MM wins!

[dcn]

Small win, we sold our double stroller yesterday (end of an era!!) which will pay for our hotel at Legoland later this month. Also we are having a yard sale today and hopefully will get enough for tickets. We’re already up about $60 so I’m happy. Bonus that this shit is out of my house!

[covergirl82]

Small wins:

-DH and I got merit increases, which will provide around $200 more each month. We are planning to use most of that money toward paying down debt. (ETA:  We have a goal of paying off our travel trailer next April as a result of paying more on the loan now, and using DH's bonus in March 2020 to pay off the rest.)
-I got a $1,000 bonus (unexpected) from my manager. I will use that to pay for routine maintenance on my car this month (because net after taxes and retirement deductions is around $600).
-We bought a new fridge and dishwasher, and when the delivery/installation guys flipped the door and moved the handle so the door would open the opposite way, it revealed a scratch-and-dent by one of the door handle screws. The Lowe's store manager gave us 25% back, which was around $300.

[ellipses84]

My retirement accounts are in great shape! I attribute this to MM. I’m 15 years into my career and had the sense to at least contribute the minimum to get a 401k match in my early 20s. I found MM about 8 years ago and was still way behind what was recommended. I had a high paying job at the time and was able to change my contributions to catch up. Now I work for lower pay but have great benefits with ESOP, Profit Sharing and a 401k, and I just had my 5 year anniversary and got vested!

DH didn’t have many student loans compared to me, but he had 2 smaller ones at a higher interest rate for his later in life second career. One was recently paid off and it was an amazing feeling to have a monthly bill gone. The other will be paid off in a few months. I still have 2 but at least there’s a light at the end of the tunnel and I’m paying way more than interest for them.

[goldengirlz]

This year I will make more money than my H. That hasn’t happened since DD was born.

[dcn]

Nov 2, 2019 7:11:39 GMT -5 dcn said:

Small win, we sold our double stroller yesterday (end of an era!!) which will pay for our hotel at Legoland later this month. Also we are having a yard sale today and hopefully will get enough for tickets. We’re already up about $60 so I’m happy. Bonus that this shit is out of my house!

We ended up making $600 all together!

[mccallister84]

H got a huge raise and we maxed out retirement early this year!!!

[simpsongal]

I got a good performance review and my boss said he would be willing to give me a qsi or a retention bonus.

[dr.girlfriend]

We drove two hours away to see the leather sectional I had fallen in love with online, and it was really uncomfortable to sit on! We ended up buying a fabric sofa and loveseat instead which all together was still about half of what the sectional would have cost. :-) I'm a little sad that the plan for the living room I had in my head for months got disrupted, but glad we took the trip to figure out it wouldn't work instead of just impulsively ordering it online.

[waverly]

We paid off 1 credit card and have 2 left. The plan is to pay one off this month and half on the other one in December. It’s 0% but that expires the beginning of the year so I think we need to figure something out on that one. I think we are going to pull from savings on it because that will be replenished anyway.

My student loans will be paid off by the end of the year. DH’s are way lower than when he started out. They were on the higher side since he had gotten an MBA. We are doing OK on retirement and our house is set to be paid off in 11 or 12 years I think.

[dragon's breath]

I hit my goal of "$500k in retirement accounts while I'm 40" goal last month (was "before 40", but last October happened... I got pregnant in high school, and have been a single mom since I was 22, so it's a pretty big deal for me.

I've taken some pretty big hits the last few years (pay cuts, having to hire an attorney for some issues, etc) so cash flowing things has gotten a lot tighter, but hoping to feel a little more relaxed on that soon, when the attorney fees end and I (hopefully) get a COLA next summer. While the retirement is going well, other things have started falling apart around me.

[covergirl82]

dragon's breath, big congrats on the retirement savings! That's pretty amazing for starting out as a young single mom and having some big bumps in the road.

[wildrice]

This fall has been a big fat MM fail in most ways, due to a bunch of unexpected car related stuff. Between repairs, deductibles, paying out of pocket to fix a car that I hit in the parking lot, registering 2 new cars, and buying a new car unexpectedly, I think we've spent over 8k on car stuff since August.

Smaller wins:
- I booked all of our upcoming hotel rooms in Italy, and was able to use almost exclusively points to pay. I think we ended up paying a total of $81 for 8 nights of hotel. It helps that we're going in January so hotels were cheaper to begin with!
- Even though it was a loss to our savings, I was proud that when we had to unexpectedly buy a new car, we were able to put about 5k down by pulling out of savings. We only took out a 4k loan (we also had a check from insurance). I've never bought a used car before and I've never taken out such a tiny car loan, so it felt good to do so.

[buckeyegirl]

My DH churns credit card points. We decided to take a California road trip next July. Our flights and all 15 nights of our hotels are covered by points/miles for all four of us!

[trissie18]

We should be receiving DH's workers comp settlement check this week or next which will be enough to pay off all but one credit card, put money in savings, pay for much needed car repairs, and pay for the spray foam insulation in our basement, mudroom, and garage. This refresh on our finances will allow us to tackle the rest of our debt excluding the mortgage (last credit card, 0% mattress loan, truck payment, land loan, and student loan) by September 2021 (at least 1 year early on all of them). And we have a plan in place to ensure we don't rack up anymore cc debt with unexpected expenses.

[Susie]

My personal SL balance total just dropped below $50k -- $49,973.23. The next milestone will be when mine and H's together drop below $100k, in another $5600 and change.

When we first started repayment, I owed around $140k, and together we owed around $260k. It's been a slog.

[gt7301b]

I got a promotion. The new job is challenging, but honestly I feel like the position was made explicitly for me. this is the first time I have ever been excited about going to work.

[mlkgls]

I hit another milestone amount in my 401k last week and while I am technically slightly behind the 4x at 45 goal, which coincidentally also occurred last week, I am in pretty decent shape overall. I have earned a fairly modest salary most of my career and feel such a sense of accomplishment at having reached this mini goal.

[Deleted]

We are sort of following Dave Ramsey and now have $1k in savings.

I paid off my last student loan last month.

We've been working on improving DH's credit score and were able to get a new credit card and move an $18K balance with 19% interest to one with only 6% with no transfer fee and have a solid plan to pay it off in 15 months which will save us over $1500 in interest.

[Deleted]

A person in my family died and I am left with 125K. The process to receive the money is tedious and a lot of waiting. This money is life changing in the fact that it will erase all my debt, max out retirement savings and have left overs. This is such a relief and I feel so bad for feeling happy about the money as three people had to pass away for me to even receive it.

Also, in the past 6 months, I've paid off 5K in debt as well as being able to take an international trip. I work 10-12 hours a day between my day job and side hustle. It is exhausting but financially it feel great.

[liveintheville]

H just found out he’s got a conference in SF the week of my birthday. So I’ll be spending my birthday there! We have enough points I can fly for free and of course the hotel will be covered. I’ve got a couple friends out there and it’ll be great to see them.

[farfalla2011]

October was the first month in ages we didn't go over our grocery or eating out budgets! Yay having a baby? Although we've had a ton of other expenses related to that.

While I know interest rate wise it doesn't make a lot of sense, I finally have DH onboard with prioritizing paying off our 2 car loans! He's ridiculously over his job and the stress it brings (been there 21 years in Jan) and I want to have an exit strategy fairly soon for all our sanity's sake. To go anywhere else he'll take a sizable pay cut, but paying off our cars will significantly improve our monthly cash flow to allow him to make a real change if/when the time comes. I think between bonuses and extra cash, we could make this happen end of next year.

[fryjack2]

We made the final final final ( we've been on the fence) decision to pull our kids out of private school and send them to public school next year. It frees up roughly 80k/year.

We've begun to map out what we will do with that $7500 a month that won't be going to tuition.

Mostly home projects, investments, philanthropy, and a 2nd home fund that hasn't had money put into it since we saw that surprise 2nd kid on the ultrasound

[fryjack2]

On a smaller scale, I got all our Halloween decorations this year from Goodwill. I took the kids with me to drop off some donations and we saw some great Halloween items in the window display and bough them.

I also consigned a bunch of stuff and have $200 in that store account to cash out.

I haven't bought lunch or breakfast at work in 2 weeks.

[sadlebred]

My fall side gig is cycling photography. I'm at the event anyway taking photos (I'm the social media director for the series) & racing. I've made about $350 profit.

The bike shop replaced a handlebar on one of my bikes for free. I traded them another new handlebar.

The rest of the news has been very bleak lately.

[nomad100]

I have been religiously using Mint to track my spending the last 5 months and it is paying off. My BS spending on crap I don't need has dropped off to almost nothing, I have paid off 1 CC and am working on the next 2. Once they are paid off, I will be entirely debt free. Goal is to have that happen by December, 2020 if not sooner.

2018 was a shit year - financially and otherwise. I got divorced and had to sell stock to pay off my Ex (I was the one with the assets and didn't protect myself enough in the prenup, as it turns out.) and then sold more stock to pay off my house and took a huge tax hit which then translated to big quarterly tax payments.  My brother died and while I was his heir, there is a lot of guilt that comes with the money (and it is tied up in complicated family partnership). So seeing the light at the end of the tunnel with no more big quarterly tax payments for 2020, being debt free and maybe even getting a tax refund I can use to pay off the debt early and maybe even start to fund some home improvement projects I have had to put off will be amazing.