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In the spirit of zaurg and slow motion, here's another thread where I lay out my situation and then fail to take the advice within. History: I've been awful with spending and credit card debt since I was 18. My parents were awful with debt raising myself and my brother on what really was one mediocre income, eventually resulting in such gems as a 2005 foreclosure on the 840 sq ft rancher I grew up in and at one time a 27% APR note on a Suzuki Forenza. From 2009 through 2016 I worked at a job where my wage went from $10/hour ultimately to $16.89/hour, buying an $89k house in 2012 that I had no intention of trying to afford on my own, which is the spot I was in when my ex-fiance left in 2014. Combine an upbringing where I observed awful financial traits learning no restraint, a few years in a house that was consuming half of my income, depression which I repeatedly try to cure with retail therapy, and awful habits of bouncing from one expensive hobby to the next, I've more or less lived on borrowed money. Advice: "You need a budget!" And I think I have one! For the past couple years I've been tracking my debts through Google sheets. This is a quick run down of what I'm looking at:  HOUSE = balance of my mortgage, my 78% rate to where the PMI drops off CAP = now carries no balance month to month. Used for all of my automated bills (  )M1st = originally was a balance transfer card. Well, it's stayed nearly maxed out since then. Hoping that by December/January that I can roll this balance onto my big balance card and keep it at 0. WF = normally carries no balance. Used as my vacation/trip card, where my girlfriend and I are budgeting money to be saved for small trips, which then pay off this balance. DISC = currently at 7% until 2/20 as a balance transfer, is budgeted to be paid off by 12/19 AMAZ = Amazon. If my lifetime card rewards were used to buy Amazon stock rather than cash back I'd be rich. Trying hard to keep this one low. BB-E = Best Buy card, not used anymore as it was for 0% appliances to replace a busted dryer. SHEETZ = Gas station card, used for gas discounts and everyday bullshit buys. PAYPAL = Paypal card, current balance is 0%, budgeted to be paid off before the 0% expiration and not to be used again anytime soon. NEWEGG = Same as the Paypal card above. Budgeted this to be paid off by July before the 0% expires. PSECU = the big rear end balance transfer card. 2.9% through the end of 2019. 9.9% thereafter on remaining balance. CAR = ~4% APR car loan So now for the income, using October as an example:  My take home is about $740 a week, leaving with this currently: $5 weekly into both a vacation savings and a house/car savings $25 monthly into a watch savings $50 monthly into a 2% savings that ideally I want to have turn into a 3-6 month emergency fund $350 to the CAP card to cover the monthly bills $300 to SHEETZ to cover daily poo poo (which I'm spending beyond that) $~325 to DISC to lower the balance by $300/month $~150 to M1st with the goal of lowering that balance by $100/month, eventually rolling it into the big card below $~120 to electric and gas bills which I pay cash to avoid convenience fees $~100 to PAYPAL to pay that off by 0% expiration $600 to PSECU $~75 to AMAZON to have something in the budget to cover small buys $700 mortgage $50 to the "high yield" savings There's also the $150 car payment for October which I'm paying with the last pay in September not shown in there Conclusion: Good: I like my budget. It's an utterly absurd $40,000 of poo poo, but I finally feel like with my current pay and current budget I can be free of it by mid-2021. I'm looking to move in my girlfriend sometime this winter/early 2019 which will be a help on split living expenses. The 0% balances I have are set to be paid before the 0% expires. Since moving my balances to the big PSECU card, I've maintained some level of discipline by keeping CAP exclusively to the monthly recurring bills, WF to exclusively our weekend getaways (which is budgeted for using the months where there are 5 Fridays), kept Amazon low, and the BB cleared. Car is reliable with low miles and is exceedingly economical. With the use of balance transfers, in the past 2-3 months I've gone from $~500 a month in interest charges down to around $150. I have a $2500 raise scheduled for December and an unknown annual raise set for June. I have budgeted small dollar amounts to savings accounts to give myself a sense of mental security. Bad: I say that I have things under control. If you would have asked me a year ago, I would have said the same. If you would have asked me two years ago, I would have said it again. It's $40,000 of loving credit cards. I'm only putting $20 a week into my 401k and my employer is only tossing on an extra $5 to that. I've never had a savings account that's had four figures in it for more than the time it takes me to transfer my pay to the checking account. The dollar figure I owe in total just keeps rising. I've had nearly non-existent self-control with buying things over the years - PC parts, A/V, watches, clothes, whatever; there's always been some dumb reason I come up with as to how I can justify it and how I can manage to squeeze another $50 from somewhere in the budget to cover the payment on another credit card. I want to be done with it. I hope I'm finally on the path to do. I got the monthly interest charges cut by more than two-thirds. I've got a budget that, barring a catastrophic event or another relapse into spending sprees, could get me under the $20k mark by the start of 2020. But I've said I've had it under control before. I've convinced myself I've been on the path to financial freedom. And the numbers show it's just become worse as time rolls along. Ask me questions, poke holes in my budget, help me to learn what I have got wrong so I can end this poo poo that has consumed my entire adult life.
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Sep 10, 2018 22:37
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| # ¿ May 13, 2024 23:34 |
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Eric the Mauve posted:How much of the $300 a month to Sheetz is gas? Because Sheetz is a terrible place to buy anything other than gas so I'm curious what "daily poo poo" means here. Adar posted:You make a net $36k a year after taxes (so like low 40's gross?) and owe $40K (including $10k on ultra high interest cards), own a house with barely positive equity, and have no savings, but also have bonus income + a shared household coming up next year and no student loans. You also want to be responsible going forward and are taking some steps in that direction. Josh Wow posted:Am I reading correctly that you’re saving $20 a month for vacations, $20 a month for house/car savings and $25 a month to buy a watch/watches?
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Sep 11, 2018 02:36
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Adar posted:At the moment, you're thinking about spending the next three years on a tightrope without a safety net in order to pay ~$70,000 to strangers so that a number goes up. This number will, one day in the distant future, let you take on more debt at a lower interest rate if you really want to walk on a tightrope again afterwards. The other thing the number does is lets you own a house, but you already have one so that doesn't apply. You make a good case. I didn't really consider it being that much of a tightrope as now it's like "oh there's freed up credit limits if poo poo hits the fan" Weatherman posted:You can't afford a watch that needs to be saved for. Period. If you need a timekeeper, pick up a $20 Casio or something. Put the balance of your watch savings into your emergency fund. Yeah I guess that was one of those things where I told myself it was the right way to do it, when I should not have done so at all. Applied those funds to the car loan. Droo posted:I feel like this whole post is a troll built around "$25 monthly into a watch savings". That's what I'm trying to do. KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:do you own watches because i suggest you sell some oh boy do I ever
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Sep 11, 2018 14:49
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22 Eargesplitten posted:On one hand (heh) I can see the point of putting some small amount into a budget for something you have a habit of overspending on so you don’t go cold turkey and break down with a huge spending spree. Both good points, and the first is what my mindset was when I thought of it a couple months ago. Ultimately it is pretty much nothing so I'm not going to proceed with it further. KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:i suggest you move to an envelope system or other entirely cash based system where everything is preallocated in part because this: Yeah, living off of cash is completely foreign to me. I don't believe I've done so in at least 10 years.
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Sep 11, 2018 20:32
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Thanks all for the input. I'm still mulling over bankruptcy, and I think my biggest obstacle to that is the car loan. I've read from a few bankruptcy lawyers online that credit unions typically close all accounts upon notice of a bankruptcy, and not only is the car loan through a credit union, it's through one where I also have that $27k card balance. So if I went down that route I'm assuming I'd have to find a way to pay that off to get the title clear first before filing. Otherwise, my existing plan is a moratorium on frivolous spending which is already in place and learning to enjoy what I have now rather than seeking the need to get something new. Cutting back of garbage food spending for good would be my next big help in spending reduction. My girl is a nurse and is financially independent and will be moving in soon which will be a big help to my bottom line. She's aware of my debt levels and the timeframe I'm looking at to be free and clear. As to the watches, I have sold some here and there, but what I'm sitting on now falls under two categories - cheaper pieces I've had for a while that have very little value, and more expensive-but-not-luxury pieces which I certainly don't want to sell and would take 30-50% hit on what I paid for them. So not really looking to sell those further when it would amount to advancing the timeline by a measure of weeks at most. The monthly bills have been cut back a bit to under $300 from around $325. Watch savings is on indefinite hold. Targeting $36k by the end of the year, which would be a 10% reduction from this point, and should be possible with current budgeted payments on things and spending discipline. If I fail on doing that then I don't think I'd have any way out aside from bankruptcy.
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Sep 23, 2018 17:45
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Shadowhand00 posted:I was hoping to see at least a Grand Seiko. Me too man. Me too.
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Sep 26, 2018 18:32
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I'm not buying or selling any watches.
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Oct 11, 2018 19:22
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Droo posted:You are going to be poor forever so you can have a box of decorative watches? In 2018? If selling the lot would have me cleared of debt I'd have done so yesterday. But I don't see much point in clearing house on them when I'd knock off ~5% of my total debt. Half of what I have I've owned for years and they're in the condition that reflects that, and they weren't all that expensive to begin with. You all keep jumping on this watch-selling bandwagon as if I've got thousands and thousands of dollars of value in them. I don't.
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Oct 11, 2018 20:18
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Droo posted:It's not really about the watches, it's about the fact that your broken brain kept buying stupid useless poo poo as you dug a financial hole that is going to take you 5 years to get out of. If you can't figure that out and fix your brain then you are going to be poor until you die. Raldikuk posted:At the very least schedule a free consultation with one to go over the basics; like how to go about keeping your car. Weatherman posted:So should we assume that you've given up, OP, since you got given advice but it wasn't the advice you wanted and now you're going to ignore this thread and convince yourself that whatever scheme you've cooked up is the right one (like all your others before)? Spokes posted:well, it's been a month since your first post, how has it gone While I'm still mulling over bankruptcy, that itself doesn't fix what caused all of this in the first place. It fixes the desperation of having $100 in interest charges push a $4950 balance over the 5k limit just to make a $150 payment and do the same thing on 4 other accounts the next month. But it doesn't fix the spending that got me to that point. It doesn't fix buying a bottle of whiskey telling myself I want to try something new when I already have 9 bottles in the house. It doesn't fix buying a box of cigars because they're deeply discounted this weekend with free shipping and a free lighter thrown in when I already have a year or more worth of smokes on hand. It doesn't fix dropping $100 on a handful of movies during Criterion's 50% off sale that they do 2-3 times a year when I have a stack of a few dozen movies to burn through in the 'to-watch' pile. It doesn't fix buying that grill/griddle with included waffle irons that'll sit unused but I wanted it and it hasn't been priced this low on Amazon in the last 9 months. So yeah. Bankruptcy would wash away debt and allow me to properly save money now as opposed to grinding away at the debt and doing so 2-3 years later instead. But would I? How would I treat a clean slate? I don't know. Would I end up in the same spot 5 years from now? But this past month has been good. I've been tempted on the usual items and I've said no and not given in. It's been one month. I've had expenses that briefly put me just over $40k total like quite a large grocery run (which a fairly empty kitchen left me eating out and spending way more than I should have been) and some maintenance items on my car for inspection. But that month has been a good month, and the same end of year goal I set last month to finish 2018 under $36k, dropping ~$4k from September through the end of December is still entirely feasible if I continue to not be an idiot. And it would be the first time I could say in a decade that I made a real effort, pulled through, and actually cut ~10% off of my total debt.
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Oct 16, 2018 22:52
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Raldikuk posted:At the very least schedule a free consultation with one to go over the basics; like how to go about keeping your car. I did a thing today, and it was this
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Oct 18, 2018 00:24
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Square Peg posted:And? What did you learn? Haven't had the consultation yet, only requested one. I've got so many questions.
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Oct 18, 2018 17:31
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Weatherman posted:So do we, OP. So do we. ~*LITERALLY*~ just got off the phone with lawyer #2 as #1 never got back to me for a consultation. I'm going to have to wait a bit to file, as the biggest balance I have is the card I was transferring balances to for consolidation, and I have to wait at least 90 days since my last transfer to not have it considered to be fraudulent. The car lien will be fine, my accounts otherwise with that CU will be terminated so the worst that'll happen is that I'll have to call in payments or write checks which I haven't done in years.
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Oct 26, 2018 15:24
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| # ¿ May 13, 2024 23:34 |
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Spokes posted:Proud of you. What’s your November budget look like? Well I'll have to re-do it now, but pre-bankruptcy consideration it was: +2960 -100 Newegg payment -850 mortgage -40 meager house/car/vacation savings -150 car payment -100 Amazon card payment -~450 monthly utilities/phone/internet/etc -600 PSECU card payment -300 Sheetz card payment -320 Discover card payment I suppose my immediate next steps are to more or less stop making payments on those cards, open a new bank account somewhere and start to move what little cash I have over and the direct deposit, and save up the money I'd be putting toward card payments into paying off the $1500 or so in lawyer and filing fees early next year, assuming I clear the means test for a chapter 7. After it's all done I'd imagine I should crank up my 401k contributions as I have a pitifully small amount in there and am currently only tossing $25/week into it, pay off the car note, and start to build up my savings goals: emergency fund to cover 6 months in expenses, a house/car repair/future down payment fund, and a vacation/date night fund so that stuff can be properly budgeted.
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Oct 26, 2018 16:02
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