Debt Dumpers 2026

[barkley]

I have 2 goals for this year. One is to pay off my car. This should happen in May. Once it is paid off then the only debt we have left is the mortgage. The other is to sign papers to build a new house. We have been looking but right now just saving as much as we can so hopefully by the spring/summer we will be able to start building.

Personal goals -- I would like to lose 10 pounds this year and get rid of the clutter we have in this house so when we do move it will be easier to pack and move.

great goals!

on the clutter-when you get to the point of moving I suggest putting anything you are torn about ridding yourself of into boxes that you tape shut and label 'misc'. set them in an easily accessible area of your new home. if you don't find yourself needing/wanting anything for 6 months (longer if Christmas or another holiday's items you're unsure on and you have'nt celebrated it yet since moving)-load them up and haul them off. we did this when we sold and ended up in a rental for 10 months before re-purchasing. we were settled in and the last thing I wanted to do was pull out stuff to clutter up my new nicely organized closets and cabinets with the stuff that had cluttered up my previous home (worked EXCEPTIONALY well I might add with stuff my kids were iffy on-if they did'nt ask me to pull it out for close to a year I knew we were home free).

 

[piglet1979]

great goals!

on the clutter-when you get to the point of moving I suggest putting anything you are torn about ridding yourself of into boxes that you tape shut and label 'misc'. set them in an easily accessible area of your new home. if you don't find yourself needing/wanting anything for 6 months (longer if Christmas or another holiday's items you're unsure on and you have'nt celebrated it yet since moving)-load them up and haul them off. we did this when we sold and ended up in a rental for 10 months before re-purchasing. we were settled in and the last thing I wanted to do was pull out stuff to clutter up my new nicely organized closets and cabinets with the stuff that had cluttered up my previous home (worked EXCEPTIONALY well I might add with stuff my kids were iffy on-if they did'nt ask me to pull it out for close to a year I knew we were home free).

I really need to do this. I have boxes from when I still lived at home with my mom that has moved from house to house (first with my mom then twice with DH). I know I should get rid of some of this stuff but can't. I have gotten rid of some of the Beanie Babies but I still have a lot. Others are the stuffed animals that were my favorite or my Cabbage Patch dolls. Now my hoarding paid off when DS needed a lai for some frat party he was going to. I had gone to Hawaii when I was in the marching band in high school and I still had the fake flower one I got there and one made of seashells. So he used those and didn't have to buy anything.

 

[Nettlelondon]

Part of the 60 Before 60 challenge of listing 60 things on eBay will involve attempting to sell some of the things that went in to a storage unit 10 years ago when we had to empty our house for some work to be done. The storage unit was supposed to be a very temporary thing. Oops. In our defence we have nowhere like a cellar, attic or garage at home - just one "junk" closet under the stairs so we have nowhere to store those things that only get used once or twice a year so the storage unit will likely be a permanent feature but it would be good to have a smaller one (with hopefully a smaller pricetag).

I suspect there are things in there that we have since bought again having forgotten that we own them already!

There is a lot of "stuff" that I would merrily get rid of but my DH is rather more of a collector/hoarder than I.

 

[LoveDaisy]

I have a box story. I’ve been in my house 18 years. Last year we did a major remodel. During the remodel we moved a lot of stuff and I found a box from when I moved in. It said misc. on the outside.

I was doing a massive declutter and I thought I haven’t needed what’s in here for 18 years and moved to my donate pile.

Curiosity got the best of me and opened the box which was carefully packed with acid free tissue paper. I then chicken out because I’m scared of mice and reclose the box.

My DH opens the box after all my donate it unopened, opened it and chicken out. Turns out it’s full of early pottery my aunt made. My aunt is featured in several museums and is well known. They are old like before she changed her name and started becoming known. They are now on display in my dining room.

If you find a box, open it before you trash it. You never know what’s in it.

 

[Twilghtsprkle]

well ahead of time find out what your insurance company offers/accepts for teen driver discounts. with ours (when ours was new driver age) there was an online class they took for one discount and if they took a more enhanced form of driver's training (schools don't offer it here-it's all private and you pay out of pocket) there was another. there was also the 'good student discount' (maintain a 3.0 gpa) that we had to send in periodic report cards for. the BIGGEST savings for us though was that our young driver decided not to get a license until age 18. we were fully willing at 16 but nerves and availability of other transportation made them not as eager as I/dh remember being (allot of their friends of the same age range also opted not to). insurance agent said the premium savings (on the increase portion) was something like 40% by waiting.

My kid just got her license today. I will find out how much insurance is soon. She took her test via her driving school and I can’t apply for the license until 6pm tonight so I will wait until everything is in the system before calling my insurance. We opted to have her just get it over with at 16 (well 16 and 4 months). You can get your license after holding a permit for 6 months or 4 months if you take a full driver’s course. We wanted her to get as much experience as possible before college because we didn’t want her to be a new driver commuting to college. As it is in our state she can’t even drive with her younger sister as a passenger in the car until she’s held the license for 6 months - only licensed drivers that have held a license for 4 years. No friends in the car for a year.

 

[AquaDame]

I'm not sure what industry your husband is in but I know for my husband in engineering it's actually been a lot of work with recruiters themselves reaching out. He actually just got a text last weekend from one he hadn't heard of in many years asking if he was interested in this other company. The income scale however was absolutely nowhere near what he is currently making and he's not interested in leaving his present company (he's been working there for now almost 4 years after working at his prior company for 15yrs that he left due to stagnation in his career).

This is my husband too, the lucky bugger! Pay scale elsewhere has him sitting tight at his current place, even though they've made his job increasingly difficult over the years by lowering staff levels. Everytime they try to hire it takes forever, and to be honest they can't seem to round up very good candidates. If I could go back in time knowing what I know now I'd ask my parents to get me a math tutor and go into engineering.

 

[LoveDaisy]

My kid just got her license today. I will find out how much insurance is soon. She took her test via her driving school and I can’t apply for the license until 6pm tonight so I will wait until everything is in the system before calling my insurance. We opted to have her just get it over with at 16 (well 16 and 4 months). You can get your license after holding a permit for 6 months or 4 months if you take a full driver’s course. We wanted her to get as much experience as possible before college because we didn’t want her to be a new driver commuting to college. As it is in our state she can’t even drive with her younger sister as a passenger in the car until she’s held the license for 6 months - only licensed drivers that have held a license for 4 years. No friends in the car for a year.

Good luck with insurance. I’m in the industry (we do research) the average increase to add a teen is usually anywhere 50-100% or $1000-4000 annually.

Factors include sex, grades, state, etc. hope that helps you budget.

 

[AquaDame]

This is what I'm preferring too. My coworkers are all like no no no. You pay the highest debt/highest APR first. That would be my car at 23.9%. But my coworkers also say I don't need an EF. If my fridge goes out or something like that happen, they say to either finance it at the store or just put it on a CC.

Honestly this is how we've chosen to do things. We don't see the point of having cash sitting around while we are paying interest. We pay all our bills and well over our minimums on debt, maximize our 401K contributions for the year, and then anything extra week to week from overtime or just not spending our estimate also goes to debt. If something breaks we just pay less to debt that month and keep going. If its too much, oh well, now we have an extra month or whatever of debt to keep pounding away at. Emergencies thankfully have been rare occurrences. Once we're out of debt we'll get an EF set up.

 

[LadybugsMum]

I have a box story. I’ve been in my house 18 years. Last year we did a major remodel. During the remodel we moved a lot of stuff and I found a box from when I moved in. It said misc. on the outside.

I was doing a massive declutter and I thought I haven’t needed what’s in here for 18 years and moved to my donate pile.

Curiosity got the best of me and opened the box which was carefully packed with acid free tissue paper. I then chicken out because I’m scared of mice and reclose the box.

My DH opens the box after all my donate it unopened, opened it and chicken out. Turns out it’s full of early pottery my aunt made. My aunt is featured in several museums and is well known. They are old like before she changed her name and started becoming known. They are now on display in my dining room.

If you find a box, open it before you trash it. You never know what’s in it.

This happened to me and my pictures from a trip to Europe. I had moved around so much that I had forgotten about the box of pictures. While on maternity leave I put them all in an album that my twins now like to look through. But there were definitely some things that moved around way too much that should have been let go long before they were.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

This is my husband too, the lucky bugger! Pay scale elsewhere has him sitting tight at his current place, even though they've made his job increasingly difficult over the years by lowering staff levels. Everytime they try to hire it takes forever, and to be honest they can't seem to round up very good candidates. If I could go back in time knowing what I know now I'd ask my parents to get me a math tutor and go into engineering.

Gosh yeah if only I was good at math I've been surrounded by engineers it seems like for forever. My sister did civil engineering and my husband and one of his sisters both did aerospace engineering (my husband does mechanical though and has his whole career).

My husband did luck out during the pandemic as our area has an engineering focus and it became competitive. He asked his existing company at that time (the one he had been at for 15yrs) if they would match the offer the new company would pay him but they said they could only meet halfway so he left and his new company put him in the position it would have taken 3-5yrs more at his past company. Funny enough a month after he started his new job his old one messaged him asking him if he would come back and they would then match and put him at the position it would have taken years to get to, he mulled it over but decided he liked his new company more plus he didn't much like how they handled it all. He went from power plants to airline fueling systems.

We've had talks in the few years he's been at this new company if he's liking it enough and he does really seem to enjoy it. It's hard if you don't like what you're doing but realistically can't go elsewhere and you're right the competence of new employees can have a big impact

 

[amalone1013]

I have a box story. We moved into my main childhood home in 1997. My parents finished the basement within the first year or so and left one end as a big storage area. My dad built shelves and it was always full, he was a pack rat. Pearl Harbor memorabilia (from when my parents visited on their honeymoon), the inventory list from his parents house when they passed and the siblings split stuff up, the old crib, the waterbed frame drawers his old stereo, old school stuff from me and my sister...

So in 2012 we were preparing for a garage sale and my mom was like, let's check some of this stuff to see if there is anything to get rid of. I found 2 boxes pushed way back under the shelves.

They were from when my parents packed up their first house. One says downstairs bathroom and has some dusty fake flowers, pictures, these boy and girl figurines which were creepy and became the joke at the sale... we did it at my grandparents and I kept taking them off the sale table and hiding them in the house for my grandma to find

The other box says Laundry room. Decorative items in the bathroom box makes some sense, but what would be in this one? My mom opened it and started laughing - it was a box of mostly dirty clothes. The house sold unexpectedly and they had to pack up quick and had thrown all the clothes in the laundry room in a box which got put downstairs and never opened.

It was like a time capsule. I was 6 and my sister 2 when we moved so 90s baby clothes, lots of color block vintage disney styled stuff that had been mine. My mom pulled out PURPLE STIRRUP PANTS with black polka dots, and a purple sweater with an enormous panda graphic on it and was like, oh my god I used to wear this to work and think I was fashionable!

 

[Twilghtsprkle]

Good luck with insurance. I’m in the industry (we do research) the average increase to add a teen is usually anywhere 50-100% or $1000-4000 annually.

Factors include sex, grades, state, etc. hope that helps you budget.

I called in and was able to add her. Actually wasn’t too bad. She is a girl so that’s already cheaper. We had already been carrying the third car on the policy (my sister gave it as a gift). $600 extra for adding her per half year.

Not that she’ll be able to drive much yet. Sounds like the school has no parking spots available.

 

[Tygerlilly]

If you find a box, open it before you trash it. You never know what’s in it.

This is how I found all my grandma's kitchen stuff. All her Pyrex (the original good version), her flour/sugar/etc jars, cake stands, etc. Several boxes that got stashed in my parents garage and forgotten. I now use her bowls almost daily, DD8 had her birthday cake proudly displayed on the cake stand, and the canisters are holding all my baking supplies on my counter. I cried when I opened the boxes.

 

[barkley]

This is how I found all my grandma's kitchen stuff. All her Pyrex (the original good version), her flour/sugar/etc jars, cake stands, etc. Several boxes that got stashed in my parents garage and forgotten. I now use her bowls almost daily, DD8 had her birthday cake proudly displayed on the cake stand, and the canisters are holding all my baking supplies on my counter. I cried when I opened the boxes.

for sure go through (if not dangerous health wise on mold/rodent droppings) any boxes you've not personally packed and labeled b/c you don't know what a family member may have squirreled away. I told dh we had to shake every book/open every dvd case of his mom's b/c I've known of some older people (esp. who move into assisted living where 'strangers' are coming into their living space on the regular) to stash some cash/important papers as a theft detergent (w/my mom I knew he squirrel away place was under the kid's pictures in photo frames which used to be a common place for folks to stash stock and bond certificates b/c they knew if fire/flood...happened they were always going to grab the family photos first).

p.s. I love my mom's old pyrex-that stuff is durable!

 

[LadybugsMum]

Y’all cross your fingers for me. I have a technical interview tomorrow at 11 for a good position.