Debt Dumpers 2021

[shawthorne44]

I have 4 lines with ATT and pay $173, but that does include 1 phone installment plan. Funny enough we're the opposite of most everyone else here. Our phones lines are mine, DH's, my mom, and my dad and we pay for their phones/lines. My parents don't have a lot of money (dad's disabled, mom doesn't work) and it had started out with me paying for them because if I didn't they probably wouldn't have cell phones. I wasn't ok with that thought since if they go anywhere and something happens, how will they get ahold of me or anyone else? My mom used to pay me a little something towards it, but I eventually just told her not to worry about it. The nominal amount she was paying me wasn't make it or break it for me and when I first started out as an "adult" they paid for some of my bills, so it's my small way of paying them back.

You might look into a annual Tracfone prepaid plans for them. If they aren't streaming videos in line at the grocery stores, they probably don't use much data. The one that comes with 3Gb and bunches of minutes and texts for about $10/ month per person. There is one with unlimited calls and texts and 12Gb/year for a bit more than that.

That is how mom got a phone. They were both using dad's phone, and honestly they are rarely apart. But, mom wanted a phone. Dad resisted. So one year I bought her a phone with a prepaid year. Mom, being not born yesterday, talked often about how handy it was to have. When the year was up, they bought another year. They have one car, but two cell phones.

 

[piglet1979]

You might look into a annual Tracfone prepaid plans for them. If they aren't streaming videos in line at the grocery stores, they probably don't use much data. The one that comes with 3Gb and bunches of minutes and texts for about $10/ month per person. There is one with unlimited calls and texts and 12Gb/year for a bit more than that.

That is how mom got a phone. They were both using dad's phone, and honestly they are rarely apart. But, mom wanted a phone. Dad resisted. So one year I bought her a phone with a prepaid year. Mom, being not born yesterday, talked often about how handy it was to have. When the year was up, they bought another year. They have one car, but two cell phones.

This is what we did for our kids before we were ready for them to have a phone with internet. They used the old fashioned flip phones. This came in handy for when they were away from us. They could call us when they were ready to be picked up.

 

[ciaoaloha31]

Back in the day when pay phones were still a thing, my parents set up an 800 number with a pin code so we had no excuse to not call if we needed to check in or get picked up while out of the house. I think it was charged to our landline account but not 100% sure.

 

[pblack]

You might look into a annual Tracfone prepaid plans for them. If they aren't streaming videos in line at the grocery stores, they probably don't use much data. The one that comes with 3Gb and bunches of minutes and texts for about $10/ month per person. There is one with unlimited calls and texts and 12Gb/year for a bit more than that.

That is how mom got a phone. They were both using dad's phone, and honestly they are rarely apart. But, mom wanted a phone. Dad resisted. So one year I bought her a phone with a prepaid year. Mom, being not born yesterday, talked often about how handy it was to have. When the year was up, they bought another year. They have one car, but two cell phones.

Definitely a good idea, but my dad loves using his phone for the internet, YouTube, news, Facebook lol. My mom doesn't use hers as much for that since she has an iPad.

 

[shawthorne44]

Definitely a good idea, but my dad loves using his phone for the internet, YouTube, news, Facebook lol. My mom doesn't use hers as much for that since she has an iPad.

Does their house have wifi? If so, and he does that mostly at home, he probably isn't using as much data as you think.

 

[pblack]

Does their house have wifi? If so, and he does that mostly at home, he probably isn't using as much data as you think.

They do and thats what they use. But he's notorious for messing up his phone and somehow turning the wifi off lol. Honestly what I pay for their lines is probably equivalent too or cheaper than getting tracfones for them. Its definitely a good idea for some people though or maybe even sometime in the future if they just need the phone portion and nothing else.

 

[jackers]

I have my mom on my plan and one of my sisters has our dad on her plan. Every once in a while my mom asks if it’s costing too much and I just assure her no. They did so much for me when I was a young single mom and wouldn’t let me pay them back for things, so this is my way of doing that (they also get pricier gifts for all the occasions).

Dad just has a basic flip phone, that he doesn’t even turn on, but does take it with him when he leaves the house in case of emergencies.

Mom got her first phone, an iPhone, 4 years ago for her 75th birthday. My main purpose for getting it for her was because her first great grandchild (my grandson) was born and she got her feelings hurt when I texted pictures to my sisters before she saw any pictures. I decided I wasn’t going to go thru that everyday (They do not have internet or any social media). So we got her a phone, and she was very intimidated at first, but has really taken to it. She is in contact with so many more friends and family on a regular basis and just loves getting pictures from family members that she can then share with her friends.

 

[Tygerlilly]

Found out work is literally bribing us all to come in. If you work your scheduled shift from today through Tuesday (mine would be Sat/Sun/Mon and DH would be today/tomorrow/Tues), we would each get $200 extra on our checks. Nice little bonus for working what we were already going to work.
There's a little rumor floating around that out of desperation, they're looking at giving us raises until January and some of the warehouses are even going as far as offering the $200 per paycheck bonus through the rest of the year. We can't get people to show up to save our lives lately, so I'm kinda hoping this really does takes effect. Granted, I doubt I get the extra pay for most of it since I'll be on maternity leave, but DH will after his 6 weeks off.

I've been running some mortgage calculators, some "how much house can I afford" calculators, figuring out monthly expenses, etc. Even with an insane interest rate with the assumption my credit score doesn't raise a ton by spring, we can afford the house I really want to build. I'm planning on taking the first few child tax payments this fall and paying off debt with them. The rest I'm going to stash away in savings towards a down-payment. When taxes come in, I'm going to hoard that away as well because we will most likely still get a chunk back with the expanded CTC. I feel like we should have a solid $5-6k by April or so.

It feels good to have a solid game plan moving forward.

 

[imbatman]

Was sent a re-fi letter for the student loan. Can get the rate down to 2.97% fixed if we do a fixed 5 year. Also, an offer to switch my Disney Visa card to a premier Disney card ($49 fee/$50 statement credit) and I'll earn x2 Disney points.

I think we may pass on the re-fi, as it'll affect our credit, but I'm going to jump on board of that double Disney points since my sweet mom wants to go to Disneyland.

 

[4 Ears]

Ugh well my very carefully thought out plans for paying bills down went out the window. BUT we booked a cruise for next year at this time on deck 10 of The Dream with connecting rooms for all of us except my Mom (DH, oldest son, daughter in law of other son (the son who passed 5 years ago in July) AND our granddaughter from passed son). We all are VERY excited!! Bill's, well we will continue chiseling away at them LOL.

 

[pblack]

End of May Update:

• Pay $1000 extra towards Highlander loan.......DONE! Just paid an extra $200 to get me to my $1000 goal.
• Kick out our roommate.....This is still a work in progress. He's been looking, but hasn't found anything in his price range. He's looking at a place on Monday and I have my fingers crossed.
• Exercise 4-5 times a week for 30-45 minutes.....Still doing pretty good with this. I think I had one week where I only worked out 3 days, but I'm ok with it. Sometimes it's still really hard to find the motivation and on those days I try not to kick at myself too much.
• Refinance the house....I had taken this one off my list last time since it didn't seem like it was going to happen. Well we're signing our closing documents today. We didn't get the 3% rate we wanted, but we were able to get 3.125% down from 3.625%. This saves us about $130/mo (which will be allocated towards cable/internet when the roommate leaves), but best of all we dropped our PMI.
• Get a new roof......This had also been taken off my list since it didn't seem likely, but we've signed a contract for a new roof and solar. The grand total is cringe worthy, but our payment equates to what we currently pay for electricity in the summer. (Our whole house is electric, except for our heater.) This should also mean we'll be able to actually turn down our A/C from 80 degrees in the summer to something a little more comfortable.
• NEW goal: pay as much as I can towards our Camry loan....Our Camry had been a 3-year lease, but we just bought out the lease this month. We ended up doing a 5 year loan to get our monthly payment to where we wanted it to be with the goal of paying it off early. I'm not going to set a dollar amount towards this goal, but I will be funneling extra money towards it each month. Since we owe less on this loan than we do the Highlander, I plan on just paying the minimum payment for the Highlander and funneling the extra money I had been paying towards the Camry instead.

Since we're going to have some "extra" money because of the refinance (not having to pay our mortgage for a month), my plan is to use that money towards more home projects and getting ahead on other things I know are coming up this year (birthdays/anniversaries/etc.) I know that some would recommend paying it back towards our principal, but I'd honestly rather get some more of our house projects done or pay some of it towards our Camry to get that paid down. I'll have to see what we still need to do project wise.

The weather here this weekend is supposed to be HOT! Monday we're supposed to hit 106 degrees. So needless to say my weekend will be spent in the pool. I hope everyone has a fantastic memorial day weekend! Or if you don't celebrate memorial day, I hope you have a fabulous weekend!

 

[piglet1979]

The weather here this weekend is supposed to be HOT! Monday we're supposed to hit 106 degrees. So needless to say my weekend will be spent in the pool. I hope everyone has a fantastic memorial day weekend! Or if you don't celebrate memorial day, I hope you have a fabulous weekend!

You can send some of that heat my way in Ohio. Today we are rainy and cold. A high of 50 and a low of like 40. The rain will be gone the rest of the weekend but we will stay in the 60's and low 70's. Have a great weekend and enjoy the pool.

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

I’ve been off all week and got so much done that I’d been putting off: steam-cleaning carpets; cleaning my desk, getting rid of clutter, shredding old papers, extra thorough cleaning, doctor appts, and helping my dad with some things.
I was hoping we’d be able to go away for a long weekend but I’m just as glad to not be spending money.
I usually save $ for Christmas by funneling the snowball aside in the summer. Then it hit me. If I could hold off and wait to save for Christmas until after the mortgage is paid, we could make that gone another month earlier so we’re looking at mid November. That’s if all goes according to plan.
If plans fall apart between now and Halloween, I’ll start working on Christmas $ then.

Everyone have a wonderful weekend and happy/grateful Memorial Day.

 

[StacyStrong]

On the subject of cell phone bills, I paid for my grandma's line for about 2 years. Honestly, it kind of irritated me that none of her kids stepped up (aside from my dad and one uncle who were paying all other bills), but it was only like $25 extra month because it had no data plan attached to it. When my grandma went into the nursing home, she didn't bring the cell phone for whatever reason. My uncle (who has a lot of addiction problems. is unemployed, living with family, etc.) started using the phone. My grandma passed away in January and I'm still paying the line for my uncle. My dad says I should cut him off, but I feel SO guilty about it that I haven't done anything. I have a bunch of child locks on it because when my grandma's dementia was really bad, she was calling 411 about 30 times a day. Because of this, I get a text if my uncle calls 911, which is every couple of weeks. He has seizures if he doesn't drink (because he's that addicted) and I just don't know if I can stomach the thought of canceling the line and then he can't call 911 in an emergency. Family is tough!

Anywho, May was pretty terrible financially for me. Not because anything major happened, but I just spend money like a maniac, mostly on fast food/take out that I really really didn't need and clothes. I still hit all my savings goals for the month, but I really shuffled around money a lot from what my "planned" budget was. It was like I got vaccinated and went "YOLO, going to buy everything and anything !!!!"

 

[ruadisneyfan2]

On the subject of cell phone bills, I paid for my grandma's line for about 2 years. Honestly, it kind of irritated me that none of her kids stepped up (aside from my dad and one uncle who were paying all other bills), but it was only like $25 extra month because it had no data plan attached to it. When my grandma went into the nursing home, she didn't bring the cell phone for whatever reason. My uncle (who has a lot of addiction problems. is unemployed, living with family, etc.) started using the phone. My grandma passed away in January and I'm still paying the line for my uncle. My dad says I should cut him off, but I feel SO guilty about it that I haven't done anything. I have a bunch of child locks on it because when my grandma's dementia was really bad, she was calling 411 about 30 times a day. Because of this, I get a text if my uncle calls 911, which is every couple of weeks. He has seizures if he doesn't drink (because he's that addicted) and I just don't know if I can stomach the thought of canceling the line and then he can't call 911 in an emergency. Family is tough!

Anywho, May was pretty terrible financially for me. Not because anything major happened, but I just spend money like a maniac, mostly on fast food/take out that I really really didn't need and clothes. I still hit all my savings goals for the month, but I really shuffled around money a lot from what my "planned" budget was. It was like I got vaccinated and went "YOLO, going to buy everything and anything !!!!"

You're definitely caught between a rock and a hard place with your uncle's situation. I don't know what I'd do if I were in that situation. It's easy to call for tough love when speaking of other people's families and not so easy with our own. Then again I tend to be a softy when it comes to my kids; I'm not as demanding as I could (maybe should) be.
Ds21 says his BFF, who lives around the corner, pays his parents for his cell phone bill and $200/month rent. That really isn't a lot, same as what my parents charged me as rent back in 1991, once I was done school and working FT.

Then again, I have a friend who I suspect paid her daughter's rent for months because she graduated from nursing school and still hadn't yet gotten a job but she had her own apartment. Eventually she passed her boards and got a job.
I have another friend who's son bought a home a month before even graduating college.
So we are more middle of the road as far as enabling vs. tough love.

 

[4 Ears]

Feeling pretty good about my destashing journey. Yesterday I decided to get rid of a certain coffee mug. Upon further investigation, some where along the way it was already donated

 

[CaleCakes]

June check in.

° Discover balance in January $6,311 Paid in January keeping this on here cuz I'm proud to have gotten rid of it.

° AMEX balance $8125 in January- Current Balance $1464.08 almost there! Haven't made any additional payments on this. I am going to just be paying a little more than double the minimum which will be $100 until after my Disney trip to keep some extra cash on hand. The interest rate is 0% until September so this won't be an problem to get rid of by then.

° Start a Roth IRA for myself. Done! I opened a traditional IRA rollover and moved money from a previous employer 403b or whatever it was. I am admittedly terrible at understanding investments. For now the money is in the new account but I need to call and figure out what to do from here.

°Keep money in savings! Haven't touch savings since the beginning of May.

°Purge the garage- work in progress. It's really been a hot hot mess in there lately. Same hot hot mess.

°Eat better and drop a few pounds- 0/20 I still don't really want to talk about it. I laugh but it really isn't funny. I need to start walking at least to get park stamina up which was proven even more true during a recent Sea World visit.

° Disney August 14-22 at Copper Creek in a 2 bedroom villa for $6444. $200/$6444. 6 day hopper $1204/$1204. SW round trip now (since Jet Blue cancelled my flight back) $517/$517. Still no real budget here as it is still coming together with several "maybes". Total paid vs. outstanding so far is $1921/$8165. I am giving my friend until June 1 to decide if she is coming because I don't want to miss my dining window. If she decides not to come then I'll probably change room choice to something smaller, maybe even book over at Shades. Giving my friend until June 10th despite saying June 1 before.

°Landscaping-Some more action here- the project is at least started. He hasn't made much progress, I feel like he wasted most of the week waiting for it to rain. I really hope he gets more work done this week because the look right now isn't a good one with my front lawn all torn up and half a retaining wall installed.

°Other things on my mind:
-Still chugging along in my current job. I applied for a new position, a promotion. Really hoping I get it . Funny thing is I don't even know how much of an increase it would be. Got the promotion! It officially starts June 15th but I've been transitioning in for a few weeks now. It is a pretty decent raise. I would like to save at least half of whatever the month increase turns out to be and the rest to pay down whatever debt is left. I think I will tackle a car note next- mine is at 16k and DH is 8k both with low rates.
-Opted out of taking a long weekend back east- it'll be a busy summer here at home. DHs mother is looking into a small travel trailer for when she visits us. I am highly encouraging this purchase for her comfort (right now when she visits she takes DD3 bedroom and bathroom, but that isn't going to fly when DD is a tween/teen). Also thinking selfishly as DH and I can maybe use it to take the kids for little local camping trips. I have priced out the Forest River Wolf Pup 16bhs and the Apex Nano 194bhs. I think those are a good size for her and if we want to borrow it, and they're both light enough to pull with my current vehicle.
-Going out to eat less and ordering less take out. Doing ok here, but we are not fully committed yet. Had a rough week last week between a friend visiting and we tried lots of restaurants, and really only eating that one meal a day.

I wanted to add to the comments about cell phones and plans. Like @pblack, I have my parents on my cell phone plan. It's been like this for at least 18-20 years since I took over the main number. My parents wouldn't have bothered to get phones, at least not back then, if I didn't add them to my plan. I pay between $230-250 a month for 5 lines (4 smart phones, 1 flip for my father) with Verizon. (I spilled coffee in my handbag last weekend and of course 1 of my phones was in there so now I can only talk on speaker. I do need a new phone but I hate the prices) My parents do not pay me for their portion of the bill but as I probably have mentioned in the past, we live together, so they pick up many trips to the supermarket or when we go out to eat. I also pay for things like trash pick up, Amazon Prime, Hulu, Philo, HOA yearly fee, etc stuff like that that I don't expect them to pay for. Sometimes I pay the propane fill up, sometimes they do. It all works out. And I can't forget to say they are always available to watch the kids when I have a work appointment, so I am very thankful for them and happy to help where I can.

 

[DisneyMandC]

1. Decide what to do with the $400 from the refinance. We're discussing options from paying down the principal or investing it (in something a little more stable like an index fund). We are planning to do a major home renovation in 5 years so trying to decide if we want more equity in our home or my cash on hand.
2. Up retirement contributions. I upped mine more this past year (one of my goals at the beginning of 2020!) but I want to get it up to 15% of my income. I plan to do this as soon as the home refinance is complete. Only reason I'm waiting is we have to send paystubs every pay period until the refinance is done, and I just don't want to have to explain why my paycheck is lower.
3. Continue to save long-term for another car. Hopefully this won't be needed any time soon since we just but DH's car a year ago and the engine was replaced (for free!) in mine in March, but I want to cash flow our next vehicle again so want to make sure we have money set aside for that.
4. Continue to save for a December 2021 Disney trip. We'd like to take our whole family back again. So far we have about $8000 saved, which should come pretty close to doing a value resort stay for a week for the 6 of us again.

checking in! It’s been a few since I’ve done a check in. Can you believe we’re almost halfway through 2021?!

1. House is refinanced and we’re dutifully paying $400 a month extra towards the principal. It’s been awesome to watch it drop so fast with this extra payment.
2. I upped my retirement contributions to 15%, but now I’m going to up then again. DH just got a raise effective in his last paycheck. I’m going to up my 457 plan contribution to the extra amount in his check. In case anyone is wondering, he does have a retirement plan that he maxes to get the contribution from his work on, but we actively try to contribute more to my retirement as it keeps my student loan payment lower by decreasing my AGI.
3. I have $8400 saved towards our next car purchase! This would be higher, but I actually chose to start a home renovations savings account too and have been funding that. So I’ve been splitting things like tax refunds and bonuses between those two accounts. Obviously if we had a major issue with a car and had to buy a new one immediately then I’d pull out of the renovations account too. But for now it’s nice to be saving towards planned renovations in 4 years too.
4. Still accumulating towards saving for December, but we also added in a second trip in July! When we got back from our vacation to Arizona in April, I told DH I wanted to go somewhere for my birthday for a long weekend. We haven’t been to Disney since Feb 2020, so we decided to do a long weekend there and stay somewhere nice. We’re doing Boardwalk for the first time! We’ll be down there July 29-Aug 1. I just booked our dinner reservations yesterday. Really looking forward to that trip. Humidity is the same in VA as it is in FL so the summer heat doesn’t scare us haha.

Hoping for a slightly cheaper month coming up as we had a lot of expenses in May. Several vet bills, including for our dog who was sick (he’s fine now). Spent more money on eating than usual as I treated an old coworker to a nice dinner we had been discussing since pre-pandemic, and took my niece out to celebrate her winning a college scholarship. I want to buckle down this month so I have some spending money for Disney in July.

I also need to lose some weight. While I really didn’t gain any in the pandemic, I picked up an awful caffeine dependency/Starbucks habit as a way of “treating myself.” I decided on Friday that enough is enough and I’ll no longer be doing caffeine every day. So I had my iced mocha Friday morning and haven’t had anything caffeinated since then. I’m not necessarily saying I’ll never get a Starbucks drink again, but I do want to break this cycle of getting myself something caffeinated everyday whether it’s a coke or coffee or whatever. Hopefully that will help me drop a couple pounds too!

 

[crazycatstacy]

Headed to Florida next week! I have the major things we will be doing for entertainment purchased already and with my nephew only being 11 odds are we will eat at cheaper places. My husband and I are planning a nice dinner the night we get in but other than that I think it will be a pretty budget-friendly trip. I have a budget for food and spending money which I think is pretty generous so hopefully, we can stay on track.

We are budgeted to pay $1200 towards a credit card next check!

Our anniversary is July 4 so planning ahead for extra funds for dinner that weekend and then we are doing a weekend cabin rental end of July with my husband's family. HOpefully, we can continue to make good progress this year!

 

[Jen and Ashwin]

I applied for a job this weekend. The posting had been up for quite a while so I anticipate that they have likely already chosen someone for the position, but it seemed like an exciting opportunity so I decided, why not. Though I don't love the job location (CA bay area), it would be an amazing opportunity and we would figure it out. It would likely provide much greater job opportunities for my husband as a computer programmer/software engineer.

I have been giving my current position some serious thought. My boss is talking more and more about retiring in the next few years and I would want to get her job as director, but don't feel like that is a very likely scenario. Mostly because I feel like she is still harboring resentment about my rough maternity leave and transition back to work when my daughter was born almost 4 years ago. I have put in a lot of work since that time to make things better, but I haven't been given the types of responsibilities or opportunities that I would expect given my experience and tenure. I have seen many such things go to my newer colleagues though.

I am not sure if there is a way to turn things around so I have been exploring hiring a career coach with the idea that I would either work towards my boss's position or else I would pivot to a new job. I have had interviews with 2 coaches and have another one today, then I will plan to choose after that. The cost is not insignificant, but I am viewing this as an investment in myself and my career. I don't want to just settle for my current situation, but I feel like I need some outside perspective and help to get where I am wanting to go.