Debt Dumpers - 2017

[disneyduonj]

Everyone is doing updates so here is mine....
March Update:

So I received two bank account bonuses plus my state refund plus I received an escrow check -my bank did an "escrow review" and sent me a check for the overages with a notice that my mortgage payment would go down about $30 a month starting in May!! Our city recently did home valuations (or something like that) and my property taxes went down ALOT - like almost half - so I am already paying about $200 less a month for that.

Somehow I made an extra payment to my home equity loan so I have to use my savings to cover that and I am paying for a retreat in May out of my state refund.

I have been preparing for a holiday next month that is very costly – I usually use half my tax refunds for it but am trying not to do that – my goal was to just use the money in April that I would try to save every month towards that – so I am using part of March budgeted savings for that too. So far I about $100 less than I thought I would have going into savings and it will probably be more – the month still has 5 days to go!
But still March was a good "savings" month considering the tax refund, bank bonuses and the unexpected escrow check

April there will be no savings- maybe I can open some new bank accounts to get some bonuses later. I will be happy if I don't dip into my emergency fund savings (all savings go into that account for now).
May and June should be back to normal and July is my vacation home so not planning on saving then either.

 

[mrsabbott]

Well, we have a plumber coming next week. Our bathtub won't stop dripping and both our toilets are leaking (yuck). Our garbage disposal is also broken and we aren't going to replace again.. just remove it and put in a regular drain. There goes a chunk of our savings. Hoping it won't be too terribly expensive!

Hubs may also be purchasing a car. Not thrilled about this, but he is determined. I had hoped to wait just a little longer before we did that. Not really wanting to take on more debt right now. Sigh..

 

[mco65]

Bought a raffle tix at the ball park on Sat. from one of the local 12u teams. Won $800. Gave $100 back to the team, $100 to each of my kids (3) and the rest to momma.
Thinking back.. i could have thrown it all at a cc.. but it was an unexpected small windfall of cash so nothing really lost!

 

[hmack]

Looking back on March -

For the 4th month in a row our overall cc balance has gone down. Only $28.56 from last month, but I'm still putting it in the win column (down $703.50 overall). We have some big expenses in May and June (college road trip, oldest college graduation, youngest high school graduation, and I'll admit it one splurge weekend to VT) so I'm not expecting that trend to continue but the goal to stay mindful of spending even amidst everything.

I called the hospital and have the girls' medical bills consolidated onto one bill with a payment plan set up. That was a big thing.

I'm also working really hard on meal planning which has never been my strong skill set.

Honestly, I probably didn't handle having the extra pay check as well as I could have. I will admit that I loosened the reigns and returned to some past spending habits and didn't save or put as much $ on the credit as I could have. The plan with this Friday's check is to pay off some small expenses like the balance on the prom dress (balance is down to $102.00), pay the last payment on youngest dd's band trip to D.C. ($125) and put some money aside for our big car insurance payment in June along with trying to get a bit ahead on April's bills.

Thanks for being here and for encouraging me to stay honest about the good and the challenges. Now off to work.

 

[Jen and Ashwin]

I went though YNAB and did my end of month inventory and here is my update.

Overall, I think we did pretty well this month. Our low spot this month was spending double on dining out than we normally budget. But given that this month has been really hard due to early pregnancy sickness and the inability to even look at food sometimes, let alone cook it, I feel we didn't do too badly. I covered most of this from the extra $50 we had after all of our other items were funded plus a little extra left over in the grocery budget.

Our big win this month was saving DH's extra paycheck towards our emergency fund. We put $2500 into it this month and now have a total of $3800. Our goal is to have $9000 by the end of the year and we are on track to hit that goal as of now. We also looked over our budget for the rest of the year and were able to increase our retirement savings to a full 20% of income from the previous 17%. This has been a goal we have had since DH started his job and I now think we are in a good position to make it happen.

And the other big win is that this is the second month in a row that YNAB says the age of our money is over 60 days. For those of you who use YNAB, this is sort of a golden number that signals that you have broken the paycheck to paycheck cycle. It basically means that, on average, money sits in our accounts for a full 60+ days before we spend it. Increasing our emergency fund as well as saving monthly towards more sporadic expenses (car insurance, auto maintenance, HOA dues) has had a big impact on achieving this milestone.

 

[disneyduonj]

I went though YNAB and did my end of month inventory and here is my update.

Overall, I think we did pretty well this month. Our low spot this month was spending double on dining out than we normally budget. But given that this month has been really hard due to early pregnancy sickness and the inability to even look at food sometimes, let alone cook it, I feel we didn't do too badly. I covered most of this from the extra $50 we had after all of our other items were funded plus a little extra left over in the grocery budget.

Our big win this month was saving DH's extra paycheck towards our emergency fund. We put $2500 into it this month and now have a total of $3800. Our goal is to have $9000 by the end of the year and we are on track to hit that goal as of now. We also looked over our budget for the rest of the year and were able to increase our retirement savings to a full 20% of income from the previous 17%. This has been a goal we have had since DH started his job and I now think we are in a good position to make it happen.

And the other big win is that this is the second month in a row that YNAB says the age of our money is over 60 days. For those of you who use YNAB, this is sort of a golden number that signals that you have broken the paycheck to paycheck cycle. It basically means that, on average, money sits in our accounts for a full 60+ days before we spend it. Increasing our emergency fund as well as saving monthly towards more sporadic expenses (car insurance, auto maintenance, HOA dues) has had a big impact on achieving this milestone.

So does that mean you are 2 months ahead?

 

[Jen and Ashwin]

So does that mean you are 2 months ahead?

Basically, but not in the sense that I have 2 months of grocery funds in my grocery budget just waiting. I do take our paychecks from the month before and apply them to the next month's expenses now, rather than paying the current month's expenses with the current paychecks. But the other "age of money" comes from having more robust long term savings plus saving monthly for sporadic expenses. So in theory we have enough money that our money sits for 60+ days before it is spent, but it isn't all categorized towards more immediate expenses two months out. I hope that makes sense.

Our ultimate goal is to have $21k in our emergency fund, which is about the equivalent of 6 months basic expenses (cutting out unnecessary extras). We have a plan to get to this goal in the next 2.5 years. Once we reach that, I think I will feel pretty comfortable that we have a decent cushion.

 

[disneyduonj]

Hmmm...I use YNAB and budget a month ahead but my paychecks are deposited into a separate savings account and then transferred to my checking before the beginning of the month I use them - I haven't seen that feature you have - but I am using an older version - I never upgraded.

 

[Jen and Ashwin]

Hmmm...I use YNAB and budget a month ahead but my paychecks are deposited into a separate savings account and then transferred to my checking before the beginning of the month I use them - I haven't seen that feature you have - but I am using an older version - I never upgraded.

I never used the older versions. I guess this must be part of the web version. Since I have no comparison, I can't say much about YNAB before I started using it last June. I can say that we have found this version to be great and I love the "Age of Money" feature because it has been a personal goal to consistently get over that 60 day mark. That has kept me motivated to beef up our emergency fund and continue funding those sporadic categories like auto maintenance, home maintenance, HOA dues, etc. It was so easy this month when my HOA recreation dues bill came and I already had the $300 sitting around waiting. No need to scramble to figure out what I could cut this month to cover that cost.

YNAB hasn't eliminated money concerns 100% or anything, but it sure has reduced them by a lot. As I had said a while ago, DH used to whine about money before he became more involved in our finances. Now DH and I decide what is important together and he can see exactly where everything is going. He hasn't whined once about money since we finished paying off our CC debt last October. Once we had greater cashflow, we were able to give ourselves an allowance and up the grocery budget a little (a constant complaint that DH had). We just don't fight about money at all, which means we don't fight about anything really. Best marriage tool ever.

 

[DLgal]

I've been lurking for awhile and have decided to finally jump in with my debt dumping situation.

Ok, here goes. We only have one debt but it's a big one, kind of, for me at least.

Credit Card (Balance Transfer at 0% until Jan 2018): $13,000

My goals are:
1. Pay off that credit card
2. Start an Emergency Savings Fund (This is super important which I will explain below)
3. Spend less every month on dining out and superfluous purchases

We have a high monthly expense amount, due to where we live. Our rent/utilities/insurance/monthly recurring bills/529 plan and IRA contributions total around $5400 ($3250 of that is rent). We spend about $4000 on a credit card monthly for groceries, gas, eating out, household expenses, clothes, etc. Basically, everything we need to buy we charge for points and we pay it off every month. We take home the same amount we spend at this point.

I currently am paying anywhere from $500-1500/month to the credit card with the high balance transfer. From May onward, I have to pay $1500/month to get it paid off by the time the 0% expires in Jan 2018.

I would like to get our monthly spend on the credit card down to about $3000 or less. Then, I want to use the money that we were putting towards the high balance AND the extra $1200-1700 into savings to aggressively build up a fluid savings account. We have been using credit cards as our "emergency savings" vehicle for years, but we don't actually have anything in our savings. Rationale behind that is we have a LOT of available credit and can always transfer balances to one particular card for a 1% balance transfer fee and get anywhere from 6-24 months at 0% APR. So, this has worked for us. We are in the fortunate position to be an active duty military family with job security and essentially free medical care (the kids and I are on a plan where we can choose our own doctors, and it costs a maximum out of pocket of $1000/year for us all and we have a $300 deductible and then cost shares, until we meet the $1000, then everything is covered 100%). So, we don't really have to worry about sudden job loss (I don't work), high medical bills, or home repairs (we rent).

However, my husband is at the tail end of his 20 year career and will be transitioning out and retiring in 2-3 years. He will then have to find a new job, basically. He will get a pension, but it will only be 50% of his pay, so it would be enough to pay our monthly obligations but NOT nearly enough for us to actually live on. So, being the nervous nellie that I am, I want to sock away a HUGE amount of money in savings to carry us through for at least a year, possibly longer, if he can't find a job right away. I can't work outside of the home for the forseeable future...our kids are both autisitic and still in elementary/middle school. They need someone home with them before and after school for now.

I do work part time every year as a standardized test scorer from home. I net about $5-6k every year from that. My job will start up end of April and go through June this year, so that money will be coming in soon.

My husband is also selected for a promotion which should happen sometime this summer. That will net us an additional $1k/month, give or take a couple hundred.

So, I'm trying to decide what to do with my part time job income. Should I use it to start the savings? Or should I use it to pay off the large balance so it will be done sooner?

My goal once my husband gets his promotion is to put $3000/month into savings until he retires. My long term goal is $100k in the savings account. Retirement at this point will likely be June 2020.

In order to meet these goals, we have decided not take expensive vacations this year. We are doing a road trip up to San Francisco to visit my sister and her kids and we plan to spend no more than $2k on that. No other travel is planned for this year. We are eyeballing our next family vacation for either next spring break or next June. BUT, we will only spend 10% of whatever we have in the savings account by that point. That's our rule going forward...vacations can't cost more than 10% of our available savings. Vacations are important to us, but our long term financial health is much more so, so we are sacrificing the vacations for the short term. We usually travel 2-3 times per year, but we are stopping that for now.

Right now, I have $750 earmarked to the large balance for the next payment in April. That will bring the balance down to $12,250. I am planning $1500/month payments going forward.

 

[Jen and Ashwin]

I've been lurking for awhile and have decided to finally jump in with my debt dumping situation.

Ok, here goes. We only have one debt but it's a big one, kind of, for me at least.

Credit Card (Balance Transfer at 0% until Jan 2018): $13,000

My goals are:
1. Pay off that credit card
2. Start an Emergency Savings Fund (This is super important which I will explain below)
3. Spend less every month on dining out and superfluous purchases

We have a high monthly expense amount, due to where we live. Our rent/utilities/insurance/monthly recurring bills/529 plan and IRA contributions total around $5400 ($3250 of that is rent). We spend about $4000 on a credit card monthly for groceries, gas, eating out, household expenses, clothes, etc. Basically, everything we need to buy we charge for points and we pay it off every month. We take home the same amount we spend at this point.

I currently am paying anywhere from $500-1500/month to the credit card with the high balance transfer. From May onward, I have to pay $1500/month to get it paid off by the time the 0% expires in Jan 2018.

I would like to get our monthly spend on the credit card down to about $3000 or less. Then, I want to use the money that we were putting towards the high balance AND the extra $1200-1700 into savings to aggressively build up a fluid savings account. We have been using credit cards as our "emergency savings" vehicle for years, but we don't actually have anything in our savings. Rationale behind that is we have a LOT of available credit and can always transfer balances to one particular card for a 1% balance transfer fee and get anywhere from 6-24 months at 0% APR. So, this has worked for us. We are in the fortunate position to be an active duty military family with job security and essentially free medical care (the kids and I are on a plan where we can choose our own doctors, and it costs a maximum out of pocket of $1000/year for us all and we have a $300 deductible and then cost shares, until we meet the $1000, then everything is covered 100%). So, we don't really have to worry about sudden job loss (I don't work), high medical bills, or home repairs (we rent).

However, my husband is at the tail end of his 20 year career and will be transitioning out and retiring in 2-3 years. He will then have to find a new job, basically. He will get a pension, but it will only be 50% of his pay, so it would be enough to pay our monthly obligations but NOT nearly enough for us to actually live on. So, being the nervous nellie that I am, I want to sock away a HUGE amount of money in savings to carry us through for at least a year, possibly longer, if he can't find a job right away. I can't work outside of the home for the forseeable future...our kids are both autisitic and still in elementary/middle school. They need someone home with them before and after school for now.

I do work part time every year as a standardized test scorer from home. I net about $5-6k every year from that. My job will start up end of April and go through June this year, so that money will be coming in soon.

My husband is also selected for a promotion which should happen sometime this summer. That will net us an additional $1k/month, give or take a couple hundred.

So, I'm trying to decide what to do with my part time job income. Should I use it to start the savings? Or should I use it to pay off the large balance so it will be done sooner?

My goal once my husband gets his promotion is to put $3000/month into savings until he retires. My long term goal is $100k in the savings account. Retirement at this point will likely be June 2020.

In order to meet these goals, we have decided not take expensive vacations this year. We are doing a road trip up to San Francisco to visit my sister and her kids and we plan to spend no more than $2k on that. No other travel is planned for this year. We are eyeballing our next family vacation for either next spring break or next June. BUT, we will only spend 10% of whatever we have in the savings account by that point. That's our rule going forward...vacations can't cost more than 10% of our available savings. Vacations are important to us, but our long term financial health is much more so, so we are sacrificing the vacations for the short term. We usually travel 2-3 times per year, but we are stopping that for now.

Right now, I have $750 earmarked to the large balance for the next payment in April. That will bring the balance down to $12,250. I am planning $1500/month payments going forward.

Welcome and glad you are joining us. You have some big goals, but you seem to have a plan to achieve them. Cutting back on existing spending is probably your best bet to pay off the credit card balance before the 0% expires. So cutting down on vacations will be good, but everyday spending adds up quickly. If you aren't tracking all of your spending, I would say that is where you need to start. Find a budget program that you like and start tracking everything. Prioritize your essential expenses plus your credit card payments, then look towards how to divide the rest among discretionary spending in order to decrease the amount going on your credit card each month.

As for your emergency fund, I would say put away $1k-$3k to start, to cover any real unexpected expenses. Then focus on the credit card balance to make sure you pay off the balance before the 0% expires. After that, shift all of the money towards your savings goals. $100,000 isn't a small sum of money to save in just 3 years. But depending on your income, it may be possible. Budgeting for a few months will help you better understand your expenses and determine if this goal is really doable or if you have to adjust your expectations.

 

[DLgal]

Welcome and glad you are joining us. You have some big goals, but you seem to have a plan to achieve them. Cutting back on existing spending is probably your best bet to pay off the credit card balance before the 0% expires. So cutting down on vacations will be good, but everyday spending adds up quickly. If you aren't tracking all of your spending, I would say that is where you need to start. Find a budget program that you like and start tracking everything. Prioritize your essential expenses plus your credit card payments, then look towards how to divide the rest among discretionary spending in order to decrease the amount going on your credit card each month.

As for your emergency fund, I would say put away $1k-$3k to start, to cover any real unexpected expenses. Then focus on the credit card balance to make sure you pay off the balance before the 0% expires. After that, shift all of the money towards your savings goals. $100,000 isn't a small sum of money to save in just 3 years. But depending on your income, it may be possible. Budgeting for a few months will help you better understand your expenses and determine if this goal is really doable or if you have to adjust your expectations.

Thanks for the advice. $100k is doable. I mean, it will require sacrifice, but once that card is paid off, we will open up $1500/month (I have been paying that much every month for a long time...the $750 for April is due to an expensive car maintenance expense last month so I had to cut the payment to compensate, but the balance was $20k back in October). And add in the additional income we will have after the promotion and that's an extra $1000. I figure I can easily cut our monthly spending by $500 so that will be our $3000 right there. That will require spending no more than $2900 on the credit card every month long term though. We honestly spend most money on food, so not sure how much more we can reasonably cut out. Groceries are about $1200/month for our family of 4. We don't eat too much processed food but I have two pre teen boys and they EAT...a LOT! It's crazy. We also eat out too much. I estimate we spend around $700-1000 at restaruants, bars, etc every month. That is what we are trying to curb. And then my husband and son have a bad toy addiction. My husband is constantly buying new Lego sets, action figures to add to his collection, video games, etc. He's a big kid. I let him do it because our kids don't have expensive sports or extracurriculars, he doesn't have an expensive hobby, nor do I, etc. Disney is our main form of entertainment, we have Disneyland AP's (cost almost $3k per year for us all) and we go almost every weekend, so we spend money there too on food. When we buckle down, we can easily get our monthly spend down to $2500. We are on track to do that this month. It can be done, just requires discipline.

I don't do "budgets." I just don't have the patience for them. I have tried and it just gets tedious and I lose interest. I work much better on the "is this a want or a need" way of spending money. I am trying to get us all on the same page here and focus on the NEEDS and not so much the WANTS.

 

[Jen and Ashwin]

Thanks for the advice. $100k is doable. I mean, it will require sacrifice, but once that card is paid off, we will open up $1500/month (I have been paying that much every month for a long time...the $750 for April is due to an expensive car maintenance expense last month so I had to cut the payment to compensate, but the balance was $20k back in October). And add in the additional income we will have after the promotion and that's an extra $1000. I figure I can easily cut our monthly spending by $500 so that will be our $3000 right there. That will require spending no more than $2900 on the credit card every month long term though. We honestly spend most money on food, so not sure how much more we can reasonably cut out. Groceries are about $1200/month for our family of 4. We don't eat too much processed food but I have two pre teen boys and they EAT...a LOT! It's crazy. We also eat out too much. I estimate we spend around $700-1000 at restaruants, bars, etc every month. That is what we are trying to curb. And then my husband and son have a bad toy addiction. My husband is constantly buying new Lego sets, action figures to add to his collection, video games, etc. He's a big kid. I let him do it because our kids don't have expensive sports or extracurriculars, he doesn't have an expensive hobby, nor do I, etc. Disney is our main form of entertainment, we have Disneyland AP's (cost almost $3k per year for us all) and we go almost every weekend, so we spend money there too on food. When we buckle down, we can easily get our monthly spend down to $2500. We are on track to do that this month. It can be done, just requires discipline.

I don't do "budgets." I just don't have the patience for them. I have tried and it just gets tedious and I lose interest. I work much better on the "is this a want or a need" way of spending money. I am trying to get us all on the same page here and focus on the NEEDS and not so much the WANTS.

You have to do what works for you. But I will say that budgeting doesn't have to be tedious. I spend about 10 minutes setting up my monthly budget in YNAB because I have set funding goals for all of my categories. I just hit the "Goal Target" button and it fills it in for me. Since we charge everything to credit cards, our expenses are automatically reconciled in the program. DH and I sit down for 10-15 minutes once per week just to review our budget. This is helpful to make sure we are still on track for the month (i.e. not overspending in any categories) and make any changes if necessary. Now that I know the budget software well, I probably spend just an hour on my budget each month. Definitely not what I would call tedious.

And the benefit has been that we pretty much don't overspend on anything anymore. If the money isn't available for a purchase, then we don't buy it. And in the case this month, we overspent on dining but I shifted money from our grocery budget to cover the shortfall, so that overspending didn't become debt. Also, we each have a set allowance, so if DH wants to spend money on video games, he can, but only to a certain point. Same with me and my sewing hobby. There is equity as well as accountability to each other this way and I love that.

 

[AquaDame]

I don't do "budgets." I just don't have the patience for them. I have tried and it just gets tedious and I lose interest. I work much better on the "is this a want or a need" way of spending money. I am trying to get us all on the same page here and focus on the NEEDS and not so much the WANTS.

I agree - we have a "budget" but I could never use YNAB or anything like that as I don't have an easy time categorizing it. Instead we try to stick to X dollars a day, period, for food and incidentals like clothes and entertainment. All the "have to"s like bills and gas for the cars and such are added into the spreadsheet and that is as nitty gritty as we get. Still keeps us "on track" but doesn't get tedious.

Are you sure you want 100K just sitting in savings...? Put that money to work!

We are only four days away from our big trip to Japan! I had thought we'd have 4-5K in cash to take with us but we have $3600 since the second bonus for my husband was smaller than we figured (not a big deal) and we had some extra costs from my cat's end of life vet bills and such to take care of. I don't anticipate needing to draw even that much from ATMs and whatever is left over will be put to CCs. It will be nice not adding to them this trip!

 

[piccolopat]

I've been lurking for awhile and have decided to finally jump in with my debt dumping situation.

Ok, here goes. We only have one debt but it's a big one, kind of, for me at least.

Credit Card (Balance Transfer at 0% until Jan 2018): $13,000

My goals are:
1. Pay off that credit card
2. Start an Emergency Savings Fund (This is super important which I will explain below)
3. Spend less every month on dining out and superfluous purchases

We have a high monthly expense amount, due to where we live. Our rent/utilities/insurance/monthly recurring bills/529 plan and IRA contributions total around $5400 ($3250 of that is rent). We spend about $4000 on a credit card monthly for groceries, gas, eating out, household expenses, clothes, etc. Basically, everything we need to buy we charge for points and we pay it off every month. We take home the same amount we spend at this point.

I currently am paying anywhere from $500-1500/month to the credit card with the high balance transfer. From May onward, I have to pay $1500/month to get it paid off by the time the 0% expires in Jan 2018.

I would like to get our monthly spend on the credit card down to about $3000 or less. Then, I want to use the money that we were putting towards the high balance AND the extra $1200-1700 into savings to aggressively build up a fluid savings account. We have been using credit cards as our "emergency savings" vehicle for years, but we don't actually have anything in our savings. Rationale behind that is we have a LOT of available credit and can always transfer balances to one particular card for a 1% balance transfer fee and get anywhere from 6-24 months at 0% APR. So, this has worked for us. We are in the fortunate position to be an active duty military family with job security and essentially free medical care (the kids and I are on a plan where we can choose our own doctors, and it costs a maximum out of pocket of $1000/year for us all and we have a $300 deductible and then cost shares, until we meet the $1000, then everything is covered 100%). So, we don't really have to worry about sudden job loss (I don't work), high medical bills, or home repairs (we rent).

However, my husband is at the tail end of his 20 year career and will be transitioning out and retiring in 2-3 years. He will then have to find a new job, basically. He will get a pension, but it will only be 50% of his pay, so it would be enough to pay our monthly obligations but NOT nearly enough for us to actually live on. So, being the nervous nellie that I am, I want to sock away a HUGE amount of money in savings to carry us through for at least a year, possibly longer, if he can't find a job right away. I can't work outside of the home for the forseeable future...our kids are both autisitic and still in elementary/middle school. They need someone home with them before and after school for now.

I do work part time every year as a standardized test scorer from home. I net about $5-6k every year from that. My job will start up end of April and go through June this year, so that money will be coming in soon.

My husband is also selected for a promotion which should happen sometime this summer. That will net us an additional $1k/month, give or take a couple hundred.

So, I'm trying to decide what to do with my part time job income. Should I use it to start the savings? Or should I use it to pay off the large balance so it will be done sooner?

My goal once my husband gets his promotion is to put $3000/month into savings until he retires. My long term goal is $100k in the savings account. Retirement at this point will likely be June 2020.

In order to meet these goals, we have decided not take expensive vacations this year. We are doing a road trip up to San Francisco to visit my sister and her kids and we plan to spend no more than $2k on that. No other travel is planned for this year. We are eyeballing our next family vacation for either next spring break or next June. BUT, we will only spend 10% of whatever we have in the savings account by that point. That's our rule going forward...vacations can't cost more than 10% of our available savings. Vacations are important to us, but our long term financial health is much more so, so we are sacrificing the vacations for the short term. We usually travel 2-3 times per year, but we are stopping that for now.

Right now, I have $750 earmarked to the large balance for the next payment in April. That will bring the balance down to $12,250. I am planning $1500/month payments going forward.

I would put everything towards the credit card and try to pay it off in December even though the 0% goes to January 2018. The reason is if there is any delay in the payment posting, you could get stuck with interest retroactive to when you did the balance transfer. It's a good idea to bring down all of your other expenses as well. That $4K a month sounds like a lot. I know your goal is to get that below $3K, but perhaps you should go through the last few months and identify more things to cut. Perhaps it would help to set up separate budget amounts for each of those things. After you pay this debt, try to keep to the reduced spending and put the savings away for your emergency fund.

 

[DLgal]

Are you sure you want 100K just sitting in savings...? Put that money to work!

LOL. For now, yeah. I want it to be in liquid savings for security and easy access if we need it. I am probably being overly cautious, as DH essentially has a job offer (work from home) if he wants it when he retires that would maintain our income level at the same place as it will be after he gets his promotion this year. That's his fallback. I'm sure he will land a job easily. I'm just paranoid.

The long-long term goal for that money will be for a house down payment IF we don't end up needing it. But where we live (and would like to stay long term if possible), we would need at least $250K for a downpayment in order to have a mortgage payment that matches our current rent payment. Houses here are crazy expensive. We can continue to rent long term...I'm fine with that. Eventutally, though, we will use that money for a house either here or somewhere much cheaper down the line (like Florida when we are old...we'll just buy our retirement home in cash). I plan to invest a good chunk of it once we know we don't "need" it.

 

[AquaDame]

LOL. For now, yeah. I want it to be in liquid savings for security and easy access if we need it. I am probably being overly cautious, as DH essentially has a job offer (work from home) if he wants it when he retires that would maintain our income level at the same place as it will be after he gets his promotion this year. That's his fallback. I'm sure he will land a job easily. I'm just paranoid.

The long-long term goal for that money will be for a house down payment IF we don't end up needing it. But where we live (and would like to stay long term if possible), we would need at least $250K for a downpayment in order to have a mortgage payment that matches our current rent payment. Houses here are crazy expensive. We can continue to rent long term...I'm fine with that. Eventutally, though, we will use that money for a house either here or somewhere much cheaper down the line (like Florida when we are old...we'll just buy our retirement home in cash). I plan to invest a good chunk of it once we know we don't "need" it.

Have you looked into money markets (MMDA)...? You have access though you'd want to check limits on the number of withdrawals allowed though that shouldn't be an issue if you are just sitting on the money anyway. I totally get wanting to keep things liquid though - my husband and I have butted heads on the issue but he won out and we don't have money sitting around. If we didn't have a large cash inflow every month I may not have caved though...!

 

[DLgal]

Have you looked into money markets (MMDA)...? You have access though you'd want to check limits on the number of withdrawals allowed though that shouldn't be an issue if you are just sitting on the money anyway. I totally get wanting to keep things liquid though - my husband and I have butted heads on the issue but he won out and we don't have money sitting around. If we didn't have a large cash inflow every month I may not have caved though...!

We have other money in investments right now so we are doing that as well. We invest a certain amount every month that I count as a monthly recurring expense.

 

[AquaDame]

We have other money in investments right now so we are doing that as well. We invest a certain amount every month that I count as a monthly recurring expense.

Lucky.. all my investments are tied up in IRAs and stocks. Someday I'll be able to have other accounts too but first... the debt.

 

[javeyloveschelsi]

Joining in This year we have already paid off a couple cards and built up our small emergency fund, so we are now working on a couple more cards and our one vehicle payment. This month we did go over budget, but we just had baby #4 last week, so we ate out more than usual (I had a really, really rough pregnancy and all of us went through a month of battling a virus before he was born, so meal prepping just didn't happen.) Also, the baby has jaundice, so we were driving back and forth to the hospital everyday for testing, which is a 70 mile round trip, so gas was a bit more, plus my DH ran to Walmart a few times while I was in the hospital.

Getting back on track now and should have a smaller grocery bill for the next couple weeks because we have a meal train from our church coming the next 3 weeks, so hoping that will help even out last weeks overspending