Debt Dumpers 2020

[imbatman]

and set up the credit card to be paid in full tomorrow.

 

[jen7233]

Now considering to just pay off my vehicle early. Money would otherwise just go in short term savings, but those goals are met except for home savings (technically that is done, but just increasing it). With cancelling vacations, have 5k in vacation fund in Ally and nowhere to go, and 200k in cc points, waiting for some good use next year! I am watching some various economic rates, speculating if the Ally rate may dip under 1%, will see. Not doing anything with that savings and others right now, so yet another reason looking at the car loan to just knock it out, and may as well save on the interest.

 

[barkley]

Now considering to just pay off my vehicle early. Money would otherwise just go in short term savings, but those goals are met except for home savings (technically that is done, but just increasing it). With cancelling vacations, have 5k in vacation fund in Ally and nowhere to go, and 200k in cc points, waiting for some good use next year! I am watching some various economic rates, speculating if the Ally rate may dip under 1%, will see. Not doing anything with that savings and others right now, so yet another reason looking at the car loan to just knock it out, and may as well save on the interest.

if you've got your emergency fund in place and these are just short term savings that could go to pay of a car note i would do it in a heartbeat. beyond the interest savings the amount you have been paying on your car note will be a nice addition to save/pay off something else with.

 

[DLgal]

if you've got your emergency fund in place and these are just short term savings that could go to pay of a car note i would do it in a heartbeat. beyond the interest savings the amount you have been paying on your car note will be a nice addition to save/pay off something else with.

Unless it is literally your only installment loan, in which case keep it because it boosts your credit score. Being totally debt free tanks your credit pretty significantly.

This is where we are. No mortgage and our only loan is our car at 0.9%. We are keeping it because it is the only way we can get our credit above 800. Before we got that loan 3 years ago, we couldn't break 800. 3 months after opening it, score went up to 835.

 

[barkley]

Unless it is literally your only installment loan, in which case keep it because it boosts your credit score. Being totally debt free tanks your credit pretty significantly.

This is where we are. No mortgage and our only loan is our car at 0.9%. We are keeping it because it is the only way we can get our credit above 800. Before we got that loan 3 years ago, we couldn't break 800. 3 months after opening it, score went up to 835.

just not our experience. we have no debt (house paid off as well) and nothing that pays on installments (including insurance b/c we pay it annually or bi-annually for a significant discount). the only thing that could report would be the credit union credit card i buy groceries on and immediately turn around and pay (within days) along with the same practice on a couple of other vendor specific cards (costco, amazon...). we've never had a problem with it negatively impacting our score-we are in the exceptional range and remain there.

 

[DLgal]

just not our experience. we have no debt (house paid off as well) and nothing that pays on installments (including insurance b/c we pay it annually or bi-annually for a significant discount). the only thing that could report would be the credit union credit card i buy groceries on and immediately turn around and pay (within days) along with the same practice on a couple of other vendor specific cards (costco, amazon...). we've never had a problem with it negatively impacting our score-we are in the exceptional range and remain there.

We don't have a paid off house, we never had a mortgage. We rent. Maybe that is why? I've had a credit history for 24 years and have never been below like 750. But I never got over 800 until we got a car loan (we had paid off all our previous car loans years ago). We have numerous credit cards, and have never once had a late or missed payment. But we do rack up quite a large bill every month and although it gets paid in full, maybe the utilization ratio is too high. Who knows? But our credit lines are extraordinarily high, so I don't think that is the issue.

 

[amalone1013]

Credit scores are so strange. I just recently broke 800 on mine with no real changes in usage etc other than age of account going up, and thats still pretty low because I play the credit card game for travel points. Student loans were paid off a few years back and my car loan last year so all that's on there now are credit cards. Hopefully that changes soon as we are house shopping now....

 

[jen7233]

if you've got your emergency fund in place and these are just short term savings that could go to pay of a car note i would do it in a heartbeat. beyond the interest savings the amount you have been paying on your car note will be a nice addition to save/pay off something else with.

Yes, emergency savings are in place. Roth done for the year. Nothing much else to consider, unless getting out of Dodge is a necessity, lol. But seriously, back to finances. It's the only installment loan we have, and since there's been a whole lot of time to reflect on finances, I am thinking about it. I did consider credit score impact, sits at 780s for me and 820s for DH typically. I'll see what I'll do, you know, when it's that one thing left on the books.

 

[trenty]

Now considering to just pay off my vehicle early. Money would otherwise just go in short term savings, but those goals are met except for home savings (technically that is done, but just increasing it). With cancelling vacations, have 5k in vacation fund in Ally and nowhere to go, and 200k in cc points, waiting for some good use next year! I am watching some various economic rates, speculating if the Ally rate may dip under 1%, will see. Not doing anything with that savings and others right now, so yet another reason looking at the car loan to just knock it out, and may as well save on the interest.

Unless it is literally your only installment loan, in which case keep it because it boosts your credit score. Being totally debt free tanks your credit pretty significantly.

This is where we are. No mortgage and our only loan is our car at 0.9%. We are keeping it because it is the only way we can get our credit above 800. Before we got that loan 3 years ago, we couldn't break 800. 3 months after opening it, score went up to 835.

just not our experience. we have no debt (house paid off as well) and nothing that pays on installments (including insurance b/c we pay it annually or bi-annually for a significant discount). the only thing that could report would be the credit union credit card i buy groceries on and immediately turn around and pay (within days) along with the same practice on a couple of other vendor specific cards (costco, amazon...). we've never had a problem with it negatively impacting our score-we are in the exceptional range and remain there.

Not my experience either. We also have no debt and credit scores remain high (above 800). I use CC but also pay them off within days. I agree with @barkley - pay that loan off.

 

[potterfanatic]

Today I paid off my a big medical bill that was still lingering (had $1,500 left on an $8,000 bill) It probably wasn’t the smartest decision to make because I could have used that money to pay off something with interest, but that $270 a month will now be rolled into paying off another card, and I just feel better having that bigger monthly payment out of my life.

 

[pblack]

Today I paid off my a big medical bill that was still lingering (had $1,500 left on an $8,000 bill) It probably wasn’t the smartest decision to make because I could have used that money to pay off something with interest, but that $270 a month will now be rolled into paying off another card, and I just feel better having that bigger monthly payment out of my life.

Sometimes you need the small wins in order to get to the big wins.

 

[imbatman]

Today I paid off my a big medical bill

A bill paid off is a wonderful thing!!!

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

Okay, I got tired of seeing the $8000 balance on my 0% credit card balance transfer, so I transferred money from my Ally account and set up the credit card to be paid in full tomorrow. Now that my Ally APR is down to 1%, I'm not making as much interest as I had planned on when I opened the account last year. So, might as well knock out that large balance that has just been mentally bothering me.

That also eliminated the $122 minimum payment on that account from my monthly spend.

I have considered doing this too but I have a little greedy streak in me, so they can wait until the end of the 0% period. I make the minimum payments directly from that savings acct so it doesn't impact our monthly budget.
One ends in April, the other in May. The only aspect that tugs at me is that our credit scores will go up once the cards are paid off.

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

So I have been putting $ into savings so that when our 0% promotional rate expires, we can just pay them in full. I finished saving up for one and the other I have saved $3000 out of 8500. I was planning to attack the mortgage once done saving for the 2nd Discover card but it's not due until May and I'm feeling impatient. Dh has a ton of OT lately, working Sat + Sun for the past 3 weekends. Also we still have 2 more months this year that have 3 paychecks.
So I have decided to temporarily funnel our snowball to our mortgage until Jan 1. At that point, I will return to saving the remaining $6000.

Just for the fun of it, I added up all the snowball payments and principal amounts from our regular monthly payment. From now until Jan 1, that adds up to over $17,000 off our principal.
This is not even including dh's OT. Our balance would go from $105,790 down to $88,530. It will save thousands in interest as well. I have never been so excited to pay our mortgage.

Barring some catastrophic issue, we should be able to save up the last $6000 for the Discover card by mid-March. Plenty of time to pay it off by mid May.

TGIF!!

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

We have officially given up the idea of cruising the Panama Canal in February. sigh... Even if it sails, we'd rather go when things are much closer to normal. So we took the $8000 we had set aside for this trip and plunked it down on the mortgage principal.
If we also put our snowball toward it every month, it should be done in 2 years instead of 8 years and saves over $10k in interest charges.
It most likely will be more like the end of 2022 because I funnel our snowball every summer for Christmas money. I also will need to send it to Discover from Jan through March.

Still, I'm excited to be able to do this. I wanted to last year but didn't think I could go all that time without a vacation. Now we don't have much choice. If we go anywhere, it will be short simple trips where we don't have to worry about quarantining to leave or return.
We might as well do something positive out of a bad situation. I will be so happy when it's gone.

 

[sweetpeama]

Got my paypal credit paid off so far in August. There is a small monthly membership fee of less than $15 so I will pay that one with the next paycheck on the 21st.

Starting that paycheck place at least $50 in savings to get it to at least 1K. I know it's not much but DH's work is going to be slowing down. This year due to covid we don't know how much. Figure even a little bit helps on that aspect.

Car loan from my parents will be paid off in October so starting in November that $100 payment can go to the savings.

Need to put something even if it's only $5 in our secondary savings which is reserved for vacations. None planned for the foreseable future though if we can get a few more things paid off and the one savings up to at least 1K might try and convience DH that we take a 3-5 day trip to either Great Falls, Missoula, or the Black Hills sometime the 2nd or 3rd week in May. DH's work week runs Sunday-Thursday so would plan to have him take Thursday off provided they have the Friday shift back. He will occasionally fill in but that one was taken off in mid March of this year, surprisingly he worked the last one they had.
If not since Thursday is the long shift we will plan to leave Friday mid morning. If we go to GF it would be a 3 day trip due to it only being about 3 hours each way. So either drive up on Thursday and then have Friday and Saturday to do things and drive back so we are home early enough for him to go to work on Sunday or drive up on Friday and return home on Monday.
Missoula is about 6 hours so that one would again be plan to drive there on either Thursday of Friday and come back on either Monday or Tuesday but not get back in time for DH to go to work. That trip would also depend on if arrangements could be made to spend time visiting and catching up with one of my cousins. That one might even be a come back on Sunday trip as well.
Black Hills would be at least Friday-Tuesday though I could plan a 2 week trip and still not do a few favorites and a few new things that I would like to do. Not even looking at the high ticket items like a Jeep Safarai in Custer State Park (I can see enough buffalo from the road in my own vehicle thank you very much I don't need to go driving up really close in an open jeep to them. Also off the list are hot airballon ride and helicopter tour not in the budget and let's talk about this thing I don't do called heights.

The rest of the plan is to continue to pay $64 a month on my Best Buy Card. $200 a month on the credit union credit card, and the minimum monthly payment on the Sears card which changed it's name to shop your way. The credit union card is joint and the others are just in my name. Since the closest Sears or even Kmart are several hours away and trying to use a small reward online gets me an invalid even when I copy and past the code from an email that one is the lowest prioity in my book. Once I get more in likely the Best Buy card paid off as long as I have at least 1K in my primary savings though would ideally like to have closer to 3-4K just based on what deductilbes would run us for a claim and I would love to not have it wiped out again. At that point I will reevaluate which of the remaining cards gets more money. A lot is going to depend on which one has a higher usuage at the time so if one is down to using say 60% of the available and the other is sitting at 75% I am going to hit the higher used one for at least a few months to get my usage down.

We are down to one vehicle that is running so the plan there is to try and get at least one of the ones that is broken down sold. Depending on if I can get up early enough later this morning since it is now 3 thirty in the morning that it is cool enough I will go outside and get the last few things out of the one I want to get moved first just because it's in one of our parking spots close to the house and it would be nice to have that spot back to actually park a vehicle in. I also need to get some pictures of the vehicle. It is not running though it will start if there is a battery. We ended up play swap batteries around for a bit so the battery that was in the truck that broke down in Feb 19 went into the car DH was driving (that is now at a won't start but he hasn't done much with it since he can take the truck and we can get by with one vehicle right now) and then when we got the truck fixed in May of 20 using some of our stimulus money we took the battery out of the car that had just broken down in March at the start of everything so we didn't need a 2nd vehicle as since DH was aleady having to go out as an essential worker it made more sense for him to do the shopping. I am also at high risk so trying to avoid the stores as much as possible. That is why I have a teenager that I send in and if necessary I call the store tell them I am sending her in and what I need and they help her get it especially at the farm and ranch supply store. Most of the time that stop is catfood since we can get a 40 pound bag for less than 18.50-that one certain fat cat around her does not like but he does eat it and complains. You would think after being switched to it in April 19 that he would be used to it by now. The one we were using was still under 20 but for only a 35 pound bag. Cost was not the reason we switched going from 11% fat to 9% fat and increasing the protein by 2% plus a small increase in crude fiber was the reason for the switch because 2 of the 4 cats were overweight and the other two were right at the top of an acceptable weight. Mr Heavist is no longer tipping heavily towards the tailend when you pick him up and do the tip test which they all hate. Right now we have a total of 3 vehicles that we for sure need to get moved that I am going to ask a range from 500 to 700 on and if I get an offer of 300-500 on all of them I am going to take it and run. At least that is more than I would get selling them for scrap which right now is running about 150-200 a vehicle depending on the size. Once those are sold then I will decide if the two trucks parked along the fence line will be brought up to be sold though those are also going to depend on if we can get in to the pasture without tearing the ground out so can't be too wet or soft and we can't have too deep of snow either. The one has been sitting there for years and my sister is actually part owner so she would need to make the decision as well on that one. The other vehicle that once the first 3 are gone to make a decision on is DH's car does he want to try and get it started or does he want to try and sell it.
Plan is to use at least some of the money if there is a 2nd stimulus around the same amount as the last time on getting a new to us vehicle for cash off craigslist. Since we won't be in a spot where we need a vehicle that I can drive we can be a little bit more picky than we were on the one we got in Nov 19 after we were down to one for a month when our one had the transmission go in Oct 19. Should be able to find something decent for around 2K but if we need to go up another 3-500 we can do that. In the meantime I am working my alternate get a 2nd vehicle plan which is enter the PCH rewards drawing for the current vehicle which this time around is a Ford F150. If I get it that will be my vehicle since it will have an AC that works and DH can drive the older GMC Sierra 1500 to and from work.

 

[Eureka]

Hi all, life has been busy and Disboards kind of fell off my radar for a while. I plan to do some catching up this weekend. I hope everyone is well.

 

[barkley]

for anyone still awaiting tax refunds-evidence the irs is working on the backlog dd's return that was filed (paper) in march had the refund (with interest) direct deposit this week!

 

[sweetpeama]

for anyone still awaiting tax refunds-evidence the irs is working on the backlog dd's return that was filed (paper) in march had the refund (with interest) direct deposit this week!

That's weird that they had a backlog from March. We filed ours on March 6 (OK technically our tax accountant filed it electronicly for us) and we had the refund money in our account on March 16 in order to go shopping for a new washer and dryer. Which also happened to be the day that the elementary district I am zoned for was to have a day off so the teachers could plan for a contigency in case schools had to shut down. They announced this on March 13 and on March 15 the governor of MT announced a school closure through March 31 which ended up being extended to a May 7 optional return to school. (We had a handful of smaller schools that did return all of which due to declining enrollments from when the building were built have enough space to easily have 6 plus feet of distance-they just had to rearrange the desk and remove things like small beanbag partner reading corners from the rooms and get a means of taking tempatures and a supply of hand sanitizer to be set).

After drying laundry on racks and every spot I could find here at home from mid July 19-mid September 19 when the washer decided to go as well so we switched to going to the laundrymat I am extremely greatful to have a washer and dryer. Even if we weren't dealing with a pandemic. We had some people (my dad) complain that we spent the money at the start of shut down on a washer and dryer but we have more than saved what we were spending just on the cost of wash and dry and the laundrymat not to mention the special trips into town to do laundry as we could not get much else done on those days and would have to use another day to run other errands costing us gas.

I wonder if the location that people were assigned for processing their tax return made any difference. Homeschooling mom wheels turning for a research project for a kid to do. Not that my kid would because anything that mom suggests is stupid.

 

[barkley]

from what the irs has reported over the past few months all the paper returns (not electronically filed) that were received and hadn't been processed prior to covid shutdowns were being warehoused and that as of may they had a backlog of 4.7 MILLION unprocessed paper returns. now, consider that the filing date was extended from april to july this year so on top of that 4.7 million they have all the returns filed between may and just last month