What are you doing with your stimulus check?

[shakinros]

This thread brought to you by DH and I disagreeing over the spend/save/donate distribution. He wants to BUY THINGS. I don’t even know what things. I want to donate it somewhere it can be turned over to households who actually need this money. We could pay some student loan debt but I don’t feel great about handing my stimulus payment over to Navient.

[mae0111]

We aren’t getting one, but when they first announced without parameters, we were planning to donate it in some way. Our local food bank can be difficult to work with and have income maximums, so they don’t help everyone. We wanted to use it to help people that didn’t qualify for the food bank.

Doing our kitchen over during all of this felt a little like an excess, even though we’ve been saving for quite some time to be able to pay for it all in cash. So we wanted to do something to give back.

ETA If we hadn’t just done the kitchen, we had talked about a dribble up for the kids, or one of those baseball/softball hitting nets for the backyard.

[sdlaura]

We don’t qualify. My parents did though and gave it to other family members who need it more. Like they’re paying my cousin’s car payment for the next six months.

In your situation I’d probably just save it. Or maybe divide into pieces and let DH buy one fun thing, save the rest? If your student loan interest rate is low.

[shakinros]

sdlaura the student loan interest rate is not that low. We can’t refinance it because it’s only in DH’s name and he’s unemployed. But the monthly payments fit into our budget just fine and we planned to use the extra $600 from UI benefits towards debt. That seems like enough.

[covergirl82]

We didn't qualify. If we had, we would've donated at least a portion of it to our church and/or a local organization that assists people in need. I don't know if Hand 2 Hand is local to me or national, but that is a good organization that helps families in need of food. I don't think there is any income review, I think families just sign up, so it's easy for families going through a short-term need to be able to get food.

shakinros, maybe he could use a part of it to buy something?

mae0111, we actually did get Dribble Up for DS, and so far he's used it for the week since we got it (although before we bought it, we made sure he was interested in it and that he understood he would be expected to practice with it at least 6 out of 7 days a week).

[erinshelley21]

We are just going to put ours in savings for now. My income is fine now but I haven't been able to get out and meet with as many people, so I've had a pretty slow March and April new biz wise.

DH mentioned a first responder bonus a couple weeks ago and that will be a different story if that becomes a thing.

[twinmomma]

Mine is just sitting in savings. I'm trying to build up a good emergency fund so I pretended that money didn't even happen and just shuffled it off to my savings account.

[polecat8]

Right now, my stimulus check is sitting in savings in case we need it. My pay was cut 10% for the rest of the year, so this money will cover a little bit of what I'm missing. As much as I'd love to donate some of it, I'm paranoid that I may lose my job since our company town hall meeting last week didn't paint a good picture. I'd like to get our e-savings to a 6 month cushion (which we are almost there) before I try to take care of anyone else since I'm the only breadwinner in my family.

[madringal]

I donated a good chunk of it, and the rest is sitting in savings. There is a small chance I could be laid off, so I just wanted to have an additional cushion. If we end up not needing it, we will use it to pay DD3s PreK tuition in full in August.

[waverly]

We don't get one, so I didn’t think what to do with it. I’m no help.

[rere]

I am taking all of the extra money right now, because we have some from cancelled trips, the fact that we don't spend any right now, and DH getting extra money just for showing up and both of us working actually more, and putting it in savings. So far DH is showing up, but if there comes into his workplace, he probably will take 2 weeks leave that they are offering.

I am of the mindset that we don't know the fallout of this and maybe we won't feel it for another year. So I am hoarding cash. Dh is not as worried, due to our jobs. I am in Public Health so it stands to reason, we will be very busy for a while, I have 18 years in and am in management, hopefully we received money from the Feds to continue our work with this. But our state budget also sucked already, so there will be cuts somewhere. Pretty much 85% of DH's company will go before him and they are the main supplier of materials for the larger global company. So he feels ok.

However-nothing is a guarantee. We are pretty conservative financially. We don't have much left on the house, we have savings. But I have one going to college in a year and don't' want to have to break into that money.

[mommyatty]

We don’t qualify. MIL got one and immediately donated it to the women’s shelter. We are seeing significant upticks in need for services for victims of domestic violence.

[k3am]

We don't qualify.

[186momx]

I plugged ours into savings. DH is wanting to spend it on something fun for him only. I moved it over super fast and haven't told him we got it. DD says she gets it for gymnastics.
shakinros, what is YH wanting to buy with it? Mine wants more paintball stuff.

[supertrooper1]

STBXH and I barely qualified for the child credit plus less than $100. It's still sitting in my account as I want to split it 50/50 and he needed to talk to his attorney about it. So his will go to attorney fees just to ask her how to split it and I'm not sure what I'll do with mine. Savings or donate.

[phdmomma]

We don't qualify either. I would have put it into savings, we are supposed to start furloughs at my work in the near future (university), but have no idea what they will look like. DH works in the railroad industry as a consultant, and one of the railroads (UP) is going to furlough its non-union folks for a week a month. So, we are now hoarding all of the cash that comes our way, so that we can ride this thing out.