Debt Dumpers 2025

[Nettlelondon]

To be clear, the religious / church bits don't bother me - it's just completely alien to the general experience of life here.

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

I didn't follow DR fully when getting out of debt bc I wasn't willing to take my Efund down to 1k while we were getting out of debt. We didn't have a ton at the time, but we had two kids/a mortgage, and my husband is in tech, so we knew his job was always risky (and he has been laid off so we know we need it). We did the avalanche method bc we were fully locked in and didn't need the motivation, but even with all these strays and being Dave-ish, I still credit him for us being where we are. I listened to his podcasts and watched his show constantly for motivation. I truly think for most people he can be the real answer if they're willing to listen.

Dh was in industrial maintenance/construction half of his life and a lot of lay offs would be seasonal or dependent on the economy. I think I mentioned before how he was laid off 2 weeks after we bought our house. In that case, you have to tweak the advice to make it work for you. We're not all in the same boat.
Dh was all about having fun in his 20s and early 30s. He was 33 when we started dating and he had nothing saved for retiredment.
I was the one to push him to get that started but he'll always be way behind on that. He's 9 years older than me, saves twice as much as I do and I still have twice as much. So when DR talked about stopping retirement saving, well maybe that's great advice for a 30 year old to do for 6 months but no way would that work for us.

 

[barkley]

I'll probably get a honeybaked ham to bring to my grandma's house.

it kills me to pay the price but I get SO MUCH bang for the buck when I get a honeybaked ham. we get one for Christmas and get many meals out of it (my personal favorite is to make eggs benedict). I get one larger than we need and freeze portions for future meals. all the small scraps, the portion at the end of the ham that does not get spiral cut and the ham bone are bagged up for split pea soup (just made a double batch last week that we ate off of for a couple of days, sent the oldest home with 2 quart containers to freeze and we've got 2 quarts in our freezer as well). I just wish they sold up here the non jarred cranberry sauce we used to be able to buy at their northern california locations.

We didn't get rid of cable

we did'nt either. our thought process was that we needed some form of entertainment, some means to decompress. we felt that if we had something relatively inexpensive it would keep us from feeling so 'deprived' that we would be driven to choosing 'just one little spurge on something fun' which we knew would ultimatly cost more than multiple months of our cable bill. even today when I eye our budget when the notifications of increases in our streaming packages arrive I consider that even if we watch just one new release vs. seeing it in the theater that we've saved $ (it costs more than the $25.99 i'll be paying come 11/1 for my Disney plus/Hulu/Netflix bundle than 2 adult tickets at our local movie theaters ).

 

[Nettlelondon]

When we first got married we were pretty broke. Thankfully we lived pretty close to both sets of parents so for a couple of years we would somehow contrive to eat at each set of parents, accidentally, at least once a week, sometimes twice. Everyone knew what was going on, but no one ever mentioned it. We didn't actually have any debt, other than our mortgage, but we were very close to it. I got very good at creating meals from the yellow stickered, end of day reduced foods at the local supermarket and our slow cooker was a lifesaver.

But we managed to have a holiday every year and a couple of cheap weekends away. Holidays were our safety valve. We were very good at spotting ways to holiday for less. For example we used to visit France (only a very short ferry ride away for us) staying with a company that had ready erected tents throughout the country so that we could self cater easily. They used to run an offer where you could select a region and they would choose your site. This was about half the price of selecting your site. It might be that you had to move once during your holiday but they were never very far apart and were all really good quality sites so it wasn't a huge saving. We also used to holiday outside the school holiday period which made it a lot cheaper too. Without those breaks we would have gone insane, I am sure.

DH worked for a bank at the time and he got a role in a new centre that was overwhelmed with work during the set up phase. As a result they offered overtime for Saturday mornings 8 to 12 which was paid at such a lucrative rate that it was about 25% of his normal week's pay. Those mornings made a huge difference to our finances!

Whilst following DR to the letter might get the debts done quickest it doesn't work if you can't stick to it, so adjustments have to be made.

And I agree with ruadisneyfan2 - cancelling retirement savings, particularly if you have employer matching, is a huge step with implications for a very, very long time. You shouldn't lose the roof over your head now at the expense of your future, but it really should be just about the last thing to remove from the budget if at all possible.