Debt Dumpers - 2019

[DLgal]

My DH and I are headed to Disneyland for a quick weekend trip this weekend for his birthday and in the area I live it's been stormy and cold. On Saturday in Anaheim it's supposed to be sunny/partly cloudy and around 75. I'm soooo excited for a day of warmer dry weather.

We are going Saturday as well! It should be nice, but it's supposed to be WINDY!

 

[DLgal]

I'm sorry! You are going through one thing after another it sounds like!

You said you pulled from Roth contributions before and it worked out, so on the plus side is annoying debt can be out of your way. I just look at it as investing is all the effort to make those monthly contributions over time. But, sounds like you have the plan in place and if you focus after the debt payoff to come back around to the Roth investing, then your plan is in place. We all have our plans that work best for each of us.

Yeah on Disney!! We are going to WDW in April and we are staying at SOG. I have my tickets already I bought from them, first time I've ever tried it (I mean buying the tickets not the resort!), and it worked out fine, and magic bands are bought. Plane tickets done with points and paid extra for early bird. Now I'm seeing lots of talk on another part of the board I'm in with EMM and DAH, and it's so VERY tempting but I'm trying to stay grounded and not do it so I can keep the budget I had in mind. We aren't prepaying the lodging, but I've got it earmarked and set aside in a vacation savings account along with dining, etc., which I have to think through some more how to cut costs there.

I hate crowds, too, and I know I'll be dealing with them when we go but I am SO looking forward to going anyway. Looking forward to the weather, too, and it better not go raining on me! I can't stand winter, I'm done with it before it even gets into full gear, although winter where I'm at near DC isn't too awful and April won't be too horrible, it's leaving winter behind and happy to get away.

Yeah, we will buy our tix through SOG, but I won't consider staying there for this particular trip, where no one else that is going is affiliated with the military. I don't feel like being their sponsor, and needing to show my ID every time we enter the gate, etc. I'm kind of sour on the military right now, so I don't want to be surrounded by it on my vacation. But, buying tix through them is awesome since they come already activated!

We all REALLY hate crowds, so we are leaning towards the first week of May for that reason alone. I got some quotes from Disney and prices and military room discounts are good that week, so now it's just deciding where we want to stay.

 

[dina444444]

My DH and I are headed to Disneyland for a quick weekend trip this weekend for his birthday and in the area I live it's been stormy and cold. On Saturday in Anaheim it's supposed to be sunny/partly cloudy and around 75. I'm soooo excited for a day of warmer dry weather.

It hasn’t been much better here, but the rain is suppose to let up after today.

 

[Shughart]

Y’all the hits just keep coming Since Thanksgiving we have dealt with major flooding, three weeks of a GI bug, a broken dishwasher, a broken arm and now our furnace won’t stay on and has a burning smell

I have a call into our furnace guy, but am still waiting to hear back. I could just cry. If it’s major, that’s going to be another huge hit to our van fund. I’m trying to look at the bright side and be grateful we have the savings on hand, but ugh.

Oh no! Furnaces are the worst! This is one of the scarier things about home ownership I think. All the things that can go wrong! We rent right now and it was so nice when our furnace was acting up to call the landlord and pass it off to him. My husband has a high stress/long hour job and when we buy a lot of this will fall a to me and/or be at the mercy of my father in law's availability. Just THAT (not even the cost, omg) stresses me out.

It is VERY fortunate you do have the savings. It also makes me pump my brakes a little. My score topped 720 yesterday and I am feeling impatient to try and go for no money down because now that we have decided to move, of course I am falling in love with houses. But we need to have ALL ducks in a row. We also need to have a decent savings in place. Because if our furnace went on the fritz and I didn't have money stashed away I would curl up in a corner and make animal sounds. No lie.

Here is to hoping VERY MUCH that you are getting all your bad luck out NOW and can spend the rest of the year catching up!

 

[pblack]

We are going Saturday as well! It should be nice, but it's supposed to be WINDY!

It hasn’t been much better here, but the rain is suppose to let up after today.

Thanks for the tip on the wind! I hate the wind even more than I dislike the rain. (Even though I really only dislike the rain when I have to be out in it.)

 

[Tygerlilly]

DF finally (finally!!) caved and agreed to a Disney trip with the girls before the little one turns 3 next year. Looking at maybe the end of Feb or begining of March.

We've been looking and can't find a cruise that really works with the dates we can go for the honeymoon, so we kinda scrapped that idea for now. Our tentative backup plan is to actually head to Orlando for 3 nights, 4 days and do Universal. Planning on doing the power annual passes for us and then possibly sneaking over for a day or two next year also, so we will maximize usage there.

 

[jen7233]

My DH and I are headed to Disneyland for a quick weekend trip this weekend for his birthday and in the area I live it's been stormy and cold. On Saturday in Anaheim it's supposed to be sunny/partly cloudy and around 75. I'm soooo excited for a day of warmer dry weather.

Very lucky! I miss Disneyland I haven't been in many years! We're closer to WDW. I've talked with my adult DD to go together to DL, if we can match schedules some day.

 

[barkley]

Oh no! Furnaces are the worst! This is one of the scarier things about home ownership I think. All the things that can go wrong! We rent right now and it was so nice when our furnace was acting up to call the landlord and pass it off to him. My husband has a high stress/long hour job and when we buy a lot of this will fall a to me and/or be at the mercy of my father in law's availability. Just THAT (not even the cost, omg) stresses me out.

It is VERY fortunate you do have the savings. It also makes me pump my brakes a little. My score topped 720 yesterday and I am feeling impatient to try and go for no money down because now that we have decided to move, of course I am falling in love with houses. But we need to have ALL ducks in a row. We also need to have a decent savings in place. Because if our furnace went on the fritz and I didn't have money stashed away I would curl up in a corner and make animal sounds. No lie.

Here is to hoping VERY MUCH that you are getting all your bad luck out NOW and can spend the rest of the year catching up!

when you go to buy an existing home you can negotiate with the seller to provide you with a 1 year whole home warranty so if anything goes wrong you pay a small deductible (maybe $30-$50) for any problems. you can opt to keep the policy up when the year ends. with a new home you can set one up to kick in when the builder's warranty ends.

i've got a local service contract on my hvac system that runs us $250 a year. we got it a couple of years ago when our a/c went out during a heat spell and found out that people w/service contracts got first priority for appointments. i went back and forth on renewing it last year, decided to and within a couple of weeks our heat went wonky-called them up to come out and the repair bill would have run me twice the premium.

 

[MamaBelleRN]

So relieved! The furnace needed a new valve and $298 later we’re up and running! It WOULD have only been $80 if we had registered the furnace when we bought it in 2009, but evidently we failed to do that Nonetheless, I’m so glad it was s simple, quick and relatively painless fix!

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

Y’all the hits just keep coming Since Thanksgiving we have dealt with major flooding, three weeks of a GI bug, a broken dishwasher, a broken arm and now our furnace won’t stay on and has a burning smell

I have a call into our furnace guy, but am still waiting to hear back. I could just cry. If it’s major, that’s going to be another huge hit to our van fund. I’m trying to look at the bright side and be grateful we have the savings on hand, but ugh.

Hopefully this is Murphy’s last stunt.
Once, we lost heat and it was something simple like a fan motor which my HVAC brother replaced. Hoping yours is a simple fix too.
Hang in there!

 

[imbatman]

I foresee that trying to get through these next few weeks with family matters is going to be an upheaval. Grandma's trust is all laid out, but there are some family noses who are bent out of shape about their "lack of." I expect exactly nothing from anyone, in terms of inheritance. Not grandparents, not parents. Heck, I hope my parents have a grand time spending what they earned. I've already been through two other family deaths where claws come out. It's painful to watch, to be a part of. Had someone fly off a handle because Grandma gave her pearls to my DD on her 16th birthday--more than two years ago. We never expected it and my DD cherishes them. I won't let her wear them to the funeral, even if she asks, for fear of comments or accusations.

The only upshot I have to report financially is that since this is the "skinny" week of the budget, I don't even have money to go buy junk food to stress eat. Just a little cushion of extra cash to get us through to next week, when both paychecks hits. Man, I can't wait to shed this debt and LIVE.

 

[DisneyMandC]

My new student loan payment still hasn't started, it looks like I'll find out the new payment around 2/5 or 2/6. I think it should be about $275, which is a $30 drop from what I'm paying now. My PSLF credits updated though, and I'm now at 44 credited months! 1/3 of the way towards forgiveness!!

We're definitely going to be over budget this month. We've actually done really well on our day to day spending. Very little eating out and eating a lot from the freezer. However, we've had multiple new year expenses this month- New tires on DH's car, plus it needs an alignment, oil change, and inspection, PLUS we had to get new tags for him this month. I took the dog and cat to the vet this morning for the annual check up, plus the horse vet comes for the second time this month today to do my new baby's vaccines. New insurance policy for DH's horse. I also had a double payment of my student loan that's normally $100 per month. I couldn't pay it last month because the loan was being transferred to a new provider. It wasn't put in forbearance though, so this month I owed $200.

Overall though, I am really happy with our current money situation. DH ran the numbers on his taxes, while still missing a few forms, and it looks like he'll get back around $2500, which is WAY more than I was expecting. I'm honestly not sure what we'll do with that money. I'd like to beef up our savings more, but I also need to set aside some money for our Japan trip next year. I may just put it all into savings with half of that earmarked for Japan. Our Ally savings rate went up to 2.20%!

 

[jen7233]

I foresee that trying to get through these next few weeks with family matters is going to be an upheaval. Grandma's trust is all laid out, but there are some family noses who are bent out of shape about their "lack of." I expect exactly nothing from anyone, in terms of inheritance. Not grandparents, not parents. Heck, I hope my parents have a grand time spending what they earned. I've already been through two other family deaths where claws come out.

Oh, me too, we are going through an estate issue right now in the family, going through probate, and the angry feelings that come out in some. We were actually fortunate not have to pay one single dime to funeral expenses, didn't have to execute the will, my dad had it all planned out to the last detail, so we, I feel, should be thankful zero burdens.

 

[jen7233]

Overall though, I am really happy with our current money situation. DH ran the numbers on his taxes, while still missing a few forms, and it looks like he'll get back around $2500, which is WAY more than I was expecting. I'm honestly not sure what we'll do with that money. I'd like to beef up our savings more, but I also need to set aside some money for our Japan trip next year. I may just put it all into savings with half of that earmarked for Japan. Our Ally savings rate went up to 2.20%!

I haven't even thought about taxes yet. Except for seeing something about points in the SW shopping portal on TurboTax....

I opened up two savings accounts yesterday to earmark retirement moving savings and emergency fund, and Ally is one of them.

 

[StacyStrong]

I'm trying to NOT debt dump and spend all my money on Anastacia tickets, but I can't find a presale code (or guess the code) for the life of me. Rude.

My 401k is finally starting to go back up and my 2019 budget seems to be going well.

 

[Shughart]

I'm trying to NOT debt dump and spend all my money on Anastacia tickets, but I can't find a presale code (or guess the code) for the life of me. Rude.

My 401k is finally starting to go back up and my 2019 budget seems to be going well.

I'm not familiar with Anastacia, but Elton John's farewell tour comes through here next month and it's killing me that I can't go see him. My husband and I regret that we were too young to have been able to see Freddy Mercury perform live in all his glory. Elton John is one of those for me. So is Adele. But it would be $250 just for the ticket to go by myself. Not including parking or something to eat outside the stadium.

 

[Jen and Ashwin]

We have managed to trim last month's deficit down to $190. I am not sure what my new monthly paycheck amount will be yet, but I think that I underestimated it a bit so hopefully this will shrink a bit more. We are way down in fuel usage this month, so I am thinking about putting anything left over at the end of the month towards the deficit as well. Then once we know the final numbers, DH and I can have a discussion about how best to come up with funds to fully make it up.

And I was able to make another $200 in payments towards the trailer loan, so it is now officially below the $13000 mark. This new surge has made me want to keep up the momentum, so I have started swagging a bit more again. I haven't done much with it in about a year now, but willing to put a bit more effort to help tackle the loan faster.

 

[Tygerlilly]

I'm trying to NOT debt dump and spend all my money on Anastacia tickets, but I can't find a presale code (or guess the code) for the life of me. Rude.

My 401k is finally starting to go back up and my 2019 budget seems to be going well.

I'm not familiar with Anastacia, but Elton John's farewell tour comes through here next month and it's killing me that I can't go see him. My husband and I regret that we were too young to have been able to see Freddy Mercury perform live in all his glory. Elton John is one of those for me. So is Adele. But it would be $250 just for the ticket to go by myself. Not including parking or something to eat outside the stadium.

DF wants Jimmy Buffet tickets for his birthday. I'm going to try hard to make it happen, but it's going to be a stretch. It's not even the tickets that are so expensive, it's everything else that goes with it!

 

[DisneyMandC]

And I was able to make another $200 in payments towards the trailer loan, so it is now officially below the $13000 mark. This new surge has made me want to keep up the momentum, so I have started swagging a bit more again. I haven't done much with it in about a year now, but willing to put a bit more effort to help tackle the loan faster.

I'm trying to get back into it more too. I actually got out of it when I started with credit card points as I was using more of my time learning how to deal with all that. Now that I more easily have a handle on that, I want to get back into SB. I just redeemed for a $25 Visa gift card on sale to buy a $25 Disney GC, so I'm going to try to keep up that momentum. Even if I just do $25 every month, that will be $200 extra dollars towards Disney in September.

 

[Jen and Ashwin]

I'm trying to get back into it more too. I actually got out of it when I started with credit card points as I was using more of my time learning how to deal with all that. Now that I more easily have a handle on that, I want to get back into SB. I just redeemed for a $25 Visa gift card on sale to buy a $25 Disney GC, so I'm going to try to keep up that momentum. Even if I just do $25 every month, that will be $200 extra dollars towards Disney in September.

For productivity reasons, I stopped sitting on my sofa and using my laptop when working from home. I am back at my desktop in the study and that means that my laptop is free to run ncraves all day instead, so I have started there since it is really passive. Also have been printing the coupons each day for $0.50, though today you get $1.00 for printing 50. I never actually print them out, I hit the cancel button on my printer once it goes through so I don't waste the paper. Always credits. This seems like it might be enough to earn about $25 each month without much more work. And when I see easy opportunities for some additional points, I grab those. And I always swag from DH's account because for every 10 points that he earns, my account earns 1 point. It is nice to get a little 10% bonus on everything that I do. Even an extra $330 towards the trailer loan this year would make me pretty happy.