Debt Dumpers - 2017

[ruadisneyfan2]

Dayvewc, I'm so sorry for your loss. Sending another NJ hug out to you.
It's good that you were able to be there and for your own peace of mind to know he was surrounded by loved ones.

I lost my grandmother in late Sept and though my job grants 3 days of funeral leave, my parents made the arrangements which left me quite a lot of time. I found what helped me most was going through old pictures and creating a power point slide show to music. I had planned to have it playing on dh's laptop on a small table in a corner at the post funeral luncheon for anyone who wished to view it. It turned out the private room we were in had a big screen tv and everyone was able to watch it while we waited for our food. Considering I threw it together in 2 days, it turned out amazing. Over the next few days I tweaked it, added more pics and another song, then converted it dvd.
It's so beautiful but then it made me cry more that I wished I had made this video while she was alive; she would have thoroughly enjoyed it.
Anyway, I found it to be a constructive way to work through my grief.

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

Mildly annoyed with DH. He took a call from a lady affiliated with his union and set up an appointment with her on Wednesday night for her to "explain" his union death benefits. Ugh. #aintbuyingnoinsurancepolicylady

#aintbuyingnoinsurancepolicylady


So true. Makes you want to say, "Just mail us the details. We can read." Men can be so spineless at times, dh included. I walked into our living room once when ds20 was a baby to find dh had invited a big, creepy looking door to door salesman inside to sit on our couch and discuss buying encyclopedia sets whose profits would benefit inner city children. Dh felt it would be helpful to have for when ds reached school-age. Yes, Honey, that's a nice cause but with the internet growing we don't need any encyclopedias and please don't invite total strangers in who knock on our door.

Be strong dadtosam!!

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

Well, I think my goals for 2017 will now be changed. Originally, I wanted to really focus on paying down our debt (between us, we have 4 credit cards and 3 lines of credit), and adding to our emergency account and our USD account (we are Canadian, but we both set up US accounts with our banks that allow us to transfer money from CAD to USD through online banking. We started each transferring $50 CAD each payday (bi-weekly for my boyfriend, weekly for me) - which doesn't work out to a ton because of the terrible exchange rate right now, but it added up! We were able to go on our 9 night WDW trip this month and pay for all our food and the majority of our souvenirs with cash we had saved! We only put a few things on a credit card because I forgot my wallet in our hotel one day and we didn't want to waste time going back to get it. We have a trip to California next week, so the leftover cash in my wallet will help pay for our food/souvenirs there.)

However, while we were on our WDW trip, the half marathon my boyfriend was supposed to run was cancelled due to thunderstorms. One of the options was to transfer your registration to another runDisney event, so it looks like we will be going back to California in November for the Avengers half marathon (it falls on a long weekend for us, and it's an event my boyfriend has wanted to participate in for awhile). So, we'll have to pay for flights and hotel for that trip, but we're planning on making that one as cheap as possible.

Also, and this is really exciting, my boyfriend proposed to me while we were in Animal Kingdom last Tuesday! We haven't figured out dates or locations or anything, but we have decided we want to get married in 2018 - so that means we need to save/pay for a lot of wedding things in 2017.

I think I would be very happy if we could end the year at the exact same point we're at right now. That would mean paying off our November flights and our flights for our already planned WDW trip next January, and our hotels for both trips, as well as any wedding items we buy, deposits we make, etc.

Congrats on your engagement!!

 

[fifthdimensiondweller]

One thing i do is set my account to do is automatically move $100 from checking to savings every pay period. T

Thats a REALLY good idea! That way we don't even see the money!

 

[DisneyMandC]

$82 out to the student loan payment this morning...

I feel like I've spent a crazy amount of money this month. We had some residual Christmas giving to do, so some of it was that. I also took my dog to the vet on Friday, in keeping with everyone else on this board! Not too bad, but I purchased him some dental treats there to help him avoid plaque and tartar on his teeth. He ate the treat fine in the vet's office, but when I went to give him another one last night, he spent an hour and a half fighting the treat, barking at it, whining... he is a very odd Golden Retriever that I could write a comedy show on. Fortunately I called them and they said I could return them, so that will be $43 back in my pocket. Which is good since I just spent another $60 online ordering him his joint supplements and probiotics. Yes, if you were wondering, this dog is my child and is extremely spoiled. He definitely eats better than I do!

In other potentially moneysaving news, it looks like there is a very real possibility that Comcast is coming to my area!!! I know this may not seem moneysaving, but I live way out in the country where our only TV options are Directv or Dish, and our internet options are... well, limited. Literally. I pay $112/mo for a Sprint internet card that only gives me 30 GB of data. Which means after I stream a couple tv shows, I'm basically out of data. On top of that, I pay $102/mo for Directv. Keep in mind we only have one television in our house. All of my neighbors are in the same boat. Recently, however, one of them discovered that Comcast just came about 2 miles from our road. She stopped one of the Comcast representatives and asked him what it would take to get Comcast to our street. He said it would be fairly easy now that they're closer, they just need to make sure we'd have enough people to sign up. So far, we have over 100 people who have signed a petition saying they would purchase Comcast if it came to our area. We are hoping this will be sufficient to get them to our road, and should know soon!

 

[mco65]

Comcast.. thanks for reminding me.. gonna cut my cable/internet bill some.. I currently pay ~230 per month.. i think i can cut that in half by dumping all the premium channels that ONLY I watch. no more Game of Thrones..

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

how does this work? just note what you want to pay, keep updating here.. and use this place for motivation..

OR better yet, can i get someone to pay off my 5k credit card that was used to finance our most recent trip to WDW???

Well, the threads keep continuing from year to year. Sometimes it just gets chatty because we've all been here so long we're growing roots. lol Maybe in your spare time read the 2016 thread to read real strategies for paying down debt. I may have even rambled on earlier in this 2017 thread.

I joined in 2013 and followed the Dave Ramsey Snowball method. It has made a world of difference in our financial situation & attitude. I paid off all our credit cards since then (a ridonculous amount) and paid off dh's truck 6 months early. Besides that, it has taught me to really look at our incoming $ vs. outgoing $ and live within our means. Prior to that I never really sat down and made a budget, never paid attention to what is leftover, charged way too much on credit cards with the attitude that we earn a pretty good income so we "deserve" to treat ourselves good, etc. I kept sending a little extra here & there but in reality, barely treading water & slowly sinking.
With the snowball method, it's a very methodical system so I have a list for each paycheck to know exactly what bills those funds will pay and anything leftover (after a small cushion) all goes toward the 1 particular debt that I'm attacking.

Now I'm working on a Parent Plus Loan from ds20's one semester of college. Yes, I should hand this over to ds20 since it really is HIS debt but unfortunately, he is no longer in college. He's been working PT and paying a smaller student loan, his car insurance & a small car payment for a car we bought him so he could transfer to a community college locally, which he ended up not attending. Grrr....that's another story.
Since the parent plus loan is in my name and I have an excellent FICO score, I'm a bit reluctant to leave it in the hands of someone so young.

To add to that, the near 7% interest rate of the Federal Student Loan program was making me bonkers so I paid the 2% balance transfer fee and split it on my & dh's Disney visa accounts using the blank checks they mail us. So we have 0% until Oct to pay them back. Dh's will be done in early March and mine by mid June. Of course that's The Plan for now. I like to allow a few extra months in case something comes up that derails us. (Like ds not being able to keep up his car payments.)
The only reason I chose to work on dh's half first is that his regular interest rate something like 14.25% and mine is slightly lower, 13.25%. They were roughly the same amount so I had to find some reason to choose one over the other. lol.
If it gets paid off early, so be it. I will start attacking the next debt which is our Home Equity loan to put a small office addition on our home which was previously a screened-in back porch. In was rarely used but as an office we use it very often. Dh pleaded for years to do this and I was reluctant but now I'm glad we did.

Anyway, if you google Dave Ramsey snowball you will get a more concise explanation than my rambling. lol

Welcome to the group and good luck!

 

[mco65]

Well the Comcast call didn't go well. My commitment is not UP until May so i have to wait until then to slash that bill..

In the mean time, today i closed out a bank account that I NO LONGER use.. ($10/month fee) plus i closed a PO BOX that i used for that account ($140/year).. that's over $20 per month.. not much but i bet i can find some more small leaks in my finances..

Thanks for taking to time to explain all that ruadisneyfan2. I am familiar with Dave Ramsey.. but its always good to refresh..

 

[s3058]

Sorry for your loss @dayvewc.

I knocked off another 80 today and hoping to do another 30 later this week, added to the 50 I did last week I'm currently at:

1670
-80 (savings)
-50 (savings)
-----------------------------
1540

Also OT, but its great to hear that so many of you take real proper care of your pets! I love hearing about happy healthy animals because so many don't do it.

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

Well the Comcast call didn't go well. My commitment is not UP until May so i have to wait until then to slash that bill..

In the mean time, today i closed out a bank account that I NO LONGER use.. ($10/month fee) plus i closed a PO BOX that i used for that account ($140/year).. that's over $20 per month.. not much but i bet i can find some more small leaks in my finances..

Thanks for taking to time to explain all that ruadisneyfan2. I am familiar with Dave Ramsey.. but its always good to refresh..

UUUGGGHH! I despise bank fees. I really do everything in my power to avoid them.

 

[mco65]

UUUGGGHH! I despise bank fees. I really do everything in my power to avoid them.

When i originally opened this account (some 10 years ago) it didn't have any fees.. ZERO.. but about 3 or 4 years ago they started charging $10 per month.. might be even $12.. but at the time i still needed/used the account. For the past year i have simply kept it because of the convenience of it being close but i was constantly moving money over from my primary account just to pay the monthly fee.. ugh!

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

Our former bank was that way too. We finally canned them around 2 yrs ago and switched to our current bank that has pretty much 0 fees unless you're overdrawn.
I hated to dump them because we were with them over 20 yrs, the account # was easy to remember, and they are probably 10 branches in our hometown. Never more than a mile away in any direction but really if the balance dipped below $100, even if it was 99.99 for 1 day then back up again, they would charge the $15 fee. Screw that.

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

When i originally opened this account (some 10 years ago) it didn't have any fees.. ZERO.. but about 3 or 4 years ago they started charging $10 per month.. might be even $12.. but at the time i still needed/used the account. For the past year i have simply kept it because of the convenience of it being close but i was constantly moving money over from my primary account just to pay the monthly fee.. ugh!

JMHO, but the key to staying motivated is to keep seeing progress. So the same time each month when you would normally transfer $ to pay the fees, send the same amount to pay toward whatever bill you're attacking. Every little bit helps.

 

[Shmily1]

Have you used undebt.it? I just heard of it and was wondering if it was useful.

 

[Ngwira]

Window loan is down to $4400 from $7200 in July 2016! We are making progress by paying $300 a month, though the minimum is now only $48. DH agreed that part of our tax refund is going to it. First pay of 2017 is this Friday. Hoping it's a nice check.

 

[mco65]

Dammit, thanks for reminding me about taxes.. i expect to be paying in.. no refund.

I did a quick search on undebt.it.. looks legit.. i would caution anyone putting in acct #s but as long as they don't ask for those..

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

Window loan is down to $4400 from $7200 in July 2016! We are making progress by paying $300 a month, though the minimum is now only $48. DH agreed that part of our tax refund is going to it. First pay of 2017 is this Friday. Hoping it's a nice check.

Great job! Minimums keep people in debt forever and that one is extremely low. What's that, 1%? Sheesh, that should be illegal. It would be time for new windows again by the time it would be paid off.
At this pace you could probably be done by next July.

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

Dammit, thanks for reminding me about taxes.. i expect to be paying in.. no refund.

I did a quick search on undebt.it.. looks legit.. i would caution anyone putting in acct #s but as long as they don't ask for those..

I agree about putting in account numbers. If it's any consolation, the so called "experts" say that it's actually better to owe at tax time. By getting a refund it's means we overpaid all year long and gave the government an interest free loan. I completely understand that but I still choose to overpay and get a refund. Maybe someday when we have plenty of $$ in the bank and can just write a check stress-free for what we owe, I will adjust my withholding so we're not overpaying.

 

[Aurora_Australis]

Sold a nice dress I no longer wear and the kennel the dog wont use so $90 in my pocket that should cover some unexpected spending this pay period.

On the theme of dogs and vets, whilst our tripmwas only $109, if he won't stop licking at a benign drowth on his paw and let it heal, $400 next pay to put him under and cut it off

 

[Sajchinook2015]

Is it too late to join? I need to learn how to create a budget then stick with it. I need to pay off credit card debt and start saving for a different car. Sounds like the 2016 thread as some good ideas/advice. I will have to go find it.