can i bet your group pet?

[mm project]

I followed a link on thenest to you here. We need serious help! As it stands today, we have $17,346 in cc debt, student loans, a car payment, a personal loan, a baby and regular monthly expenses.

It is so depressing.

Our budget is on my work computer (i am home with a sick baby) and can post it tomorrow.

But, will you help us? We need to get this knocked out asap.

As of now, we lno longer use credir cards, use cash only, have a $1000 in savings. Our car will be paid off next october. The personal loan will be paid off 3 years from this month.

We contribute 3% to dh's company program to get the match. I do 4% and get 4% from my company, i am 33 dh is 32. We have about $10,000 in retirement.

We are not doing so hot. The good news is that we had a couple little windfalls earlier this year and got about $20,000 of debt paid off. We were actually down to only owing $7,000 but due to some unfortuanate misguidance by our accountant for taxes, we had to put about $7000 on our cc to pay this year

In a nutshell, thats where we are. Can you help?

[ijack]

We need your entire budget

[mm project]

I will add that about $9000 of it is on 0% cc until next august.

The debt is spread over 5 cards. The lowest has $300 on it

[heygrey]

we can offer fantastic advice and then you can help yourself by putting it to practice :-)

post your budget tomorrow when you can and we'll help you "find" money.

the first thing i would suggest doing today while you're home is calling around to lower things like insurance rates, cell phone bills, internet bills, etc, etc.

the second thing is to take a long hard look at your priorities and what you consider necessities. can you cut something like cable and watch netflix instead?

[Deleted]

We can help, tomorrow, when you post your budget. It's kind of hard to tell you where you can cut without it.

That said, you have taken the right steps, you have a small e-fund and are no longer living on cards. That's a good start! It sounds like you're in a good place to do a debt snowball of sorts.

[downtoearth]

If you can post your budget tomorrow, that would help.

Otherwise, do you have gym memberships, cable TV, or eat out a lot? I think when we cut out just gym memberships and cable TV we went from an paying an extra $120/month to paying $8 per month for Netflix.

If you do that combined with eating out $50 less per month, you might get almost an extra $200/month to pay toward your cc debt. I'd actually probably put $200/month into an e-fund for at least 5 months so you had a couple thousand in savings and then pay all of that plus any extra from your monthly budget into the cc after that.

Plus, if you work, I used to pay a ridiculous amount per month for daycare for my first. It was good care, but when I started looking around, I realized I could basically cut that in half and still have someone who was licensed, wonderful, and loved my kid. You might want to consider re-looking at childcare - even if it's hard emotionally for you to change it.

[mm project]

May 17, 2012 14:02:01 GMT -5 @crackhabit said:

bet my group pet what?

I just caught my typo. But i cant edit it. Sorry

[mrssandro]

May 17, 2012 14:02:01 GMT -5 @crackhabit said:

bet my group pet what?

I was going to point out the same thing. I read it a few times and I am still not sure what she meant in her subject line.

[heygrey]

May 17, 2012 14:02:01 GMT -5 @crackhabit said:

bet my group pet what?

i was also wondering this.

[BAMFMrsB]

Post your budget tomorrow. We'll need to see:

INCOME

minus

Housing (Mortgage or rent)
Car payments
Loans (CCs or personal)
Insurance
Food (Groceries & Dining out)
Phone
Electricity
Gas
Water and sewer
Cable
Children/Pets
Entertainment
Personal Care

etc etc etc.

[mm project]

Ok, i found our budget in an email. Here is where we are. (I feel so naked. I am shaking so bad! And im embarrassed)

Dhs pay -$2500 (sometimes more if he has overtime, but this is minimum)
My pay - $2300

Both pay is after health insurance, retirement contribution and 5% automatically going to savings.

$40- cc#1 with $320 on it
$40 - cc#2 with $1900
$120 - cc#3 with $5800
$83 - cc#4 with $3400
$100 - cc#5 with $6000

Life insurance for dh $44
Life for me $47
Roth savings $25
Personal loan $585 (paid off in 3 years)
Gas/electric $200
Water softner and ro $56
City water $65
Verizon (cells and internet) $160
Student loan #1 $84
Student loan #2 $125
Student loan #3 $165
Car $250 (paid off in 16 months)
House $858
Car insurance $114 (full coverage for both cars)
Auto fuel $500
Groceries/eaing out/diapers/ hc, etc $700 ( in cash broken in to $175/week)

There are time my check are higher. Student loan #3 will be eligibale for loan repayment next year (hopefully)
No daycare expenses at this time. It will be $200 in august.

We are pretty screwed huh?

[heygrey]

oooh.

"pet project."

got it.

[mm prject]

May 17, 2012 14:03:18 GMT -5 @mm project said:

May 17, 2012 14:02:01 GMT -5 @crackhabit said:

bet my group pet what?

I just caught my typo. But i cant edit it. Sorry

I meant your group pet project

[pugz]

Is a second job a possibility for either one of you? Maybe waiting tables or working at Target on the weekends or something? I think some extra income would help a lot here.

[bunch]

No, you're not screwed. You can do this. It's a big step to put it all out there.

My immediate thoughts....

Our first suggestion is always to cut down on your cell service. Can you do this?

You mention using cash for your flexible expenses. Are you doing this every month? And sticking to it? I that's key because so many of us spend a lot more than we think that we do.

If you haven't yet, go to mint.com and link all of your accounts so that you can track your expenses. Every single one. You need to be honest with yourself.

Where (aside from The taxes) did your debt come from? What is the personal loan?

I would suggest that your h take as much ot as he can possibly get. Throw every cent of that towards debt, starting with the highest interest rate first. Then, once you pay it off (and you can and will) do the same to build savings. If you have a way to earn extra money, do the same.

Good luck! And stick around. You'll learn lots.

[mmpetproject]

I just made an account. Thanks for the input. I have called verizon to get our bill down and right now, this is the best we can do.

A second job isnt really feasible right now, but is an option in a couple months.

The debt came from taxes and crap like huge car expenses and just overspending.

We have done the cash system for 2 months and have done pretty well. I am proud of us!

[phunluvin82]

Are you snowballing your CC debt? A lot of people try to pay a little more than minumum on every card, when really they should be putting every available $ to the card with the highest rate and paying the minimum on all the rest.

[hannamarin]

Your auto fuel is high. Can you carpool? Transit?

[lindyanne]

It's too late now but if the taxes you paid were to the IRS, you can set up a payment plan. Even with penalties and interest, it'd probably be a better deal than your cc. We had the same thing happen to us a long time ago.