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I am genuinely curious how old you and your wife are.quote:Car Loan - 17.95% APR - $14,330 This might be unthinkable for you, but if you can sell those cars and end up with enough to pay them off and buy two beaters (or one, if you think you can manage a one-car house), you'd be digging yourself out of a lot of your debt. It also might be impossible depending on how much the cars have already depreciated, but you should at least consider it because if a 17.95% interest rate was a physical wound, it would be a deep bleeding gash in your torso.
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Dec 3, 2013 21:03
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Nail Rat posted:Having two cars when it's not an absolute necessity is a big luxury. It doesn't seem like it in America, but it really is a tremendous luxury to have two cars. Whenever I hear people drowning in debt with car loans, it's one of the first things I recommend to stop the bleeding. It's certainly a hassle to have to coordinate driving, but it's not worth the thousands of dollars you lose to car payments, insurance, gas, and repairs for a second vehicle. Even more so if you've bought new cars, but I'm not going to beat anyone up over that. My wife and I each have our own cars, but I'm still driving a '99 Accord.
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Dec 4, 2013 21:38
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Knyteguy posted:We couldn't get out from under the loans on a cheaper car. We were aiming for a (used) $9k Corolla, or $6k PT Cruiser originally but the numbers weren't working. It just turned out the cars were worth less than I thought (we were there for 8 hours negotiating so I did everything I could to get as much money as possible). Sorry if I'm being thick-headed, but I don't understand what you're saying here. Do you mean you were trying to get trade-in value for a used Toyota, but couldn't get there with the two vehicles you had, and couldn't get a loan to cover the difference? What did you actually pay for the car you bought, and how much of it is the loan at 10.99%?
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May 28, 2014 21:22
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Knyteguy posted:$15.00 towards the baby fund. I'm only half-following the thread, but this jumped out at me. I know it's only a partial budget or whatever you said, but I'm very curious what you have saved up in this "baby fund," how much you plan to add to it every week/month/whatever, and how much you plan to have available when the baby is born.
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Jul 30, 2014 21:03
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Knyteguy posted:Plus hey books are cheap entertainment $/hour. They're free at the library! Infinite value! Knyteguy posted:Meh I'm not going to justify it.  Starting the race by shooting yourself in the foot. 27 days to go! Spartan August looking great so far 
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Aug 5, 2014 03:37
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Knyteguy posted:Would it have been better if I used my blow money on 20 energy drinks 1 day at a time? And for fucks sake the book I wanted and bought was a financial book even. It would have been better to wait until the end of the month, confirm you have blow money left, and then blow it. Or, you know, save the extra for your baby.
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Aug 5, 2014 05:19
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Knyteguy posted:We're probably going to spend an average of $20.00/mo to use our apartment's laundry facilities (we preload cash onto a laundry card) if things continue as is, which is likely. It may be even more. Can you break that down? Is there a straight-up fee to even be allowed to use the room, or are you spending $20 actually running machines? I only ask because the stuff around me has always been around two bucks to wash and dry a load, and I can't really see it getting to $20/mo. Are you counting the cost of detergent, dryer sheets and whatnot in there? Those costs won't go away with a home washer. I'd caution against buying the mini-washer, but to be brutally honest I don't find the concerns you have all that concerning. I obviously don't know all the details of your situation, but I've never really worried about people stealing my clothes, or being assaulted in the laundry room at my apartment complex. Everything else you mentioned is just a quality of life upgrade (we have to walk there, it's cold sometimes, reloading the card is annoying), and it's really up to you if it's worth it. You should also take into account that the thing will use a decent amount of power, raising your electric bill, and may end up breaking or needing repairs in the future. edit: yeah it's also just really small 
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Aug 11, 2014 20:11
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I'm also extremely curious how this came up in your household. I never knew things like this existed. How did you find out about them and start thinking about buying one? Is this a nagging problem you've been dealing with for a long time now?
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Aug 11, 2014 20:17
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:I pay $2/load to dry and $2/load to wash in my building which is loving horse poo poo but honestly pretty standard pricing wise here. For one dude, it's probably running $12-16/mo, and that's while dry cleaning a lot of work clothes. I can easily see spending $20/mo on laundry fees alone as a couple or a family. Yeesh. Guess I lucked out in my previous apartments. I guess it was six years ago.
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Aug 11, 2014 20:21
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Knyteguy posted:I'm ignorant regarding this, but is there any reason we should consider an accountant for 2015? Taxes seem to be getting more complicated every year. I never bothered with one for my personal stuff, but I hired a small business accountant when I started my own company, and he's a loving sorcerer when it comes to finding deductions. You can write off all kinds of random poo poo, including a portion of your utilities if you use a home office solely for the business. Stuff I'd never imagine writing off are apparently fair game, and people smarter than me have been saving tons of money year after year. My little brother started a business relating to 3d printing and various machining tools, and apparently he can just write off the drill bits he uses. I live in CA and have family in NY, and I get to write off the cross-country flights because I have a partner there and meet with him each time I go. I made my wife a 2% owner so her flights get covered as well. I could certainly file all the paperwork myself, but I'm sure I'd miss all the little things he was able to find for me. Most tax people worth a drat will see you for a half hour or so for free. Explain what you're doing and ask what they can do for you. Remember, you're hiring them, and you can walk away from the meeting with no obligation to ever talk to them again.
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Aug 13, 2014 21:52
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Knyteguy posted:There's almost always room to sacrifice, but everyone has their limits. I'm in the camp of "pay to watch football if it keeps you sane," but what a lot of people are saying in various ways is that you should seriously consider every purchase you make, if you really need it, and if there are cheaper (or free) alternatives. I know you know this, but sometimes when you post you give off a vibe that makes us think you're ignoring the idea and justifying purchases by simply thinking, "I was good and didn't buy the most expensive thing." There are certainly completely free ways to keep up with football. I know listening to the radio isn't as good as watching a stream, which isn't as good as having cable, which isn't as good as paying for the premium packages. There's an entire gamut there that runs from paying almost nothing to paying hundreds of dollars a month. This is true for most things in life, and where you fit along the gamut if completely up to you. Maybe eating that one-time-per-season $150 fee is what works best for you, but try to imagine the future where you don't buy it. Will you be truly unhappy? How much of your happiness actually hinges on watching football live on television or the computer? Maybe it's a lot, and that's okay. Everybody needs a form of catharsis, and maybe this is yours. But consider that every dollar you save, every single one, betters the future of your family.
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Aug 15, 2014 20:38
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Knyteguy posted:Yes, but maybe a sole proprietorship since it is cheaper. You probably have already, but be sure to read up on the different times of corporations you can start. There's a reason it's cheaper. Sole proprietorships have virtually no liability protection, and you are personally on the hook for any legal action, claims, and debts against the business. If poo poo goes sideways and you don't have the liability shielding of an LLC or corporation, they'll come right after you and your family's money. I know it seems stupid, especially if your business is writing apps or something like that, but poo poo happens, and Americans love to sue.
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Aug 16, 2014 17:36
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Knyteguy posted:I'm going to be taking a break from the thread until September 1st I think. Feel free to pm me if you want to talk but I wouldn't expect a reply here. It's nothing personal to anyone who has posted, but discussion is running in circles quite a bit and the thread needs a soft reboot. 
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Aug 20, 2014 18:27
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Knyteguy posted:Going great, thanks a lot for the ideas. I'm actually eating a pork roast with chipotle sauce quesadilla right now (leftovers). Having meals premade rocks. We haven't really looked up anything else yet since the meals are so delicious. Try to have a few recipes ready to go and mix them up a bit, because getting sick of a dish will sneak up on you, and it's easy to want to run to McDonalds when you can't stomach another bowl of chili.
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Aug 23, 2014 02:43
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Pretty much this. The posts you've made in this thread really do make it seem like you enjoy the feeling of getting new things. Maybe we don't see the full picture behind your thought process, but from what you actually post in the thread the vibe we're getting is that you just really, really like to get new things, and even passively think about getting new things while driving home from work. You bought kindles half a week into "Spartan August" and were happy for a while, talked a lot about all the money you'd be save by using them, but a few days later started talking about maybe returning or selling them. That seems like weird behavior to me. Getting a new credit card is getting a new thing. It didn't cost you anything, and I'm totally down with you having a card and using it responsibly to repair your credit. The fact that you asked a question and couldn't wait forty minutes for someone to respond to it is a little irksome, and reminiscent of what the thread believes is a history of rushed financial decisions. I think the decision you made is fine, and I'm not in any way saying I don't believe you won't use the card responsibly. I'm just pointing out why people are weirded out by how quickly you pulled the trigger on something like this after asking the question, as if you thought it wasn't a great idea but decided to do it before anyone tried to stop you because NEW THING.
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Sep 3, 2014 19:08
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Knyteguy posted:Then we hit the beginning of the next month and it's like the faucet opens. We get a little bit of spending cash available and we've been austere on spending for two+ weeks so we go a little crazy. This is exactly the wrong thing to do, and you know that. 
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Sep 8, 2014 19:21
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Knyteguy posted:We might get a storage unit 
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Sep 9, 2014 01:00
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This is the best thread title change in a while.
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Sep 10, 2014 18:11
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Knyteguy posted:We also paid nearly $100.00 in extra rent just to make sure we had it covered What does this mean? Is your rent a variable number you're uncertain of from month to month?
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Sep 15, 2014 18:29
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Dipping into your savings to cover monthly expenses is pretty lovely and dangerous for people with issues controlling their spending, but people shouldn't sweat you for it if you pay it all back by the end of the month. Do what you can to get a month ahead, pay into your savings like it's a bill, and it won't happen again. Good luck and stick with it.
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Sep 15, 2014 21:09
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Knyteguy posted:Hey we'll talk business during the trip and it's a writeoff Please tell me you know that "write-off" doesn't mean "free," and that depending on your tax bracket you'll probably only see 25% off on your taxes.
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Sep 23, 2014 06:34
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a worthy uhh posted:You probably could have just sewed the buttons back onto the shorts but that's not 'throw money at it' so it's not a viable solution I guess. It's also not difficult to let out a pair of pants/shorts if you get too fat for them. Jeans are a little tougher, but slacks/khakis/cargo shorts are a breeze. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BS_VpyIR0jU
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Sep 23, 2014 19:08
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Knyteguy posted:Yep don't get me wrong I take full responsibility for any confusion here. Genuinely curious: Was this a miscommunication to the thread, or did you forget that she was planning to stay home, or has she been waffling on the idea for a few months?
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Sep 24, 2014 19:54
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Janus Owl posted:I won't take them to our Humane Society Why?
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Sep 24, 2014 22:24
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April posted:This is wrong. There's no way to know how EITHER of you will feel until the baby is here. You should not put pressure on your pregnant wife to make this decision right now. What you should be doing is putting together a budget that doesn't include her income, and living on it, so that you are prepared for it if that's what she decides. Plan for the (financially) worst case scenario of your wife staying home, and live on a budget pretending her income doesn't exist at all. When the baby comes and her maternity leave ends, think about how the past few months were, and be much more confident in your decision, either way.
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Sep 24, 2014 23:31
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Veskit posted:Yall getting into rice and beans territory. Slowcooker + cats. 2birds1stone.
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Sep 25, 2014 06:40
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Knyteguy posted:Money... well maybe we can use some of it to rent a truck and haul some of the other stuff away to the dump/donation (that we've been planning on trashing even before thinking of taking on the clutter room) Don't tent a truck. Post whatever you don't want on Craigslist or whatever is popular around you, and people will show up to your house and take it away. Even a broken freezer. There are people who will take pretty much anything if you're giving it away, and for the nicer stuff you can make some quick cash.
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Sep 26, 2014 23:40
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Inept posted:For your own health, maybe stop drinking beer for a while, Mr. Button Popper. It's honestly one of the worst things for you from a calorie/overall health standpoint. Drinking calories if the quickest way to get fat, and it's the hardest part about staying healthy for me personally. I used to drink way too much soda and beer. It was cleaning out my wallet and filling up my pants.
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Sep 26, 2014 23:42
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100 HOGS AGREE posted:I have not found any times in my own life where getting rid of a bunch of poo poo was a bad idea. Great on you making some space. My wife and I have started to realize this, and have been shedding tons of crap over the past year. We both come from packrat/borderline hoarder families, so there's always a little resistance, "Who knows when we're going to need those crutches again?!" "I might use that computer case for something someday!" But every single time, getting rid of the junk has always felt good after the fact. Bonus points if we made some cash on craigslist, or some charitable deductions from Goodwill. With a little work and cleaning up, you've basically added a room to your house. Good job!
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Sep 29, 2014 19:23
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At least he understands that he doesn't have to spend every penny of his budget every month, and that it's not supposed to change much from month to month. I think.
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Nov 21, 2014 19:18
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For the record, there's also a big difference between getting a job as a software developer at a company, and teaching yourself to write simple phone/web apps. You don't have to be the best developer in the world to write the phone app or web frontend to some sort of web-based database, and you can do it with no formal training, education, or certification. The App Store doesn't check for a diploma.
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Dec 4, 2014 00:42
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Knyteguy posted:Basically I don't know how much we went over budget in November. Old Fart posted:Sometimes I don't update YNAB for weeks. Just sit down with YNAB and your online transaction report and type that poo poo in. There, now you know how it worked with your budget. I know you've got a lot going on and I know how money leaks when you've got to get something as complex as a move done RIGHT NOW, but this is really silly. All the data is there for you, you're just admitting it's too much work to actually figure it out. That sort of attitude won't really help anything, and if you get in the habit of writing off months entirely when something comes up, you won't get very far. Stuff always comes up. Find some time this weekend and track everything.
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Dec 5, 2014 20:19
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Knyteguy posted:Part of the problem was my bank did a system upgrade from the 24th to the 1st of December so reconciling expenses, on top of moving the weekend of the 15th and not getting the computer up up for quite a few days after that, and then a busy Thanksgiving and my bank only showing a few days worth of transaction... just not worth it to me to try to reconcile against nearly a month's worth of expenses. I know how much we spent (as shown in the YNAB graph less some returned fees) so I'm OK with an adjusted transaction. I feel comfortable enough knowing it went towards moving fees, paying my cousin to help move, a little bit of holiday spending, a few tools, and restaurants around the time of the move. I'm admittedly being a little lazy here but time has been at a premium lately, and I just don't feel it will give me anymore of the picture. I pretty much covered it for you guys already, I think. Eh. The reason you don't know how much you spent on what is because things got hectic and you ended up just spending spending spending because you felt like you had to. You lost track mid-month because of this, and now you're basically writing it off because there's not a whole lot of value in knowing where the money went. But this whole thing is about knowing where your money goes. It's easy to say "yeah well I spent this much moving, total" and move on with your life, but what happens the next time you have to move? What have you learned from this experience that will make the next move easier, from a financial standpoint. If a year from now your lease is up and your landlord wants to sell the place (however unlikely that may seem to you now), will you be able to track those expenses properly, or will this all happen again? Did you get a good deal on your tools? Should you budget for other such purchases in the future? You can't know if you don't know how much you spent on them. I really don't like poking you like this, but you should really sit down and figure it out. Take the medicine.
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Dec 5, 2014 22:13
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Veskit posted:Knyte this is the first time you posted your spending for october, and you skipped november entirely so of course people are acting this way. But I've been doing really great since May!
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Dec 8, 2014 23:15
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Knyteguy posted:Edited that out. It would cost roughly $23/mo @ 1 ounce a day so I simply misquoted. But yes formula is way more expensive than I expected. I know you edited it out, and you're going to brush this away, but your estimates for formula were off what it will actually cost by like 20x. Your baby needs much more than an ounce of formula a day. This is exactly the sort of thing people are trying to tell you about, but every few days you come in all cavalier linking websites you've barely read and saying how well you have things in hand. "I know all about baby budgeting because I put some numbers into this webpage! $23/mo for formula, done." I'm genuinely afraid that this baby is going to kick your budget in the balls, hard
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Dec 10, 2014 18:52
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Veskit posted:You should go back to counseling. You're kind of broken if you forgot the point... Knyteguy posted:Financially, right now, I'm a fat guy who has always been fat. I don't know first hand the benefits of being fit. I've lost 10 lbs or so sure, but I also gained a few lbs back over Thanksgiving and my mindset is a little negative at the moment. I don't think Veskit is being hyperbolic at all. If you genuinely can't remember why you should be budgeting and need examples and reassurances on a regular basis, I don't know what to say. You made a great analogy. A fat person may not know the benefits of being fit, but they should certainly know the detriments of being fat. Financially, if you can't see why it's not a great idea to be fat and think it's totally fine, there's not much anyone can say to convince you otherwise. People are free to live their life, fit or fat, financially responsible or irresponsible. You have to want to lose weight, and you have to want to be financially responsible. If you don't, you don't. Knyteguy posted:Everyone can stop reminding me I'm supposed to be a dad now also. I'm pretty well informed of that and it becomes grating. My parents were terrible with money and I grew up happy as can be even eating eggs, beans, and hotdogs for much of my early childhood. I parse the first part of this as, "My parents were bad with money, so it's okay for me to be bad with money." This is a silly argument to justify bad behavior, but again, you're free to live your life how you want. The part about food is weird because eating eggs and beans is pretty frugal and not unhealthy. Was there anything you remember that you couldn't do because your family couldn't afford it? If you really need more reasons to explain why acting financially responsible is good and will better your life, I'll get as basic as I can: When you're good with money, you have more money. When you have more money, even just a little more than you need, you can worry less about money, and making ends meet. That alone should be a major stress relief, like Old Fart said. It's a huge weight off your back to be debt free, and watch your savings numbers grow every month. You sometimes come off as very stressed in your posts here, and people browbeat you when they think you get stressed, disappear from the thread, and end up buying things. When you have "enough" money and good financial habits, money starts to take care of itself, and it's no longer a thing to worry about. Having "more than enough" money puts you in all the sort of situations you've talked about. Your wife could take a longer maternity leave, or even stay home with the child. You could consider having a second child sooner, if that's something you're interested in. Her having a job or side-business during that time would be a bonus, and not something that feels forced. If you've ever worried about losing your job, having good financial discipline and a pile of savings can completely remove that stress from your life. If you really can't see why you should be doing this, we can't help you.
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Dec 12, 2014 21:06
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April posted:You're absolutely right, there's nothing about any of the above that could have been planned better or prevented. I wrote up a really snarky post quoting that bit, but decided not to pile on KG. I've gone from worried sympathy to something approaching horrified terror over the last few months. You've got a baby coming in five weeks, man. That's two bi-weekly paychecks from now. I just... Christ. Edit: You're getting a lot of second-hand stuff and hand-me-downs, right? What do you have for the baby ready-to-go in your house? Inverse Icarus fucked around with this message at 01:33 on Jan 7, 2015 |
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Jan 7, 2015 01:30
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Knyteguy posted:I don't think people are being unfair more, just more that we're beating a dead horse. The horse people are beating isn't one particular issue. We're not beating on the "you made mistakes breaking your lease" horse, or the "you blew your budget while moving" horse, or any other specific thing. To us, it seem like these events are all caused by the same "horse," namely problems with your ability to plan for things and actually stick to the plan when things go sideways. People react to and beat you up for the individual events not because they're bad in isolation, but because they appear to us to be just the latest symptom about the thing we've been screaming about since you started the thread. I have no idea how else to explain that to you. You're much better at the semantics and mechanics of budgeting now, and you even saved a bit of money, but to us it appears that you have recurring bad habits that you seem to be ignoring that completely smash your budget and render all your planning worthless.
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Jan 7, 2015 20:59
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Knyteguy posted:I was unaware of that. [...] Not a big deal. Quick, it's that horse!
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Jan 7, 2015 23:55
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Knyteguy posted:That's unfair. Explain why. Not being snarky. Explain why what I said isn't fair so I can try to understand how you could think that because I can't make any sense of it. Edit: To clarify, you definitively said "It's not like there is interest" on what amounts to a loan to you by the government, a provably false statement that five minutes of googling would prove, just hours after people were hounding you for not doing your research. This is a mistake that would have cost you hundreds or thousands of dollars. Inverse Icarus fucked around with this message at 00:31 on Jan 8, 2015 |
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Jan 8, 2015 00:26
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