I just can’t understand it-and I can’t take it either!

amother

↑ Lightcoral

Wed, Sep 18 2024, 10:16 am

amother OP wrote:

5500 mortgage
5100 tuition
3700 health insurance
3500 groceries and household (detergent etc)
1000 cars
2000 support
2000 household help (if I don’t have help I can’t work)
1000 bills
2000 heloc
500 credit cards
800 tzedaka
@100-150 personal care (barber)

No retirement savings right now

Read this again. You need a personal financial expert to go through specific numbers with you. Not an accountant (I am an accountant). There is probably a lot of ways you can save. But to answer your original question - if I am struggling, how on earth does anyone else manage? - is taxes and your debt payments. Taxes is really society's great equalizer Very Happy

amother

↑ OP ↓

Thu, Nov 28 2024, 10:03 am

So after a little jiggling around I was able to set up a monthly budget on quicken and I see what happened to get us here.
Our income currently exceeds our spending by about $1500 but we were short every month until last year November by a couple of thousand. So that’s where our debt grew from. The rolling credit on our credit cards kind of masked the issue because they were never due at the same time and we get paid twice a month.

That said now I am working really hard on crunching our budget. No more eating out or takeout careful grocery shopping minimal clothing shopping etc. We have about 42000 in credit card debt and 184000 on our heloc. We plan to use the upcoming January bonus to pay off most of the credit card and our taxes. I hope that next year at this time we have no cc debt-between the bonus and using the surplus 1500 in our monthly budget to pay it back.

My only question is does it make sense to be paying back our debt so aggressively even as we have no petty cash savings (we have some retirement-I forgot about them because they aren’t that much at this point but will hopefully grow-and stocks). Should we be doing this differently?

amother

Feverfew ↓

Thu, Nov 28 2024, 10:43 am

Just want to say I can totally relate to this.

BH make a similar amount as you, but we have such massive debt we are choking. Don't even own a home yet.

The past 18 months we bh managed to pay back almost $300k. We are attacking the last $250k and hopefully in the near future we will have a clean slate and start to breathe.

amother

↑ OP ↓

Thu, Nov 28 2024, 10:44 am

Paying prime plus 1/4 on the heloc. The cc are zero apr but coming due in the spring and then to transfer to new cards will be 3-4% of the balance
What I hope to do is clear the ccs and then transfer some more of the heloc balance to zero apr cc for 18 months so I can pay down more principal and lower the interest on the rest . I already transferred off 14k of the heloc to an cc and my heloc payment went from 2000 to 1760. Cost me $420 for the balance transfer and have zero interest for 18 months-will wipe that cc when we get the bonus.

amother

↑ OP ↓

Thu, Nov 28 2024, 10:45 am

amother Feverfew wrote:

If you’re making this much money and don’t own a home have I got questions for you! Mainly, whyever not?

amother

↑ OP

Thu, Nov 28 2024, 10:47 am

our emergency fund is our stocks which we don’t touch. I feel less likely to sell stock then to take cash from a savings account to buy something unnecessary. if an emergency comes then we will just sell

amother

↑ Feverfew

Thu, Nov 28 2024, 10:48 am

amother OP wrote:

If you’re making this much money and don’t own a home have I got questions for you! Mainly, whyever not?

We took out huge personal and business loans to start a business. We then had about 7 years after we opened of basically 0 income. We are bh earning a lot now but paying back the loans before we buy a house is a priority.