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The ideal situation would be to avoid short selling your house if at all possible. Not that it isn't an option on the table but I would see if the goon collective of BFC can help you figure out how to hang onto it. With that in mind, how about changing the conversation from "thinking about short selling my house" to "help me avoid short selling my house." I would start by doing the normal BFC routine. List your incomes along with your bills/debts and lets see if we can help put together a budget that gets you on track. Maybe there are a few options that you haven't thought of that folks here can help point you towards. edit: I would also recommend discussing a little bit about what you and your wife qualifications are. If you are going to throw a hail mary pass by dumping everything and leaving Alabama you're going to want to make certain that you're not going to end up in a worse situation by being homeless in a new town. TouchyMcFeely fucked around with this message at 17:43 on Aug 29, 2014 |
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Aug 29, 2014 17:38
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 17:18 |
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With you doing transcription work at home you're pretty mobile but what about your wife? Would she have better opportunities with what she's doing in another location? I took a quick look at your resume and I see HR on there. That's pretty good since you should be able to find HR work just about anywhere. Your wife's job on the other hand I don't know anything about. Are you near a large city or way out in the boonies? Would you be able to up your income by picking up an HR gig somewhere which would in turn give you a little breathing room? The typical "get out of debt/fix a financial problem" is to run the debt snowball but there isn't much breathing room in your budget to do that. You could really slash your food budget but it means eating like garbage while you get things sorted out. If you have any land or access to land I would highly recommend gardening. Especially with where you live you could be growing just about year round. Those supplemental veggies would also go a long way in helping to reduce food costs and you might be able to make a deal bartering with others in the community for eggs, meat, etc. Another place where you could temporarily take a hit is to reduce your phone bill. I'm guessing those are his and her's cellphones. You could go old school phone/text only basic phones which should reduce your bill a bit as well. The good news is that although you're right on the edge, you have everything covered. As long as you both keep doing what you're doing you can make head way.
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Aug 30, 2014 00:54
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Do your student loans qualify for Income Based Repayment or do you have any deferrals available? Do you have an idea of how much of a boost your wife's income would get by moving to Atlanta and have you looked at other cities like Montgomery, Tallahassee or New Orleans? That really sucks about your back yard not getting any sun. Any chance there is a community garden in town that trades shares for labor? On the income side, what are the chance you could pickup some extra work? Whether it's doing additional transcribing or maybe some odd jobs during the day?
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Aug 30, 2014 12:33
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Fantastic. It looks like you might be able to get a little bit of slack on your budget after all. Step one is to get your emergency fund back in place. Because of what you're trying to do you have a couple of options. If you're willing to stay where you are and grind down the house until you can break even on a sale then you're looking at saving a grand and then starting your debt snowball. Another option would be to save as much as you can in cash until you have enough to get the two if you moved to a new town and situated before the short sale or foreclosure has a chance to really make an impact. This is the more dangerous of the two options but it would get you moved faster. Personally I would likely go for option 1 because it carries the least amount of risk. I also meant to ask, what's the balance of the student loans and is there any other debt?
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Aug 30, 2014 19:33
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