Debt Dumpers 2025

[DanceDisney23]

I'm very open with my kids re: what makes money and what doesn't when it comes to careers and what our financial situation is like at any given moment, so I'm not worried about anything like that. I'm more worried about how FAFSA will view a 529.

A 529 counts as a parent asset along with your savings and non-retirement investments. Your income however weighs more heavily for your demonstrated need calculation.

Then of course it’s up to the college your child will attend whether they meet all your need or not. Most don’t. The financial aid package can also include loans and work study, not just grants and scholarships. Let’s say your calculated need per fafsa is $20,000, and your child’s college meets 50% of that. Perhaps they will offer $2,500 in scholarships and grants, and $7,500 in loans. You will need to cover the other $10,000 in addition to what fafsa decided your family can afford to pay based on your income and assets.

I don’t think it’s a disadvantage to your children if you open a 529.

 

[Cfabar1]

I don’t think it’s a disadvantage to your children if you open a 529.

I don't think it is either. Other option depending on your state and the age of your kids is the state prepaid plan that allows you to send your kids to in-state college and "prepay" for it. Some states are better run than others with these. One thing I like about it is it puts boundaries on what the parents are prepared to foot the bill for and can be equally fair for multiple children. It can be limiting in other ways.

 

[Tygerlilly]

Sat down and talked with my mom and decided instead of trying to hold a yard sale after dumpster weekend we were going to just donate all the things that are left. It will help both my mental and physical load to do it that way. I set up a pick up with salvation army for the 1st.

Realtor called me today and said we are now up to 5 showings on opening day. There's zero pictures of the inside currently so they're going off the outside and price. There's nothing major that needs done to it, just new carpet/paint and some touch ups. I'm really hoping we hit my target price and I think we will!

 

[pblack]

2025 Goals (subject to change):

End of March update.

Financial -
[ ] Get home equity loan down to $20k - Currently sitting at ~$23,500.
[ ] Pay off new ipad purchase ($860) - Paid off as of 3/29!
[ ] Add $4k to emergency savings to get us to our 6 months saving goal - Only auto contributions have contributed to this so far. $1025/$4000.


Personal -
[ ] Exercise - get my body moving. Stay focused on eating healthier. Stay focused on getting more protein in my day. - Still doing well with focusing on exercise M-F. I think last week was the first week in awhile (where I've not been on vacation or traveling) that I only did 4 days, but I had a really bad headache one day last week. I need to be more mindful of what I'm eating on the weekends though, that's when I tend to falter. Especially since we'll usually have some drinks on the weekends.
[ ] Replace our patio cover - Finally reached out for a quote and let me just say it came back higher than I really thought it would be. Sooo we'll see what happens. We won't tackle this until the side yard is done though.
[ ] Build new fence in our side yard, level out the dirt, get a storage shed. (May or may not utilize 0% balance transfers depending on costs). - Need to call for a pick up of the pile of limbs/branches/old fencing that's currently sitting on the weed patch in front of our side yard. I think we've gotten all the roots up that we need too (may still need to tackle some as we level out the dirt), so now we just need to figure out the best way of leveling out this area. We have a packed weekend this weekend, so hopefully within the next couple weekends we can figure this out. We already bought a storage shed (on sale) and it's currently taking up room in our garage.

All in all, March was a pretty good month for us. I'm looking at a vacation for the end of the year, possibly an all inclusive in Jamaica, but we'll see what ends up happening. Too many things I want to do, plus flights are expensive. I already know that this month (i.e. credit card statement period) will be more spendy than the last seemed to be. We have lots of little things going on and I just bought tickets for tonight's Athletics "home" opener. Not because I'm a fan of the A's, but because I think it'll be cool to be there for the first time they play in this new to them stadium. Granted I did get discounted lawn seats so it wasn't as much as it could have been, but between tickets, parking, and food we're probably looking at about $150 for tonight's festivities. Ah well, it should be fun at least.

Hope everyone is doing well!

 

[Cfabar1]

Congrats! Glad you had a great month! We have done pretty well... It feels like no matter what we do, medical bills keep returning to us... hoping those days are ending soon.

 

[Tygerlilly]

We had to call the dumpster company and have them pick one up and bring an empty one and extend one more day. I spent Saturday and Sunday doing just the garage. It was horrible. Today I started on the actual inside of the house. My mom was there with me today and I think she finally got everything she wants put in a spot where I can get it and made a list of everything else she wanted.

Tomorrow I'll head down and start throwing things away right away. The Salvation Army is coming at some point to start taking some of the furniture donations I have pulled out and ready to go already.

We are now up to 8 showings for the first day. I'm overwhelmed to say the least, but so so hopeful that we will get a good offer that might lead to a short sale or even a cash offer. I'd be extremely happy to have this settled by the end of the month.

 

[barkley]

We had to call the dumpster company and have them pick one up and bring an empty one and extend one more day. I spent Saturday and Sunday doing just the garage. It was horrible. Today I started on the actual inside of the house. My mom was there with me today and I think she finally got everything she wants put in a spot where I can get it and made a list of everything else she wanted.

Tomorrow I'll head down and start throwing things away right away. The Salvation Army is coming at some point to start taking some of the furniture donations I have pulled out and ready to go already.

We are now up to 8 showings for the first day. I'm overwhelmed to say the least, but so so hopeful that we will get a good offer that might lead to a short sale or even a cash offer. I'd be extremely happy to have this settled by the end of the month.

I'm sorry it's so much work for you but glad you are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. one suggestion to help avoid dealing with something similar down the line with your mom's new place-try to keep an eye out for her inadvertantly overbuying, esp. food and personal need products. mil moved from a house into a small apartment in her later years. when we needed to clear it out we could not believe the amount of duplicate stuff she had squirreled away. she was not prone to over-purchasing when she was in her house so I think it was going from have a larger kitchen with single larger areas of cabinets she would put food into and could easily eyeball what she had/needed (same with bathroom with large storage under the sink). she had minimal space so she would put stuff where she could fit it and then forget she had purchased it only to repurchase it repeatedly (I lost count of boxes of bouillon packets we found).

 

[Tygerlilly]

I'm sorry it's so much work for you but glad you are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. one suggestion to help avoid dealing with something similar down the line with your mom's new place-try to keep an eye out for her inadvertantly overbuying, esp. food and personal need products. mil moved from a house into a small apartment in her later years. when we needed to clear it out we could not believe the amount of duplicate stuff she had squirreled away. she was not prone to over-purchasing when she was in her house so I think it was going from have a larger kitchen with single larger areas of cabinets she would put food into and could easily eyeball what she had/needed (same with bathroom with large storage under the sink). she had minimal space so she would put stuff where she could fit it and then forget she had purchased it only to repurchase it repeatedly (I lost count of boxes of bouillon packets we found).

I just threw away 7 bags of food from her cabinets today at the house. All of expired over the last 3 years of more. I don't even know where she found it all because I went thru that cabinet and got rid of stuff not long ago.

I was there another 6 hours today and got a lot done. The two main areas I wanted to clear out because I had the dumpster I was able to do: garage and sun room. It was awful and I'm horribly sore, but they are done. I'm taking a few days to stay home and celebrate my middle kiddos 8th birthday and then I'll go back down on Sunday to try and make it look somewhat presentable for Monday. It's not going to be where I wanted, but it's far better than it was.

 

[pblack]

It's not going to be where I wanted, but it's far better than it was.

This is basically my life motto. I'm always saying "well, it's not perfect, but it's better than it was."

 

[Tygerlilly]

This is basically my life motto. I'm always saying "well, it's not perfect, but it's better than it was."

I feel this so deeply in my soul.

 

[WDW_fan_in_TX]

I haven't posted in a while, but I've been doing budgets.

Got my budget done for March 28-April 24 (I get paid every 2 weeks, hence why we do 4 weeks at a time. My next paycheck falls on April 25). I've been doing a lot of listening to Dave Ramsey podcasts, and I've covered my 4 walls (rent, bills, transportation and food). We also have an extras account that covers anything like nails, haircuts, Amazon stuff, work on the car, movie tickets, stuff like that. Once all of those are accounted for, there's roughly $200 left over that doesn't have a spot (yay). It could go up because I allotted $800 to food (for DW and I) for the month, and we may not use all of funds in the "extras" category. If have anything leftover in either of those categories, it will just go into some type of savings account. So I'm finally feeling good about where things are headed.

Looking ahead, we have to get some work done on my wife's car (new tires, fuel senor needs replaced, 2 fuel injectors need replaced, and we have to get it all done immediately so we can get it registered). And I have to get a headlight replaced as soon as possible. So, anything left over after all 4 walls are covered, and anything we have left over from the extras category will probably go toward that or creating an emergency fund.

 

[Nettlelondon]

I haven't posted in a while, but I've been doing budgets.

Got my budget done for March 28-April 24 (I get paid every 2 weeks, hence why we do 4 weeks at a time. My next paycheck falls on April 25). I've been doing a lot of listening to Dave Ramsey podcasts, and I've covered my 4 walls (rent, bills, transportation and food). We also have an extras account that covers anything like nails, haircuts, Amazon stuff, work on the car, movie tickets, stuff like that. Once all of those are accounted for, there's roughly $200 left over that doesn't have a spot (yay). It could go up because I allotted $800 to food (for DW and I) for the month, and we may not use all of funds in the "extras" category. If have anything leftover in either of those categories, it will just go into some type of savings account. So I'm finally feeling good about where things are headed.

Looking ahead, we have to get some work done on my wife's car (new tires, fuel senor needs replaced, 2 fuel injectors need replaced, and we have to get it all done immediately so we can get it registered). And I have to get a headlight replaced as soon as possible. So, anything left over after all 4 walls are covered, and anything we have left over from the extras category will probably go toward that or creating an emergency fund.

Great progress - at least you now have the chance to have a little breathing space and create plans, rather than lurching from challenge to challenge. Well done.

 

[Nettlelondon]

Over breakfast this morning DH and I discussed life, the universe and everything. Well our finances anyway, and worked out a plan to stop saving in to pensions, start using up our savings, and for him to progress towards retiring, or at least moving to only working a few days a month. We will then start accessing his pension pot later this year / early next year (depending on how much work he does and how quickly we burn through our ready savings).

We will continue to take a salary from the company he works for (and that we jointly own) to ensure we don't miss out on our tax free earnings band. In the UK the first £12,570 of income is tax free so we don't want to leave the money in the company and pay corporation tax on the higher profits if we can juggle it around and save what we can.

It is going to be an interesting mental shift to go from saving & investing to spending those funds but it has to happen at some point. We are not going to access my pension yet as another way to reduce the company tax bill is to put money in to my pension. Once you start taking money out the tax incentives for putting money in drastically reduce. And thanks to the type of pension pots we both have, we can just take money out whenever we need to so don't need to have emergency funds and other savings. Apparently - though we are keeping some cash on hand in an instant access account in case something happens that needs immediate funds but that can't be paid with a credit card.

It's all very odd - and I suspect the next few months will involve a lot of reviewing of what we are actually spending money on, rather than what we thought we would spend it on.

 

[Tygerlilly]

We currently have 3 offers in on the house with one more coming. They have a deadline of 5pm to bring their best offers and we will review them then. I'm hoping for asking price with no additional work done. That would make me super happy.

 

[focusondisney]

We currently have 3 offers in on the house with one more coming. They have a deadline of 5pm to bring their best offers and we will review them then. I'm hoping for asking price with no additional work done. That would make me super happy.

Good luck! I hope you have all good offers to choose from.

 

[Nettlelondon]

We currently have 3 offers in on the house with one more coming. They have a deadline of 5pm to bring their best offers and we will review them then. I'm hoping for asking price with no additional work done. That would make me super happy.

Multiple interested parties sounds like a great step towards achieving your aims. Fingers crossed.

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

We currently have 3 offers in on the house with one more coming. They have a deadline of 5pm to bring their best offers and we will review them then. I'm hoping for asking price with no additional work done. That would make me super happy.

You CAN say it’s being sold as is. This is how our son’s house was. If something objectionable arose from the home inspection, he could have chosen to back out but it wouldn’t fall on the seller.

 

[afan]

You CAN say it’s being sold as is. This is how our son’s house was. If something objectionable arose from the home inspection, he could have chosen to back out but it wouldn’t fall on the seller.

It will still depend. I sold mine that way but there were things like the bathroom fan not venting correctly that had to be fixed due to some law/regulation.

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

Ds’s house inspection listed suspected asbestos insulating the ductwork in the crawlspace. The seller refused to touch it. Ds could have backed out of the contract but he really wanted the house.

I think it depends on whether the buyer is going FHA for mortgage vs conventional.

FHA will make a lot of demands on the the seller as to what must be done before the sale can happen.

I had a former coworker in the mid 90’s trying to sell her house. It wasn’t in a very desirable town.
After a year, they finally got an offer. They were told they’d need to replace the roof.

She and her husband kept all their money separate and split every single bill 50-50. (Way too much work for me.)
They knew they’d be needing a roof soon anyway so she had already saved up her half of the roof money.
He didn’t save his half so they had to lose their buyer and give the husband some time to save his half of the roof.
I haven’t seen her in over 25 years. I often wonder if they’re still married.

 

[disney-inspired]

Ds’s house inspection listed suspected asbestos insulating the ductwork in the crawlspace. The seller refused to touch it. Ds could have backed out of the contract but he really wanted the house.

I think it depends on whether the buyer is going FHA for mortgage vs conventional.

FHA will make a lot of demands on the the seller as to what must be done before the sale can happen.

I had a former coworker in the mid 90’s trying to sell her house. It wasn’t in a very desirable town.
After a year, they finally got an offer. They were told they’d need to replace the roof.

She and her husband kept all their money separate and split every single bill 50-50. (Way too much work for me.)
They knew they’d be needing a roof soon anyway so she had already saved up her half of the roof money.
He didn’t save his half so they had to lose their buyer and give the husband some time to save his half of the roof.
I haven’t seen her in over 25 years. I often wonder if they’re still married.

I don't get marriages like that - like, if we're married we are all-in, together. That's how my parents and other family have handled their finances as married couples so this whole 50/50 thing is so weird to me. If you don't trust someone with your money, why are you marrying them???

I'm single so don't have any experiences with all that but if I ever do get married, that's a non-negotiable for possible future DH.