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

herakles: Jan 17, 2009

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.

# ¿ Apr 14, 2010 01:19

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# ¿ May 7, 2024 13:16

herakles: Jan 17, 2009

Engineer Lenk posted:

Is the food budget for you alone, or are you supporting someone else as well? $350 in groceries + ~$200 for eating out seems really high to me, particularly in a place where rent is only $700/month. We spend a good bit less than that (maybe $400 combined) for two people.

I live in central California with a roommate, my food and restaurant budget does include paying for my girlfriend whenever we go out to eat together and buying groceries whenever we cook together (she's broke). Groceries are expensive here, but I also eat out too much.

# ¿ Apr 14, 2010 19:05

herakles: Jan 17, 2009

KarmaCandy posted:

Why is your girlfriend broke? I think fixing that may be the best solution to saving a little more.

Medical issue - she can't work more than part time or she'll lose her county health benefits. Not that they've done squat for her. :argh:

# ¿ Apr 15, 2010 00:16

herakles: Jan 17, 2009

TLG James posted:

Is there anything comparable to mint.com out there for free? I realize that mint is free, but my main bank hasn't worked with mint.com for about 4 months now, and I've had them open "tickets" into it, but all they say is they are working on it. The last update I got was 3 months ago.

Unfortunately, since Mint got bought by Intuit, they have gone further and further towards the crapper. Yodlee or Wesabe are both free, but not quite as nice as Mint. Wesabe has a Firefox extension that helps to automate their update process.

# ¿ Apr 17, 2010 16:41

herakles: Jan 17, 2009

FISHMANPET posted:

I'm well aware I've hosed this up, I'm just wondering if I have any recourse beyond just paying it off and never dealing with Dell Financial again.

No, you have no recourse. Sack up, pay them (at faster than $30/mo, if you possibly can, since they're probably charging you like 25% interest), and then if you're embarrassed of being a giant fuckup who can't keep track of his obligations, never deal with them again. It's not Dell's fault you didn't pay your bill. As a general rule, if you have a debt and they don't send you a bill, you need to call them and say "Hey, fuckers, where's my goddamned bill because I got a wad of cash I wanna give you!"

Bonus points if you say exactly that.

# ¿ Jul 28, 2010 18:20

herakles: Jan 17, 2009

Sundae posted:

I have a question regarding my current financial situation, particularly with regard to my current plans.

After a good two years of fights with Direct Loan Services, I have finally gotten them to agree to drop the loan recall they have on my accounts. As such, I have a choice in what loan plans I can pick again. (Long story short: Without me missing any payments, they recalled my loans, put me in the ICR plan, removed my other options, and set my repayment period to 7 years on over $75,000 of federal loans, claiming my income could support it.)

Anyway, I now have a bit under $34,000 in loans after being quite the pauper for three years, and my funding has cleared up into a pretty nice budget shown on the previous page, I think.

If I continue my current rate of payment (ICR would be $1,500 per month roughly), I will be done with these loans in three to four more years. This rate of payment swallows all attempts at making savings. I have no more money than I had three years ago. I have been fully funding my retirement accounts, though. They're in fantastic condition, and have been turning a hefty profit for the last three years.

The advantage is that my total interest paid is going to be ludicrously low if I follow up on it. I'll have paid about $9,000 in total interest.

The disadvantage is that I have one month's expenses put away and have no emergency fund, because my previous fund was swept away in the past three years of payments under that loving loan recall. (Seriously, how the gently caress did they think I was going to make an escalating payment that started at $1100 per month and went up to $1500 after one year?)

My family is livid at the idea of me dropping my loan payments to a longer term, and are calling it financially irresponsible. Meanwhile, I think it is financially irresponsible of me to leave no buffer for emergency costs. Not to mention, I'd kind of like to propose to my girlfriend in a year or two. I need to have some money for wedding expenses eventually, though not in the immediate future.

So I ask you, fellow BFCers: Continue to play Russian Roulette with my lack of an emergency fund for three to four more years, or extend it out until I have a safety net and then go back to mega-crazy-ultra-payments?

Pay off the loans first. Figure out a way to make or save a couple grand extra that you can stash in an emergency fund. You don't need a lot in your emergency fund, just enough that an unexpected expense doesn't completely gently caress you, $1000-$2000 should be plenty.

# ¿ Sep 7, 2010 19:06

herakles: Jan 17, 2009

Dragyn posted:

This has always been my thought on the large savings cushion platform as well. I'd be very interested to hear why this is a bad idea.

The problem with this is that if your budget is tight, instead of having a $2000 emergency fund that just goes away and gets rebuilt at $50/mo, you've got $2000 of credit card debt that's getting repaid at $50 a month and generating $20 a month in interest. If during that period of repayment/rebuild, you lose your income, now instead of having an expense you can cut if you need to (no more contribution to emergency fund) you have an additional expense you still have to address every month.

If you've got lots of free cash, it's not a big deal either way, but if you've got lots of free cash, you should have an emergency fund anyway.

# ¿ Sep 7, 2010 19:55

herakles: Jan 17, 2009

Built 4 Cuban Linux posted:

Yeah but if you save up all your money instead of paying off debt in the first place... then you still have a bunch of debt to pay off when you lose your job. And if you don't lose your job: everything is cool.

I'm not suggesting saving up all your money instead of paying off debt. You'll note that my advice was to save up money AND aggressively pay off debt. I managed to make myself debt-free at the beginning of this month by making sacrifices - I've gone from eating out ~16 times a month to eating out ~4 times a month, I cut down the options on my cell phone plan, and I started going to the library instead of ordering a fuckton of books off of Amazon. I also sold off a bunch of poo poo I don't use anymore to pay down my debts.

I wiped out my debt, I have an emergency fund, and now I've got an extra $500/month. My plan is to dump $400/month into my retirement fund and set aside an extra $100/month for shopping/fun. YMMV, but I think that not having an emergency fund is a financial risk.

# ¿ Sep 7, 2010 20:47

herakles: Jan 17, 2009

canyoneer posted:

Are there any other advantages to credit unions I'm missing besides better checking/savings interest rates and " MEGABANKS"?

YMMV, but my experience has been that credit unions actually give a poo poo about keeping you as a customer. Chase royally hosed up my account, and while they were very happy to say they were "sorry for the inconvenience" they weren't particularly interested in actually doing anything to fix the problem in a timely fashion.

# ¿ Nov 2, 2012 10:45

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# ¿ May 7, 2024 13:16

herakles: Jan 17, 2009

Something Awesome posted:

While this thread has been amazing at answering one off questions I realize that I need some read education on how to get my ship in order and get myself out of the immensely depressing situation I have gotten myself into (broke, depressed, debt up to my eyeballs). Can anyone recommend any particularly good internet resources/reading materials that relate to unjamming a personal financial nightmare? I have google'd a ton of keywords but all I ever get is the same 1 paragraph synopsis on how "*THIS* is the e-book to solve all your problems!".

I recommend Get Rich Slowly and Mr. Money Mustache, personally. For books, the millionaire next door is decent. Honestly, after reading a ton of books and blogs on personal finance, the nuts and bolts are very simple, it's having the discipline to execute that's hard. For that, you have to be willing to make changes and sacrifice, which is much more challenging than most people are willing to admit.

# ¿ Nov 16, 2012 17:49

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