Debt Dumpers - 2018

[Jen and Ashwin]

Thanks! Loot Crate is having a BF special today for 3 crates for 1/2 price so it was only $62. We’ll give them a try. I did Ravenclaw since that is his house.

Yes, I just resubscribed for 6 months to the Harry Potter crate. But they got smart. I used to resubscribe each year using the Cyber Monday deal, then cancel the auto-renewal and resubscribe again the next year using the same offer. This year they restricted the offer to subscriptions of less than 1 year. Oh well.

 

[fifthdimensiondweller]

@disney-inspired I hope you're ok!

We are home from the trip and just plugged our numbers into the budget- we did well and should be able to pay for everything when we get paid again. Then everything from Florida next week will come out of January's budget, and then we'll be ok. January will be a very dry month for us money wise since we'll be taking care of Florida's expenses, but considering we've had 2 trips, Thanksgiving, DS's first birthday, Christmas for everyone including DS, and a few other family birthdays I'll consider that perfectly reasonable.

 

[disney-inspired]

Hope you are okay!

@disney-inspired I hope you're ok!

We are home from the trip and just plugged our numbers into the budget- we did well and should be able to pay for everything when we get paid again. Then everything from Florida next week will come out of January's budget, and then we'll be ok. January will be a very dry month for us money wise since we'll be taking care of Florida's expenses, but considering we've had 2 trips, Thanksgiving, DS's first birthday, Christmas for everyone including DS, and a few other family birthdays I'll consider that perfectly reasonable.

Thank you, I'm doing okay! My car has some damage but it's not totaled. I just keep thinking of my paid off WDW trip in January to improve my mood.

 

[Alexle2007]

Yes, I just resubscribed for 6 months to the Harry Potter crate. But they got smart. I used to resubscribe each year using the Cyber Monday deal, then cancel the auto-renewal and resubscribe again the next year using the same offer. This year they restricted the offer to subscriptions of less than 1 year. Oh well.

I found a YouTube video of someone opening their Nov box and it looked like it had nice items in it- a t-shirt, 2 umbrellas, the house "owners" pictures and a pin. For $20 I'll take it.

 

[Jen and Ashwin]

I found a YouTube video of someone opening their Nov box and it looked like it had nice items in it- a t-shirt, 2 umbrellas, the house "owners" pictures and a pin. For $20 I'll take it.

I haven't opened my November box yet. Now I am super excited!

 

[jen7233]

I'm not sure if this will include Disney gift cards, but I read this about a Target gift card sale this Sunday:
https://www.doctorofcredit.com/10-off-target-gift-cards-on-sunday-12-2/

I'm going to give it a try Sunday to see if I can pick up a few gift cards at a discount to cover dining/in park expenses for our spring WDW trip. Hoping it works and can use the debit card with it for another 5%. Air is already covered and hotel can't use Disney cards to pay with, so just hopefully can save a little % on restaurant and souvenirs.

Thank you, I'm doing okay! My car has some damage but it's not totaled. I just keep thinking of my paid off WDW trip in January to improve my mood.

It is stressful dealing with car repairs and insurance, so that's a good thing to have a paid off trip to think about!

 

[jen7233]

Well, reading some more of the fine print I now see:
"Offer does not include Target VISA gift cards, Target MaterCard gift cards & American Express gift cards and gift cards issued by other retailers such as dining lifestyle and entertaining gift cards"

oh shoot, I'm interpreting this as a "no" to Disney cards? Just Target only? I don't know, I'm still going to try.

 

[Jen and Ashwin]

Well, reading some more of the fine print I now see:
"Offer does not include Target VISA gift cards, Target MaterCard gift cards & American Express gift cards and gift cards issued by other retailers such as dining lifestyle and entertaining gift cards"

oh shoot, I'm interpreting this as a "no" to Disney cards? Just Target only? I don't know, I'm still going to try.

Yes, this is just on Target gift cards. And you can no longer use Target gift cards to purchase Disney gift cards unfortunately.

 

[imbatman]

And we are leaving tonight for the airport to our trip that almost wasn't.

I'm going to stay with this group, even after we are debt free next year because I hope I can encourage someone as much as I've been encouraged. Plus, I need the accountability until I reach those zeros on my snowball calculator.

Target MaterCard

I know this is a typo, but I totally imagined Mater grinning on the front of a MC.

 

[StacyStrong]

This month/December is so expensive!

My brother's wedding is tomorrow and along with his gift, I'm spending two nights in a hotel in downtown Chicago.

I leave Tuesday for a 6 night stay at Disney.

Plus Christmas and I had to buy myself a new winter coat! Mine no longer fit.

 

[Tygerlilly]

Starting to look ahead to next year and get all my things in line and organized. We've been doing really well the last half of this year and I'm excited to start new spreadsheets and charts and countdowns.

Our biggest expense next year is the wedding. I'm anticipating about $15k total, although we've gone over the guest list and once we went through who probably won't be coming, it's a lot less people than we thought. So I feel like it's going to be a good several thousand less than my estimate.

 

[OhMari]

Starting to look ahead to next year and get all my things in line and organized. We've been doing really well the last half of this year and I'm excited to start new spreadsheets and charts and countdowns.

Our biggest expense next year is the wedding. I'm anticipating about $15k total, although we've gone over the guest list and once we went through who probably won't be coming, it's a lot less people than we thought. So I feel like it's going to be a good several thousand less than my estimate.

Good for you.
I had 3 weddings in 9 months and our first dd got married about a year before all of them.
My youngest dd kept her wedding down to 15K, even less.
We received a $500 check back from the decorator, since we did not use a lot of decorations, that we thought we would use.

Hope you share your journey with us-I still love to hear about wedding planning.

 

[Tygerlilly]

Good for you.
I had 3 weddings in 9 months and our first dd got married about a year before all of them.
My youngest dd kept her wedding down to 15K, even less.
We received a $500 check back from the decorator, since we did not use a lot of decorations, that we thought we would use.

Hope you share your journey with us-I still love to hear about wedding planning.

I will. Hopefully I get some good deals on last minute things. My dress is $600 and completely customized, so I saved a ton there and I LOVE it. I think we decided to do a 4 day cruise for the honeymoon now, which I've priced out at about $800 for us both. Once I add in flights and a hotel the night before, I think we can keep the honeymoon well under $2000.

 

[pblack]

My debt dumping is still at a standstill. I hope to be able to continue it in January. On the flip side though I was able to get all the bills i needed paid, including the unexpected tax bill, with only having to touch a little bit of our savings. So at least we haven't added anything to our debt. I think we're also mostly done with Christmas shopping. All that's left to get are a few gift cards, some candy, and I need to order a gift to be shipped to my best friend and her husband.

 

[Aurora_Australis]

I need to sit down and have a good look at all my budget stuff over the weekend, while DH is interstate visiting friends. Have been paid for my exam marking but trying really not to touch that as it is meant to pay for our Japan flights. Refinancing our home loan for a slightly better rate but more just ease of a bank I can access when necessary. DH is now casual though and we just got a new pay system so payslips are all over the place despite him doing a regular 3 days per week.

Did a whole bunch of Christmas shopping over the weekend so probably have only $200 of gifts left to buy and then all extended family, kids,gift exchanges and teacher gifts are done. But I havent input much of that in the budget yet as this week all my end of year marking and student reports are due, plus my seniors have their first major assignment due Friday so definitely looking forward to Friday afternoon this week!

 

[Tygerlilly]

I'm sure this has been asked before (possibly even by me) but what do you guys use to track you debt and budgets? Do you do it all online? Have a planner you like? Make a binder with charts and stuff?

I really want a way to be more on top of things this year. I think I'm going to get an actual planner and be able to write it all out and actually SHOW DF what we have due, how much we have available, where our savings are at, etc.

 

[DnA2010]

I'm sure this has been asked before (possibly even by me) but what do you guys use to track you debt and budgets? Do you do it all online? Have a planner you like? Make a binder with charts and stuff?

I really want a way to be more on top of things this year. I think I'm going to get an actual planner and be able to write it all out and actually SHOW DF what we have due, how much we have available, where our savings are at, etc.

Spreadsheets for me- what I plan to do in 2019 is to actually track how much we spend in groceries, fuel, etc- right now I have a line item in my budget for them, but I don't actually go back through our creditcards and break out our spending (we put everything on cards and pay off monthly) so I will probably keep a separate sheet where I tally the spending, then move my total into the master spreadsheet.

So I have a section with our fixed costs: mortgage, gas, electricity, phones, internet/tv, Life insurance, children education, retirement savings- aka the section that doesn't change, then I have a section where I have the more "one-offs" that I know of forcasted- ski hill seasons passes, house insurance, car insurances (we pay them yearly), annual vet for dog and horse
Finally I have a section for costs that change a bit- Fuel/car maint, food/dining, gifts/school stuff/other, vacations- the 3 sections total each month to give a forecast

I then have our pay sources, and I update them as mine is the same but DH's changes based on how much he works, then I have the total left at the bottom- I then forecast the future month based on the planned expenses.

 

[pblack]

Mines not nearly as in depth as @DnA2010, but I use a Google spreadsheet that lists all of my monthly bills, due dates, payments, etc. I tried tracking our monthly expenses (gas, groceries, etc) but I kinda lost the motivation to do it. I may start it up again in January. My spreadsheet also includes the balance due on each of our credit cards that we are trying to pay off, and once I make a payment I lower that total. I don't do this for the student loans though since I'd have to factor in interest. (Our credit cards are 0% interest since we take advantage of balance transfer offers.)

 

[amalone1013]

I'm sure this has been asked before (possibly even by me) but what do you guys use to track you debt and budgets? Do you do it all online? Have a planner you like? Make a binder with charts and stuff?

I really want a way to be more on top of things this year. I think I'm going to get an actual planner and be able to write it all out and actually SHOW DF what we have due, how much we have available, where our savings are at, etc.

I like YNAB for our budget to track bills, expenses, etc. We do everything off last month's income... I just did up our Dec one. I took all of our income from Nov, assigned it to our Dec budget categories, and then the extra goes into a budget category for making extra debt payments. Nov is a 3 paycheck month for both of us, so we had a big extra amount this month.

Then I use a debt snowball spreadsheet I downloaded online. I like to keep it in google Docs so I can access it anywhere. The snowball spreadsheet I found calculates interest too (it's not perfect, but decently close so good for planning). I'll take the extra payment amount from the budget, and when we actually make the payment onto whatever loan, I update it in the spreadsheet.

 

[Dentam]

I have a spreadsheet with all of my monthly expenses, income, and bills outlined on it. It helps to keep me organized. Now I just need more income to pay down this debt now that my rent is so much higher.