Getting Out of Debt in NOVEMBER!

[eirual]

Do you want to get out of debt? Start living on a budget? Be able to start saving? Then this is the thread for you! Some of us use Dave Ramsey's method but please join us even if you're following someone else/your own plan. All are welcome!

Here's DR's plan:

Pre-Step 1: Get current on your debts and do a budget
0.1 No new borrowing.
0.2 Talk with spouse and get him/her on the same page as you concerning finances.
0.3 Do a written budget
0.4 Temporarily stop all retirement contributions
0.5 Get current on all the basics (Shelter, Food, Utilities, Basic clothing)
0.6 Amputate "toys" (bikes, boats, ATV's etc) to help snowball
0.7 Cut lifestyle (Cut cable, cell, extras, eating out) and/or get a second job to raise $1000 EF.
0.8 Get current on ALL bills

BS1 $1,000 to start an Emergency Fund
1.1 Chop up/freeze CC's (You have an EF now)
1.2 Get Health insurance NOW if in the US
1.3 Get Life insurance NOW if you have considerable debt/your family couldn't make it financially if you died.
1.4 Amputate cars that you can't pay off within 24 months

BS2 Pay off all debt using the Debt Snowball
2.0 Do the debt snowball, paying all your debts from lowest BALANCE to highest.

BS3 Three to six months of expenses in savings
3.1 Start car replacement fund
3.2 Save up 20% for home purchase OR pay down existing mortgage to the point you can drop PMI.
3.3 Start furniture or other non-essential stuff replacement fund

BS4 Invest 15 percent of household income for retirement

BS5 College funding for children

BS6 Pay off home early

BS7 Build wealth and give! Invest in mutual funds and real estate

Here's the link to Dave Ramsey's website: http://www.daveramsey.com or if you want a good DR discussion forum, http://www.llnoe.com is good but hardcore. Gail vax Oxlade's Til Debt do Us Part is great tv show, very motivating. Her website is: http://gailvazoxlade.com/blog Others like Suze Orman or Mary Hunt, really doesn't matter whose method you use, just start the process to getting out of debt

[mylilmonkeys]

Boy are you on the ball!

BS3 here.  Slowly adding to our car replacement fund.  DH's dropping income seems to have bottomed.  We have just enough to cover our budget, and no more.  I can still spend less than he makes and save, but the saving doesn't really feel like savings because it is all earmarked for either an annual bill, the car replacement, or birthday/Christmas gifts.  Oh well, we're making progress!  

[AnkaJones]

BS2 here.  Started our debt snowball just last month.  Did our first written budget for October, and actually stuck to it well enough to be able to make our second debt snowball payment yesterday.  Usually when I do our loan payments (all student debt) I feel like such a shmuck remembering all that that irresponsible spending as a college student.  Writing my debt snowball check was different.   I finally felt like we were taking control of the situation.  It was a blow for freedom!!!  DH and I were smiling for the rest of the night.  We are enriched in far more ways than just the money we didn't spend frivolously.  I guess it's good we're getting momentum now.  We're in for a long haul.

Anka

Edited by AnkaJones - 11/1/11 at 4:09pm

[eirual]

Originally Posted by AnkaJones 

  It was a blow for freedom!!! 

AWESOME!!

It's amazing how taking control of your finances spreads to the rest of your life too...

[dziejen]

Still plugging away here

[eirual]

This month's tight for us- absolutely NO wiggle room, so we'll see how we do....we've been slacking off lately.

[kitteh]

We had a pretty good month in October, up until the last week or so. DH was working extra shifts and we seemed to have a lot of "extra" money. Late in Oct we had to go to an immigration interview for DH which I thought was on the other side of LA, so we rented a zipcar for the day only to realize that the appointment wasn't actually downtown but closer to Beverly Hills, which would have been a reasonable trip by bus. Oh well, we had already reserved the car for the full 24 hours and couldn't cancel without paying nearly as much as the original reservation. So we decided to take advantage of the car and hit up Target for some Christmas shopping. We put it all on DH's card ($344!) planning to pay it off at the end of the month.

Well about a week later we received notice that a non-profit organization with which we'd signed up last January had found us an affordable apartment in Santa Monica. We went to see it the next day and LOVED the apartment and location, so we put $100 down to hold it til Nov 30th and I guess we're moving!! This is great great news for us, but also complicated and could get expensive because we are currently in a lease til April 30th, so we'll have to break it and pay penalties. Also we're living with my brother, who may or may not make this transition more difficult than it has to be, I don't know.

So we're suddenly in SAVE SAVE SAVE mode. Then DH's last check in Oct was short over $250, and my EDD payment of about $250 was delayed for typographical errors on the continued claim form, and suddenly we're in a bit of a crunch, money wise. We have the funds in an ING account, but I'm trying not to touch that unless ABSOLUTELY necessary. So the restricted cash-flow has kind of been a good thing, psychologically, to get us back on track as far as the budget goes. We've already paid the $344 down to $250, but we also have about $150 on our Old Navy card. Those two cards have high interest rates, so I'm motivated to pay them off in full before the due dates later this month. But the rest of our credit card debt that we have (~$3500) is at 0% til 2013, so we're dropping those payments down to the minimum in order to save up cash for the move.

I'm hoping that the move goes smoothly and that we can recoup our "losses" from it quickly. I'm so so excited to finally have our own apartment for just my little family, though. EEE!!!

[trekkingirl]

Subbing will check in soon

[Paigekitten]

BS1 for us.  We are going to be here for a while.  But I thought we were going to have to pay the house payment late this month and we managed to scrap it together which means we'll have a little extra next paycheck to stick away.

[AnkaJones]

So, I'm in one of the cities with an "Occupy" going, and just walked through the tent city.  A lot of them are advocating pulling money out of banks in order to decrease their control on society... it seems to me that debt is actually the way financial institutions control society.  Can you imagine if the entire country just payed off their personal debt, then had all the money currently going to minimum payments left to reinvest in their communities? 

visions of utopia

Anka

[mylilmonkeys]

kittieh - Great news on your new apartment!  Hope everything gets back on track the way you want it!

Anka - I agree!  Wouldn't it be even better if our federal government took its debt more seriously, too?

[eirual]

*knock on wood*

We've been doing really well during this super tight month. We've eaten out more than I'd like to admit (1-2/week) but being pregnant and exhausted and having food aversions, I'm being gentle on myself for that. Eating out wasn't in the budget but we've still done it on cash because some things we did budget for aren't going to be needed this month (e.g. clothing and I forget what else).

How's November going for the rest of you?

[CookiePie]

Well my work is mostly seasonal with few hours over the winter months.  I have been looking for alternatie work even if it is just seasonal, with no sucess.  This time of year I take extra care to budget & meal plan & to make sure we can make ends meet before I sit down & pay any extra toward the CC bill.  I finally feel like we are in reach of our goals.  But I know that this winter will be tough, as they always are.  I'm actually havnig a good time trying to make pinching pennies a hobby, & challenging myself to do better!     

[AnkaJones]

I was doing really well this month until last weekend, when I had leisure time.  Totally fell off the horse.  I sat down and reworked the budget, though, and while this month will be extremely tight for the rest of the month, we should be able to make our goals.  Another challenge is that DH is on a business trip, and I'm watching money fly out of the account... it'll all get reimbursed and it's just coming out of the cushion specifically for that purpose, but given how much effort we put in to save a couple bucks, watching a $50-100 business dinner come out is traumatic!  I guess it's a good sign.  If opening my wallet triggers pain receptors, I figure I'm less likely to do it.

In good news, I'm doing a lot of OT for the rest of the month, so my leisure time issue will probably be less of a problem.  I hate being away from DS this much, but if I keep this up for a year or so I'll be able to spend a lot more time with him.

Anka

[trekkingirl]

we are spending our first week in the RV! Lots of changes and start up cost involved. I'm hoping that we get our permanent spot here shortly. That will save a ton. I'm excited to post updates here as we make some headway. I think I am going to check out TTMM again and reread it just to get fired up. Or should I say gazelle intense!

[Paigekitten]

Our homebirth turned into a hospital birth.  We have NO wiggle room for that. 

[dziejen]

We were able to take our kids out for the day for Veteran's Day thanks to an awesome discount for families and free admission for hubby at the aquarium.  We also visited the nearby Submarine museum and then were able to go out to dinner with ca$h!   Also picked up 2 extra shifts at work this week which will help a lot.  Can't believe the holidays are creeping up so quickly!

PaigeKitten, It's great that you were able to pay the house payment on time - what a great feeling!  Sorry that your plans have changed but I hope it all works out and that you have a wonderful birth and a healthy little one.

[Milk8shake]

Coming out of lurk-dom to join in.  I'd definitely be in the early pre-steps.  Been chatting to DP about budgeting and such. 

Can anyone recommend a good Excel template to start out?  I tried to create my own, but ended up confusing myself!!

We're doing some "toy" amputation as well. 

My main focus at the moment is bringing all of our bills up to date.  This is the first time we have been behind like this.  I've had to have a lot of time off work in the last 18 months of so, for one reason or another.  Add to that the medical expenses, and us probably not tightening our belts the way we should have, we've ended up here.  I've contacted all the companies, and made arrangements to have everything paid up to date by the end of December.  After that, the only thing we'll have outstanding is our CC debt, which is also not pretty, but that is next on the list. 

In the mean time, I am looking into options to transfer the CC debt to a lower interest card or loan, but I'm worried that won't be possible because a) our credit has probably been affected by the recent defaults, and b) I've only been back at work properly for 2 months, and most won't loan to you until you have 3-6 months in one job.  I'm currently looking for a better paying job, with more hours, so then I will be starting all over again anyway. 

[eirual]

Welcome, milk8shake. It sounds like you're on the right track! DH made our excel template, but I find I still prefer paper (and it's so messed up and personal that it wouldn't be worth sharing). You can find budget templates if you search in excel.

QUESTION:

-Do any of you have Christmas plans? DS and DH are easy, but I usually try to do something little for extended family (5 brothers and wives, 10 neices and nephews). In the past I've done cinnamon stick christmas tree ornaments (where you rip strips of green fabric and tie them around cinnamon sticks to make little christmas trees with allspice balls), ball ornaments (snowman handprints with a poem), personalized egg cups.

[AnkaJones]

We're going to be pretty low key this year.  DS is too young to remember (or, for that matter, need much in the way of presents), and I can get paid a lot for overtime.  Basically, I'm scheduled for OT throughout the season.  It's a little bit of a glum way to spend the holiday, but we're trying to have all of our debt paid off by next Christmas (and there's a lot of it), so we'll have a glum Christmas this year to have a totally awesome, debt-free Christmas next year.  As far as gifts, we're doing kids only, and will probably be sending checks as they're mostly older.  Speaking of which, last year we did those little gift cards that look like credit cards -- I would totally avoid those for anyone thinking about them.  The kids like them, but they cost a lot of money!  We didn't realize it until we had already checked out. 

Given all of that, we're going to try to do some holiday cheer.  We've got a Christmas tree, some ornaments from years past.  I'm painting wooden blocks for DS, as well as sewing some soft blocks from scrap fabric.  I'm also scouring Craigs List and freecycle for some kind of push toy or wagon or something which I think he'll like over the next few months.

Best,

Anka