Debt Dumpers - 2019

[jen7233]

Thank you for all your suggestions! Anyone use the every dollar app? My husband gets free subscription through work for smart dollar, which helps with the budgeting, but it looks like I can use the Every dollar app to keep track of daily expenses. I’ve put together a list of monthly expenses that give me a ball park idea of what’s going out each month.

Yes, I do. I use the free version. I use Excel and old fashioned pen and paper though to track and make sure all bills are paid every month. The app mainly for other category tracking.

 

[barkley]

I use Excel and old fashioned pen and paper though to track and make sure all bills are paid every month

there's something to be said for old fashioned pen and paper for reinforcing the budgeting habits. i remember in college being taught that if a person writes down by hand so much as a small synopsis of what they are learning it will reinforce it tremendously (even more so if they then verbalize it out loud) so i find that the practice of using a good old fashioned hand budget to track purchases and payments it helps me stay to the course.

 

[princessesintraining]

Our main pay is once a month, so I setup payment of all my bills at the beginning of each month. I get paid bi-weekly and work part time, but hoping to pickup some extra hours on my days off by substituting.
I’m mainly looking to keep track of our unnecessary spending. I think I’ll give it a try. Thanks for the reviews.

 

[imbatman]

I'm optimistic...but 2018 kicked my rear, so I'm also realistic.

I need to vent. Our fabulous trip early this month? Family member who is DVC owner "gave" us the points earlier this year. He's now expecting payment. I'm so angry I could scream. We NEVER EVER would've stayed there for that cost. NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS. Now, I need to budget in $3500 to repay it. Yes, you read that right. I'm not even civil to him at this point because he's pretending like we agreed to it. Stab me. Stab me now.

Looking forward to the support & motivation in 2019!

You've come to the right place! Feel free to ask for advice, rage against family members, or just to say "I've messed up." We are all here to help each other.

 

[disney-inspired]

I need to vent. Our fabulous trip early this month? Family member who is DVC owner "gave" us the points earlier this year. He's now expecting payment. I'm so angry I could scream. We NEVER EVER would've stayed there for that cost. NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS. Now, I need to budget in $3500 to repay it. Yes, you read that right. I'm not even civil to him at this point because he's pretending like we agreed to it. Stab me. Stab me now.

 

[fifthdimensiondweller]

@imbatman I would be FURIOUS if I were you. Absolutely livid.

 

[FQLover]

Omg. Make up a payment plan and then WRITE HIM OFF! I can't believe the nerve of that.

 

[Tygerlilly]

Holy cow! That is insane! I would definitely not have any further communication with that person after that. I'm so mad for you right now.

 

[jen7233]

there's something to be said for old fashioned pen and paper for reinforcing the budgeting habits. i remember in college being taught that if a person writes down by hand so much as a small synopsis of what they are learning it will reinforce it tremendously (even more so if they then verbalize it out loud) so i find that the practice of using a good old fashioned hand budget to track purchases and payments it helps me stay to the course.

I started out this way before internet with the old checkbook registers and savings passbooks, if anyone remembers those things!

I need to vent. Our fabulous trip early this month? Family member who is DVC owner "gave" us the points earlier this year. He's now expecting payment. I'm so angry I could scream. We NEVER EVER would've stayed there for that cost. NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS. Now, I need to budget in $3500 to repay it. Yes, you read that right. I'm not even civil to him at this point because he's pretending like we agreed to it. Stab me. Stab me now.

Wow that is so wrong of them. How does one come back later and say they expect payment after the fact?! A gift or an offer is just that, that's awful!

 

[amalone1013]

there's something to be said for old fashioned pen and paper for reinforcing the budgeting habits. i remember in college being taught that if a person writes down by hand so much as a small synopsis of what they are learning it will reinforce it tremendously

Yes! I used to rewrite things when studying for exams in college, like topics and how the process worked, facts, whatever.

I started out this way before internet with the old checkbook registers and savings passbooks, if anyone remembers those things!

I religiously used my checkbook register in college when I got my first checking account/debit card. Now I do all digital, but I think being disciplined about doing it all by hand helped a lot as I was learning to budget. I still like to do a lot of calculations by hand.

 

[barkley]

I started out this way before internet with the old checkbook registers and savings passbooks, if anyone remembers those things!

i remember them and in fact our local credit union still has them upon request. they are for the most part used for little kids who are learning about budgeting and savings but i suspect (based on my own late mom's resistance to atms and only having a 'flimsy paper receipt' even if she walked into a bank to deposit) that there are some older seniors who opt for them as well.

 

[AmyAnne]

Ack wrong thread -- sorry!

 

[AmyAnne]

@barkley I'm pretty worried about our taxes. We actually didn't change our withholdings because we couldn't figure out what exactly we should change. We usually get a small refund (a few hundred dollars) but I have no idea what we will be looking at this year.

 

[amalone1013]

I've stressed over our taxes all year. I just put the info from our final paychecks into the IRS withholding calculator and it's estimating a $540 overpayment. I'll be happy if it's within $540 either way, over or under. Last year we messed up because we didn't think to redo our W4s with getting married and owed $1400. I think this year we're mainly over because DH makes commission and we used his numbers from last year, which were bigger... he had a bunch of jobs waffle back and forth the last few months, and now multiple have pulled the trigger this week... so he'll see big chunk of his 2018 work as income in 2019. We just laughed about it last night after another one did, and how taxes will be just as much of a pain.

 

[OhMari]

They say it goes in three’s.
First our wash machine that was totally rebuilt 4 years ago under warranty stopped working. The repairman tried to recollaborate the electrical mother board. He did reset it and got it running, but the next day it would not start. He came back and it was dead. Since they do not make my machine any longer he cannot get parts.

2. A ballis light needs total replacement in our kitchen.

3. The motherboard on our 4 year old oven went out. Luckily it is under warranty. But cannot order part till Jan. 2nd, and will take a week to come in. So no oven for 2 weeks.

Makes me wonder if my house got hit by lightening, but it is the middle of winter.

 

[barkley]

They say it goes in three’s.
First our wash machine that was totally rebuilt 4 years ago under warranty stopped working. The repairman tried to recollaborate the electrical mother board. He did reset it and got it running, but the next day it would not start. He came back and it was dead. Since they do not make my machine any longer he cannot get parts.

2. A ballis light needs total replacement in our kitchen.

3. The motherboard on our 4 year old oven went out. Luckily it is under warranty. But cannot order part till Jan. 2nd, and will take a week to come in. So no oven for 2 weeks.

Makes me wonder if my house got hit by lightening, but it is the middle of winter.

i'm convince that appliances get jealous if you give too much attention to one over the other. it never fails that if one gets a visit from the repairman within a few days to a week one of the others wants attention as well.

 

[fifthdimensiondweller]

Alright! DH and I had our year end/ year begin budget meeting today. I got a pleasant surprise. I'd been thinking all year we were putting 8% in his retirement- we were actually putting 10%. So provided he gets a COL increase in the spring we'll likely up that to 11-12%.

Now onto our hard goals- main goal this year is to pay off our sedan and trade it in for an SUV. It'll break our heart to do it but with DS getting bigger and wanting to start trying for baby 2 at the end of 2019, we're simply outgrowing sedans for now. We're going to continue doubling payments and throwing extra at it until it's paid, hopefully by summer, and trade it in.

Question: We should do that, right? Or instead of doubling payments should we make the regular payment and put the extra into savings for a down payment on the SUV, and then trade the sedan in with some money owed? This is the first time I've ever had a car worth more than scrap to trade in, so I honestly don't know what to do. We'd likely be trading in for a pre-owned SUV at similar mileage to our sedan or maybe a little less. We're only trading it in because we need an SUV- the sedan itself still runs very well and only has about 80k miles.

The other goal this year is to put $3000 in savings, so we mapped out a savings plan to get that done. We also have an extra $60/ mo going into savings for DS now, plus contributions from family.

Amother thing we're doing (and the one thing that really tripped us up last year) is cutting down on visits to our hometown several states away, and budgeting way ahead for the 1 visit we are making this year, along with our December cruise. I won't have hard numbers for a little while, but our December cruise will probably run us about $2000 with the balance on the cruise (will be paid with income tax), the hotel halfway there and back, and food on the road getting there and back, plus parking at port.

The other expense we have this year is my cousin's wedding. We're very close and he's DS's godfather, so that is going to be our one trip to our hometown this year, in lieu of Thanksgiving, which is traditionally our trip up. The wedding is in late August, and we're thinking while we're up north we may take DS to Sesame Place. We can use my mom's timeshare for the room (she and some other family with little ones will join us) and we'll just spend one day with them all at the park, so it shouldn't be too bad. We priced it out and came up with a savings plan for it, so provided it all goes well, we'll be doing that. I'll have to post more details on pricing later but it looks like buying tickets ahead would put us at $120 for a day there (DS would still be under 2 so free there), and we'd probably do a character meal. We plugged that in as well and made a savings goal for that, so we're in good shape!

Finally, we made a monthly gifting budget, and mapped out the whole year of gifts we still need for birthdays, weddings, and Christmas next year, so that we can save a little each month. I shop all year when I see good deals so this will give me a set pool of money to pull from for that rather than having to check the spending budget and take from that month's allowance. Sadly, we've decided we likely won't be traveling for my good friend's wedding in October. It makes me really sad because she's important to me and she's been through a lot, but we just can't make it work in the budget. It's a tough though, but we have aging family with serious illnesses and we need to save a bit of wiggle room both in time off and budget for an emergency trip up. At least by not going I can give a bit more generous of a gift, and hopefully I can see her when I'm visiting in August to give her my well wishes personally.

So it looks like all in all this year is going to be about saving and meeting very specific goals. Then, provided everything goes well, 2020 will be straight about saving, saving saving. I'll likely be pregnant and then have a newborn at the end of the year, so we're thinking just a small long weekend trip to Disney's Vero Beach Resort in February for our anniversary and that's the only trip we'll do anywhere at all that year. So that should give us several extra thousand we don't normally have to just throw at savings like crazy people!

Oh, and I didn't mention, but none of the budgeting we did today factors in me having a job. DH and I decided we want to have the whole budget set in place as though I'm not working, even though I'm actively searching for part time work now, because hours can vary so much. So my money will always have a different "job", but mostly it'll get socked away straight into savings I'm guessing.

Woof. That took forever to type! Here's to 2019!

 

[Tygerlilly]

Starting off the new year working over time. While not the most exciting new years plans, they work for me. Waiting (I'm)patiently for my w2 so I can knock that out asap.

 

[MN_Andi]

Laid out my budget spreadsheet for the year, and wrote down some dates when I should be getting my W2s (I work 2 jobs), and my 1098E for student loan interest. Since I don't have a house, any kids, and I'm not married, my taxes are for now thankfully easy, and should be filed early February.
I also just realized that January is a 3 paycheck month for me, which will be great way to start out the debt dumping in 2019!

 

[barkley]

Laid out my budget spreadsheet for the year, and wrote down some dates when I should be getting my W2s (I work 2 jobs), and my 1098E for student loan interest. Since I don't have a house, any kids, and I'm not married, my taxes are for now thankfully easy, and should be filed early February.
I also just realized that January is a 3 paycheck month for me, which will be great way to start out the debt dumping in 2019!

3rd paycheck months are awesome for debt dumping if you don't use them in your ongoing month to month budgeting. dd's job is paid bi-weekly as well and it's the first time she's ever experienced this so when i helped her do her budget i showed her how she could get by on just budgeting w/ 2 paychecks per month and then throw those extra 2 each year at her student loans which will go a long way in paying them off much earlier.