Debt Dumpers - 2018

If you're going to splash out on staying in the centre of anywhere, Venice would be it!

I agree! It is well worth it! :thumbsup2
Then again I'm a location, location, location kind of girl. ;)

I wonder if the hotel where we stayed in 1990 is still there. It's called the Splendid Suisse and omg the location was fab. A few blocks from St. Marks Square, very old, very European style and our favorite for the whole tour. Off to google...
 
And.....DH just told me we need a new washer...repairman put a temporary fix on it so it will last between "6 weeks and 6 months"... Will be checking out President's day sales on washers :(
 
ha ha ha... we feel your pain..still paying mine too :(..Only saving grace is my interest rate is 1.75 because I consolidated in 2004!!

That is the loan I'm about to pay off with my tax refund. I was extremely fortunate to have my mom pay my expenses and let me live at home during law school, but she lost her job right at the start of my third year of law school and didn't get another job until December, so money was extremely tight. I received a couple scholarships for my bar exam course, but even still it's crazy expensive and just trying to live through that study period is miserable even if you're not worried about money. Having my job start four days after the bar exam was really a blessing and a curse!
 


Taking baby steps here....... and trying to follow advice I've heard here.
Hello 2018
Slow and steady I am swimming...............................

step #1 I am now officially a part time employee and love it.(Only down is I have to pay for my own Medical/Dental coverage but it's reasonable 110.00 a month).

step # 2 Paid off my home mortgage Friday

step #3 Paid off high interest CC and closed account.

step #4 opened a lower interest CC for emergencies.

step #5 opened an emergency fund at my Credit Union.

Started proceedings to get a divorce (should have done this 15 yrs ago)................................ just laziness and costly.
But I just found out my lawyer passed away 2 months ago... all docs shredded so today I applied for a copy of the marriage certificate. I found a new lawyer and am going to set up an appointment once I get the certificate.
It should be a quick uncontested/joint application process. Providing Ex Hubby doesn't act like an idiot.

Plan to write up a Will with the lawyer also,,,,yep I am one of those people that knows better but never took the time to put one together.

I have read more info on inheritance and investment than you can imagine.My brain is buzzing from all the info.
I think because of all the taxes involved in my late brothers estate it has made uneasy when considering
paying someone to invest or manage my assets.
I am thinking of setting up my own portfolio and managing it myself with the help of my accountant.
I am going to see a financial advisor (at bank) on Wednesday but I already feel like they can't offer me
what I am looking for. This is where I need reminders to not act to quickly and think...take my time before making any decisions.
Well that's it gang............... one step at a time.
Hugs Mel
 
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I resisted the morning package for WDW. I also came up to the conclusion that I don't shop with list or plan and we have way too much food waste as result. I like this forum, and I like the idea of setting savings goal.
 
While paying on my fiances car at car mart yesterday, I decided to poke around and see what they had to offer. I have crap credit, so keep that in mind and this place doesn't go off credit, just your income/monthly expense ratio. Well, I bought a 2013 Kia Sorrento. Lol. They made me a fantastic deal on it. $200 down, with an additional $800 down once taxes come in in a couple weeks. Payments are $420 a month. And the loan is only 2 years. Overall, I feel I'm getting a much better deal, especially just on interest!

The offer from the dealership I went to was $1500 down, payments were $450 for 5 years.

Thank goodness this worked out because our next option was renting a car for vacation next week and I really didn't want to spend $280 on a rental when I would buy the next week.


Also, we picked our wedding venue, set the date, and put the deposit down! :jumping1: I absolutely LOVE the girl who is in charge of it all and will be the day of coordinator. Plus we got the room rental free if we hit the catering minimum (which we will, easily).
 


We added to our debt this weekend. Since we should be getting the keys to our new house next week, we went shopping for a washer/dryer over the weekend. I knew that Best Buy had a set on sale that I wanted so we went there. While we were there we decided to see what kind of refrigerators they had on sale also (even though we were supposed to be buying one from my brother) and they had a Samsung french door on sale for $1250 in the color I wanted, black stainless steel! I'm in love with the black stainless steel. It was about the same price/a little more expensive then what we would have gotten from my brother, but since it was the brand and color I wanted we decided to go for it. We also ended up buying a new bedroom TV that was on sale, $330 for a 4k 40 inch Samsung. Can you tell we like Samsung in our house? All in all we spent $3000 at Best Buy :eek: but they will be out on March 3rd to deliver and install the appliances. Luckily we do have cash for at least part, if not half, of it and we'll have 18 months to pay off the balance. I do foresee adding to our debt this year though instead of paying it down, but I guess that's the price of buying a house.
 
We added to our debt this weekend. Since we should be getting the keys to our new house next week, we went shopping for a washer/dryer over the weekend. I knew that Best Buy had a set on sale that I wanted so we went there. While we were there we decided to see what kind of refrigerators they had on sale also (even though we were supposed to be buying one from my brother) and they had a Samsung french door on sale for $1250 in the color I wanted, black stainless steel! I'm in love with the black stainless steel. It was about the same price/a little more expensive then what we would have gotten from my brother, but since it was the brand and color I wanted we decided to go for it. We also ended up buying a new bedroom TV that was on sale, $330 for a 4k 40 inch Samsung. Can you tell we like Samsung in our house? All in all we spent $3000 at Best Buy :eek: but they will be out on March 3rd to deliver and install the appliances. Luckily we do have cash for at least part, if not half, of it and we'll have 18 months to pay off the balance. I do foresee adding to our debt this year though instead of paying it down, but I guess that's the price of buying a house.
We bought our first house in 2013 and as long as you know you will have repair/replacement costs annually, you should be fine :). It was a shock to the system being unable to call the landlord, but homeownership is so worth it.
 
We added to our debt this weekend. Since we should be getting the keys to our new house next week, we went shopping for a washer/dryer over the weekend. I knew that Best Buy had a set on sale that I wanted so we went there. While we were there we decided to see what kind of refrigerators they had on sale also (even though we were supposed to be buying one from my brother) and they had a Samsung french door on sale for $1250 in the color I wanted, black stainless steel! I'm in love with the black stainless steel. It was about the same price/a little more expensive then what we would have gotten from my brother, but since it was the brand and color I wanted we decided to go for it. We also ended up buying a new bedroom TV that was on sale, $330 for a 4k 40 inch Samsung. Can you tell we like Samsung in our house? All in all we spent $3000 at Best Buy :eek: but they will be out on March 3rd to deliver and install the appliances. Luckily we do have cash for at least part, if not half, of it and we'll have 18 months to pay off the balance. I do foresee adding to our debt this year though instead of paying it down, but I guess that's the price of buying a house.
Keep an eye on prices over the next 14 days, Best Buy will issue a refund on any money if the price drops within 14 days of purchase. I bought my W/D and fridge there 2 years ago and the price for all 3 dropped a few hundred dollars a week after I made my purchase.
 
Keep an eye on prices over the next 14 days, Best Buy will issue a refund on any money if the price drops within 14 days of purchase. I bought my W/D and fridge there 2 years ago and the price for all 3 dropped a few hundred dollars a week after I made my purchase.

We plan on it! I'm hoping that maybe this weekend the price will drop a little further. We got lucky when we purchased our living room TV, it dropped by like $200-300 the next week and they adjusted the price for us.
 
We plan on it! I'm hoping that maybe this weekend the price will drop a little further. We got lucky when we purchased our living room TV, it dropped by like $200-300 the next week and they adjusted the price for us.
I also don’t know what credit card you purchased it with, but I used my American Advantage Citi card which has Citi Price Rewind and I got more money back like 3/4 months after based on the final price I paid Best Buy.
 
I also don’t know what credit card you purchased it with, but I used my American Advantage Citi card which has Citi Price Rewind and I got more money back like 3/4 months after based on the final price I paid Best Buy.

We used our Best Buy credit card so unfortunately I don't think that will work for us. :( But thanks for the info!
 
We closed on the home equity loan with Chase. If I made a $30,000 disbursement, then I got a 0.25% rate reduction for the life of the loan. I asked what would happen if I got the disbursement and then just paid the money right back into the HELOC. Since there is no prepayment penalty, I would get the rate reduction and the HELOC would be paid in full. So that is exactly what I did. When the $30k hit the account, I just used the disbursement to pay back into the HELOC. That way, I get the rate reduction without having to pay any interest (just a few hours interest?) on the account until we actually need the money. We are working with the architect now on plans for the basement. Once we get started on actual construction, then I will start tapping the HELOC on as needed basis.
 
Just checking in. We haven't set real goals yet, so I just have abstract things to chime in with.

We had a 5 night trip to Disney World at the end of January, which was fun but sad since we don't have concrete plans to go back yet. And we had lots of fun at Moonlight Magic thanks to @Jen and Ashwin :) After credit card points for flights and hotel, and discounted or free/earned gift cards, it ended up being around $700 - about a third of what we spent on a similar trip last January :thumbsup2

We are scaling back on our eating out, which was our big budget buster last year, and meal planning. I'm trying to use up things that have accumulated in the pantry. I have gotten back on track with my Starbucks spending... I originally was aiming for a couple times a month at most, but it got way out of hand last year when the well water was bad. I'm sticking with my brewed coffee and little instant coffee packets at work.

I'm still coming up with us owing around $1800 on our taxes, bummer but we've got the cash to pay for it. We're really sitting on way more than we should be currently, since we haven't done anything with our extra income since we paid off our student loans... it's enough to pay off one of our cars, it's bad! Need to straighten that out this week. I'm glad we've slacked on it though, because of the tax thing and also some wedding expenses coming up. BIL gets married in SoCal in April. We leave 7 weeks from tomorrow, and DH just officially found out he was in the wedding a few weeks ago, and just last week what he's supposed to wear. So we need to budget in that cost, and also a wedding gift. The wedding is on a Friday, and we figured we (including the in-laws) would have to miss work Thursday too since the venue is an hour and a half from any airports, so we'd thought of flying into San Diego Wednesday night and sharing a room with the in-laws, covering that and tickets to the USS Midway, and then splitting the rental car cost... and that all went out the window on Saturday. MIL doesn't want to take Thursday off :confused3 We had decided before to make a small trip out of it and go to Disneyland after the wedding, so I bought tickets with some gift cards I had stocked on Saturday before the price increase. I redid the hotels and flights now that we're not flying in with the in-laws, so now those are all covered with credit card points, including a night on the Queen Mary in Long Beach. The rental car is slightly cheaper with the new plans than splitting it 50/50 with the in-laws was. I've got almost $300 in Disney gift cards now, so I'm going to try and earn gift cards/money through things like Swagbucks to cover the rest of the trip stuff. Aiming for another $200-$300 in free/discounted Disney gcs, and $350 to cover other meals/rental car. I've got some things to sell on eBay and that money will go towards the trip too.

Work OT has slowed down a little, as we have gotten someone to help us work third shift until we hire and train a new employee. We also had the last three weekends off, so my paychecks this month are my smallest since I was on my honeymoon - only 16 OT hours each :rotfl: And then some people are taking time off, so I'll have to help cover, so it looks like next month my checks will have 30+ hours each.

I feel like I've been waiting forever for the IRS to update their withholding calculator, so I can change my W4... Hoping to straighten out the extra income this week, and then switch our retirement savings around. I haven't changed my 401k from 25% since last summer. We need to bump up DH's, get IRAs going, and maybe increase my HSA savings. I read something recently that it might make more sense to fund 401ks to get match, max HSA, max IRAs, and then go back to the 401k. It's the same I'd read before, but I'd never seen HSA taken into account. Lots to do around here :)
 
That is the loan I'm about to pay off with my tax refund. I was extremely fortunate to have my mom pay my expenses and let me live at home during law school, but she lost her job right at the start of my third year of law school and didn't get another job until December, so money was extremely tight. I received a couple scholarships for my bar exam course, but even still it's crazy expensive and just trying to live through that study period is miserable even if you're not worried about money. Having my job start four days after the bar exam was really a blessing and a curse!
How much does it cost to take the bar exam?
 
Another lawyer here who knows my fellow debt dumpers pain of loans related to law school/bar exam. It took me 10 years of scrimping (most of it while working as a government lawyer) to pay it all off, paying about 20% of my take home pay each month. And I was lucky in not having as much loans as some do because I went to a public law school, had a job during second and third year and while studying for the bar exam, and had some grants and scholarships.
 
I was going to post today about some great debt dumping progress I've made since the first of the year (applied my whole income tax return of almost $2900 to a credit card and also put another $1500 towards it in January--making progress!!!). It really is helpful to make that list of what you owe and percentage of debt to available credit ratio--so much fun to run the number again and see the numbers going down!!!! I should have done that years ago because now I am a little obsessed lol !

But today Murphy has struck!?!?!!?!?!?! I was driving down the Interstate and all the sudden my car started shaking like crazy and I immediately started signaling and pulling over. Long story short, just as I got to the shoulder but before I got stopped, my lug nuts broke off and my tire and rim started rolling down the freeway, jumped the concrete median, missed one 18 wheeler, bounced off the side of the next 18 wheeler, jumped back over the median and came to a stop just off the inside lane on my side of the road. I jumped out of the car and raced and got it before any more cars could come along. Crazy!?!?!!?! AAA to the rescue, got towed to a local shop, and now waiting to find out the estimate. I can see the damage to the rotor, so know that will have to be replaced. Probably the spoke (I think that is what it is called) too. There was also a bit of damage to my front fender near the driver side door, but not anything that HAS to be fixed. The tire was brand new, put on Dec 23, and I bought the Certificate Of Replacement, so as soon as my ride gets here I am taking the tire and rim back to Discount Tire and hope they make it right. Not sure if they will replace the rim (that I bought there too) but they should at least replace the tire for free with the Certificate. I know is is going to be costly and slow up my debt dumping. On the bright side, the tow only cost me $10 because it was 2 miles over the AAA free tow miles limit, and the nice guy at the shop in this little town off the freeway said he can probably have me fixed by tomorrow, assuming he can get the rotor and spoke from the nearest Dodge dealership, and best of all, I have cash in my emergency fund to cover the costs.
 
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