Debt Dumpers 2025

[afan]

My parents made homemade bread this past weekend. It was so, so good. So much better tasting than store bought. I know there's not much difference health wise becuase it's bread. But I'd be curious to know the price difference.

Homemade is so much better than store bought. It's not as processed and doesn't have crap in it.

With sales It's probably cheaper per loaf buy only if you both continue making bread to use up the ingredients and you eat the bread. Not a savings if the commitment isn't there.

French baguettes are often proved in the very cold conditions but for a long time - 48 hours is not uncommon

I would love to learn to bake these but I know I wouldn't commit to it as often as I should/would need to. It's on the list for someday so I can stop buying the serviceable rolls/bread at the store. Fresh baguettes is one of the few things I like/miss about Paris.

 

[pblack]

A tip for those that maybe struggle to see their accomplishments and how budgeting/discipline can really affect your life - keep a spreadsheet of your goals and then at the end of the year (or more often) update those goals to show how much you've accomplished. As i've been reworking my bills spreadsheet today and adding/deleting things I decided to add my 2025 goals/accomplishments to my goals tab and just reading back through my goals from 2019 (when I started keeping track and I believe joined this thread) until now....I realize we've actually accomplished quite a bit. 2019 and 2020 is when we really started buckling down on our CC debt and student loans and seeing how much we've paid off over the last 6 years is a big morale booster. Plus whenever you're feeling discouraged you can look back at those goals/accomplishments to see how far you've come.

 

[Tygerlilly]

Update: the bread wasn't a total fail, but it was definitely not a big win. Ah well, I can only improve from here.

In other news, the random things I threw together to make a stroganoff-type meal turned out amazing. So I'll take that win!

 

[firefly_ris]

Thanks for the thoughts all.

The main thing I was concerned about was if throwing a lump sum makes sense due to our interest rate vs what that is making in market accounts. I have a sum that is liquid, spread out across a number of different types of accounts but getting an average annual return of 14-16% in my brokerage, around 4% in HYSA and then some other assets. Our mortgage rate is 3.75%. So lowering the overall balance is very enticing to me, but then I'm also concerned about laying too much down and losing that cash liquidity.

So it might be a better idea instead of a large sum all at once, to just say in 2026 I will commit to X number of additional principal payments. This way I'm still making a small extra dent instead of having a massive amount of equity but less liquidity (and flexibility). Then after the kids are closer to done with college I can re-assess where the balance is down to at that point and consider a larger sum at that time.