Debt Dumpers 2021

[4 Ears]

Question, for annual bills such as HOA fee and or auto/home insurance, do you pay them annually or monthly if you have the option?
Cross between I will keep my money and interest as long as I can thank you very much and I wouldnt have to pay or think about them monthly
TIA

 

[jen7233]

Question, for annual bills such as HOA fee and or auto/home insurance, do you pay them annually or monthly if you have the option?
Cross between I will keep my money and interest as long as I can thank you very much and I wouldnt have to pay or think about them monthly
TIA

I pay our auto every six months on autodraft. Renter's yearly, autodraft

 

[barkley]

Question, for annual bills such as HOA fee and or auto/home insurance, do you pay them annually or monthly if you have the option?
Cross between I will keep my money and interest as long as I can thank you very much and I wouldnt have to pay or think about them monthly
TIA

insurance-either annual or biannual (car they will only do in 6 month increments). my insurance company gives a discount for this.

anything else that's an annual amount i will at least hit up 'the powers that be' to see if they will give me a discount to pay quarterly/biannual/annually vs. monthly. sometimes it works really well-when my kids changed private schools back in the day i inquired and they said they had never considered it so they took it to their board. came back and offered something like a 5% for biannual. it was better than the interest i was getting in the account that money sat in so i was all in.

 

[DLgal]

Question, for annual bills such as HOA fee and or auto/home insurance, do you pay them annually or monthly if you have the option?
Cross between I will keep my money and interest as long as I can thank you very much and I wouldnt have to pay or think about them monthly
TIA

I do the monthly payment for auto insurance/renters insurance because of the way they have the renewal set up. The policies are lumped together but they renew at different times and we get a new statement 3 times a year, so it's easier to just pay the monthly breakdown that they have figured out and have one steady payment amount every month vs 3 different amounts in January, February, and September.

 

[dina444444]

Question, for annual bills such as HOA fee and or auto/home insurance, do you pay them annually or monthly if you have the option?
Cross between I will keep my money and interest as long as I can thank you very much and I wouldnt have to pay or think about them monthly
TIA

I pay homeowners/earthquake annually, car insurance every 6 months, and hoa is monthly since it’s a monthly rate.

 

[RamblingMad]

Question, for annual bills such as HOA fee and or auto/home insurance, do you pay them annually or monthly if you have the option?
Cross between I will keep my money and interest as long as I can thank you very much and I wouldnt have to pay or think about them monthly
TIA

Mine are quarterly. I don’t have a choice to pay annually.

 

[Eureka]

Question, for annual bills such as HOA fee and or auto/home insurance, do you pay them annually or monthly if you have the option?
Cross between I will keep my money and interest as long as I can thank you very much and I wouldnt have to pay or think about them monthly
TIA

Our HOA is yearly, no option to pay monthly. Our car insurance renews every six months but we pay it monthly- with two young, male drivers (plus me and DH), it‘s our second-largest monthly bill after our mortgage. Our homeowners insurance is escrowed with our mortgage, so I don’t handle that payment personally.

 

[Tygerlilly]

Car insurance we pay monthly, HOA is only yearly option.

Found a local company who has a 24 hour trailer rental that will drop it off, pick it up in 24 hours, and haul all your crap to the dump. It was $240, which is over $100 cheaper than an actual dumpster rental. It's set to be dropped off at 9am tomorrow morning and I'll probably email her back a couple hours later to come get it. What we need hauled off is all kinda big stuff, so it won't take long to get it loaded up. DH is very excited to have half the garage emptied of all the junk.

Finishing my batch cooking today. I finished up all the chicken, 10 bean/beef/cheese burritos, 3lbs of taco meat, and marinated chicken last night. Today I'm finishing breakfast burritos, chicken taquitos, and lasagna. I'm already tired. Lol. But excited to get it all done.

 

[CaleCakes]

Our HOA is owed yearly. Life insurance is paid yearly, auto and disability insurance are paid monthly through auto pay. Home insurance is escrowed along with property tax so those are monthly with the mortgage.

 

[CaleCakes]

March Month End Updates:

° Discover balance $6,311 Done in January

° AMEX balance $8125- Current Balance $2160

° Start a Roth IRA for myself. Picked a plan but still need to open account- still.

°Keep money in savings! Successful other than car repair previously reported.

°Purge the garage- work in progress. No changes.

°Eat better and drop a few pounds- 0/20 I don't really want to talk about it lol. Still don't want to talk about it.

° August 14-22 at Copper Creek in a 2 bedroom villa for $6444. $200/6444. 6 day hopper $1204/1204. Went with SW on the way there because the timing worked better so $248/$248. JetBue on the way back so $0/$0 (had travel credit for fees). Still no real budget here as it is still coming together with several "maybes". Total spent vs. paid so far $1652/$7896- unchanged.

°Landscaping-Back to the drawing board. The wall and work I was quoted at $7k was not the kind I wanted. It was just a natural stacked stone, but I want a masonry work which doubled the price. So this is on hold until the unforeseeable future. Will probably have the trees cleaned up but that's it for now.

Have a great weekend everyone!!

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

It's nearly the end of March! I totally forgot to update! We leave for WDW for our Spring Break this Saturday. It's been crazy around here. Our Daughter turns 14 while we are on this trip. Our first boy takes off for Boot Camp in Cape May, NJ on April 26th, then turns 18 on April 29th. Our second boy turns 18 on June 1st, graduates High School on June 5th and then heads off to Cape May for Boot Camp Sept. 28th... and somewhere in there the daughter starts 9th grade. It's all going all too fast. A few updates I suppose are due (In RED):

It's nearly the end of March! I totally forgot to update!

2021 Financial Goals:

• Continue building house fund to 9k or so (3 months worth of house payments) Currently at 4,500 This is now 5,800 I have made it to 6688
• Continue to build savings to 60k (6 months worth of savings) lllllooong way to go with this goal, currently about 3k. I've lost track of this, too many pots of money trying to keep track of. There's savings, but it'll have to wait until after vacation to figure out how much there is. This goal is all messed up because I changed how we were saving. I will have to reset this goal and try again.
• Work on spending less, although we are in a high cost area (DC) I feel like our budget for Groceries and such is far too high We did really good with this in Feb. We ate out significantly less but spent about the same on groceries. I'll take the win! We had a second month of success in spending less (Saved 400!), but we are also eating down the house for our trip next week.
• Start an IRA (I am late to this retirement game). We have a long standing TSP for DH and I have a 401(k) but nothing else for retirement (I am 36, DH is 40) I still haven't started this. Retirement me is going to be very angry with past me. I still haven't changed this. I need to put our retirement on the front burner soon.
• Start saving for Vacations, I would like to take them more often... I think maybe 4-6k may be needed to be saved. I now have 1,675 in gift cards and around $7500 for our vacation in April. Apparently we are going again in October too so gotta keep saving! I saved 8k in cash and 2,200 in Gift Cards (for food) for a family of 6 this trip. Will it be enough? Who knows? I'll start saving for October trip once we return.
• Save for potential move, if no move, use to improve current house. No Change here yet We didnt move, and I didnt save to move LOL... so I think this goal is out the window.
• Pay off 1 CC for Lowes: $600.00 - Complete by June 2021. I had to replace the dishwasher in Sept of 2020. The balance on the card is interest free for 12 months so I will just continue to pay $50/paycheck until it is paid off, roughly 6 more months. (Edited to add this, as I forgot about it earlier.) This is paid off now due to my annual bonus!

2021 Personal Goals:

• Continue college classes for Bachelor's Degree (Using DH's GI bill for this) Currently working on MidTerms I am working on Finals in two courses. I am signed up for two more in May and one in July!
• Maintain PMP certification I have already finished this for this year
• Obtain additional IT related Certification (Perhaps Sec +) I haven't had a moment to start on this yet. I may have strongly overestimated how much free time I have.
• Lose Weight (total needed to lose is 102lbs, but I'd be happy if I lost 40) I haven't moved in weight at all, which is crazy, but DH has lost 10lbs. We are still doing YouTube I am trying really hard to lose weight. Hubby lost 15, I gained 5. I see a doctor this week because what? Also, we are documenting with YouTube Videos
• Learn to cook better... I mean I can cook, its just not very exciting... and I like food so if I can learn to make healthy exciting meals, all the better. Homemade Queso is my new favorite thing! Homemade Queso is terrible for you. Its still good. We have done some pretty good stuff with Chicken lately.
• If staying, paint upstairs of house, replace upstairs carpet either way, and perhaps paint kitchen cabinets. If not staying, finish outstanding small repairs and deep clean all the things to list the house. I bought seeds! I bought starter peet! I have done nothing with these things! I am what's wrong with me! I planted the seeds, they bloomed. I bought a raised garden bed and stuck it outside. I am going to move the seedlings outside soon! I have plans to do some improvements to the upstairs, kitchen, and outside of the house.
• New Goal: Both 17 year old boys are joining the United States Coast Guard this year. One leaves in April, One is graduating High School in June and then leaving in August. I have not prepared to send them off into the world and need to figure this out asap! I think I am still in panic mode. How do you prepare for this? I think I will go to IKEA for one kid at a time and buy all the things. Also WalMart... and then the movers can take it and store it for them (apparently due to COVID they aren't allowed to come home after boot, they go straight to the first unit and the movers will come collect their things).

Unplanned Things I Managed Anyways:

• I had bought a Peloton Tread + in Feb. of 2020 with an interest free loan of $4550. I had intended to simply pay the monthly over the three years since it was completely interest free, but I actually paid it off with part of the stimulus. This saves me $117/mo
• I then bought a Pelton Bike + for $2,700 on the same interest free loan over three years. The new payment is $79/mo. I am going to pay the full $117 from the Tread instead and pay it down faster, and maybe pay it off early, because I don't like having debts, even interest free ones.
• I got myself an Electra Townie Bike, for outdoor riding. I really want to try to be more active this year. I bought it cash, so no debt.
• I upgraded our phones, but because there were other older phones that paid off our cell phone bill actually went down $80/mo and I got a new phone. I use the much higher quality cameras for our YouTube Channel so it's Win/Win.

I guess you left for WDW today and hope you're having a great time! That's so exciting for your boys. I hope you get to visit them in Cape May. It's such a cute little town. Our favorite shore town.
It's so hard to let go and it's crazy how fast the time goes but try to look on the bright side: you don't want them still living at home when they're 30 or 40 right? The ultimate goal of parenting is having independent kids.

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

I have literally cashed in ALL our CSR points using Pay Yourself Back since they announced the 1.5 redemption value last year. It only goes until April 30. I figured since the travel redemption is the same value, might as well cash in now and put that money in the travel bucket. We have cashed out $1400 worth of points (93,500 points) since September. I'm fully cashing out any earnings every month until that offer expires.

Thanks for posting this! I've been holding onto points and have some hotels booked for possible future trips but this is a great deal. Funny, it was there all along but I never actually read it. I just cashed out $460 as a statement credit. One of the hotels I have booked is in Miami for a pre-cruise stay in November. The CDC isn't letting ships sail until at least November so I'm tossing around the idea of cancelling the hotel, getting the points back to cash out, then rebook the hotel later IF cruise ships start sailing again. We put around $3000/month on our CSP card so points build up pretty quickly.

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

Sorry, maybe I should have been more clear. I mean things like cell phone bill, car payments, auto insurance, streaming subscriptions things like that. I have several set up to be automatic withdrawals from my checking account each month (some things like the cell phone bill there is a 20% savings by doing it that way) and I was just curious how other people handle theirs. Do they deduct all the amounts at the beginning of the month or each time a bill is automatically paid do they deduct that amount on the check register. I have been doing them once a month at the beginning as to not spend money already marked for something else.

I don't auto-deduct for this exact reason. Call me old-fashioned but I like being in control of paying the bills. They get paid when I say they will and I'm not a fan of letting others put their hands in our checking account. That said, I did just sign up for auto payments for our mortgage. I used to think mortgage interest accrued like a car loan or cc, by the average daily balance. I was trying to pay it as early as possible, like the 20-25th of each month, with a 1st of the month due date. Then I learned that interest is accrued based on the difference in balances at the time of regular monthly payments so there is no point in rushing to get it paid extra early. The first auto pay is April 1st.
Otherwise I keep a weekly list (budget) of which bills get paid with which paycheck. I don't wait until they're due to pay it; by Friday evening all the bills for that paycheck are paid and money is gone from checking so not much else to keep track of. I use bill pay from my bank to pay or use the cc/mortgage website to schedule payments. I do pay Verizon for our Fios package and ATT for cell phones both on a cc. Utility companies and township property taxes charge fees to use a cc which I refuse to pay.

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

that's exactly what i'm dealing with-2 tiny little purchases they tried to run through.




yup-we had a theft ring that was driving in neighborhoods after a.m. commute but before mail pickup. they hit mailboxes and looked for outgoing that looked like it might hold a check (utility and credit card bills, and birthday card envelopes were prime targets). they would take the checks, use a scanner and make their own. people wouldn't catch it for weeks unless they were keeping an eye on their checking account balance (no late notices for weeks/no one sends thank you notes anymore). had one neighbor whose account was almost depleted of thousands and thousands (she watched her balance like a hawk).

My dad used to mail his bills one per day instead of several at once. (Yes, at 79 he still prefers mailing checks vs. paying online. This old dog isn't learning new tricks.) He liked being able to put the little flag up and know that once it's in the down position, that the mailman already came. Anyone, once he had his checking account compromised, (unrelated to mailing bills) and what a PITA it was to change his direct deposits, I was finally able to convince him to use a public mailbox to mail his bills.

It sucks to have to convince someone who is used to trusting the companies they do business with that you can't trust anyone anymore. We have all gradually gotten used to this but for seniors, it's a hard concept to accept.

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

Question, for annual bills such as HOA fee and or auto/home insurance, do you pay them annually or monthly if you have the option?
Cross between I will keep my money and interest as long as I can thank you very much and I wouldnt have to pay or think about them monthly
TIA

For bills that aren't monthly, I set up a savings account at Ally.com and make payments either weekly or biweekly so that when the bill comes, I just transfer the amount needed to checking and pay it. My Ally log in has one checking account and several savings accounts with nicknames like Sewer, Escrow, Car Insurance, Vacation, Christmas, etc.

 

[imbatman]

As far as balancing the checkbook I admit I am terrible at that, always have been.

Lots of us don't, as you've seen. It's okay. If you don't, then make sure to check your account every day/every other day for charges. It is tedious at first, but becomes an easy habit. Ask me how I know!

my insurance company gives a discount for this.

Same here. Even if we save $50 for paying in six month blocks, we do it this way.

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

Lots of us don't, as you've seen. It's okay. If you don't, then make sure to check your account every day/every other day for charges. It is tedious at first, but becomes an easy habit. Ask me how I know!

Same here. Even if we save $50 for paying in six month blocks, we do it this way.

I check mine at least once per day. Sometimes twice. It gives me something to do on my train to/from work. I check our credit cards daily and also signed up for email alerts for any charge over $1.00. You can imagine my surprise when I saw 6 purchases at BestBuy.com, one after another while dh and and I were at work. Once I confirmed that it wasn’t him shopping, I quick called the bank to report it. It’s great that Chase is so good about these things, as most cc’s are, but I sure hope they don’t get stuck with having to eat it every time someone reports a fraudulent charge. I hope the crooks were unsuccessful in trying to shop.

Our car insurance charges extra to make monthly payments. The most I can pay at a time is a 6-month policy. I prefer to pay whichever way lowers the cost the most.

 

[Buzzsgramma]

I guess I don't have much to do cause I check CC and bank acct everyday....I still deduct anything from debit card...if we use it..I still write checks mostly. for bills to mail..Our daughter laughed when I said ""dont you want this receipt to deduct from your acct...""

 

[DisneyMandC]

Checking in! I've been super busy so just caught up on 8 pages here.

Our stimulus will also be deposited tomorrow! Current plan is just straight to savings. We are splitting our current savings between our future car replacement fund and future home renovations fund. Both will hopefully not take place for several years, but I hate having a car payment and also want to have some cash set aside for renovations, even though we will definitely still need to take out a loan (planning on doing major construction).

We had a couple things pop up recently but have managed to skate by. I thought we were going to have to replace our fridge. Our icemaker quit working, which isn't the end of the world, but I HATE a side by side fridge and have wanted a new one ever since we moved into this house over 5 years ago. We went into Lowe's to check out french door fridges and get an idea of what we wanted, but the icemaker started working again! I can't bring myself to get rid of a working appliance, so I'll wait for it to bite the bullet.

I also suspect that the transmission in DH's car might be starting to go... I've noticed it slipping some so I dropped it by the mechanic today to get him to drive it and let me know. We knew buying this model car (Nissan Rogue) that if something was going to go bad, it was going to be the transmission. We purposefully bought the extended warranty for it so that it's covered if that happens. I need to pull our paperwork, but I believe our deductible is $300. We'll see what my guy says tomorrow and then go from there. March sometimes to be a bad time for our vehicles considering the engine blew up in my car last March too haha.

Everything else here is just cruising along. I received both doses of the covid vaccine and am looking forward to regaining some normalcy and being a little more protected since I don't work from home and am in a public-facing job. We are currently planning to take a road trip in April for our first vacation since last February!

Update!

1. We got our stimulus. I just realized in re-reading this that I never moved it to savings or budgeted it, so I just split it between home renovations and car replacement and set a transfer to my ally account.
2. I was right about the transmission. I hate it when I'm right Thankfully, we had that warranty and it completely covered it. They were running a special for $50 off your deductible this month, so we paid $250 for a new transmission! Well, plus the initial cost of the warranty, but we're still coming out way ahead. Certainly no regrets on buying that. We got the car back on Saturday. They mentioned the car needed new front brakes and rotors too, which sounds about right, so we went ahead and did that as well.
3. We changed our April road trip to Kentucky plans to a full blown Arizona vacation with flights! We were very surprised when DH received an email to schedule his first covid vaccine at the beginning of last week. I thought he would be absolutely bottom of the barrel last to get his shot since he works from home full-time and never goes anywhere. He got his first shot last Thursday and will get his second before we take our trip. Because we'll both be fully vaccinated, we felt comfortable flying for the first time since last February. We'll be hitting all three national parks in Arizona and road tripping around the state!

 

[Tygerlilly]

We'll be hitting all three national parks in Arizona and road tripping around the state!

That's on our bucket list for a few years in the future. I think I read that kids in 4th grade (maybe 5th?) get free national park passes for their families. I'll have kids in whichever grade 2 years in a row, so we plan to do 2 years worth of national park hopping when the time comes. And since we homeschool, we can go during non-peak times and not be secured to typical school holidays.