Looking for advice to reduce debt

[beebalmmama]

So I've recently become a SAHM again, as we moved and are expecting baby #2. I am committed to staying home with this new babe for as long as possible (this may be 7-9 months). I feel a bit bad because we were able to swing it with ds 1 until 18 months ( but that is a whole other thread).

We finally got an accurate idea of dh's monthly income and calculated our outgoing expenses. We are around $300 in the negative. We have already planned to use my retirement account to allow me to stay home (probably about $2200 total after taxes are withdrawn. We have a little in savings but part of that is designated for birth expenses.

Our major expenses are rent $1025
and health insurance $650 and $200 for the FSA account (helping to pay for birth expenses) Thinking about trying to get ds's onto state health plan, may or may not be able to do this.

So the only two places I can really see lowering our monthly expenses is our car payment - $250
and
student loans - $187

We are pretty much tied to our phone plan (maybe could lower minutes, but would save us only $10-15 a month)

We "tried" to sell our car, Honda Hybrid, but could put much more effort here. The only concern we have is that if I go back to work in a year that we will again need another car. Also we can't take much of a loss on it as we would end up making payments for it after the sale. We probably owe about $500 -$700 more than blue book value.

We also need to find out what the negatives are for deferring our student loans for six months. Our interest is really low 2% and the loan is a government loan, if that makes any difference.

Any advice would be appreciated.

[goldingoddess]

Definately deffer the the student loans, it does not afect your credit report negatively.

[buckeye_bebe]

If you minimize your healthcare expenses, will you still be $300 in the red?

[SuzyLee]

Is there anything you can do to get 300 more a month in income? If you could, you could stay home much longer and maintain your retirement savings.

If you are in the red every month, every little bit helps, so I would definitely look at lowering your cell phone minutes.

We sold our car this past summer since DH takes the bus to work. Then he got laid off, and likely will need to drive to his new job, oops! I still think it was a good decisino to sell- we now have an old beater as a 2nd car, adn when DH gets a job he can drive it for awhile while we save up some money.

[beebalmmama]

We just put our student loans into forebearance yesterday. Still talking about the car though. Dh is worried about selling, because we may not get what we owe on it. He's also worried about having too much of an older car because we've been there and still have one and have sunk lots of $$ into it over the last few years. But like I said it is still on the table for discussion.

Unfortunately right at the moment we aren't in a position to bring in extra money. I've got four weeks until my due date. So realistically I don't want to start anything until mid February at the earliest. I have my certification to teach yoga, finished my training program over a year ago but haven't really had the opportunity to begin teaching. I plan on looking into finding an opportunity to teach after the first of the year. I'm not sure what I can plan on bringing in if I find something. Maybe $50 a week?

We can't reduce our health insurance costs at the moment. The only option is either to get ds's on state plan (like I said not sure if this is an option yet) or go uninsured, which I am not willing to do. No we wouldn't be in the red without the health insurance, but I don't see a way around this. We don't qualify for medicaid.

[Maluhia]

sounds like you might be able to arrange for and set up a "Mom and Baby Yoga" class - do all the writing/etc. describing and plan out where to post fliers, where to have it, budget costs/charging people, etc. and Start it in mid-January with online and flier posting starting post-Xmas. AND you get to bring your newborn with you