loss have-to-do-it-cause-there's-not-another-option diet.

And don't we all need another Disney trip? ;-)