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Knyteguy posted:Had to get my appendix removed about 3-4 years ago. Didn't have insurance due to the recession hitting us harder than anywhere. Not really funny it sucked/ still does suck. I don't see a reason to worry about something that can't be helped though. Quite possibly, your credit won't recover enough to be getting a mortgage until this falls off your report, i.e. another 3 or 4 years. Or until you pay it back (ha. Appendicitis debt in the USA would be one of the few things I have no ethical problem with people skipping out on). I'm sticking with my advice from before: first, save up money for babytimez. Second, once you have that more or less on a steady trajectory, pay off the car. Longer term stuff than that is just going to be really hard to predict right now.
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Oct 8, 2014 02:56
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CuddleChunks posted:
I agree that it's grim, but it's definitely not insurmountable. The car does have some value to it; if we can get it out from underwater then we can save ourselves maybe $5,000 if we sell it then buy a $5,000 car. Yea I'm trying to stay out of that keeping up with the Joneses thing. I'm not too much of a status guy though so I'm not too concerned here. You're right that I do have a good job (one of the most positive life changing things I've ever achieved), and yes my wife is on board so there's a light at the end of the tunnel. Just gotta stick to budget and keep on truckin.  No other bills except for a few small collections totaling less than $1,000 or so. Just waiting to get to the debt paydown phase. Also forgot to address this in the last post, but we financed the car for $22,000, and the rest was negative equity. High interest means the principal is going down slowly despite our large payment. slap me silly posted:Quite possibly, your credit won't recover enough to be getting a mortgage until this falls off your report, i.e. another 3 or 4 years. Or until you pay it back (ha. Appendicitis debt in the USA would be one of the few things I have no ethical problem with people skipping out on). I'm sticking with my advice from before: first, save up money for babytimez. Second, once you have that more or less on a steady trajectory, pay off the car. Longer term stuff than that is just going to be really hard to predict right now. I'm OK if we have to wait for the collection to fall off to get a house, although I didn't really foresee that. Having a down payment saved would still be really empowering though so we'll keep it as a savings goal. Alright so once the baby is born we'll focus on the car as much as possible. Since we'll be reworking the budget at that time I know there will be room (barring large unforeseen problems). I think I'm actually looking forward to this more than a house. We can rent a house to quell that want, but we can't rent being debt free. I'm so tired of seeing that $710/mo or whatever in debt go to the banks. Details on the house match: Nothing too out of the ordinary. Just going to add my grandmother as a third person to our house saving account. If there's an emergency (a real emergency like a lost job) then it's agreed we can take out our contribution. Other than that we're going to make it so all parties need to be at the bank to make a withdrawal if possible (at least verbally).
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Oct 8, 2014 05:17
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The interest rate on your car loan is 11% and the loan term is five more years, right? Not saying you should or shouldn't sell the car at any point, but you should have getting rid of that loan pretty high in your financial priority list. It sucks hard and it's getting in the way of all your other financial goals.
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Oct 8, 2014 05:24
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$20,000 for a simple appendectomy? gently caress, you guys need to get on the UHC bandwagon soon cause that's just unnecessary.
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Oct 8, 2014 09:07
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I swear you said it was just the car, student loans, grandma loan, and <$1k in collections...BioEnchanted posted:$20,000 for a simple appendectomy? gently caress, you guys need to get on the UHC bandwagon soon cause that's just unnecessary. Our healthcare blows. My dad goes to Canada for diagnostic procedures that are more accurate and non invasive, and a fraction of the cost. AMERIKA!!!1!
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Oct 8, 2014 15:26
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slap me silly posted:The interest rate on your car loan is 11% and the loan term is five more years, right? Not saying you should or shouldn't sell the car at any point, but you should have getting rid of that loan pretty high in your financial priority list. It sucks hard and it's getting in the way of all your other financial goals. Yes. 5 years @ 10.99%. Previous car was 5 years @ 18.xx% BioEnchanted posted:$20,000 for a simple appendectomy? gently caress, you guys need to get on the UHC bandwagon soon cause that's just unnecessary. I'd be surprised if it happened in my life time. That's socialism according to pretty much everyone. SiGmA_X posted:I swear you said it was just the car, student loans, grandma loan, and <$1k in collections... Well I usually don't factor that into the whole picture since it is medical debt, but I've definitely brought it up in the thread a couple times. Just been awhile I think. Actually now that I think about it someone brought up that I should try to challenge the medical debt since it's in collections. Medical debt can be harder for them to prove due to HIPAA, and there's a few more loopholes IIRC.
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Oct 8, 2014 16:09
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Had to make a couple changes to the budget - was off on a few things. Internet reduced: -$15/mo Car Insurance reduced: -$15/mo Laundry Card Refill added: +$20/mo Net: +$10/mo into savings. Laundry: Missed this. Internet: I didn't have our account setup online yet so I wasn't sure of the exact price. Car insurance: Category still high by a couple dollars a month. I'll just let that rollover. Do never modify budget, but forgetting laundry was a big mistake. I would have let the excess rollover on car insurance and internet if I hadn't missed that. Not expecting further changes.
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Oct 8, 2014 19:00
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SiGmA_X posted:I swear you said it was just the car, student loans, grandma loan, and <$1k in collections... How does this work if you're not a Canadian citizen? Just walk in and pay cash? I have a hard time believing that's cheaper than insured care in the US but I've been very wrong before.
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Oct 8, 2014 19:10
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Knyteguy posted:Do never modify budget, but forgetting laundry was a big mistake. I would have let the excess rollover on car insurance and internet if I hadn't missed that. Not expecting further changes. You're doing it right and you've got the right attitude about what you're doing. Keep it up 
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Oct 8, 2014 19:29
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KG who is the car loan through, and are there any penalties if you finish paying early? Even though your credit is pretty hosed, your credit union might give you a better rate than 11.99%. You'd essentially re-fi the car through your credit union, presuming the penalties, fees, rates, etc all add up. Please don't run out and re-fi your car, I'm just curious.
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Oct 8, 2014 19:29
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antiga posted:How does this work if you're not a Canadian citizen? Just walk in and pay cash? I have a hard time believing that's cheaper than insured care in the US but I've been very wrong before. When I had kidney stones in Iceland they did blood work, had me in a bed for six hours, gave me some sort of painkiller (morphine?) and a CT scan. It cost me $600 out of pocket before I got reimbursed by my travel insurance, but that was the full price for it. I've been told that the uninsured cost for all that in the USA would have been at least $2k. So yeah, I can believe it would be cheaper in Canada even if you had insurance.
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Oct 8, 2014 19:55
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Hawkgirl posted:You're doing it right and you've got the right attitude about what you're doing. Keep it up Thanks. I was a little unsure what the reaction would be. My Rhythmic Crotch posted:KG who is the car loan through, and are there any penalties if you finish paying early? Even though your credit is pretty hosed, your credit union might give you a better rate than 11.99%. You'd essentially re-fi the car through your credit union, presuming the penalties, fees, rates, etc all add up. Toyota Financial, no penalties for early pay off. I've tried to refinance with our CU before on our past car but they don't seem to want to lend to use even though we have a great history with them, incl a paid off loan. I think the fact that the loan is so underwater would probably be a big negative against us too.
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Oct 8, 2014 20:08
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Knyteguy, what is your annual gross income? What is your wife's?
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Oct 8, 2014 21:33
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Grand Theft Autobot posted:Knyteguy, what is your annual gross income? What is your wife's? $63,xxx mine (salary) $24,570 hers (calculated @ minimum guaranteed hours)
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Oct 8, 2014 22:23
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Thanks, that makes some things clearer for me. edit: some portion of your gross is going straight to retirement savings, correct? Grand Theft Autobot fucked around with this message at 22:51 on Oct 8, 2014 |
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Oct 8, 2014 22:24
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I'm curious, why is only part of your rent paid?
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Oct 8, 2014 22:59
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I'd count medical debt... A underwriter will.antiga posted:How does this work if you're not a Canadian citizen? Just walk in and pay cash? I have a hard time believing that's cheaper than insured care in the US but I've been very wrong before.
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Oct 8, 2014 23:12
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Grand Theft Autobot posted:edit: some portion of your gross is going straight to retirement savings, correct? No, not yet. Almost all of my wife's paycheck is going towards an HSA fund however, which means we're close to living on just my income. Once the baby is born we'll scale the HSA back down to equal distributions across 12 months, and start hitting her employer matched 401K at the minimum. Unfortunately my job has no retirement plan at all. However a company I contract for (who hired my boss about 2 months ago) may be picking me up in the next 3 months (according to my boss). I already do full time work for them. This will likely give me an opportunity to get some better benefits, and maybe more if I play my cards right. Old Fart posted:I'm curious, why is only part of your rent paid? Our rent is technically only $790 ($730 this month due to a credit). We're just pretending we're paying $1,200 in rent to see what effect moving to a nicer place would have on our budget. I'll make a post going into this a little more soon; I could use some input. SiGmA_X posted:I'd count medical debt... A underwriter will. I'm going to start playing the collections game maybe as soon as this weekend. I'll go for a pay-for-delete on some of the smaller ones, and on the medical I'm going to challenge them based on HIPAA violations and more if I can find it. There's some stuff that's lingering on my report that shouldn't be on there, if I remember correctly. I won't pay anything off without consulting the thread though. I'll do it all in writing so I won't have to make on-the-spot decisions. If we're successful then that may give us a better leg to stand on as far as a car refinance goes, too. The student loans are manageable.
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Oct 8, 2014 23:29
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I may be misremembering, but I think the subject of retirement funds came up earlier in the thread, and the consensus was that he needs to worry about saving up for the birth instead, and to redirect some of that money to retirement stuff after the kid is born.
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Oct 8, 2014 23:50
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Third Murderer posted:I may be misremembering, but I think the subject of retirement funds came up earlier in the thread, and the consensus was that he needs to worry about saving up for the birth instead, and to redirect some of that money to retirement stuff after the kid is born. Absolutely. I was just trying to get a picture of his gross vs net income, and the variables involved.
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Oct 9, 2014 03:26
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Knyteguy posted:Actually now that I think about it someone brought up that I should try to challenge the medical debt since it's in collections. Medical debt can be harder for them to prove due to HIPAA, and there's a few more loopholes IIRC. This was me, this is for paid medical debt - they can't keep delinquent paid medical debt on your credit report because it is a HIPAA violation. I had a few things removed well before 7 years had elapsed with this argument once I paid the debts. I would consider trying to get that $20k reduced and make payments, but I also agree with you that it isn't a priority for you right now. Once again, if I were you I'd check out creditboards.com and soak in some of the info there. It's a great resource while you're cleaning up credit and paying back loans. They'd probably give you good advice on your car loan as well.
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Oct 9, 2014 06:25
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Ah I see I thought that may have been you. Ok I didn't catch that it was paid off medical collections only. I'll definitely check out that forum you mentioned this weekend.
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Oct 9, 2014 07:09
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imabanana posted:This was me, this is for paid medical debt - they can't keep delinquent paid medical debt on your credit report because it is a HIPAA violation. I had a few things removed well before 7 years had elapsed with this argument once I paid the debts.
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Oct 9, 2014 23:35
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Is bankruptcy an option for Knyteguy? It sure seems like given this 'new' medical bill hanging over his head that possibly changes things. Given that he could walk away from the car debt and the medical debt I have to think this is an option. Don't know much about it but perhaps it's time to talk to a lawyer about this.
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Oct 12, 2014 19:43
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You need to figure that medical bill out sooner than later. Not only is it better for you to just get going on a solution so A)you can get it off your credit report B)you can get it off your mind but you should do it before you have more than bupkis in the bank and you possibly lose the option of bankruptcy. Just in case you (like a majority of Americans) have some sick sense of responsibility to meet your "obligations" to an industry that has no qualms about putting you in the poor house and grinding your future security I'm going to tell you that you should not give it a second though about telling the health care industry to eat it if that turns out to be the better path for you.
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Oct 12, 2014 20:20
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n8r posted:Is bankruptcy an option for Knyteguy? It sure seems like given this 'new' medical bill hanging over his head that possibly changes things. Given that he could walk away from the car debt and the medical debt I have to think this is an option. Don't know much about it but perhaps it's time to talk to a lawyer about this. Aristotle Animes posted:You need to figure that medical bill out sooner than later. Not only is it better for you to just get going on a solution so A)you can get it off your credit report B)you can get it off your mind but you should do it before you have more than bupkis in the bank and you possibly lose the option of bankruptcy. I'm definitely open to bankruptcy. I have no moral qualms about not paying that medical debt just for the reasons you mentioned. Anyone else have some more input? How would this impact our plans of say... getting a house? I imagine we'd lose the car right? I'd probably rather keep the car since it's probably it will be reliable for the foreseeable future. Could we choose to not discharge that? How would this affect our future though? A fresh start from many of the financial mistakes of my past would be great, but I also don't know how I'd feel about us having to wait for 7+ years to own a home, or start down a path of having good credit, etc. I'd almost rather chip away at a medical bill for the next 10 years.
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Oct 12, 2014 22:43
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Forget it. You don't need another thing to think about right now! You are working on meeting a specific budget as I recall? Keep at it, it is a skill and habit that you will need whether you decide to declare bankruptcy at some point or not. The medical debt can wait until later - or never.
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Oct 12, 2014 22:54
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Given that your car may only be 3-5k underwater bankruptcy may not make that much of a difference, especially since the clock has already been ticking on the medical debt. I've said it in the past and I'll say it again, you need to do something about that drat car one of these days. Get Grandma to loan you 10k and use 5k to pay off the loan differential when you sell the car, and use the other 5k to buy a decent older used car. Pay Grandma back $250/month until it's paid off or whatever. I'm surprised nobody has done the math on this silly car you bought but I'd guess you're on track to spending 40k for that car loan over 5 years.
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Oct 13, 2014 05:24
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I almost had tears well up when I saw the wonderhangers reference in the title of this thread. And then I found out the OP is not zaurg with a new handle.  Edit: wait, was wonderhangers cornholio or zaurg? 80k fucked around with this message at 16:43 on Oct 13, 2014 |
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Oct 13, 2014 16:36
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Wonderhangers (and vitamins, specialty chocolates, etc.) was zaurg.
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Oct 13, 2014 17:11
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Third Murderer posted:Wonderhangers (and vitamins, specialty chocolates, etc.) was zaurg. I miss zaurg
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Oct 13, 2014 17:47
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April posted:I miss zaurg We all do. My favorite zaurg moment was when he argued that no one orders pizza on Saturday, so therfore he would actually be saving money by not picking up an extra shift and staying home for all of college game day.
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Oct 13, 2014 19:51
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slap me silly posted:Forget it. You don't need another thing to think about right now! You are working on meeting a specific budget as I recall? Keep at it, it is a skill and habit that you will need whether you decide to declare bankruptcy at some point or not. The medical debt can wait until later - or never. OK. I'm sort of surprised bankruptcy hasn't come up in the thread until just now, but agreed. One step at a time. n8r posted:Given that your car may only be 3-5k underwater bankruptcy may not make that much of a difference, especially since the clock has already been ticking on the medical debt. I've said it in the past and I'll say it again, you need to do something about that drat car one of these days. Get Grandma to loan you 10k and use 5k to pay off the loan differential when you sell the car, and use the other 5k to buy a decent older used car. Pay Grandma back $250/month until it's paid off or whatever. I'm surprised nobody has done the math on this silly car you bought but I'd guess you're on track to spending 40k for that car loan over 5 years. My grandma is waaay too conservative with money to loan $10k, I think. Plus we got ourselves in this mess, and we need to get ourselves out. We definitely won't let the loan go to term. I'm still not sure if we'll end up keeping this car or not, but we can decide that once we get even with the amount owed. Budget Update: pre:Spending/Budgeted Bills: Fuel: 39/130 Groceries: 211/500 Pets: 62/150 Discretionary: Hers: 134/200 ($50 going towards an expense next month) His: 136/200** ($50 went to savings (see below)) Savings: Pre tax: 615 (HSA) Post tax: 1780/1260 ** $50 of this went into savings to pay ourselves back for last month's overage. Doing pretty well. Discretionary spending has been pretty good, except that we ended up cleaning a bunch of junk from the porch yesterday until late at night, and we went out to dinner ($14/ea). Need to be prepared to have dinners ready even if something like that happens. I think there will be more room for post-tax savings, but I'm not gonna screw around with the numbers any more until the end of the month. Business stuff for those interested: Starting this business has been keeping me extremely busy (in a good way). Business profit is small, but at least there is profit. Currently at +$24.14 this month (bought a domain or it'd be $36). I've got probably 30 hours into it in the past 7 days. I was able to translate the concept into a working website. Frontend is all setup in .NET MVC, and a little of the backend work has begun.
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Oct 13, 2014 20:15
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On the budget when you bring up money going into stuff the next month does that mean you already paid it out or that you need to make sure that you don't hit over 150 on discretionary spending. Basically have you spent 170 and are saving 100 or have you spent 270 total and are 30 dollars away from spending all the money this month?
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Oct 13, 2014 20:29
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Veskit posted:On the budget when you bring up money going into stuff the next month does that mean you already paid it out or that you need to make sure that you don't hit over 150 on discretionary spending. Basically have you spent 170 and are saving 100 or have you spent 270 total and are 30 dollars away from spending all the money this month? Well I paid mine directly into the emergency fund, so I won't get that money next month. Wife just has to make sure she doesn't spend more than $150 So here's a breakdown: Wife Discretionary ($200 total): $50 saved $85 spent --- $65 left Me Discretionary ($200 total): $50 saved $86 spent --- $64 left
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Oct 13, 2014 20:41
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I hope you guys don't break that budget this month and make it a point to keep that as a hard cutoff. You're already dangerously close to the line and it should be a good indicator for you if you end up going over it that you have serious spending issues beyond budgeting. Best of luck spreading so little over the month especially with Halloween coming up.
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Oct 13, 2014 21:30
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Veskit posted:I hope you guys don't break that budget this month and make it a point to keep that as a hard cutoff. You're already dangerously close to the line and it should be a good indicator for you if you end up going over it that you have serious spending issues beyond budgeting. I'm completely confident we'll make the budget this month. That's definitely a hard cut off, and $65/ea is plenty. I'm not big on holidays, so it's not like I'll get a costume or something. Probably won't even go out, really. I decided to cut out alcohol completely (been 2 weeks), so that's not taking chunks of my discretionary every weekend like before either. Really a lot of my spending has just been on lunches at work. For the past few months I was going until 6:00pm without eating anything at all, but that got lovely enough that I started to buy lunches. I've started bringing a bag lunch now though, so that's no longer a problem. The only discretionary I've spent in the past 5 days was dinner yesterday for $14.
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Oct 13, 2014 22:06
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Hey so I've been confused on how to approach this issue, so I'm just going to lay this out there the best I know how, and I'd appreciate some input. Novella incoming. I apologize in advance. OK so the topic is basically renting a house. This isn't exactly a new thought, but there are some new circumstances. Let me begin by saying that when we spoke with my grandmother about matching the house down payment last week (which I posted about here in the thread), I left out a detail. That detail was she said we should get the hell out of our apartment (she came over for dinner, so she saw the place). She doesn't feel it's safe, and frankly I don't really feel it's safe (at night) either. My wife, my grandma, and myself all thought that January 1 (2nd) was a good time to move. We came up with a budgetary plan, which was basically just appropriating $300 of our house down payment fund, to our rental fund. It basically switched the contributions between the two. Mind you that my grandma is pretty good with money. I don't know how much she has, but she'd give MMM a run for his money with frugal tips some times. She's also been my financial adviser for a long time, even if I didn't listen to her as much as I should have. Second thing to keep in mind was... well this was a pretty weak commitment. We could change our minds in two months, and saving money is saving money. I'm feeling pretty OK at the apartment all things considered since we cleaned out the 2nd bedroom. If we did change our minds we could just simply re-appropriate the money towards our house down payment. No harm, no foul... it was far enough away that I didn't feel the need to consult you guys yet (mind you I would have no matter what as it got closer). However some extenuating circumstances have since happened... and here's where poo poo gets kind of muddled. I'm not really comfortable going into it, but the end result was my mom nearly committed suicide this past Saturday. This is likely transcending BFC and the internet, but suffice to say there's a house on her block for rent, and it happens to be in the same neighborhood that I work. It's $1,095 a month (currently paying just south of $800), would require no yard maintenance, 1,300 sq/ft, etc. $1,000 deposit + pet (don't know the amt). Basically my thought is it would be really good if I could be around for support for my mom, as well as my sister who lives with her (she has a baby on the way as well) as living with someone as depressed as my mother... isn't easy. My sister could get out of the house and give my mother some space when she needs it (good for both), and I could be there to help my mom out when she needs that too. My grandma who was previously encouraging us to wait until January 1st (and to save up $2,500) is now saying we should maybe consider moving very soon for support purposes as well. I'm also thinking about helping my mother pay for some psychology/psychiatrist stuff, because I don't think she has insurance and I know she could use it. She's just really a god-damned mess right now. Now if anyone is wondering why I don't just go see my mom after work every day, it's because she works a 4-10 shift so she gets off 2 hours after I do. We live about 35 minutes away from her. Times that by 2 (there and back), plus time actually visiting, and it can be draining and unrealistic. So BFC what I'm asking is, what do you guys/gals think? I'm not going to go sign papers or whatever tomorrow, I promise. I'm willing to get input and it'll definitely be considered. I'm feeling pretty lost since this happened Saturday truthfully, and some guidance would really help. And for anyone who may say "Oh how convenient, a situation for Knyteguy to move didn't see that coming heh" please realize I've been/am considering staying in this place until the lease ends, or at least until January. Believe me when I say I didn't ask for the current situation. I'm really off balance right now, actually. Thanks everyone.
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Oct 14, 2014 04:35
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I'm sure you'll get a few people who think you should commit to your budget but...gently caress it. You've only got one mom. There's definitely a danger here of always finding emergencies that justify you breaking your budget, but I feel like if they're all as serious as this one, you just weren't meant to be financially solvent. From now on, poo poo like this is exactly why you plan for the worst case scenario.
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Oct 14, 2014 04:47
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I think it's a fine idea to move, but you should figure out a way to carve out $300 from your budget and live like you are still paying $800/month and treat the $300 a month as an additional income source. That way if costs come up related to your mom you'll have a $300/month buffer to help pay for those things. Time to cut that fun budget down and start eating beans!
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Oct 14, 2014 05:24
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