Debt Dumpers - 2016

[mrsabbott]

Got an email saying my returns were rejected. Turns out our efile IRS code thingy from last year wouldn't work and I needed to get a new one. Did that and re-filed. My returns were accepted and now we are just waiting to have our money deposited! Yay!

 

[gracie1]

?? So you know how your min. payment goes down as you are paying. Do you change each month's payment to meet that new min. payment or do you just keep the min. in place that you started with so that you are paying the same amt. from the beginning?

I would just keep paying the same minimum because your then paying a little extra to that card each month

 

[gracie1]

I couldn't get over my paycheck excitement all day! I did some debt dumping!!!!

I worked on my budget during some free time in training. I managed to pay off three small credit cards, two of which were part of the new work clothes I bought. One is some stuff that made it onto a card while I was between jobs but it's gone!!! Total gone $870!!!!! I still have $1,000 in my EF.

I've still got a ways to go, I guess I wasn't as tight with my finances as I thought. *gulp*

My goal is to be free from credit cards by next June. I will still owe student loans and I'm hoping to get a new car this year or next. I want to have a nice down payment at least for that. If I can swing it I want to buy a condo and I'll wait to buy a new car. If I can snag this condo I saw for sale I could get a condo for almost half of what I pay for rent currently.

I filed my taxes today so that will pay off my Disney package and half of my next card!!! With my snowball payments I'll be in really good shape over the next few months.

I do like my new job but I'm super tired. I'm still in training so everything is new. Today was tough but I know it will be ok next week. Too much information and not a lot of it makes sense yet. Discouraging but it will get better.

Hope everyone has some good luck these next few weeks!!!

That is fantastic!!!! Way to go!! Three cc is a huge accomplishment!!

 

[edk35]

It's still good, don't get me wrong. Studies apparently say that people who have unlimited PTO typically don't use as much as when they know they have X days to "use or lose." It's just a different mindset. Last year was the first year with it. The year before we had 25 days (vacation and sick combined) and 7 holidays, so I try to use that number as my guide to make sure I am not (read: my manager does not think) taking advantage.

That is really good. My dd got her first big girl job (after graduation from college) as we call it in Dec. 2014 and she gets 22 days off and 7 or 8 federal holidays. I thought that was crazy good for her first year. Yours is GREAT TOO.

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

WOW I have that account but we have ONE account for our vacation fund. I had no idea you can have more accounts under one log in. I have to check this out.

Were you able to see how? If you click on the Summary tab it lists all of your accounts. At the bottom of the list it says something like "Add another Capital One account". Including kids accounts we now have around 14.

So whatever card/bill is at the top of your snowball, the payment comes out of the Capital One each month (or however often you pay)?? So if you are paying credit card X with the extra snowball money it is paid from the Capital One card acct? Your other debts that you pay min. on are coming out of a different checking acct?? Do you ONLY use the Capital Once card for the bill on the top of your list???

Here's how I've been paying down debt. It's a little long but stay with me....
Dh and I get paid biweekly on opposite weeks. So every week is pay day for one of us.
I created a Word document and I list each paycheck for the month (usually 4 of them) and each one's estimated amount. Beneath each paycheck, I list the bills to be paid with that check (based on their due dates) and planned transfers to savings. Not just debt but also water, electric, cushion for checking acct, etc. Anything leftover goes toward our SWA visa which is what we use for most purchases.

Our first bill that I attacked was our overdraft protection for our checking account. It wasn't the smallest balance but it was a ridiculous interest rate and the next 2 bills had 0% promotions and all 3 were roughly similar balances. I usually paid $25 biweekly with my pay to the OD protection. In the past I got no where doing this because I kept adding to the balance!
This time I scraped all I could and made a vow to never add to the balance. It was slow going but made progress. That first bill was the hardest!
Once that was paid off, I attacked the Sears bill. That was $25 min. paid on Week #2 each month. So on Week #2 I still paid the usual $25 Sears payment but then on my biweekly paychecks when I would have paid the OD protection payment in the past, I now sent those to Sears also, as if I were still paying the OD protection. I guess I could have just paid $75 to Sears as one payment but I'm a visual person and substituting an old bill with a new one was how I saw it. It also kept my checking account a bit more even keeled, no large up & down dips.

Then once the Sears bill was paid I moved on to the Amazon bill. That min was $75, paid from Week #1 pay. Then on Week#2 when I would have paid the Sears bill, I now put that $25 to the Amazon bill. Then changed my biweekly $25 from Sears to Amazon. So Amazon was getting $150/month but I would send it as 4 separate payments, at the same time when the old bills were due. They don't mind as long as they get their min each month.

Then just keep going down the list of bills. Some weeks my snowball is less than $200. Some weeks it's $800. All of that $800 was once paid as a multiple smaller bills that are now $0!

I find this works much easier if you pay your bills online, whether you pay through your bank's bill-pay feature or directly through your credit card's website. If I was making a single monthly payment by check and snail mail it wouldn't work for me. Also when I kept the font all black, my Word document started looking like a CF full of numbers so I color-coded each week. Purple for Week1 paycheck and bills, Orange for Week2 pay, Green for Week3, Blue for Week4. Then when we start a new month I copy and paste from the previous month and just change the dates to the new month. I keep the old stuff so I can refer back at any time.
This also makes it really easy on those few times per year where we get 3 paychecks per month to designate them toward the snowball. (I make those red so they really stand out on the page!) Those paychecks have NO bills listed under them so unless I overspent on my regular monthly SWA card, it all goes to the snowball. I can only chuckle to myself when coworkers say it makes no difference whether there are 2 or 3 paychecks per month. I know for certain, if I'm diligent that 3rd pay can make a huge difference!

When you asked about using the Capital One checking acct here is what I used to do...
Whatever bills were paid off and now part of the snowball, I'd transfer those amounts to my Cap One checking just to get it out of our regular checking account. I'd schedule in advance for it to occur on payday so that it wouldn't be hanging around making our checking account look fat. Then I'd schedule the bill to pay from my Cap One checking.

After a while I realized it simply added another step of banking and added a couple days to when I can schedule a snowball payment.
Now, as an experienced snowballer, I can view my paystub online at work 2 days before payday, I then schedule bills to pay online the day before payday. Then on payday when I drink my morning coffee, I see that my paycheck went in and snowball payment went out. It's very satisfying & motivating.

Sorry this is so long but I cannot emphasize enough how easy it is to follow as long as I don't overspend with everyday expenses such as groceries, gas, occasional restaurant, etc.

Good luck and hope this helps.

 

[DisneyMandC]

Well, last day of the month and we did some debt dumping! I feel like this was our first time really getting rid of our debt! So overall this month we:

1. Paid the minimum on DH's student loan - $208.78
2. Paid $65 over the minimum on my student loan - $150
3. More than DOUBLED DH's car payment!!- $1300

Woohoo! So excited about the car payment! The car loan is our highest loan amount out of these three, but our lowest interest rate. However, the monthly payment is one we hate, so we really want to get rid of that to snowball it into our student loans.

I have to say, this really wouldn't have been possible without our use of YNAB! Seeing where we're spending our money has really helped us see how much we have left to put towards debt, which is great!

 

[scdak]

I hope everyone has had a good first month of 2016 and has made progress in the budget business! I for one am excited - my vehicle is paid off as of a few minutes ago (well, once Ally gets the payment from my bank), I have paid off 1 CC, and cut one CC balance by 2/3'rds, I will pay that one off in a few days. I have put a little bit of money in my savings account as I work to try to build an emergency fund. Next month's goal is to snowball all the money from the car loan and the 2 CC that I will have paid off onto the next CC to pay down..............I hope to have that paid by July if possible.

Keep the stories coming on how everyone is making changes in their lives to get rid of debt, I am getting great ideas from this thread.

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

Wow, we definitely seem to be in a reverse Murphy phase as a group - woohoo!!

That's because is here at my house, kicking my ars and dragging me around by my hair. He is pure evil.

We have been chugging away with our snowball payments and doing great with it. In fact, next week with dh's OT, we'll pay off the last of his truck loan where we did the balance transfer to a cc last summer! yay!

In the meantime, ds came home from his first semester of college in late Dec. Over the break he finally admitted he doesn't like his major, missed a few assignments which then led him to be too embarrassed to attend class (they are very small classes, 25 students or less) which made him miss more assignments.
He finally felt so ashamed that by Thanksgiving he stopped going to classes at all.
This includes the history class (which he loves) and got a 97 on the mid term.

At first I assured him it's not the end of the world to change majors or schools. He might just look back in 20 years and see it was just a bump in the road of life. We'll get him a car and he can work for now and we'll sign him up for our local county college for summer or fall.

In our long talk, it turns out that despite seeming very happy on the outside, he is actually very depressed. Not quite like he can't get out of bed all day, but close to it. We are getting him help but it's slow-going. He has been this way for a while and it will take time to undo the damage it's done.

The sad part is that he is sooo wicked smart it's a shame for him to not get back into college somehow. His SAT scores were beyond the range that his school typically accepts.

Still, we were not expecting to be buying him a car now. We're in the suburbs where you have to have a car to get around. So again, we're back to cashing those checks from our Disney visa cards that charge 2% fee but you have a year to pay off at 0%. So first I thought $4000 would get him more than a clunker. Well, after pouring over thousands of cars on craigslist and spending our weekends looking at so many filthy POS's, we upped our game to $7000. This gets us to the range of 8-10 yrs old with less than 100,000 miles on it.
We found a great car, clean & well-maintained, but the owner needs to pay off the loan to get the title which they are in the process of doing. It should take a few weeks and we can close the deal. If this falls through I think we may end up at a dealership to find something still used but in better condition than a clunker and be stuck with a payment.

Even with the $7000 we've had to suddenly come up with, we should be debt free by July except our mortgage but then there's ds's student loans. Once they realize he has withdrawn from school, those will come due too. I feel like until he gets himself back to normal we should help him out but right now he'd let it all fall apart. Hopefully he can get himself to the point mentally where he can work & pay off some loans and then attend our county college in the fall.

This is the kind of crap no parent expects or makes contingency plans for. Really hit us out of the blue though hindsight is 20/20 and we should have started getting him help his senior year of HS.

 

[hollybearsmom]

So proud of myself. Went to Th store and the mall with a list. At grocery store I had two items not on list, and at mall only 2.50 impulse. Did a huge deal better tho month using cash envelope system and set up payment plan for one medical bill. And I didn't spend that money shopping!
Murphy bummer is I cracked a tooth and have to find some time and cash for that this next month. I'm determined to get it done!

 

[DisneyMandC]

That's because is here at my house, kicking my ars and dragging me around by my hair. He is pure evil.

We have been chugging away with our snowball payments and doing great with it. In fact, next week with dh's OT, we'll pay off the last of his truck loan where we did the balance transfer to a cc last summer! yay!

In the meantime, ds came home from his first semester of college in late Dec. Over the break he finally admitted he doesn't like his major, missed a few assignments which then led him to be too embarrassed to attend class (they are very small classes, 25 students or less) which made him miss more assignments.
He finally felt so ashamed that by Thanksgiving he stopped going to classes at all.
This includes the history class (which he loves) and got a 97 on the mid term.

At first I assured him it's not the end of the world to change majors or schools. He might just look back in 20 years and see it was just a bump in the road of life. We'll get him a car and he can work for now and we'll sign him up for our local county college for summer or fall.

In our long talk, it turns out that despite seeming very happy on the outside, he is actually very depressed. Not quite like he can't get out of bed all day, but close to it. We are getting him help but it's slow-going. He has been this way for a while and it will take time to undo the damage it's done.

The sad part is that he is sooo wicked smart it's a shame for him to not get back into college somehow. His SAT scores were beyond the range that his school typically accepts.

Still, we were not expecting to be buying him a car now. We're in the suburbs where you have to have a car to get around. So again, we're back to cashing those checks from our Disney visa cards that charge 2% fee but you have a year to pay off at 0%. So first I thought $4000 would get him more than a clunker. Well, after pouring over thousands of cars on craigslist and spending our weekends looking at so many filthy POS's, we upped our game to $7000. This gets us to the range of 8-10 yrs old with less than 100,000 miles on it.
We found a great car, clean & well-maintained, but the owner needs to pay off the loan to get the title which they are in the process of doing. It should take a few weeks and we can close the deal. If this falls through I think we may end up at a dealership to find something still used but in better condition than a clunker and be stuck with a payment.

Even with the $7000 we've had to suddenly come up with, we should be debt free by July except our mortgage but then there's ds's student loans. Once they realize he has withdrawn from school, those will come due too. I feel like until he gets himself back to normal we should help him out but right now he'd let it all fall apart. Hopefully he can get himself to the point mentally where he can work & pay off some loans and then attend our county college in the fall.

This is the kind of crap no parent expects or makes contingency plans for. Really hit us out of the blue though hindsight is 20/20 and we should have started getting him help his senior year of HS.

Sorry for your son's struggles, but kudos to you for taking it seriously and getting him the help he needs. It sounds like he's a smart young man, so I'm sure things will turn around for him soon. And as I'm sure we all know, it doesn't matter how old you are, sometimes you just need your mom

 

[PrincessKymm]

That's because is here at my house, kicking my ars and dragging me around by my hair. He is pure evil.

We have been chugging away with our snowball payments and doing great with it. In fact, next week with dh's OT, we'll pay off the last of his truck loan where we did the balance transfer to a cc last summer! yay!

In the meantime, ds came home from his first semester of college in late Dec. Over the break he finally admitted he doesn't like his major, missed a few assignments which then led him to be too embarrassed to attend class (they are very small classes, 25 students or less) which made him miss more assignments.
He finally felt so ashamed that by Thanksgiving he stopped going to classes at all.
This includes the history class (which he loves) and got a 97 on the mid term.

At first I assured him it's not the end of the world to change majors or schools. He might just look back in 20 years and see it was just a bump in the road of life. We'll get him a car and he can work for now and we'll sign him up for our local county college for summer or fall.

In our long talk, it turns out that despite seeming very happy on the outside, he is actually very depressed. Not quite like he can't get out of bed all day, but close to it. We are getting him help but it's slow-going. He has been this way for a while and it will take time to undo the damage it's done.

The sad part is that he is sooo wicked smart it's a shame for him to not get back into college somehow. His SAT scores were beyond the range that his school typically accepts.

Still, we were not expecting to be buying him a car now. We're in the suburbs where you have to have a car to get around. So again, we're back to cashing those checks from our Disney visa cards that charge 2% fee but you have a year to pay off at 0%. So first I thought $4000 would get him more than a clunker. Well, after pouring over thousands of cars on craigslist and spending our weekends looking at so many filthy POS's, we upped our game to $7000. This gets us to the range of 8-10 yrs old with less than 100,000 miles on it.
We found a great car, clean & well-maintained, but the owner needs to pay off the loan to get the title which they are in the process of doing. It should take a few weeks and we can close the deal. If this falls through I think we may end up at a dealership to find something still used but in better condition than a clunker and be stuck with a payment.

Even with the $7000 we've had to suddenly come up with, we should be debt free by July except our mortgage but then there's ds's student loans. Once they realize he has withdrawn from school, those will come due too. I feel like until he gets himself back to normal we should help him out but right now he'd let it all fall apart. Hopefully he can get himself to the point mentally where he can work & pay off some loans and then attend our county college in the fall.

This is the kind of crap no parent expects or makes contingency plans for. Really hit us out of the blue though hindsight is 20/20 and we should have started getting him help his senior year of HS.

Hugs!!!!!! Glad you are getting him help. Kudos!!!!

It will all work out for your son. I've been there and it's so incredibly hard when you feel like he does. It's awesome he's got supportive family to help him.

Just a suggestion....have you considered contacting a buy here pay here lot? It might be easier to get him a car at a cheap rate for a few months or they might be willing to sell one cheap. If he decides to go to school away from home again in the fall you're not paying off a loan for a car he's not using and you can just turn it back in, sort of like a long term rental while he gets the help he needs. Might not work out in this situation but it was a suggestion my sister looked into when she was faced with a tough car situation.

Good luck!!!!!!!

 

[dayvewc]

That's because is here at my house, kicking my ars and dragging me around by my hair. He is pure evil.

We have been chugging away with our snowball payments and doing great with it. In fact, next week with dh's OT, we'll pay off the last of his truck loan where we did the balance transfer to a cc last summer! yay!

In the meantime, ds came home from his first semester of college in late Dec. Over the break he finally admitted he doesn't like his major, missed a few assignments which then led him to be too embarrassed to attend class (they are very small classes, 25 students or less) which made him miss more assignments.
He finally felt so ashamed that by Thanksgiving he stopped going to classes at all.
This includes the history class (which he loves) and got a 97 on the mid term.

At first I assured him it's not the end of the world to change majors or schools. He might just look back in 20 years and see it was just a bump in the road of life. We'll get him a car and he can work for now and we'll sign him up for our local county college for summer or fall.

In our long talk, it turns out that despite seeming very happy on the outside, he is actually very depressed. Not quite like he can't get out of bed all day, but close to it. We are getting him help but it's slow-going. He has been this way for a while and it will take time to undo the damage it's done.

The sad part is that he is sooo wicked smart it's a shame for him to not get back into college somehow. His SAT scores were beyond the range that his school typically accepts.

Still, we were not expecting to be buying him a car now. We're in the suburbs where you have to have a car to get around. So again, we're back to cashing those checks from our Disney visa cards that charge 2% fee but you have a year to pay off at 0%. So first I thought $4000 would get him more than a clunker. Well, after pouring over thousands of cars on craigslist and spending our weekends looking at so many filthy POS's, we upped our game to $7000. This gets us to the range of 8-10 yrs old with less than 100,000 miles on it.
We found a great car, clean & well-maintained, but the owner needs to pay off the loan to get the title which they are in the process of doing. It should take a few weeks and we can close the deal. If this falls through I think we may end up at a dealership to find something still used but in better condition than a clunker and be stuck with a payment.

Even with the $7000 we've had to suddenly come up with, we should be debt free by July except our mortgage but then there's ds's student loans. Once they realize he has withdrawn from school, those will come due too. I feel like until he gets himself back to normal we should help him out but right now he'd let it all fall apart. Hopefully he can get himself to the point mentally where he can work & pay off some loans and then attend our county college in the fall.

This is the kind of crap no parent expects or makes contingency plans for. Really hit us out of the blue though hindsight is 20/20 and we should have started getting him help his senior year of HS.

HUGS!!! So sorry Murphy is visiting you. And good vibes to your entire family. I know way more about depression than I really ever want to talk about.

On the car front ... back in December, we had to get a new (to him) car for my roommate. He got hit by a deer and it totaled the one he had. We were in a bit of a rush because insurance would only pay for a rental for a week, but checked craigslist and dealer websites and every place we could think to look. Wound up going to a dealer for a used car. They were comparable to the prices on craigslist, and it was a lot easier to pay them than trying to get cash to pay someone from craigslist - plus it had the "certified inspection" done. Not sure how valuable that really is, but it at least meant we weren't having to find a mechanic to look over a car. He probably wouldn't want what we wound up with, but got a 12 year old single owner mini-van with right at 100k miles for $4k (plus taxes and fees). Don't know how much they ran in 2004, but a new one today is $36k or so.

 

[bcwife76]

That's because is here at my house, kicking my ars and dragging me around by my hair. He is pure evil.

We have been chugging away with our snowball payments and doing great with it. In fact, next week with dh's OT, we'll pay off the last of his truck loan where we did the balance transfer to a cc last summer! yay!

In the meantime, ds came home from his first semester of college in late Dec. Over the break he finally admitted he doesn't like his major, missed a few assignments which then led him to be too embarrassed to attend class (they are very small classes, 25 students or less) which made him miss more assignments.
He finally felt so ashamed that by Thanksgiving he stopped going to classes at all.
This includes the history class (which he loves) and got a 97 on the mid term.

At first I assured him it's not the end of the world to change majors or schools. He might just look back in 20 years and see it was just a bump in the road of life. We'll get him a car and he can work for now and we'll sign him up for our local county college for summer or fall.

In our long talk, it turns out that despite seeming very happy on the outside, he is actually very depressed. Not quite like he can't get out of bed all day, but close to it. We are getting him help but it's slow-going. He has been this way for a while and it will take time to undo the damage it's done.

The sad part is that he is sooo wicked smart it's a shame for him to not get back into college somehow. His SAT scores were beyond the range that his school typically accepts.

Still, we were not expecting to be buying him a car now. We're in the suburbs where you have to have a car to get around. So again, we're back to cashing those checks from our Disney visa cards that charge 2% fee but you have a year to pay off at 0%. So first I thought $4000 would get him more than a clunker. Well, after pouring over thousands of cars on craigslist and spending our weekends looking at so many filthy POS's, we upped our game to $7000. This gets us to the range of 8-10 yrs old with less than 100,000 miles on it.
We found a great car, clean & well-maintained, but the owner needs to pay off the loan to get the title which they are in the process of doing. It should take a few weeks and we can close the deal. If this falls through I think we may end up at a dealership to find something still used but in better condition than a clunker and be stuck with a payment.

Even with the $7000 we've had to suddenly come up with, we should be debt free by July except our mortgage but then there's ds's student loans. Once they realize he has withdrawn from school, those will come due too. I feel like until he gets himself back to normal we should help him out but right now he'd let it all fall apart. Hopefully he can get himself to the point mentally where he can work & pay off some loans and then attend our county college in the fall.

This is the kind of crap no parent expects or makes contingency plans for. Really hit us out of the blue though hindsight is 20/20 and we should have started getting him help his senior year of HS.

((HUGS)) You guys are awesome parents, your son is lucky to have such great parents! He sounds like a good kid going through some struggles and we've all been there. High school feels like a safe environment but no matter how smart or determined we are, college/university is a whole other ball game and there's no shame in admitting that the smartest of kids can struggle. I'm glad you're there for him, he'll be ok!

 

[Eureka]

That's because is here at my house, kicking my ars and dragging me around by my hair. He is pure evil.

We have been chugging away with our snowball payments and doing great with it. In fact, next week with dh's OT, we'll pay off the last of his truck loan where we did the balance transfer to a cc last summer! yay!

In the meantime, ds came home from his first semester of college in late Dec. Over the break he finally admitted he doesn't like his major, missed a few assignments which then led him to be too embarrassed to attend class (they are very small classes, 25 students or less) which made him miss more assignments.
He finally felt so ashamed that by Thanksgiving he stopped going to classes at all.
This includes the history class (which he loves) and got a 97 on the mid term.

At first I assured him it's not the end of the world to change majors or schools. He might just look back in 20 years and see it was just a bump in the road of life. We'll get him a car and he can work for now and we'll sign him up for our local county college for summer or fall.

In our long talk, it turns out that despite seeming very happy on the outside, he is actually very depressed. Not quite like he can't get out of bed all day, but close to it. We are getting him help but it's slow-going. He has been this way for a while and it will take time to undo the damage it's done.

The sad part is that he is sooo wicked smart it's a shame for him to not get back into college somehow. His SAT scores were beyond the range that his school typically accepts.

Still, we were not expecting to be buying him a car now. We're in the suburbs where you have to have a car to get around. So again, we're back to cashing those checks from our Disney visa cards that charge 2% fee but you have a year to pay off at 0%. So first I thought $4000 would get him more than a clunker. Well, after pouring over thousands of cars on craigslist and spending our weekends looking at so many filthy POS's, we upped our game to $7000. This gets us to the range of 8-10 yrs old with less than 100,000 miles on it.
We found a great car, clean & well-maintained, but the owner needs to pay off the loan to get the title which they are in the process of doing. It should take a few weeks and we can close the deal. If this falls through I think we may end up at a dealership to find something still used but in better condition than a clunker and be stuck with a payment.

Even with the $7000 we've had to suddenly come up with, we should be debt free by July except our mortgage but then there's ds's student loans. Once they realize he has withdrawn from school, those will come due too. I feel like until he gets himself back to normal we should help him out but right now he'd let it all fall apart. Hopefully he can get himself to the point mentally where he can work & pay off some loans and then attend our county college in the fall.

This is the kind of crap no parent expects or makes contingency plans for. Really hit us out of the blue though hindsight is 20/20 and we should have started getting him help his senior year of HS.

I'm sorry your son is going through this but it's great he's got parents like you to get him the help he needs, including a car to expand his options. My question is about the student loans. If he's enrolled at a community college, why would they come due? Usually there's a grace period so if he withdraws from college #1, takes a semester off and enrolls in college #2, I'm thinking he won't have to start paying them immediately.

 

[DisneyMandC]

I'm sorry your son is going through this but it's great he's got parents like you to get him the help he needs, including a car to expand his options. My question is about the student loans. If he's enrolled at a community college, why would they come due? Usually there's a grace period so if he withdraws from college #1, takes a semester off and enrolls in college #2, I'm thinking he won't have to start paying them immediately.

Eureka is right, usually there's a grace period. I know mine was 6 months after graduating, so he would maybe have to make a couple payments, but they would go back to inactive once he started a semester in August. Or he could start with summer classes in May and not have to make any payments.

 

[lilpixiebabe101]

I feel like Murphy is just waiting around the corner, but excitement to share!

Did my taxes Saturday night. They were accepted and my return will be 640$ more than I estimated! I think I will put that toward our trip and not feel guilty about it since I didn't plan for it in my snowball payoff. Or may stick it into the EF and if we get a little crazy on the trip in October it's okay because that is there and was "extra" so I won't feel bad about using it.

And...I got a credit card back in august to start building credit. 1.5% rewards. Not sure the interest rate to be honest, but I put my cell phone on it then pay it right off to credit build. The deal was pay for 5 months and get a line increase to 500$. I got an email from capital one this morning. I got my increase but to 800 not 500! I felt reallyou good about that after all our credit ups and downs in the last 7 years! My credit score also went up two points from juSt making my Macys payment in January! Excited to see what this open credit with the line increase does!

 

[hmwinter85]

Just got back from an amazing Disney Cruise on Saturday. We booked it over a year ago and unfortunately put most of the balance on the CC, however after balancing it all out today it looks like only about $100 went on the CC and I will be able to cover that out of the extra paycheck DH got in Jan. The of DH extra pay check will be split between our snowball, loan from DH parents, and putting a little towards DS birthday outing in a few weeks. Overall I'm feeling pretty good at the moment and ready to dump some debt.

My sister is already talking about a big family vacation in the summer of 2017 (Disney Cruise or WDW) so I'm putting together a saving plan for that today too.

 

[ariel1025]

February 1 check-in. Complete debt balance is now $94,144.74. That's a $5,061.11 INCREASE But after getting my Hubs truck inspected by a very trustworthy mechanic (husband of a good friend) it was going to cost us close to $2,500 to fix it and it was only valued at $1,500 when running properly due to frame damage, a non-working air conditioner etc. In short, it really was time to get a new vehicle for him.

Here's the silver lining. We were able to sell hubs truck for $1,000 to somebody who wanted it for parts which we used as the down payment on the new car AND my Dad had some GM credit card reward points that were getting ready to expire that he very generously transferred to us to use. The total of the new car is $8,220.10 after down payments etc. It makes me feel extra good that we got a little over $3,000 worth of stuff taken care of right before we took on the new car payment.

As reported earlier, I was able to get the Comcast collection dropped (and it has officially dropped off our credit report). After that success, I made one last attempt at fighting some medical expenses from having my daughter. Long story short - insurance switched the day after I went into labor (checked into the hospital just before 11:00 p.m. local time) with my daughter and both companies were claiming it wasn't their responsibility. Luckily, my husband has a new (and improved!) HR Rep at his job and she was able to fully understand everything we were explaining to her and took on the case of contacting his company's insurance rep and so on and so forth. When all was said and done she was able to get what we are required to pay lowered by about $2,000. It's still more than what we should be responsible for, but I know at this point we are at risk of going into collections if we don't set up a payment plan and I don't want to run into that. At least we made some headway on it.

Haven't officially filed taxes yet, but a quick calculation is showing we should get around $3,000 back. The plan is to put $500 in the emergency fund, pay off Discover card ($423.70) and Conn's appliance balance ($1,645.32) and put the rest towards our June trip to WDW. The two payoffs, unfortunately, won't create any new snowball, but will cover the new car payment, so at least we won't have any additional payments each month.

Wishing everyone a successful and Murphy free February!

 

[gracie1]

I hope everyone has had a good first month of 2016 and has made progress in the budget business! I for one am excited - my vehicle is paid off as of a few minutes ago (well, once Ally gets the payment from my bank), I have paid off 1 CC, and cut one CC balance by 2/3'rds, I will pay that one off in a few days. I have put a little bit of money in my savings account as I work to try to build an emergency fund. Next month's goal is to snowball all the money from the car loan and the 2 CC that I will have paid off onto the next CC to pay down..............I hope to have that paid by July if possible.

Keep the stories coming on how everyone is making changes in their lives to get rid of debt, I am getting great ideas from this thread.

Congrats on paying off your car!! You are on a role - and should be so proud of what you have accomplished in such a little time!! I'm excited for you!!!!

 

[gracie1]

That's because is here at my house, kicking my ars and dragging me around by my hair. He is pure evil.

We have been chugging away with our snowball payments and doing great with it. In fact, next week with dh's OT, we'll pay off the last of his truck loan where we did the balance transfer to a cc last summer! yay!

In the meantime, ds came home from his first semester of college in late Dec. Over the break he finally admitted he doesn't like his major, missed a few assignments which then led him to be too embarrassed to attend class (they are very small classes, 25 students or less) which made him miss more assignments.
He finally felt so ashamed that by Thanksgiving he stopped going to classes at all.
This includes the history class (which he loves) and got a 97 on the mid term.

At first I assured him it's not the end of the world to change majors or schools. He might just look back in 20 years and see it was just a bump in the road of life. We'll get him a car and he can work for now and we'll sign him up for our local county college for summer or fall.

In our long talk, it turns out that despite seeming very happy on the outside, he is actually very depressed. Not quite like he can't get out of bed all day, but close to it. We are getting him help but it's slow-going. He has been this way for a while and it will take time to undo the damage it's done.

The sad part is that he is sooo wicked smart it's a shame for him to not get back into college somehow. His SAT scores were beyond the range that his school typically accepts.

Still, we were not expecting to be buying him a car now. We're in the suburbs where you have to have a car to get around. So again, we're back to cashing those checks from our Disney visa cards that charge 2% fee but you have a year to pay off at 0%. So first I thought $4000 would get him more than a clunker. Well, after pouring over thousands of cars on craigslist and spending our weekends looking at so many filthy POS's, we upped our game to $7000. This gets us to the range of 8-10 yrs old with less than 100,000 miles on it.
We found a great car, clean & well-maintained, but the owner needs to pay off the loan to get the title which they are in the process of doing. It should take a few weeks and we can close the deal. If this falls through I think we may end up at a dealership to find something still used but in better condition than a clunker and be stuck with a payment.

Even with the $7000 we've had to suddenly come up with, we should be debt free by July except our mortgage but then there's ds's student loans. Once they realize he has withdrawn from school, those will come due too. I feel like until he gets himself back to normal we should help him out but right now he'd let it all fall apart. Hopefully he can get himself to the point mentally where he can work & pay off some loans and then attend our county college in the fall.

This is the kind of crap no parent expects or makes contingency plans for. Really hit us out of the blue though hindsight is 20/20 and we should have started getting him help his senior year of HS.

It's good that your son is able to talk to you about this. I was just wondering - do you think maybe the classes were boring to him? I don't know what specific words to use - but when your super smart you tend to need more of a challenge. I mean your son got a 97 on a midterm and wasn't really even going to the class - that's pretty smart!! I have a friend who has a super smart grandkid and in a private school and they had problems - come to find out it's because it just wasn't challenging enough to capture his attention and interest. Anyways I'm so glad he's talking about it and you guys are helping him to get help!! Everything will work out in the end!!