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Tell me if what I'm doing sounds reasonable: Income: $4,300 Bills: Rent: $640 Pick-up: $715.53 Cell Phone: $99.16 Cable: $161.86 Electricity: $100 (average for a month right now lower than this because I am working in the field and the heat, a/c and various power vampires are off/unplugged) Car Insurance: $125 Gas: $160 (one fill up per week at ~$40 per) Nelnet Loans: $186.53 Other Student Loan: $33.46 Jiujitsu Gym Membership: $85 Debts Nelnet A 1.48% (var) $2,273.42 Nelnet B 1.48% (var) $647.37 Nelnet C 1.48% (var) $1,445.69 Nelnet D 1.48% (var) $4,428.42 Nelnet E 1.48% (var) $4,293.56 AES 4.89% $4,500.31 Toyota 9.60% $14,449.46 (no credit card debt, have a visa with $2,500 limit but high interest because I hosed around on it in the past but now use it strictly for re-imbursible work expenses) Contributions to savings 401(k) $400 (maxes out 6% employer matching) Emergency Fund $800 ($400 per paycheck) Total outlay: $3,106.54 That leaves me with ~$1,195. I'm really working on getting my head around where all of that goes. I think I eat out too much (2-3 dinners per week, plus lunches at work). My dog eats up about $200 of that per month usually in food, grooming, doggie care and boarding when I'm out of town for a day or two.
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Mar 30, 2010 04:08
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| # ¿ May 5, 2024 09:46 |
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moana posted:mint.com is good to help you start tracking where that money is going to. How much do you have in your emergency fund already? It would be good to get going on paying down that car loan, that's a pretty high interest rate (not for car loans, but compared to your other stuff). I'm assuming "Pick-up" is your car payment? Paying more for a car than for rent sounds a bit crazy. Apart from that, yeah, figure out where you're spending $1k a month and see if you can push more of that over towards paying off your car loan. The emergency fund was getting $600/month before I got a raise last month. It had crept up close to $7,000 when I hosed up my truck and it cost $5,000 to fix it (hey that's why we save!) so I'm back to replenishing the rainy day fund.  (At this point you may be asking, "but ch3cooh why didn't your insurance pick up the tab?" To which I would answer "when is comprehensive insurance not comprehensive? When it doesn't include collision!" In other news I'm on the hunt for a new insurance company!)
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Mar 30, 2010 06:42
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moana posted:What are your long-term goals? Unless you have a reason you absolutely need that truck (and I'm not a car person, so I wouldn't know), it seems silly to have because you're spending so much money to drive it that everything else is going to take a back seat for a long time. If that's what you want, then go right ahead. You make decent money (I'm assuming this is post-tax, if not, I figured out where the extra thousand a month is going!) but it's going to be hard to do anything else with such a financial monkey on your back. I'd like to save up for a house. Thankfully I live in Tulsa where $175k buys you a ton of house, so raising a down payment shouldn't take too long. This should become even easier when the truck comes off the books. I spend more on my truck than where I live because for the most part I spend more waking time in my pickup than I do in my apartment. Since Thanksgiving I have spent about 3 weeks total at home. Think of my apartment more as a climate controlled storage locker. The $4,300 is indeed ATAX. My company is pretty liberal with giving out RSU's as performance pay, my first one vests next summer and is enough for a down payment on a house (BTAX) but with the upcoming changes to capital gains and "unearned income" I need to be re-thinking those plans. Obviously short term I need to get the rainy day fund back together and then start thinking long term. e: Moana you're one of the first people to figure out what my user name is without me explaining it. It was a really scary ride. I was going westbound on the turnpike when this little bundle of joy:  decided he was no longer content sleeping in the passenger seat and wanted to sleep in my lap. In the ensuing confusion I drifted into the left shoulder and struck a rock about the size of a basketball knocking my left rear tire off the rim and damaging the axle. This sent me careening, I hopped the medium (caught some air) turned 180° went down into the ditch on the eastbound side and back up the other bank before coming to a halt. At which point my dog jumped on my lap and tried to lick my face. He's lucky he's god damned cute.  ch3cooh fucked around with this message at 17:44 on Mar 30, 2010 |
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Mar 30, 2010 17:27
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slap me silly posted:Well drat, you were lucky to get out of that with skull and dog intact, and only $5k poorer. Good job having the cash handy. I crunched the numbers and making double payments on the truck will get it paid off by next February. Like you said this frees up an extra $1,400/month to put towards either savings or pay down the other debt. My first RSU vests in August of next year. Depending on what the share price does (if it goes up ~9%) it will be enough to sell immediately and payoff the student loans. At that point I would have another $220 to contribute to savings. Do you guys think I would be better off taking that extra $1,400 and putting it into savings (or investments) and allowing it to start building value or putting it towards the debt thus freeing up more of the RSU cash? Once the student loans are paid off I would be 100% debt free with $1,620 a month going to savings and another good size RSU vesting in February of 2012. So I'm leaning towards putting the money into savings and using the first RSU to payoff the debt and then the second in addition to the savings for a down payment. e: when looking at making double payments on the pickup does it matter if I make one giant lump sum payment or split it up between the $715.57 regular payment and the second $715.57 at a different point in the month? ch3cooh fucked around with this message at 00:13 on Mar 31, 2010 |
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Mar 30, 2010 23:25
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Slap me silly, the plan is to be debt free, while accumulating a large amount of fairly liquid capital for probably around a year before looking to add the mortgage. So I ran the numbers and based on the schedule of $400 every paycheck and $715.53 every other paycheck, I can have the truck paid off sometime around Christmas. And that sounds like a lovely present to myself. That leaves the question of what to do about savings. In my first post I said that I had ~$1,195 going....somewhere. If I can cut my monthly slush fund down to $600 to $700 per month I could put $500 to $600 into the savings. This shouldn't be too difficult. Between now and the middle of September I'll be working in the field (I'm a drilling engineer so I'll be living on the rig) so almost all of my expenses are reimbursed. Groceries, gas, meals, hell I'm even making a push for them to pay my cellphone.  So that's the plan oh great wise goons of BFC. Payoff the truck by Christmas, use my field time to build my savings back up, start saving some decent coin once the truck is off the books, pay off student loans with first RSU, live debt free and save serious amounts of money.
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Mar 31, 2010 01:22
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slap me silly posted:I'm a little lost there - I thought the extra truck money was coming out of the $1195 also. My total outlay of ~$3,105 includes the $800/month that currently goes into savings. The plan that I laid out above takes that $800 and puts it toward the truck and then takes $500 to $600 from my $1,195 of other expenses.
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Mar 31, 2010 02:03
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I had 984 shares of restricted stock vest yesterday which was 628 shares after withholding. I sold them this morning and should have the cash balance in my bank account on Monday. By Tuesday morning my student loans will be paid off and my debt to income ratio will exactly and precisely 0.0% (zilch, zip, zero, nada)! I can't wait I'm thinking of throwing a party for myself.
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Aug 3, 2011 03:18
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moana posted:Congrats on getting rid of the debt; go have some ch3ch2oh to celebrate I'll have about 3 grand left over and my personal laptop just died so I'm thinking about treating myself to an iPad
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Aug 4, 2011 00:50
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Omgbees posted:Yeah man, cafe food is going to kill you here, at my work it's about $10 for something basic and a drink. Since I got laid off 2 months ago my girlfriend and I have cut our weekly grocery bills in half just by spending $1.50 on a sunday paper every week. We clip as many coupons as possible and carefully plan our meals for the week. Also, Safeway now has an iPhone app that let's you load extra savings/coupons onto your Club Card. It takes some extra work but getting $100 in groceries for $50 is worth it.
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Mar 6, 2013 20:45
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Crossposting this from the debt collector thread because it isn't a debt collection issue: So when I was in college I had an additional card on my dad's AmEx account for emergency purposes (he even told me that "emergency" meant only things as severe as getting my arm ripped off and not having the cash on hand to cover my deductible). I haven't had a card on the account in over 6 years but the account still appears on my credit report. Late last year, my dad's business failed and almost $100,000 was charged off. The delinquency and charge off are now on my credit report. What are the chances I could dispute it and have it removed from my credit report?
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Mar 25, 2013 21:44
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Agreeing with everyone who said do it. Being debt free feels amazing and gives you a lot of flexibility if your employment situation changes.
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Mar 30, 2013 20:51
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| # ¿ May 5, 2024 09:46 |
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I was recently checking my 3 bureau credit score. On two of three my score was 760+ but on the third it was 690. The difference come from when I was in college I had a card on my dad's AmEx account in case of emergencies. Well about 3 years ago my dad's business failed and he went through bankruptcy and his AmEx account was charged off. That charge off is showing up on my credit report and is the only negative on all 3 bureaus. Is that something that a dispute is likely to resolve? Should I call Experian or AmEx to work through it?
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Mar 25, 2017 18:12
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