Debt Dumpers 2021

[ruadisneyfan2]

When we get snow on top of snow on top of snow, that's when I'm on my knees in need of a warm vacation.
My only comfort is that instead of vacationing, I'm saving up to pay off my Discover card (ds20's welding school) and have less than $1000 left to save for that. The 0% expires in May. Then I return to attacking the mortgage which gives me great satisfaction.

 

[ciaoaloha31]

I am of the mindset that if it is consistently going to be below freezing there better be snow We got another 3-4 inches overnight in NJ and loving it!

Today I am paying $334 towards my Paypal Credit 0% balance. It will be exciting to see it drop to a 3-figure balance tomorrow.

 

[crazycatstacy]

We are below zero temps here but just enough stuff to annoy you. I would like a good snow day from work but that isn't happening! DH gets his second COVID vaccine shot today and I get mine Saturday. Hopefully we are lucky ones and don't have a lot of issues afterwards.

 

[slightly_obsessed]

We are below zero temps here but just enough stuff to annoy you. I would like a good snow day from work but that isn't happening! DH gets his second COVID vaccine shot today and I get mine Saturday. Hopefully we are lucky ones and don't have a lot of issues afterwards.

We are about the same here weather wise. The low for Monday here is currently projected to be -18, windchill on Sunday down to -39 and our chance of snow is maybe 1-3".

And yea for COVID shots! Most of the people I know who had them had few to no problems the second time around, hope it's the same for you.

 

[CaleCakes]

It's freezing rain with a high of 38 in my little pocket of Tx today- this was not in the brochure . I'm waiting anxiously for the FedEx person to deliver my hoppers ... so while I wait I paid the bill! $1216 brings my card back down to $0. Feels good.

Funny story when I went to buy the hoppers the other day I was going to use my Disney Chase card to start building reward dollars. Well I went to read the card number and saw the card in my wallet expired... in 2019 . Clearly I don't use the card very often and had filed the new ones away . I got JetBlue points instead.

 

[webcreatrix]

Can I join in, albeit, late? I've been following this thread for a few years and feel like I know some of you. I feel bad for lurking! I'm impressed with all of you, setting goals and knocking them out of the park! I am a spender and always have been, but as retirement looms closer (I'm 51), I really want to get serious about knocking out some credit card and medical debt this year.

I feel like I'm cheating a little bit, because I'm maybe getting a bonus this year what will enable me to knock most of that out. And, an income tax return for the first time in YEARS! Husband is partially self employed and finally started paying taxes quarterly and was laid off from his day job at Southwest Airlines in March 2020 and has only worked small contract jobs since. That said, I will still have student loans, a car payment, emergency savings, two teenagers heading to college, a new tiny breast cancer diagnosis, mortgage, and retirement savings to tackle.

I feel like posting here will help me be more thoughtful and accountable for how I spend (or don't spend) and save my dollars. I would typically spend this annual windfall on home furnishings, travel, electronics. Not this time! I'm getting rid of the debt and working into being in a place of SAVINGS.

 

[pblack]

Can I join in, albeit, late? I've been following this thread for a few years and feel like I know some of you. I feel bad for lurking! I'm impressed with all of you, setting goals and knocking them out of the park! I am a spender and always have been, but as retirement looms closer (I'm 51), I really want to get serious about knocking out some credit card and medical debt this year.

I feel like I'm cheating a little bit, because I'm maybe getting a bonus this year what will enable me to knock most of that out. And, an income tax return for the first time in YEARS! Husband is partially self employed and finally started paying taxes quarterly and was laid off from his day job at Southwest Airlines in March 2020 and has only worked small contract jobs since. That said, I will still have student loans, a car payment, emergency savings, two teenagers heading to college, a new tiny breast cancer diagnosis, mortgage, and retirement savings to tackle.

I feel like posting here will help me be more thoughtful and accountable for how I spend (or don't spend) and save my dollars. I would typically spend this annual windfall on home furnishings, travel, electronics. Not this time! I'm getting rid of the debt and working into being in a place of SAVINGS.

Welcome! Its never too late to join in on the debt dumping journey.

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

Can I join in, albeit, late? I've been following this thread for a few years and feel like I know some of you. I feel bad for lurking! I'm impressed with all of you, setting goals and knocking them out of the park! I am a spender and always have been, but as retirement looms closer (I'm 51), I really want to get serious about knocking out some credit card and medical debt this year.

I feel like I'm cheating a little bit, because I'm maybe getting a bonus this year what will enable me to knock most of that out. And, an income tax return for the first time in YEARS! Husband is partially self employed and finally started paying taxes quarterly and was laid off from his day job at Southwest Airlines in March 2020 and has only worked small contract jobs since. That said, I will still have student loans, a car payment, emergency savings, two teenagers heading to college, a new tiny breast cancer diagnosis, mortgage, and retirement savings to tackle.

I feel like posting here will help me be more thoughtful and accountable for how I spend (or don't spend) and save my dollars. I would typically spend this annual windfall on home furnishings, travel, electronics. Not this time! I'm getting rid of the debt and working into being in a place of SAVINGS.

and for the diagnosis. Some day you will look back and this will be a distant memory.

 

[ciaoaloha31]

Mid February Update (in purple)

2021 Financial Goals

41.9% Complete 13% Complete Payoff PayPal Credit Balance by end of July (0% interest through July)
4.9% Complete Payoff Balance of Amex Card by end of August (with 0% interest through August)
1/11 0/11 Make additional $100 monthly payment towards principal of SSR DVC Loan starting in February
0/11 Make additional $100 monthly payment towards principal of CCV DVC Loan starting in February
0/11 Save $200/month towards down payment of a new vehicle starting in February (current vehicle is fully paid off as of Dec 2020 and expect 2-3 more years out of it before needing a new one)

2021 Reach Financial Goals (Goals that are a bit of a stretch but trying for them anyway )

August 2027 Current Projected Payoff Date November 2027 Current Projected Payoff Date Payoff SSR DVC Loan by end of December
$7003.56/$10,000 $7001.78/$10,000 Grow Emergency Savings to $10,000 (yay interest?)

 

[DisneyMandC]

Finally back online after our ice storm this weekend. We got a little bit of snow on Thursday and then had an ice storm come through on Saturday and it iced all day. We lost power at 12:30 pm and didn't get it back until 7:30 pm last night. I know it's not the worst of all situations considering we were just over 24 hours, but when it hasn't been above freezing for 3 days, it gets cold fast! Thankfully we had a generator that we could plug our fridge and an electric heater into so we didn't lose any food and kept it at about 55 degrees in the house. We didn't have any way to cook anything (other than Ramen the first night in the microwave) so we had to get takeout for all three meals yesterday. They're calling for more freezing rain this Thursday, so hoping we don't have a repeat.

In first world problems, the check for our refund from closing AND the refund of our last mortgage payment was in the mail Saturday and a tree fell across the road literally 50 feet in front of our mailbox so the mail didn't get delivered haha. I have no immediately pressing need for that money, but was looking forward to getting that almost $2000 deposited!

I did put some more money back in my pocket each month this morning. Our internet and cell service has been extremely spotty since the storm on Saturday, so I chatted online with our internet provider and they told me there was a known outage and that my current plan was now $10 less a month so they could move me over to that with no other changes to my devices or data. Another $120 back in my pocket each year!

 

[barkley]

We didn't have any way to cook anything (other than Ramen the first night in the microwave) so we had to get takeout for all three meals yesterday. They're calling for more freezing rain this Thursday, so hoping we don't have a repeat.

consider investing about $60 in a copper top induction cook top (i spent about $100 at walmart and got the one that comes with a deep lidded pot/pan and some other items). you can use it to replace your stove top and oven (to some extent since you can set the temp on it) in a power outage if you've got a generator you can plug into. they are also great if you bbq outside and want to cook something you would normally do on a burner. safe to use (can't burn yourself on it).

 

[jackers]

A few mid month updates...

Decided to pull the trigger on refinancing our mortgage. Monthly payment will decrease around $300/month but I plan to continue to make the same payments I have been so will be able to throw more towards the principle each month. Once everything is finalized I will play with my payoff calculator and see if I need to adjust my plan of mortgage free by age 50 (5.5 years away).

Also adjusted our cable/internet package because we almost never watch “regular” TV and will be saving almost $60/month there and cancelled a monthly app subscription with savings of $20/month.

Question, I think a few people here use Mint - I get access to it via my TurboTax account. Thoughts on it? I do everything in Excel spreadsheets right now but wondering if I should go more automated and use something my husband might actually understand.

 

[DLgal]

A few mid month updates...

Decided to pull the trigger on refinancing our mortgage. Monthly payment will decrease around $300/month but I plan to continue to make the same payments I have been so will be able to throw more towards the principle each month. Once everything is finalized I will play with my payoff calculator and see if I need to adjust my plan of mortgage free by age 50 (5.5 years away).

Also adjusted our cable/internet package because we almost never watch “regular” TV and will be saving almost $60/month there and cancelled a monthly app subscription with savings of $20/month.

Question, I think a few people here use Mint - I get access to it via my TurboTax account. Thoughts on it? I do everything in Excel spreadsheets right now but wondering if I should go more automated and use something my husband might actually understand.

I use mint, but ONLY to see the balances of all my accounts in one place. I don't actively budget with it, but it provides a good snapshot.

 

[EilonwyWanderer]

I use an excel spreadsheet but only because I'm leery of giving my information to companies that could possibly be breached and I don't want to have all my financial information in one place. Also I really like color coding it in excel! Years ago I did budget spreadsheets up through 2028 assuming a certain amount for raises and things going forward. I love playing with the numbers this way but they always look so much better in that spreadsheet than they do in real life!

Credit card has jumped to nearly 7k again. Part of that is the exercise bike I decided to get since the weather has just been too cold and icy to get outside for a walk and I have to do SOMETHING cause these pandemic pounds are just packing on at this point. I should be able to knock most of that down with the tax return and the extra money I'm getting with my extra teaching positions this semester. Our oil tank got replaced and we're still waiting for the bill for it.

The big thing i want to tackle this month though is eating out. My father-in-law was in the ICU with COVID last month, really touch and go (he's 83) and it just....wiped us out. We were constantly jumping every time the phone rang and on edge all month and it resulted in us eating out a LOT. So this month I want to plan for NOT doing that and making more meals at home. We just got a microwave and that should make things a LOT easier for us because previously we only had a toaster over and that's not great for reheating leftovers that are frozen in plastic containers! It's like a brand new world!

I'm sort of tempted to see if we can refinance our mortgage but we've only had it for eight months and I'm not sure if there's a time limit on it. I think we'd only drop by .25% to .50% but every little bit helps so it's tempting.

 

[slightly_obsessed]

I feel like I'm cheating a little bit, because I'm maybe getting a bonus this year what will enable me to knock most of that out. And, an income tax return for the first time in YEARS! Husband is partially self employed and finally started paying taxes quarterly and was laid off from his day job at Southwest Airlines in March 2020 and has only worked small contract jobs since. That said, I will still have student loans, a car payment, emergency savings, two teenagers heading to college, a new tiny breast cancer diagnosis, mortgage, and retirement savings to tackle.

Welcome! And totally not cheating in my book, that's a lot to tackle.

Question, I think a few people here use Mint - I get access to it via my TurboTax account. Thoughts on it? I do everything in Excel spreadsheets right now but wondering if I should go more automated and use something my husband might actually understand.

I tried using it and have gone back to Quicken/Excel. I think it's can be a good tool and I liked the goals and credit score features, but I didn't love it overall. Part of that was after years of using Quicken, it seemed like much more of a hassle to manually enter/categorizing everything. There are also the ads and the emails that drove me a bit crazy (especially the "Payday is great, ain't it?!" Years of my mother telling me ain't isn't a word I should have stuck ). Really, it's kind of nitpicky of me. I'd say if you have the time, set it up but give it a few months trial to see what you really think about it. I just finally decided I'd rather stick with what we had and that the yearly fee was worth it.

 

[CastAStone]

I know I’m not a frequent poster here, but I wanted to celebrate a little: I paid off all my credit cards in December and have redirected our suspended student loan payments into our previous consolidation loan which I will have paid off by the end of the year, at which time my cars will both be paid off and, with our mortgage at 2.75%, we can focus on just paying off the quarter million in student loans and beginning to build real savings outside of the 401k employer match.

 

[RamblingMad]

A few mid month updates...

Decided to pull the trigger on refinancing our mortgage. Monthly payment will decrease around $300/month but I plan to continue to make the same payments I have been so will be able to throw more towards the principle each month. Once everything is finalized I will play with my payoff calculator and see if I need to adjust my plan of mortgage free by age 50 (5.5 years away).

Nice. I did a refinance last year too. It's saving me $700 a month mainly because I hadn't rolled the proceeds from my previous home into my new mortgage because of timing. And a refinance made more sense than a recast last year.

We're the same age. There is no way that I will be mortgage free by 50 if I want to hit my FIRE number by 50. I'm trying to wrap my head around this now. I can pay it off now and push out my FIRE number, or I can continue to invest and hit FIRE with the mortgage. But why retire with mortgage interest that I can't deduct against anything? I will be able withdraw from my taxable basically tax free to cover my $60k of living expenses since the 15% capital gains doesn't kick in until around $77k for a married couple. And I can't pull money out of my 401k or IRA until I hit 59.5 without a tax hit. I'm trying to figure out what to do. With a 2.8% mortgage rate, investing should make more sense, but the market can tank next year for all I know. This stuff is tough.

How are you thinking about this?

 

[barkley]

But why retire with mortgage interest that I can't deduct against anything?

we had always planned on paying off our home early but when it got to the point where the mortgage interest deduction was no longer of benefit to us we kicked it into high gear. looking back, we bought our first home at the time we did b/c our cpa pointed out the advantages having that deduction would bring to us as a newly married 2 income couple so when we were doing our taxes back 8 years ago and realized we were at the point it was no longer going to be of benefit for us it just seemed logical to get it eliminated (the stuff we had previously used for itemizing were no longer a thing for us). fortunately we had enough in savings to pay it off while retaining enough savings to feel secure (i firmly believe that no one should consider their home equity as a means of short term or emergency savings).

bought our first home in 1991 and it would have been paid off this year. bought our current in 2007 and were able to supercharge paying it off in 7 years. we've very much enjoyed paying ourselves that mortgage payment (and an added benefit was fafsa doesn't look at home equity whereas it does look at savings).

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

Nice. I did a refinance last year too. It's saving me $700 a month mainly because I hadn't rolled the proceeds from my previous home into my new mortgage because of timing. And a refinance made more sense than a recast last year.

We're the same age. There is no way that I will be mortgage free by 50 if I want to hit my FIRE number by 50. I'm trying to wrap my head around this now. I can pay it off now and push out my FIRE number, or I can continue to invest and hit FIRE with the mortgage. But why retire with mortgage interest that I can't deduct against anything? I will be able withdraw from my taxable basically tax free to cover my $60k of living expenses since the 15% capital gains doesn't kick in until around $77k for a married couple. And I can't pull money out of my 401k or IRA until I hit 59.5 without a tax hit. I'm trying to figure out what to do. With a 2.8% mortgage rate, investing should make more sense, but the market can tank next year for all I know. This stuff is tough.

How are you thinking about this?

I have debated to myself and with dh pros and cons of paying down mortgage vs. investing. Right now our non-retirement Vanguard (US Growth Fund) is smoking hot and we first opened it in early 2018 so it has grown a shocking amount since then, even without adding more to it. Also our retirement funds are performing very well. This makes me want to add more to them. Our mortgage is only 3% but it's kind of a mental thing, like a big weight hanging on us. I'm in my early 50s and dh is 9+ years older than me and we've had a mortgage since I was 26. I just want it gone for the feeling of freedom and taking that massive weight off of us before dh retires.
We can't predict the future with investing but I can predict with 100% certainty that dh and I will be absolutely thrilled to have no mortgage.

From August 6 - Jan 1, I paid down 1/3 of our balance. I'm really hoping I don't go crazy travelling soon but I can feel the urge starting already. Dh had his 1st vaccine shot yesterday and I'm done both of mine. Once my dad gets his (soon) I will feel a lot safer to travel. I can hear a combination Disney/FL beach trip calling out to me. It says "Come, leave that ice behind and feel our warm sun!"

 

[jackers]

Nice. I did a refinance last year too. It's saving me $700 a month mainly because I hadn't rolled the proceeds from my previous home into my new mortgage because of timing. And a refinance made more sense than a recast last year.

We're the same age. There is no way that I will be mortgage free by 50 if I want to hit my FIRE number by 50. I'm trying to wrap my head around this now. I can pay it off now and push out my FIRE number, or I can continue to invest and hit FIRE with the mortgage. But why retire with mortgage interest that I can't deduct against anything? I will be able withdraw from my taxable basically tax free to cover my $60k of living expenses since the 15% capital gains doesn't kick in until around $77k for a married couple. And I can't pull money out of my 401k or IRA until I hit 59.5 without a tax hit. I'm trying to figure out what to do. With a 2.8% mortgage rate, investing should make more sense, but the market can tank next year for all I know. This stuff is tough.

How are you thinking about this?

My reasoning for mortgage free by 50 is two fold - first, I want to use that money for other things - specifically travel. I had my oldest when I was 19, met DH two years later, and we still have a teenager in the home, so we've never had that "we time" in our lives of it just being the two of us- so looking at our 50s for that. The current dream is to have a WFH job that can be done anywhere, and will allow us to travel across the country in an RV for perhaps months at a time, stopping wherever we want for a few weeks, and then moving on. But having the house to come back to whenever we want.
Second, I want to go into retirement without any housing costs. But we haven't made any firm plans on what that is - not sure if we will stay in this home (a good home as we age with no second floor, but more than we would ever need with a fully finished basement, 4 beds/3 baths) or downsize or look at a retirement community. This gives us plenty of time to be in a good financial position for whatever we decide. I'm in a good place in investing for retirement but not at FIRE pace - if I can retire at 60 I would be extremely happy but am targeting anything prior to 65.