Debt Dumpers 2025

[barkley]

Oklahoma is tax free this weekend too. I promised my daughter we'd go to the mall for the Hello Kitty Truck today not knowing this. I am less excited than I was.

we don't have these events here but people on the eastern side of the state routinely cross the boarder into Idaho to save about 4% on sales tax and MUCH more on fuel and anything Washington imposes 'sin' taxes on (tobacco and liquor). one of my old friends in California who swears he will never leave there does wistfully speak of one area on the western side of our state that he views as 'financial paradise' because residents reap the benefit of living in income tax free Washington but live in close proximity to a neighboring Oregon town to do their day to day purchases (Oregon has NO sales tax ever) .

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

NJ has some of the highest property taxes in the country, but somehow still can’t afford to cut families any break for school supplies.
It was offered for only 2 years (after my kids were done school) and then stopped it last year.

 

[Sheree]

but we have no sales ta

NJ has some of the highest property taxes in the country, but somehow still can’t afford to cut families any break for school supplies.
It was offered for only 2 years (after my kids were done school) and then stopped it last year.

but we have no sales tax on clothing!!!

don't get me started!

 

[Nettlelondon]

We are away again staying in our holiday home for a few days as there was nothing in the diary to keep us at home.

One of my husband's clients needed some changes made to their IT system that couldn't be done during the working week so he spent a few hours both days of the weekend working. They get charged double for him working at weekends so this was pretty lucrative. Especially as he did some of it at 6 am when he woke early and couldn't get back to sleep. By the time I got up he had finished the things he wanted to do that day.

We are off to a 3 day music festival at the end of the month and had been toying with upgrading our tickets to give access to better viewing areas, "upgraded" food trucks (I have no idea how a food truck can be upgraded but hey ho) and quality toilets. I don't like to point out to the organisers that all toilets are quality - some are poor quality, some are slightly higher quality but at the end of the day thay are all portable toilets so unlikely to be luxurious.

DHs efforts this weekend my be converted into the upgrade. At least then it will feel like the effort has produced a direct benefit.

We also spent the weekend changing some furniture. We had purchased a cabinet to replace a wicker basket that we had been using as storage in the living room of the holiday home at it had fallen apart. We thought the new cabinet was the same colour as the TV unit but it turns out that over 20 years Ikea has changed the colour even though the name is the same. Outrageous! We tried living with the two but they clashed so a replacement for the TV unit was purchased and built over the weekend.

We took the old one apart relatively easily and managed to donate it to a local goodwill type of store, and they were really delighted that we had all the instructions, had labelled all the pieces as to what step they related to in those instructions and had bagged up all the bits and pieces of fittings in labelled bags! We had thought we might need to pay someone to take it all away so were really glad we managed to sort it ourselves.

 

[Tygerlilly]

I think I just leveled up my traveling mom game. I earned a bunch of points after our last GWL trip and was looking around at where more locations were. I discovered there's one in Houston area, very close to NASA, which is where we wanted to stay before the cruise in November. Our original hotel we had booked was going to be almost $800 for 3 nights (which seems to be typical for our family needs). I decided to check into rates at GWL and was able to get 3 nights in a giant room with everyone getting their own bed for $340 after using my points. Score! The kids will be stoked to have something to do in the evenings after we're done exploring instead of just sitting in a hotel room and I'm excited I saved $400.

 

[LadybugsMum]

I've been playing Animal Crossing while out on short term disability. I wish it was as easy to earn money in real life as it is in the game! I would be completely debt free including the mortgage!

 

[Tygerlilly]

I've been playing Animal Crossing while out on short term disability. I wish it was as easy to earn money in real life as it is in the game! I would be completely debt free including the mortgage!

Man, wouldn't that be amazing? Lol. Every time I play games I'm like, these 3 hours of playing earned me so much in game money, but working a full 2 weeks I'm barely scraping by.

 

[WDW_fan_in_TX]

Got a little off track with our trip to Chicago. But it also allowed me to look through our budgets and expenditures over the first half of the year. And allowed me to reset things a little. So refreshing. Still not quite making enough money. We bring home about $5,600/month between the 2 of us, and our bills are $4,300-$4,500, and that doesn't include gas/transportation and food/groceries.

And on top of that, it looks like our company is about to get bought out. So we don't know what the future holds here. Not sure if I'll have a job when the new regime takes over (I've been told I'm safe). But you just never know 100%.

That said, we've started an EF. WE opened a small savings account where our leftover change goes into it each day. For example, if we spend $1.01, then 99 cents goes into the savings. It rounds up every time we swipe the card then transfers that money into a savings account. We started with nothing on July 1, and we finished the month with a little over $55.

 

[Nettlelondon]

Got a little off track with our trip to Chicago. But it also allowed me to look through our budgets and expenditures over the first half of the year. And allowed me to reset things a little. So refreshing. Still not quite making enough money. We bring home about $5,600/month between the 2 of us, and our bills are $4,300-$4,500, and that doesn't include gas/transportation and food/groceries.

And on top of that, it looks like our company is about to get bought out. So we don't know what the future holds here. Not sure if I'll have a job when the new regime takes over (I've been told I'm safe). But you just never know 100%.

That said, we've started an EF. WE opened a small savings account where our leftover change goes into it each day. For example, if we spend $1.01, then 99 cents goes into the savings. It rounds up every time we swipe the card then transfers that money into a savings account. We started with nothing on July 1, and we finished the month with a little over $55.

Once again you have made a good step along the way, well done. Fingers crossed the job situation works out well and that there isn't too much turmoil along the way.

 

[pblack]

Hubby and I are getting ready to leave on a 6-day cruise and yesterday I received an upsell call from Carnival (1st time for this to happen!). I was able to switch from our interior room to an aft-balcony for $300. This is quite the discount from what it would have cost us to book the aft-balcony from the start. I guess someone had just cancelled it and they were trying to upsell it to someone so they can then turn around and upsell the room we were in. (We're booked in the Havana area which is 12+ and has it's own pool/hot tubs/bar.) I haven't told my hubby about it. I just plan on surprising him when we get on the ship.

 

[disney-inspired]

Hubby and I are getting ready to leave on a 6-day cruise and yesterday I received an upsell call from Carnival (1st time for this to happen!). I was able to switch from our interior room to an aft-balcony for $300. This is quite the discount from what it would have cost us to book the aft-balcony from the start. I guess someone had just cancelled it and they were trying to upsell it to someone so they can then turn around and upsell the room we were in. (We're booked in the Havana area which is 12+ and has it's own pool/hot tubs/bar.) I haven't told my hubby about it. I just plan on surprising him when we get on the ship.

That is SUCH an upgrade! I got an exterior room as part of a rewards trip from work back in 2019. I have no idea how people handle an interior room.

 

[pblack]

That is SUCH an upgrade! I got an exterior room as part of a rewards trip from work back in 2019. I have no idea how people handle an interior room.

We don't mind interiors, especially if it's a short cruise, but definitely prefer having some natural light. Plus it'll be nice to be able to put our wet suits out to dry. Sometimes the cost savings of an interior vs. a balcony wins out, like it did with this cruise lol.

 

[huggybuff]

Hey guys! Another quick update. I paid off my Discover card at the beginning of this month. Next up is my Ally credit card. I'm giving myself 2 months to pay that one off.

On another note, I didn't do a weekly update this year because last year was such a disaster with regard to accomplishing anything at home/other personal goals. WELL, it turns out that I've had inattentive ADHD my whole life, in addition to the major depression/anxiety that I've been on medication for for most of my adult life. I've started meds for the ADHD over the past month and it's kind of amazing tbh. I don't have tightness in my chest anymore when I think of doing the simplest of tasks and I don't feel the need to sleep all day on my days off to avoid feeling guilty over not getting things done. I don't get mentally exhausted like I used to after completing simple tasks and my feelings of being overwhelmed have gone down dramatically. Kinda crazy it took me this long to figure it out, but here I am.

 

[WDW_fan_in_TX]

Time to work on getting back on track. I paid an extra $20 onto each of my CCs (one balance is $250ish and one balance is$480ish). I plan on putting $50 more on each one in September, which is also when my school loan payments resume.

Still trying to find a way to get out of my car loan. I looked into a 401k loan, and my company doesn't do that. I've reached out to a local newspaper about covering football games on Friday night, and I go meet with them today. So they'll give me around $400/month extra (it's only on Friday nights), and I'll probably put an extra on my car payment (if I decide not to just pay off my CCs all together).

We've gotten better about not eating out as much. More meals at home. But we keep eating the same things it seems. So I'm going to check into the meal plans category on here and see if I can get any ideas. We did go to Walmart on Monday to buy groceries for the week, and it was $110. We've gotten to where we only go to Walmart once a week now to buy for a whole week instead of going every 4-5 days. Got 4 cans of chicken for $8 to do a crockpot this weekend that we can eat on for a couple of days.