BFC Newbies Thread: 33% of the interest paid is tax delectable

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > BFC Newbies Thread: 33% of the interest paid is tax delectable

Pillowpants: Aug 5, 2006

Should you ever close a credit card?

# ¿ Jan 28, 2010 03:40

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 17:53

Pillowpants: Aug 5, 2006

herakles posted:

I'm 32 and have basically zero assets, I've lived hand-to-mouth for pretty much my entire adult life and I'm tired of it. I'm trying to get my budget under control and exercise some fiscal discipline so I can be debt free and not penniless.

Here is my budget:
code:
2468	pay	675	rent
		350	groceries
		200	hospital bills ($500 left)
		100	emergency fund
		100	savings/unexpected expense fund
		100	credit card bill ($2100 balance, 7% APR)
		50	cell phone
		25	cable bill
		80	electric bill
		60	insurance
		60	gas
		40	gym membership
		180	eating out/restaurants
		10	webhosting
		100	shopping/clothes/misc
		100	entertainment
		2230
I've been doing pretty well on sticking to that, although I tend to go over on eating out. I'm planning on shifting my hospital bill payment to my credit card as soon as that bill is paid off and then put that $300/month into my emergency fund until I've got a nice $20k cushion to sit on.

I'm impatient, though, and I want it to happen faster. Does anyone have good recommendations for supplemental income to help knock out my debt faster? I have between 12-16 hours a week that I could devote to this, but I'm not really interested in getting a lovely minimum wage job.

You're throwing $400 combined at CC/Medical Bills/Emergency Fund.

Based off my calculations, you'll have your Medical Bills paid off by June, your CCs by by next January, and then putting $400 into savings a month will give you $20,000 by Mid January 2015.

If you cut your eating out to $80 and throw the extra $100 at your CCs then Savings, your CCs are gone by November, and you'll have your 20k cushion by Mid October 2014.

Pillowpants fucked around with this message at 13:15 on Apr 15, 2010

# ¿ Apr 14, 2010 13:03

Pillowpants: Aug 5, 2006

Chin Strap posted:

Don't hawk your product in other subforums dude. Not cool.

Moana told me I could as long as I didn't just post a link and offered something useful in addition to it, but I'll remove it anyways.

# ¿ Apr 15, 2010 13:13

Pillowpants: Aug 5, 2006

Google and Microsoft offer several basic budgeting templates that could help you if you want a simple monthly budgeting tool to help you out.

You could also check out mint.com for something to keep track of your net worth and suck at categorizing transactions.

There's also plenty of different software you can buy on the internet (from places like the spreadsheet store or youneedabudget.com) where you enter in your spending and it auto generates pretty graphs and tells you how much you suck (or are awesome) with money.

Are you having trouble saving money or do you just spend too much?

----------------
SPREADSHEETS

# ¿ Apr 29, 2010 12:38

Pillowpants: Aug 5, 2006

Lyric Proof Vest posted:

does anyone have any good excel templates they like to use? i'd love to be able to use mint but it doesnt work in the UK and i need to get my house in order. Not in any bad situation just i'm pissing money up the wall on crap instead of sticking it in savings.

Microsofts website has 100 excel templates you can use, but they're all made to be pretty and aren't as useful as I'd like.

# ¿ May 6, 2010 12:10

Pillowpants: Aug 5, 2006

Koskinator posted:

For the past year, I've gotten started on the whole 'monthly bills' thing. I have a cell plan for 45/mo and a starter credit card with a $1000 limit that I pay off monthly.

Once each, I've missed a monthly deadline. For the cell phone, I ended up making a double payment the next month, and the CC debt($120 that month) was paid off about five days late. I'm new to the credit rating game - will there be any repercussions from those at all? I have no other credit builder than those two at the moment. If relevant, I'm in Canada.

As far as I know, it won't affect your credit unless you're more than 30 days late, and the companies don't often report it unless its 60 days past due.

# ¿ May 9, 2010 23:39

Pillowpants: Aug 5, 2006

amethystbliss posted:

Quick question about student loan repayment. I just graduated with a BA and will be going overseas to get my MSc. I will also be moving to the UK permanently. Because of the huge hassles involved with making student loan payments from outside the US (fees are outrageous), I plan to pay off all of my student loans in 3 years. Will have about 50K in loans (all federal, mostly subsidized) by the time I finish my master's in 2011.

Is it possible for me to enroll part time in online classes at a community college once I'm done with my master's simply to take advantage of an extra year of student loan deferral? It would be great if the government could cover the interest for another year while I work full time/aggressively pay the loans off. I did the math and enrolling part time at a community college, which is all you need for deferral, would be cheaper than paying the annual interest. Seems too easy, though. I'm trying to figure out the quickest and most efficient way of paying these drat things off, so any experience with this would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance .

You have to be taking at least 2 classes to defer student loans. I know people who have done this.

You could also do a forbearance (interest accrues and then gets added on as principal at the end of the forbearance) for up to a year, 3 times for a total of 3 years. You don't need to be in college for this.

# ¿ May 17, 2010 22:08

Pillowpants: Aug 5, 2006

If you want to buy a house for 100k , put $1500 a month in your savings account for the next 2 years or so and then try to find a cheap house while maintaining a large emergency fund.

That said, Citi gave me a CC with a decently high limit when I had no credit too.

Pillowpants fucked around with this message at 12:26 on May 19, 2010

# ¿ May 19, 2010 12:24

Pillowpants: Aug 5, 2006

DuckConference posted:

Vancouver. poo poo is crazy around where I work. And a roommate in a 1br would be a bit cramped and wouldn't really work for me.

Anyway I have a pretty healthy retirement portfolio already (for my age, anyway) in addition to an emergency fund, so I figure that even if I end up making very few contributions for around a year it won't be much of a setback.

You really shouldn't be spending 50% of your income on rent though. That's a good way to get yourself in a bad situation fast.

# ¿ Jun 14, 2010 14:19

Pillowpants: Aug 5, 2006

Grumpicat posted:

I couldn't find the right thread for this..

How are people getting away with spending like $200/mo on food and groceries? That's like living on less than 7 dollars a day. That's like one burrito with a small drink (hold the sour cream and guacamole). In college I think I spent around $400+ eating a lot of Subway and plain bagels and I thought I was doing good. But now I have to support myself on $12.50/hr and a extra two hundred bucks a month would be really nice.

How do you do three meals a day on your miniscule budgets? Pasta and root vegetables? Can you write out a typical breakfast/lunch/dinner and snacks saying how much each meal costs?

The average goons tend to spend seems to be around $400 just on groceries. That number gets skewed when I factor in the crazy dining out numbers I've seen since I started doing budgets for people.

Personally, we spend about $260-$300 a month on groceries. My lunches consist of either lunch meat or lean cuisine and we usually eat the same 7-10 meals over and over again.

In addition to that, we spend $150 dining out per month too (We go out to eat once a week and she buys bagels and coffee at Dunks/I usually buy lunch at work once a week). This is definitely not the norm.

Pillowpants fucked around with this message at 17:32 on Jun 19, 2010

# ¿ Jun 19, 2010 11:56

Pillowpants: Aug 5, 2006

Kaluza-Klein posted:

Can some one recommend software to analyze personal finances? Something I can import data into from my bank, etc.

I tried Mint.com for a few days, but it makes me a bit nervous giving them all my bank and credit card info/credential, especially when they are using that info to try and sell me things.

edit: ps I have a mac, lol.

There are dozens of sites out there that offer programs like that.

It depends what you're looking for.

Do you want to just have your spending analyzed? Do you want a budget too?

Do you want to download the program or do you want web-based?

Pillowpants fucked around with this message at 11:29 on Jul 26, 2010

# ¿ Jul 26, 2010 11:25

Pillowpants: Aug 5, 2006

CelestialScribe posted:

Has anyone used You Need A Budget before? Any thoughts? Would be nice to use software instead of my own spreadsheet all the time.

Yes. I used it for a few months before I started my own spreadsheet. It crashes a lot but when it works, its pretty awesome.

# ¿ Aug 26, 2010 18:14

Pillowpants: Aug 5, 2006

moana posted:

Zeta is my favorite Zeta.

I wish I were taught earlier how to invest properly, and I don't think people are informed enough about how dangerous CC debt or new car payments (or heck, active investment) can be. I'd love to teach finance mathematics in school just to get people started on the right foot because gosh, it would have been nice to know that instead of getting thrown blindly into the adult world of personal finance.

This.

I've spent the past six months helping goons with this and its pretty abundantly clear that the last generation didn't care enough to teach anyone how to budget.

I'm so glad I can help people, but its sad that there wasn't a class in high school or responsible parents who could help with this kind of thing.

Third Murderer posted:

Speaking of this, I would love to see a general budgeting FAQ or something. For example, I've heard that you shouldn't spend more than ~30% of your income on housing/rent. Are there similar "suggested" figures for other expenses, like utilities and groceries and stuff? I know there's a budget thread, but it's mostly people just offering each other critiques - it would be nice to have some kind of centralized document to look over.

Are you looking for an average of what most people spend or do you really want a budget?

I have 200+ goons information all averaged out in a spreadsheet from the budgets I make if you want to know how much the average is to spend on groceries or eating out or entertainment.

# ¿ Oct 22, 2010 00:33

Pillowpants: Aug 5, 2006

alreadybeen posted:

I would be interested, bonus if you could break it down by income as that would be more meaningful (average spend for those earning 10-20k, 20-30k, etc).

Since I'm not on my computer, I'll give you some info I can remember.

Most goons spend over $200 a month going out to eat. Most goons also spend around $150 on their cell phones, and have over 5 Credit cards.

4-5% of goons are living a life where overdraft seems to come regular, and half a dozen goons have debt where minimum payments exceed $2500 (and another half a dozen pay rent of around that much)

# ¿ Oct 22, 2010 02:35

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 17:53

Pillowpants: Aug 5, 2006

Vestral posted:

Another point I'd like opinion on, I have a permanent part time position at my job, where I'm contracted for 25hrs/wk which cannot be reduced without firing me, and short of stealing/punching out my boss I'm not getting fired (go labour laws!) but work I 40hrs a week, the rest made up of casual hours. These extra hours can get cut, but in the foreseeable future, they won't be. I get the feeling I should budget with only my contract hours/pay in mind, but what would I do then with the extra $250/wk I'm actually making? Would I have a savings amount built into my budget PLUS this extra money?

I'm just reiterating what froglet said, but it's a really good idea to have separate savings accounts.

What I do is I have 75% of my savings going in my emergency fund account and 25% of it going in the "I want an Ipad" savings.

I don't know how much you make, but you could set it up in such a way that 90% of the savings you normally put in, goes into the emergency fund and then the remaining 10% plus any extra hours goes into "wants'

# ¿ Nov 27, 2010 01:29

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > BFC Newbies Thread: 33% of the interest paid is tax delectable