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I'm just looking for some general advice about how to approach our financial future. Things aren't looking too grim, but we don't have any real plans either. I'm 23 and my parter is 24. I'll try to keep this short. Credit Cards Chase: $2600 limit, $2480.67 balance, 18.24% (mine) Capitol One: 1250 limit, $0 balance, 12.50% (mine) BECU Visa: $500 limit, $0 balance, 12.90% (partner's) As of 02/18/10 the capitol one card had a balance of $1159 and the BECU one had a balance of $478 Other Debt $5000 owed to my parents Our budget looks something like this: Income:$2500 Rent:$865 Utilities:$155 Credit card:$55 Pets:$120 Auto Repairs/Gas:$100 Auto Insurance:$200 Phone:$100 Grocery:$350 Netflix/WOW:$41 Personal:$200 ($100 each) Weed:$300 Current Savings: $25.67 $2500 is an absolute lowball for how much we make in a month. This is the first month working off of this budget but the plan is to put every extra cent into our debt. I'm also up for a promotion which would raise my hourly rate from $13.00 to somewhere around $20. If this happens our plan is to stick to the same budget and pay off debts even faster. For the future we both want to go back to school sometime next year. I got my associates without having to take out a single loan and I'd like to do this with the rest of our schooling. Our biggest goal is to buy a house as soon as possible. There are a few purchases of around $600-$700 we'd like to make in the short term as well. Right now both of our credit scores are around 650. Looking at our credit reports there's nothing negative on them so I assume it's lack of credit history. We really want to get these to be around 750. We both have 401ks that we are not contributing to. Our employer will match our contributions up to 5% of our income if we start. To be honest though it's really hard to think about retirement when you're living paycheck to paycheck. Do you have any advice for reaching our goals as quickly as possible? I'd give more backstory but this is really long already.
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Mar 26, 2010 01:00
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| # ¿ May 5, 2024 12:45 |
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I understand the weed is kind of ridiculous. Still, this is the first month we've even had a personal category. Before it was just weed and essentials. I've made cuts in other areas. We don't have cable or a phone plan. That $100 for phones is in the budget to see if we could afford to get some. Right now we pay $13. We haven't used heat or A/C in two years, I even have the breaker to the heaters flipped off. Honestly though, if I stopped smoking we could probably cut it down to $200. I'm just making excuses. The big problem is I'm entirely in charge of our finances and I don't really know what I'm doing. I mean can I keep that 401k if I leave my current employer? Can we buy a house on our current income or do we need better paying jobs first? Will paying off that last credit card help my credit score much or do I need to be doing a lot more? We have big things we want to do. I can get us out of debt just fine but I don't know what to do after that. Edit: There's no medical reason for the weed, by the way, we're just stoners.
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Mar 26, 2010 08:24
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