Getting Out of Debt in May - Page 3

[MsFortune]

BS2 Pay off all debt using the Debt Snowball

2.0 Do the debt snowball, paying all your debts from lowest BALANCE to highest.

We are on 2.0.  I had a heart-to-heart about debt with DH and it took him a while to really get that I am serious about tackling our debt.  He sees debt as cash-flow, so as long as we can make all of our payments, we are OK.  I look at it as total amount owed, and consider the interest we will pay at the end.  So yes, we are fine, month to month, but we don't really get ahead.  

It's been really hard adjusting to not spending money on things.  I did not realize how much I shopped.  Sometimes online.  Or I can go to Target and blow a few hundred and have no idea what I really bought.  So this has involved a big shift for me.  I'm trying to live the "reduce" part of the "reduce, reuse, recycle" mantra but did not realize what a consumer I am.  I'm trying.  I've really gotten into thrift shopping and had some fun with that.  I get the experience of shopping, but it's more thrilling because it is a hunt.  And I'm reducing my consumption and reusing, so it's a win-win.

We just bought a new house for about 1/2 the price of our current house.  We are doing this to reduce our debt & payments.  The neighborhood is not my ideal, but we plan to live there for 5 years, live cheaply, and then see where we are.  The house is nice and the yard is amazing, so maybe we just never leave our house.

The house was a bargain because it's in bad shape, so we had to take out more debt to get some work done.  We are doing some ourselves but with full time jobs and two young kids, not much time for that.  

So we really can't start on the next step until we move into the new place and sell this place.  So I am in debt limbo.

[trekkingirl]

$50 more went to the BEF this week. Still pluggin away!

[mtm]

MsFortune, you're doing great, learning not to shop is a huge step. Congrats on the new house!
 

trekkingril, how close are  you to filling the bef?

[trekkingirl]

I still need about $700. Not a lot of wiggle room right now. I'm only working 25 hours a week since my baby is still so young (4mo old).

We have been trying to spend $100 on groceries per week. In the past we would skip grocery shopping often and end up eating fast food (yuck).

DH isn't ready to live on a written budget which makes it hard to know how much money I can safely tuck away. At least he has curbed his spending.

Also we decided to pay at least $200 per month on our smallest CC (we were paying $50) so that it's paid off by tax season. We are hoping for a nice tax return next year. This way the tax return can go towards CC#2.

I'm confident I would already have the BEF if I had been strictly following Dave. My DH has other ideas and only skimmed TTMM. It's more important that I have a good relationship with DH than a strict plan. At least we have a plan now instaed of blindly spending and hoping nothing comes up that we can't afford to deal with.

[pranamama]

old medical bills are on schedule to be paid off by the end of June !!    :)  all but about $200 paid at this point.    I do have a bill in collections that wasn't properly billed to insurance and they ignored me when I asked them to redo it so this summer I may try to dispute it.  The insurance company even called them to ask them to send a bill.

[eirual]

Getting out of debt in JUNE?? 

[trekkingirl]

got my CC bill today and it was really good to see the balance go down a little. Hasn't gone anywhere but up for a loooooooooooooong looooooooooooong time! Still pluggin away at the BEF too. About half way there now. I'm really tempted to just throw it all at the CC but I'm sure murphy would strike if I did that. It's such a slow process but I am finally starting to make a tiny bit of headway.

[eirual]

Awesome, Trekkingirl! 

Sometimes I wish I had a fast forward button because the waiting is the hardest part! But you're certainly heading in the right direction with the right attitude and mind-set.

Definitely keep plugging away on the BEF- it gives you the POWER to take life as it comes at you, and that is an amazing feeling.

[Wolfcat]

Joining the thread:

I have been working since the end of December on my Credit Score. It started at 570 and it's all the way up to 637. I need it to be 640 to buy my parents' house.

I've been contacting the creditors on my credit report. I invested $20/mo on a credit tracking program that I am very happy with. I'm getting my medical bills paid off and then I will open my first credit card in almost 15 years. (I decided to do so because I'm so afraid of running it up and going backwards that I believe I'm in a good place to have the mindset to pay it off. It will be used for business expenses ONLY.)

My bf will be going to full time with a raise at the end of the month, so we will be able to afford to pay even more bills, even faster... Yay!

[-Resque-]

I don't post here too often, but we're certainly making progress! We just paid the last of some hospital debt I acquired fall of last year. That was so nice, and will free up $329 a month! More exciting is what is due to happen next month...

WE WILL BE DONE PAYING OFF OUR CREDIT CARDS!!!

We started November of 2009 with around $25,000 in credit card debt. The first 13 months we deprived ourselves of EVERYTHING unnecessary to take out a major chunk of the debt. I went a little insane this past Christmas, and ended up buying WAY too much! Since then, we've let ourselves spend a little on unnecessary things, as it was obvious that I was losing my mind. We probably could have been done with the credit card debt in March, had this not happened, but I'm pretty proud of us nonetheless... with the addition of the hospital bills, we will have paid off $28,000 in 21 months. It seemed so insurmountable when we first started! I can't believe we did it.

From here on out, we are done with Dave... for the time being at least. We will be saving up a down payment on a house before paying off our cars. We are aiming for having a $30k payment by September of 2012.

[trekkingirl]

resque that is just the motivation I needed to hear today! congrats on getting to where you want to be. Had I started in 2009 I might be where you're at and that makes me a bit sad because back then I had a roommate paying half the bills! I may be doing that again to save for a down payment on a house but right now were plugging away at our snowball and slowly building the BEF.

I live in such a high cost of living area. DH won't relocate even though my job would pay us $7000 to move to another area that's cheaper while keeping my same pay rate. I looked on craigs last night to see about a cheaper rental to help us get ahead. Ha what a joke! We are in the cheaper rental. We pay $1625 a mo and most places around here now are about $2200 a mo.

At least homes for sale have finally gone down to about $400,000. Saving 20% to put down on a house seems so unatainable so right now I'm just going to remember why we need to take baby steps. At least I have finally decided to try to get somewhere instead of just treading water.