Dumping Debt and Building Wealth with Dave Ramsey ~ May - Page 6

[MyTwoAs]

Originally Posted by phathui5

Now I'm dying to come up with the other $1070 to pay off the midwife. That's the next one on our list.

It is kind of addictive, isn't it? My next smallest one is still six months or so out.

[p1gg1e]

Originally Posted by MyTwoAs

If you don't *need* to get out then I'd stay. I'm in Arizona which is I think the third hardest hit area as far as the housing "crisis" goes and we were originally going to move in January of 2009. We're pushing that back 18-24 months to give things time to settle.

Do you have the luxury of time on your side?

yep. really its ok...I'm going to take some calms forte LOL

We just want to be closer to family and live in the country...we countered today so we will see.

If it falls through we will have a big snowball ready for june

[MyTwoAs]

LOL, yes me and my RR have been cozy during these past few months. I know what you mean about being closer to family - we were planning on moving closer to my sister and nephews but are pushing that off. Patience is not one of my virtues, hence my mounds of debt. LOL

Good luck with the counter!

[crazyeight]

Originally Posted by phathui5

dhinderliter,

Why not get rid of your mortgage? As long as you have a mortgage, you don't really own your house. If something happens to your income, you can lose your home. While investing makes more sense from a numbers perspective, paying it off makes more real world sense. With it paid off, your house is safe.

unfortuneatly your home is never really SAFE. not only could insurance companies screw you pretty good for whatever reason but other people could decide to sue the pants of you for a stupid reason. in no way am i going to believe that just cause i don't have a mortgage means my home will never be taken from me.

as for the numbers....if i get to a point that i can be putting an extra $1k a month towards my mortgage i would be MUCH MUCH better off buying a rental property, fixer upper, high interest mutual fund etc. i don't know the exact numbers but i am not going to blindly just put my money into my home. if i didn't have ambitions to invest in real estate and had a retirment fund started then i might do that but taking an extra 10 yrs to pay off my mortgage and doing NO investing (besides that min. 15% that DR says) is not smart. i remember in HS being told that investing $100 from 20-35 and then NO MORE is WAY better than investing $200 at 35-retirement. so you can see that the 10 yrs i just pay down a mortgage (6.125% currently) could potentially HURT my compounding! i remember some "guru" makeing a comment that paying off your mortgage and doing nothing with your equity is just like putting money under your mattress..or worse. a BANK decides whether your worth it to give you money for your house and your moeny isn't working for you. not to say that if i could invest AND pay off a mortgage i wouldn't do that. thats doubleing my efforts. i try to think work smarter not harder and that goes for my money too!

not to mention in our personal lives...we're military. paying in extra money right now is a waste since the market is fickle and we move. it would be much better to have a liqued fund than "paper" (haha) money.

[mtm]

I want to be debt free so that we canuse our money to save for things we'd like to do, like travel, help our kids with school etc.

[TanyaS]

I just did my monthly spreadsheet of our debt snowball. Since joining this thread at the end of January, we have paid off 22.9% of our debt! Of course, a big chunk of that was tax returns and economic stimulus, but it's so wonderful to have it continually decrease even in months without large lump sum payments.

[Purple*Lotus]

Well I am discouraged. I had to go to the ER last night. Not only did I have to leave work and thus lost hours, but we hit our cap of insurance money, so the entire ER bill has to be paid out of pocket. I knew it ahead of time, and I tried really hard to make it through the night, but I could not breathe because the tissues were swollen around my windpipe I am dreading the bill, the last ER visit I had in 2005 was $1200.

[MyTwoAs]

Originally Posted by ~*Jaime

Well I am discouraged. I had to go to the ER last night. Not only did I have to leave work and thus lost hours, but we hit our cap of insurance money, so the entire ER bill has to be paid out of pocket. I knew it ahead of time, and I tried really hard to make it through the night, but I could not breathe because the tissues were swollen around my windpipe I am dreading the bill, the last ER visit I had in 2005 was $1200.

Yikes that is hard, is your insurance on a calendar year?

[Purple*Lotus]

Yeah, I forget the total, but we have like a cap fo $1200 or so, so we have no copays or anything. It went fast because I needed PT for my knee plus I go to the doctor every few weeks for really high BP. Then once we hit that, we have to pay out of pocket for the next $1500, then from then on, insurance pays for 80% of everything. It could be worse, though. But I really did not want an ER visit last night, but my symptoms were that of an allergic reaction, so I thought I needed to go. Better to be safe than sorry, I guess. But I had to miss a days work

I shouldn't complain, I am lucky. I just hate spending money. I am sure we all do, actually, or we wouldn't be in this thread

[lauriem33]

Oh Jaime, we've been missing you here on this thread. I hope you're feeling better physically (if not mentally with the insurance burden on your mind, ugh....).

As for the question of the day: Why do we want to be debt free? We've been twice in serious credit card trouble. Stupid, I know....we didn't learn the first time when we should have but this time it was as bad as it gets and this time we HAVE to learn the lesson, you know? So now I want to get out from under my student loan debt, keep learning to live within our means, and stop living paycheck to paycheck and going in the negative every month for the first time in our lives. We want to be debt free (or at least I do, dh is a little harder nut to crack) because it's time. It was a lesson learned the very hard way, and it's time.

[Girl In The Fire]

Woo HOO! I am now officially debt free! : We started in mid January and paid off almost $8000. Now on to Step 3...

BS 1 - Always Done
BS 2 - Done
BS 3 -1,000/10,000

[TattooedMama]

Originally Posted by APBTLuv

Woo HOO! I am now officially debt free! : We started in mid January and paid off almost $8000. Now on to Step 3...

BS 1 - Always Done
BS 2 - Done
BS 3 -1,000/10,000

That's awesome!

[TattooedMama]

Originally Posted by phathui5

QOTD: Why do you want to be debt-free?

Well our reasoning is more longterm. We don't want to end up like our parents. They are in their 50's and still work lower level jobs, paycheck to paycheck with NO retirement savings!!!

So we need to pay off all our "debt" now so we can start saving a massive amount of money to invest because I'm not gonna eat dog food as a senior citizen. And that is the harsh truth. :

[shanetedissac]

Update on the van

Hello all:

I took the van to the local car shop after paying the dealer $110 to have them put it back together. The local car shop looked it over, I told them everything the dealer wanted to do. Well, they said they would do the front and back brakes for about $600. That is like a third of the dealer price. They said that the 'leaks' were actually seeps and were not an issue at this point. The timing belt does not need to be done for many more miles. The power stearing fluid problem can just be filled at each oil change. So, our $4500 car repair bill has not become about $600. Yea, I think I'll stick with the local shop for the van.

Thanks for the suggestion of having Mark work on the car. He is not mechanically inclined with cars. I would be the one doing it and I don't know much about cars. Maybe that could be my new hobbie. I think I would rather knit again.

Thanks,

[Mama Rana]

Originally Posted by TattooedMama

Well our reasoning is more longterm. We don't want to end up like our parents. They are in their 50's and still work lower level jobs, paycheck to paycheck with NO retirement savings!!!

So we need to pay off all our "debt" now so we can start saving a massive amount of money to invest because I'm not gonna eat dog food as a senior citizen. And that is the harsh truth. :

hear hear!
I also want to travel more, see the world, and not feel so vulnerable.

[llamalluv]

Payday and time for an update:


May 1st debt numbers:
Mastercard 1 ..$499.82
Mastercard 2...5034.14 ***
Student Ln 1...3137.49
Student Ln 2...6893.48
Auto Loan.....11167.61
----------------------
Balance.......$26732.54


We had a double payday today - DH got paid, and we got our tax rebate (which is really an advance....)

May 9th debt numbers:
Mastercard 1 $0000000!!!!
Mastercard 2 $4949.14
Student Ln 1 $3093.89
Student Ln 2 $6853.31
Auto Loan...$10830.34
--------------------------
Balance........$25726.68

$1005.86 paid off 2/3 of the way to our goal of $1500! :


On the QOTD - we want to be debt free so that we can be FREE. Right now, all of our financial and personal decisions orbit around what bills we owe.

On a semi-related note, I was talking with someone about work and missing church to work, etc. The particular issue was, "Is it acceptable to miss church services for work, when all you are really working to pay for is college and a car?" (i.e. a high school kid living at home) The other woman's opinion is that there is "good debt" (school loans, mortgages) and "bad debt" (credit cards, car payments). My opinion (and what I said) was "If at all possible, debt should be avoided, even if it means missing Bible class to support yourself through college." She acted like she "caught me" by pointing out that I have student loan debt and that DH & I are going to get a mortgage to buy our first home.

I guess she missed the part where I said "if possible".

Oh, I've been caught! I'm a fraud! I may as well just take the credit cards and go to the mall and buy one of everything, in each color, since I plan on taking out a 15 year fixed rate mortgage, and we all know the two are equivalent! .

And for the record? My $11,000 in student loans was the DUMBEST thing I've ever done. All I was doing was financing not living in a studio apartment - I wanted the 1 bedroom with a washing machine and dryer and the $11,000 that I borrowed was the difference in rent between the two apartments for two years ($425 for a studio vs. $680 for a 1-bedroom) and the furniture to fill up the extra room.

[FeelingBlessed]

Snowball Progress...

Continuing to hit the snowball; cannot wait for 5/16 when we close on a land sale + will have a big chunk to throw at the mountain of debt!

SNOWBALL PROGRESS...

Since the official launch of our snowball on 2/15/08:

Snowball - Phase 1 (short-term): $4,746.18 PAID OFF

Snowball - Phase 2 (long-term - mortgages for 3 properties + grad school loan): $1,874 PAID OFF

TOTAL PAID OFF: $6,620.18

Snowball Goal for May: break $60K

Kim

[crunchy_mama]

still lurking... no exciting bills to pay off, but I have been more frugal again. I have definitely cut back on the groceries. Yesterday I did my big trip and that should last for another couple of weeks. I have been staying home most of the time and trying to plan when I do go in to eat before we go, or buy cheap snacks if we are out and about.

I have planned our vacation for the week after next. We reserved our room, last night, I found one for $55 a night. We could of got one $10 cheaper, but this has a micro and frig, so it will make it easier for breakfast and other meals, which will save us money. We got our stimulus($1800) so we are planning to use $1000 for our vacation. I have planned out when to go where for the best fees and parking. Mostly we are doing cheap family activities, but it all adds up. The motel is about $250, gas will be about $125, food- I hope to keep to $200 or less, all the activities are about $200 (the zoo, magic house, science center, grant's farm, city museum, botanical gardens, butterfly house- entrance fees and parking). I hope to have enough left that we can do a bit of shopping- I want to hit some consigment shops for some church clothes and plan to hit the Farmer's market and stock up on asparagus and spinach to put away for next year.

[dex_millie]

Hey,

Just doing a quick update
dex millie
0: Get current on bills: Always done
1: $1,000 to start an Emergency Fund: always working on this(we are not as strick on this)
2: Pay off all debt: CC1-PAID(it was 4000); CC2: 630(was 3800) - can't wait to be CC debtfree; BIL: 1150; MIL: 5000; Pretending this isn't here for this year(just doing min. payments - Studentloan1: 10,000; Studentloan2: 11,000

I cannot wait for the stimulas check. Most is going to the savings and some to BIL - I guess he will use it to stimulate the economy.

Well. Last week DH saved us 450 in labor cost, he changed the knock sensor in our car. It took him 1 week to find it. 3 weeks of trying to do it the 'easy' way, and to realize our model car is different than what is shown on the internet. And 5 hours on a Sunday to do the whole job. So that is 450 we get to keep

[tiffany21074]

Us too!

Here is what we have paid off (thank you stimulus check)

1000-Retail Services
80.90-Holy Spirit Hospital
75.68-Quantum Assoc.

Total paid=1156.58

Woohoo!

Still to pay:103,272.09 (including our mortgage)

Goal=To have everything paid off completely by 2015.