Debt Dumpers - 2019

[pblack]

@mom2rb Congrats! And it sounds like good riddance to your old job!

 

[barkley]

I put in my notice at my old job and was promptly fired. Now I just have to live cheaply for 3 weeks until the new job starts.

i've always thought this to be a petty and STUPID move on an employer's part. that said-because they opted to 'fire' you have you considered applying for unemployment? i've known people to do this when their employer's took this stance-they ended up getting paid (after their waiting period) for the period in between the old and new jobs (and in some situations where payroll periods took a few weeks on the new job-some payment for those weeks as well).

might be something to look into.

 

[Dentam]

DH got a bonus! I paid off the credit card and had work done around the house. The fence was falling down and the sprinkler system was broken. We also owed the IRS a lot. Not being able to deduct the two 20 year olds that I still support was hard. I used the bonus and paid off everything plus money for the graduation dinner. I put in my notice at my old job and was promptly fired. Now I just have to live cheaply for 3 weeks until the new job starts.

I am debt free!!!

Wow, that must have been quite a bonus! Congrats and as others have said, good riddance to the old job!

 

[Tygerlilly]

Congrats on being debt free @mom2rb!!!! My job is the same way. If you put a 2 week notice in, they immediately walk you out. They don't really "fire you", but the job is immediately terminated. I guess they had too many bad expierences with 2 week notices.

 

[StacyStrong]

Back from Disney under budget! My vacation fund is happy!

 

[Shughart]

@KearneyFam02 That is awful, I'm so sorry!

 

[Jen and Ashwin]

DH and I have decided to add more debt and not an insignificant amount. As you remember, we were saving money towards a DVC contract or a trailer. Because a friend was selling the exact trailer that we wanted and it was no longer going to be produced, we decided to go ahead and purchase it last October. From the $25k cost plus almost $2k tax and registration fees, we have now just $11k left to pay on it. I think it will be closer to $8k by the end of the year, so we are far ahead of where we had planned for this loan.

Well, though it wasn't really in our plan right now, we looked over the numbers and have decided to purchase another DVC contract at the new Riviera Resort. DH was stuck on the idea that he only wanted to have a contract at a monorail resort, so because of that we were considering Grand Floridian as our next option. The Riviera will have the Skyliner and DH he really likes that idea. He also likes the idea of having a home resort closer to some of the other parks rather than just being right by MK. The studios are very similar to Poly, with a shower and a shower/tub in each room, plus 3 separate beds, so we see these rooms working for us long term with 2 kids. And though it will cost more to buy direct than if we go for a resale contract, we will get the benefit of the entire 50 years rather than a shortened amount on a resale contract.

I am both excited and a little nervous, but we know that we can make this work and we would rather invest in fun family vacations than most other things. Since DH probably won't have enough vacation time, we will likely be renting out our Riviera points for the first year and applying that towards the costs as well. Though I really hope he gets a promotion so that his vacation time doubles.

 

[DisneyMandC]

DH and I have decided to add more debt and not an insignificant amount. As you remember, we were saving money towards a DVC contract or a trailer. Because a friend was selling the exact trailer that we wanted and it was no longer going to be produced, we decided to go ahead and purchase it last October. From the $25k cost plus almost $2k tax and registration fees, we have now just $11k left to pay on it. I think it will be closer to $8k by the end of the year, so we are far ahead of where we had planned for this loan.

Well, though it wasn't really in our plan right now, we looked over the numbers and have decided to purchase another DVC contract at the new Riviera Resort. DH was stuck on the idea that he only wanted to have a contract at a monorail resort, so because of that we were considering Grand Floridian as our next option. The Riviera will have the Skyliner and DH he really likes that idea. He also likes the idea of having a home resort closer to some of the other parks rather than just being right by MK. The studios are very similar to Poly, with a shower and a shower/tub in each room, plus 3 separate beds, so we see these rooms working for us long term with 2 kids. And though it will cost more to buy direct than if we go for a resale contract, we will get the benefit of the entire 50 years rather than a shortened amount on a resale contract.

I am both excited and a little nervous, but we know that we can make this work and we would rather invest in fun family vacations than most other things. Since DH probably won't have enough vacation time, we will likely be renting out our Riviera points for the first year and applying that towards the costs as well. Though I really hope he gets a promotion so that his vacation time doubles.

That's so exciting!! Congrats!

 

[DisneyMandC]

So DH found out his final bonus numbers and it turns out he will be getting a really solid bonus this year! I will use most of it to go ahead and fund our savings account up to one year's worth of mortgage payments. I'm not sure what I want to do with the remaining money. Maybe pay off DH's student loan? Not sure.

 

[Tygerlilly]

Not really debt dumping related, but I also went ahead and joined Weight Watchers. I cancelled a beauty subscription I had, so it pretty much is a wash as far as new monthly expense goes. Plus it's only $20 a month. I do fine with the workout and exercise on my own, but the food part is hard for me. I think I'll do pretty well on it since I have the app to track everything and it has some good tips and recipes.

 

[PhoenixStrength]

Update time:

So March wasn't great for us, with my husband winding up in the hospital for an abscess and then a week and a half later I got an abscess on my hand from the same source (crazy spider bites!). I didn't get hospitalized but didn't lose a couple of days of work because I could move a few of my fingers. So between the 2 of us we lost 4 days of pay that we didn't have PTO for (My husband didn't have enough due to our vacation in February and I'm self employed so no PTO for me). Then with my birthday and other unexpected expenses popping up we didn't get much debt dumping done. So far April is a little better, and the rest of the month I should be able to debt dump a good amount.

My DH is on board with debt dumping for sure, but tends to want to eat out a lot, which TBH I like too but I know how expensive it is. He brought it up himself that we should to stop eating out unless it's a special occasion so we can debt dump even quicker, so yay for that! Since I'm the one in charge of finances he always asks me before he spends anything if we have it in the budget, but I got in the habit of budgeting for it since I knew he would ask. So now instead I will budget that $$ to debt dumping!

I'm doing our financial planning for the rest of the year this afternoon, and my DH and I had a discussion earlier today about vacation plans for this year and next. We have a wedding to go to in October in Texas for my DHs oldest friend so we decided to take advantage of the fact that we already have to pay for airfare there and back and extend the wedding trip to include vacation in the area too. Then last week we found out my cousin is getting married in Georgia in April of 2020, so we will be going there the first week of April, so we will turn that into a vacation too. I'm thinking we may wind up going to either Universal or Disney since they are pretty close...or maybe I'm just trying to find a reason to be able to go back to Disney. And our 2021 vacation is already set, as we are going with my SIL, BIL and DNephew to WDW for his first trip for his 5th birthday in May 2021. We plan on going for 2 weeks, though the others will probably just be 1 week of that. So now with all of that planned out I can more accurately create a road map to being able to pay for those while still debt dumping as much as possible too. I'm hopeful we can be debt free by the end of 2020 but I'll get working on the road map now to find out for sure!

 

[Birdie dog]

Well, we're in April, and I continue to be slow and responsible and continue to dump debt. I haven't bought much since January and I haven't bought a thing on credit. I'm paying down a second CC and will start my third right behind it. I still haven't filed my taxes. It doesn't help that I'm sending $4000 away so I'll wait until the very last second. I should work on them tonight though to make sure they're tweaked for filing on Monday. (I've already entered numbers into Turbotax). Our trip to Europe is less than a month away now. It's paid in full and I've been saving monthly for spending money there. I'm only bringing carry-ons so that will force me to cut back on my spending so that's a good thing. Today I had a nice surprise though, I looked into a box on my dresser because I thought I had some extra money in there. I found, $200! It'll stay there until we leave though. It'll help pay my petsitter next month.

 

[Dentam]

Still on track with debt dumping here. Also, with the weather getting much nicer and everything greening up, I've had the motivation to finally buckle down and use MyFitnessPal daily to track my calories and exercise. I've lost 2lbs after one week!

 

[Shughart]

Not too much here. Some small purchases. I managed to get both my Nike flip flop AND a pair of of those Sketcher go walk flip flops for under $50 for both pairs. Scored some cashback too. Also picked up some stuff from Menard's today. Was going to wait until payday on Monday, but 11% off rebate time, so I just moved it from my misc budget on the next check's budget to my CC payment budget line. Otherwise spending is going OK. Making a dent to get us back down to where we started this year.

A WW update (my meeting/weigh in day is Thursday) I am down 14.4 since I joined WW (6 weeks) and down a little over 18 total since the beginning of the year.

 

[Jen and Ashwin]

So a bit of an update on the DVC purchase. I put the entire purchase on my CSR credit card, which will be earning me roughly $600 in rewards. I will pay it off on the next statement balance, which won't be due until the beginning of June. After some discussion, we have decided that instead of incurring any more debt and interest costs, we will be taking the entire cost of the contract out of our savings and will just work to repay that money. Essentially we are borrowing from ourselves. We will still have about $6k in emergency savings and we felt this was enough of a cushion for now. My organization's main funding grant will be renewed until Sept. 2021, so I know that my job will be pretty safe for the next 2.5 years. DH's job is also safe, but still hoping that they give him a raise/promotion. Evaluations have started this month, so we should know in the next few months if that is likely. Otherwise, DH plans to start looking at other opportunities.

Maybe a bit of rationalization to ourselves, but since we won't be adding any interest costs, it doesn't seem totally insane to us. I will still be putting all "found" money towards the trailer loan to get that knocked out asap and then once that loan is finished, found money will go towards paying ourselves back again. And DH's overtime pay from being on call will still be going towards his car loan. So mostly plans and budgets have stayed the same for now.

 

[FQLover]

@Jen and Ashwin Girl, you amaze me. I need to sign up for "Money Strategies 101" with you. Since I am a couple of decades older than you, though, that ship may have already sailed. But, gosh, you are good at side hustles, mapping out plans, keeping so many factors clear in your head (or spreadsheets), still living large with travel and home improvements, knocking out debt. Way to go!

 

[Jen and Ashwin]

@Jen and Ashwin Girl, you amaze me. I need to sign up for "Money Strategies 101" with you. Since I am a couple of decades older than you, though, that ship may have already sailed. But, gosh, you are good at side hustles, mapping out plans, keeping so many factors clear in your head (or spreadsheets), still living large with travel and home improvements, knocking out debt. Way to go!

Sometimes it feels a little crazy keeping it all together, but I attribute a lot of this success to YNAB. It has kept us super organized and focused with our money. Saving up for IVF was our first big achievement and obviously I would say the best money that I ever spent, but I don't think we could have achieved it so quickly without being hyper organized. And I do like a good side hustle, but that has been a little harder now with having a toddler. I do have a mystery shop this weekend though, so another $10 towards the trailer fund incoming.

And I think I was a little more impulsive with the DVC purchase than I would normally be. And that is really all because of DH. We have been talking about adding another contract since we got our first one in 2015. I mentioned Copper Creek to DH when it started selling and he showed 0 interest. And we were kind of saving towards a Grand Floridian resale contract because DH really wanted to buy at another monorail hotel. He is just a big fan of using buses as little as possible. So when I mentioned that the new Riviera resort had started selling points to members and that it would include the skyliner as a transportation option, he was super interested right away. So since he was so enthusiastic, I saw it as my opportunity. Who knows when DH would be so willing to buy another contract again? The next DVC resort slated for 2023 will probably only have bus (and maybe boat) transportation, so who knows?

 

[DisneyMandC]

Sometimes it feels a little crazy keeping it all together, but I attribute a lot of this success to YNAB. It has kept us super organized and focused with our money. Saving up for IVF was our first big achievement and obviously I would say the best money that I ever spent, but I don't think we could have achieved it so quickly without being hyper organized. And I do like a good side hustle, but that has been a little harder now with having a toddler. I do have a mystery shop this weekend though, so another $10 towards the trailer fund incoming.

Totally agree. I just love the clarity it provides me regarding my money.

 

[Shughart]

Do you think YNAB is useful to someone who already uses a spreadsheet system? I went in and signed up for a trial, but not sure it's my style.

 

[Jen and Ashwin]

Do you think YNAB is useful to someone who already uses a spreadsheet system? I went in and signed up for a trial, but not sure it's my style.

I think it would depend. We used Mint before YNAB and it just wasn't granular or flexible enough for us, so we find YNAB to be so much better. For me, I don't think I would stick with it if I had to manually put in every transaction, so I appreciate the auto import feature that YNAB has. I am not sure what your spreadsheet allows, but I use the funding goals in YNAB for pretty much every single category so that setting up each month is super fast, but you might be able to just copy and paste a spreadsheet, so it might be equally quick. I also like seeing the trends and the age of money because I find it pretty motivating. An really detailed excel spreadsheet could probably handle something similar if you are really good at it. But I think the thing that I like the most with YNAB that I would find challenging with a spreadsheet is that I can't break it. I have had to work with budgets for work in excel and I always seem to accidentally delete some formula and the numbers go wonky.

I think you should find a tool that works for you and stick with it because you will see progress. For us, that tool is YNAB.