Debt Dumpers 2026

[pblack]

I know it's only December first, but there's already been talks of 2026 goals in the 2025 Debt Dumpers Thread. So as 2025 comes to a close, I figured I'd go ahead and get the Debt Dumpers 2026 thread going. Please continue to post your 2025 recaps on the 2025 board, but as you're working on your goals for 2026 post them here!

If you're new to the debt dumping thread, welcome! We're a friendly bunch who encourage each other in their wins and losses. No negativity allowed here! Most of us post a mixture of our debt dumping goals and personal goals, but it's not a requirement! Please post whatever you feel comfortable with and let us help cheer you on.

 

[Tygerlilly]

Thank you for getting 2026 all set up! I can't believe this year is almost over.

I'm continuing to fine tune my plans for 2026 and hope to have that solidified by the end of the week.

Can't wait to see what else everyone is looking forward to accomplishing in the new year!

 

[WDW_fan_in_TX]

Thank you for setting this up. Look forward to reading what everyone's goals and plans are.

 

[barkley]

2026

I'm looking at my 2026 budget and still tweaking. part of it I won't be able to figure out until after (a) my 2025 interest totals are known, and (b) our 2026 social security statement arrives. after I get those I am going to take the numbers and run a rough draft of our 2026 taxes b/c when we file in 2027 I will have hit the magic age of 65 and will qualify for the senior deduction. fingers crossed I might not have to budget for estimated taxes.

 

[Tygerlilly]

2026 Goals

I think I finally have everything written down and finalized. I need to input some more details (like balances) once we get to January, but for now I want to get my list down.

Financial
• Pay off all credit cards
• Increase 401k contributions
• Build EF to $3000
• Replace DH car
• Pay 6 month car insurance policy at once instead of monthly
• Sinking Fund set up
- Holidays
- Birthdays
- Camper
- Donations
- Yearly expenses

Personal
• Meal plan and prep
• Half marathon training for Feb, October, and November
• Read more
• Attend more craft shows as a vendor

 Home
• Finish bedroom makeovers
• Downstairs bathroom makeover
• Front and side porches
• Back yard fence
• Garden beds
• Purge unused items

 Travel
• Long weekend trips (3-4 days)
• 2 or 3 week long trips (5-17 days)



Okay, so for some explanation on some things. Most financial things will start getting accomplished faster now that I'm back to working more hours. I'm trying to pick up as many hours as I can this month to get us back to good standing on some things. DH's car replacement will come from the money he gets from his dad's house selling. It's currently contingent, so let's hope it goes thru this time.

Personal goals are pretty self explanatory. Home goals are a continuation on some of this year's. We got the younger two rooms switched, but I still need to paint our son's room. And the oldest daughter wants to do something different with hers. The color she picked when we moved in 2 years ago is really dark and we want to brighten and make it more fun as she's moving into the tween years. The side deck situation will probably happen first. That's the door we use most often and it's literally concrete steps into the door. It's tight and steep and slick when it rains/snows. We found a place that has a prefab porch for $700 we just need to dig the footers, so that will be towards the top of my list once the credit cards are done.

Travel, we're trying to focus on long weekend trips that we can take around middle daughters gymnastics meets. She has several around the state and if we need a hotel for one night anyway, we might as well try for 2 nights and do some fun things while we're there. We can get into children's, art, and science museums for free with the variety of passes we have. A camper is also high on my list this year since my oldest is a 4th grader and has the national park pass for free and next year my middle kiddo gets it for free. There's TONS of camping around and most are pretty inexpensive so I want to make that a priority for how we vacation the next couple years. Being able to shop and then cook in the camper/fire will save us a ton over hotel living and eating out, even if we did get better about packing food/shopping when we get there for cold foods and microwave meals. I do want to make sure we make it to PA in the spring or so because my grandma seems to be doing not as well as we hoped and I want to be able to see her before she passes, but again, they have AMAZING campgrounds there if we're able to get the camper purchased before we plan the trip. The only other trip we really want to take is to the beach and for that we will definitely get a hotel or rental house/condo.


Can't wait to get 2026 going and actually knock out some of these things! I had a huge mental shift over the last couple months and I'm really trying to get our family into a better position and DH is happy to chug along with me with achieve our goals.

 

[pblack]

I may add more as I go along, but for right now I can't think of anything else to go on my lists.

2026 Financial Goals:

• Get home equity loan down to $15k (which means paying about $500 a month)
• Pay off my new wedding ring and treadmill purchase - needs to be done by April (Roughly $1800)
• Add $4k to our emergency savings to hit 6 month goal (Will need to add $700 to my auto contributions to hit $4k)

2026 Personal Goals:

• Exercise - use the treadmill at least 20 times a month. (I'm hoping setting a monthly goal will work better for me than a weekly goal.)
• Donate monthly to my favorite cat charity/shelter (Aiming for $50-100/mo. This could technically be a financial goal also, but i'm choosing to put it as a personal goal.)
• Replace patio cover
• Finish creating bar top out of old fence posts
• Buy a grill gazebo
• Take weekend/long weekend trips to at least 3 new places (My DH has really crappy time off with this job he started, so i'm aiming for weekend getaways to keep my sanity.)

At this point I definitely have more personal goals than financial goals, but i'm ok with that. We're at a point in our life that the debts that we do have are biggies and won't be paid down quickly (mortgage, solar loan, home equity loan). The home equity loan is the one we owe the least on right now which is why i'm choosing to throw extra towards it. If we get a tax return this year I may also throw all/most of it at that, but we'll see what happens. Because those debts are biggies and won't be paid down quickly, that's also why i'm focused on enjoying life and turning our house/backyard into something that we love.

 

[Tygerlilly]

i'm focused on enjoying life and turning our house/backyard into something that we love.

THIS! We pay so much for our homes that I feel the same way. I'm trying to do more fun things at home, make it comfy, enjoy the yard and things we have. Make it a 90s childhood full of every day fun instead of all the extravagant stuff we're exposed to online every day.

 

[FreeTime]

Delete

 

[firefly_ris]

2026 Goals

Financial
Like last year, these are just my own personal goals and don't include my husband's contributions into his retirement account or the other brokerage account he messes with. All of our assets are combined as a marital unit and the overall big picture is calculated that way, but these are just the goals that come from the portion of the household income I provide.

1. Max out 2026 IRA
2. Make 4 extra principal payments on mortgage
3. Invest $500 per child into each custodial brokerage account
4. Re-assess where EF funds sit and are distributed, move things around if needed to maximize returns
5. Shop around to see if any better deals for car and homeowner's insurance

Personal

1. Lose 5 pounds
2. Read 5 books
3. Paint 10 watercolor paintings
4. Pilates video 3x week
5. Remain consistent in personal financial habits (ie don't start slacking off on frugality, don't start eating out a bunch just because I am now personal chauffeur to 3 busy teen schedules, etc)

I did make a dent but didn't meet my weight loss goal for 2025 or my reading goal. So I'm keeping these more attainable this year, with the hope that I can exceed it. I added watercolor painting to the list since it's something I enjoy doing but this year was so incredibly busy with home projects and kids extracurricular activities that this fell by the wayside and I barely made time to paint at all, so I want to be more intentional with carving out time for that.

 

[mmbrad02]

I have lurked on this thread for many years and always think I’ll jump in “next time” and then next thing I know the year is half over and I’ve never posted. And I love the sense of community this thread feels like! So, here goes for 2026! First off, my name is Melissa, I’m 45, and live in a pretty low cost of living area. For reference DH and I both work full time (I’m an Accountant, he’s an IT Director) and we have one DD15. Our finances have been better some years, more of a struggle in others, but while I think my DH and I have a decent handle on our finances, I always feel there is more room for growth and improvement and motivation! And it always seems like there is always a bill to pay, so I love the accountability of this thread!

(and I tend to ramble so there is probably way too much explanation on this)

Financial Goals:

• Payoff 0% Interest Capital One Venture One CC – We have $846 remaining that I’m trying to knock out asap. This was a $1800 Insulin pump charge (my DH and I both have Type 1 diabetes) and a $1300 car repair. We are paying $350 a month from our regular income toward it so not worried about the payoff exceeding the deadline BUT I want it gone (see my second goal) so I’ve also been putting my part time Ebay sales towards it too to pay it off faster. I had been using the part time Ebay sales towards our vacation fund but ultimately decided I needed to be a big girl and pay my actual bills off before I grew the vacation funds faster.
• Our mortgage will be paid off in March 2027, Yay!, but we also have a HELOC that currently has a balance of $15K on it. We currently pay $360 a month from our regular income to this, but when Goal 1 is paid off, we will (hopefully) sink that whole payment to the HELOC as well. The HELOC was originally opened for $10K when we did new vinyl side several years ago, we did pay that down to $0, but then we increased the HELOC to $20K when we did our new deck and new HVAC (deck was scheduled to have major repairs/rebuilt and was in progress, when my car transmission went completely out, and then the HVAC died two weeks after that. It was not a great time – and did I mention the HVAC went out the day returned from a 7 day Disney trip – which was paid for but still left a sinking feeling in my stomach of how much money we spent and what we were facing)
• Of the current $15k, $4500 of it (bear with me because initially this is not going to make good financial sense) was a purchase last week of a used car – currently a spare for us but long term the plan is it to be the daily driver for DD. The car is a 2010 so financing it was a higher interest rate than our HELOC. The plan is to pay that off with our tax refund check, so it won’t be there long, but the opportunity knocked for the car (it’s only got 55K miles on it, all the bells and whistles, and we know the history on it and felt it was good fit for our needs). Should we have been able to pay cash for it? Sure. Technically we could have. But it makes me nervous to make bigger purchases and worry about what could happen later (hence the deck/transmission/HVAC issue last summer)
• We also have another 0% Wells Fargo CC for living room furniture we purchased in early 2025. The balance has to be paid off by October 2026 but we should be on track to pay it off sooner. The sooner the better The balance is currently $585 and we pay $200 a month out of our regular income. Again, wanting to free up that regular payment toward other things.
• Start setting aside money for a vehicle down payment – see goals below for this to make more sense. While we are both driving vehicles that are paid for, we have been doing a lousy job of setting aside money toward the next one. We are human.
• We used to pay our auto insurance semi annually but this past fall our property tax increased pretty significantly so I ended up only paying 3 months of our auto insurance. Not the end of the world but I need to do the math and increase our weekly savings for this so when the next bill rolls around, we can get back to semi annual payments.

Upcoming Expenses/Thoughts:

I know loans like a HELOC may be frowned upon to some and I know the interest isn’t great, but we purchased our house from a Master Commissioner sale (bank repossession) in 2004 for a “cheap” price and its been a labor of love. The house was not finished on the inside and we did 90% of the work ourselves. When we bought the house we only borrowed what the house cost, but it needed work and we have slowly done a lot of things without borrowing any money – but we have additional things we want to do still – and since the house is almost paid off, I guess what I am trying to say is I’m not ashamed to have the HELOC since I felt like the initial house purchase was quite frugal. We would like to finish our entire basement, but have ultimately settled on finishing half and leaving half unfinished for storage. I would love to get started on this in 2026 but time will tell. DH is very handy and we had hoped to do this project ourselves (like 20 years ago!)but realistically a lot of it is hard for a one person job ( I assist but I am not very helpful when it comes to lifting big sheets of drywall and such! ) and we both work and have lives so we will also see how this turns out.

• We also want to purchase a nicer family vehicle in 2026/2027, which is also a reason we want to get some of these bills paid off. My car is a 2017 Ford Escape (purchased used in 2020) and for the first three years it served me well – zero issues and I found it to be a fun little car for my daily commute. But in 2024 the transmission went out and that was a $6500 repair. Then summer 2025 a rear engine gasket (maybe? Car lingo is not my thing ) went out and that was a $1300 repair. We thought about trading it both times, but neither time did we feel ready to jump into another payment so we didn’t. Now the plan is that we have the 2010 spare car in the event anything else goes wrong, but I will drive my Escape for another year since we have invested so much money into it, and then when DD gets her license she will have the 2010 as her daily driver and we will trade my Escape in on something else. Originally she was just inheriting the Escape but after all the issues we didn’t want to go that route. DH drives a 2012 truck that he would so love to trade in on something newer but 1) trucks are so expensive and 2) his current truck is truly in excellent condition so….
• Like the HELOC, I am personally not afraid to use 0% APR deals. I am very strict with myself about paying them off on time or early. Also I like reaping the rewards that often comes with them – this week I opened a Capital One Quicksilver card because my Escape and the 2010 Fusion both need tires (we were aware of the tire situation when we bought it). We will finance them for 15 months with the card, get the $200 introductory bonus thing for spending $500 in the first 3 months, and give ourselves some grace to pay for the expense. I know this isn’t a good plan for everyone but overall it works for us And yes I’m just paying off two =from my goals to turn around and do it again but… Im not perfect With winter here, I do not feel safe in my Escape tires, and the Fusion tires are no better – they are dryrotted in some areas and 10 years old, in a car that was not driven regularly.

Other Goals:

• I don’t have an exact plan mapped out for this but I want to continue (and perhaps ramp it up a bit) teaching my daughter be make good financial decisions. Right now she doesn’t make bad ones as she doesn’t have any income to spend but it’s coming. When she does need money from us for an outing with 4H, school, etc, she does truly make good decisions I feel. She gets me tickled when she gets exasperated by the cost of a drink at the movies, etc. I was raised in a quite frugal environment (but never felt deprived) and I want to make sure she sees good decision making skills from DH and I as well.
• Again, no good map yet, but DH and I charge EVERYTHING (vending machine to electric bill) on our Capital One Venture card so we can reap the travel rewards. We pay the bill off completely each month, but I do think there are many areas we could reel ourselves in on. I would like to lower the total of that bill by $500 a month (I would say $1K but baby steps) . While our big picture spending is overall decent to me – we both drive paid off cars, small mortgage, etc, we have gotten very relaxed in every day life. We both tend to eat lunches out, sometimes I do well to get groceries bought, much less really watch my costs and use coupons anymore, etc. These are areas I want to clean up. Hopefully I can come back with more specific goals for this eventually.
• I started dabbling in Ebay reselling back in January 2024. We had booked our Disney trip for 2024 and I wanted to do it nicely – and paid for. We stayed at Beach Club, 7 days, etc. I had sold randomly on Ebay in the past but never consistently. I started going to my local Goodwill on Sundays when the weekly tag color items were $.99 to find things to flip (well, that was after I sold everything in my house first). Then I ventured further from home to the nearest Bins store and buying more items to resell. I truly enjoy this hobby – basically a hobby that pays for itself, gives me a little in return, and I can do it any hour of the day. I will never quit my day job for it but I’m making about $300 a month in profit that I’ve been either putting towards travel or most recently, bills. I currently have about 180 items listed; in 2026 I would like to consistently have 200 items listed.

Well, if you made it to the end, thank you for reading. I can't wait to chat with everyone through out the year!

 

[Tygerlilly]

I have lurked on this thread for many years and always think I’ll jump in “next time” and then next thing I know the year is half over and I’ve never posted. And I love the sense of community this thread feels like! So, here goes for 2026!

Welcome!!! Glad to have you with us!

 

[pblack]

I have lurked on this thread for many years and always think I’ll jump in “next time” and then next thing I know the year is half over and I’ve never posted.