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I'm getting out of debt, with the snowball method. Wanna play? - Page 7

post #121 of 302
11/8/06 at 11:32am
Quote:
Originally Posted by lisa2976 View Post
Kleine, ooh bummer, but YES, you are doing it, and you are doing it right.. just think, you could have been in a situation where you weren't able to pay for those things, and ended up putting it on a cc and making more debt instead. You are making progress!
Exactly! Step one is to not acquire any more debt . . .that is major and you have accomplished that! The next step is to get rid of what you have. Baby steps!

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post #122 of 302
11/8/06 at 6:46pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mizelenius View Post
Exactly! Step one is to not acquire any more debt . . .that is major and you have accomplished that! The next step is to get rid of what you have. Baby steps!
The truck will cost $1000 to fix. : That's a BIG baby step to overcome. I am going to go take out my frustration on the chicken I need to cut up for dinner.
post #123 of 302
11/8/06 at 8:02pm
Ooooo, I'll play! I'll have to go back through the whole thread, but I just used the snowball calculator at www.whatsthecost.com and are doing our snowball by interest rate and not size. We will save $20,000 to $30,000 just by snowballing that way! wowzers!

I'm so darn excited to start this. By putting in $900 per month we should be debt free in 9-10 years. This sounds awful, but considering how many years we've been doing nothing, it shouldn't bee TOO bad. Plus any extra can go to debt and pay it off faster!
post #124 of 302
11/8/06 at 11:56pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kleine Hexe View Post

The past few months have been really hard. We've had a lot of extra expenses. Just when I manage to save $300 extra dollars (and it took me awhile) and I thought we were turning things around slowly....bam hit again by life.
Do you have a baby fund of $1000 set up? We got that done before starting the snowball. It makes so we don't have to worry as much about the unexpected expenses that happen each month. It took me three months to get it all the way up.
post #125 of 302
11/9/06 at 1:34am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kleine Hexe View Post
The truck will cost $1000 to fix. : That's a BIG baby step to overcome. I am going to go take out my frustration on the chicken I need to cut up for dinner.
UGH! Any chance you can get rid of one car?
post #126 of 302
11/12/06 at 5:04am

deliberately getting into debt

hi
i work 2 jobs : and dh is a student. we definitely count as low, low income. but i have a plan:
canadian student loans.
you see, in canada student loans don't start having interest until a year or so after the student finishes school. and we get a certain % of the loan amount in grants if we are low income or have kids. sooooo....
we're getting the maximum amount of student loan we can. so that we get as much as possible in grant money. they calculate how much to give based on a few things and one is the bank balance, so the emptier our accounts are the more we get. so we recently got a killer deal on a house. so whenever our bank balance gets above 500$ we put the money on the mortgage. that way we always look broke. but then we get more loan & grant money. so we put that on the mortgage, too. when dh finishes school we will sell the house and for sure get a chunk of change more than we paid for it, and hopefully it will have a lot of the mortgage paid off already. so we'll use the proceeds from that to pay off the student loans before they start gathering interest. then we will save for a huge down payment and buy a little bit of land, build a house, get chickens and a goat...
it feels so good to have a plan. when little things come up and we can't pay them right away because our bank balance is so low that sucks, but in the end we're going to win.
post #127 of 302
11/13/06 at 2:08pm
Oh, I am so onboard with this one. We have enough debt that it's making life VERY uncomfortable.

Quote:
I'm in. I just got Dave Ramsey's book. Here's to out of debt and buying a house in 2008 well that's my goal at least!
:
post #128 of 302
11/14/06 at 12:17am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mizelenius View Post
UGH! Any chance you can get rid of one car?

No, we live far away from everything so walking or biking anywhere is not really possible. DH has a commute of 47 miles on way for work so I could not drive him there and back. It would cost double the gas and I'm not driving him to work at 5:30 am.
post #129 of 302
11/14/06 at 5:50pm
Subbing....
post #130 of 302
11/15/06 at 4:55am
We just got off of Cobra and will be saving over $600 to pay on other bills. Also as a cancer patient there is a fund that will pay up to $1000.00 for any bill per year ( credit card,rent, etc) so I'm getting a bill mostly paid. So excited and so happy to pay off my bills!
post #131 of 302
11/15/06 at 10:41am

Debt snowball

Hey all!

Someone mentioned subbing...I found out I can sub on the local paper route and get paid $50 a day during the week and $125 on the weekend. I'm going to do this a couple of days a week and any $ earned will go towards our snowball. Not looking forward to getting up at 3 am but anything to get rid of this mountain of debt we have!
post #132 of 302
11/16/06 at 1:54am
Well, I managed to tell DH that we should not put the truck repair cost on a cc. We found someone to fix for $585 instead of $1,000 so saved some there. I used money I set aside for our house payment. That means our house pmt will have to come out of one paycheck. Ouch. So it will be *tight* the next three weeks. Not that it isn't always tight....it'll be even tighter. The main thing is that we did not pay with our cc!
post #133 of 302
11/16/06 at 2:06am
Kleine Hexe,
I've been there. We almost bounced checks last month. But managed to not u se the cc to pull us out. I did borrow money from mom but hey it's almost Christmas and I'll pay her back. We have adoption expenses totalling about 3-600 in the next two months to save up for. My mom is paying the big one of 850 for finalization. She's worth every penny but it's going to be tight tight tight til March here. LOL
Congrats on changing your mentality. That's what it's all about. No more snakes.
post #134 of 302
11/18/06 at 6:32pm

We are in

We owe about 25k on cc and 2nd as well as couple hundred in educational fees for the public school.

I will pay the ed fees off first because they are so small. We have the $1000 in the bank which is more relief than I can tell you. It really gives you some peace of mind.

I think the most important aspect to making this whole thing work is really changing how you live. It is also the hardest part.

Good luck to everyone.
post #135 of 302
11/28/06 at 1:15am
I know I haven't posted to this thread much, but I've been reading all along, and today I paid off our first card!! I'm so excited!!!! I had chosen that one as first because it had the lowest balance AND the highest interest rate, but now I'm not sure if I should tackle the next highest balance or the next highest interest rate. Oh well, I have a month to decide before the next bill comes!

Now that my snowball is rolling, I can't wait to see the next one paid off, and when they're all done (probably in a year unless we get some money back at tax-time) we'll tackle the student loan! Woo-hoooo!!!!
post #136 of 302
11/28/06 at 1:27am
Congrats Msjd. I know what it feels like. We are on a countdown as well. I just paid off one store card, cut it up and will from now on pay for clothes in cash. This month I hope to pay off at least two cards. Good luck and keep us posted! Yeah
post #137 of 302
11/28/06 at 7:57am
I had an unexpected thing happen when I paid off the Target card. It was just the store card, not the Target Visa they offer, with a $300 limit. A month after I paid it off, I got a notice that they've automatically switched me over to the Target Visa and increased my limit to $3100. : I didn't WANT that. I didn't ASK for that. And now I'm wondering how it's going to affect our credit ... even if we never ever use it. I mean, that's $2800 more in *available* credit we have open. Isn't that looked upon negatively? I'm kinda mad they did that.
post #138 of 302
11/28/06 at 11:26am
heathenmom--can you just cancel the card?
post #139 of 302
11/28/06 at 11:26am
heathenmom, it is not seen as a bad thing (all the time) when you have open but unused credit. In fact, I've been told by some that it's good to have open crdit without a balance. It shows that you can have credit and be responsible with it. It is bad when you have credit and it is all maxed out. That is not good. Credit scores do not like maxed out credit.....even if you only own one credit card. Three open cards with no balance is better than having only one card but it is maxed.

You can also call Target and close it.









We get paid three times next month. I'm so excited to send extra money to the van!
post #140 of 302
11/28/06 at 11:55am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kleine Hexe View Post
We get paid three times next month. I'm so excited to send extra money to the van!
YAY you!! I always love those months, too.

I probably will cancel the card ... not sure yet. I hadn't thought about the open-but-not-used credit being viewed as responsible. I really, really don't like having open accounts out there that I don't intend to use, ya know? It just ticks me off that they can just "upgrade" myaccount without my permission.
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Mothering › Mothering Discussion Forums › Natural Family Living › The Mindful Home › Frugality & Finances › I'm getting out of debt, with the snowball method. Wanna play?