@Anonymous wrote:
LinkedIn Business LinkedIn $32.16
Life Insurance $100
Insurance $60.00
Gas - cars Immediate Obligations Gas - cars $500.00
Sacred Heart - donation for church - tithing) $60.00
Landline phone - 23rd $37.00
Cell phone - 10th $379.15
Electric - 27th $232.47
Sewage - $60
Internet - 2nd $53.62
Groceries $866.00
Guitar $60.00
Piano $88.00
School lunch $200.00
Dining Out $545.00
Just for Fun Entertainment - Movies, Drinks, etc. $216.00
These two are the hardest ones to get rid of but the most beneficial...I know from experience, but if you can sit down with the kiddos and tell them that you and hubby have a goal and as a family will work together to accomplish it..that may work
A long time ago I had a hard time talking to kids about my finances because "it was none of their business" attitude, but when #1 daughter was going to college (1 out of 6) hubby and I had frank discussion with all of them and most recently I had one with my 15yr old (others have grown up).
As that my situation is I am the only adult in house everything depends on me, I am also a firm believer in "child labor". I agreed to buy the mower so son could walk the neighborhood and earn some money. He knows that "fun" is at the moment out of reach for us (eating out, movies), however with his mowing money he puts 50% in savings, 25% back into mower payments..gas ect.. and the last 25% is his to spend as he likes
I am lucky I have a great kiddo and can understand the "big" picture, our goal is for my debt to be paid down and hopefully between his jr & sr year we go to Europe for a month and I only use cash for the trip
Good Luck!!!
**edited for spelling 
**
I know it's not easy discussing these things with the kiddos, but it can also be a great learning experience for them. My boys knew what was going on with my finances and learned to be good with the electricity (My oldest and I now share an apartment and our last bill was $53 woot woot) They learned to grocery shop based on prices and if they wanted something they learned to pick up odd jobs around the neighborhood. Now they are adults and don't want to use credit lol. They adapted well to not having cable. We used Netflix. You can also buy the sports packages and use either Roku or something like Xbox to connect. Cutting out the meals out, adjusting your thermostat, using discount gas cards, clipping a few more coupons, grocery shopping based on the sales instead of vice versa will all save you and add up quickly. Look around for better priced life insurance, get rid of Linked in, even stopping the meals out will lower you gas bill a little
@Anonymous wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
LinkedIn Business LinkedIn $32.16
Life Insurance $100
Insurance $60.00
Gas - cars Immediate Obligations Gas - cars $500.00
Sacred Heart - donation for church - tithing) $60.00
Landline phone - 23rd $37.00
Cell phone - 10th $379.15
Electric - 27th $232.47
Sewage - $60
Internet - 2nd $53.62
Groceries $866.00
Guitar $60.00
Piano $88.00
School lunch $200.00
Dining Out $545.00
Just for Fun Entertainment - Movies, Drinks, etc. $216.00
These two are the hardest ones to get rid of but the most beneficial...I know from experience, but if you can sit down with the kiddos and tell them that you and hubby have a goal and as a family will work together to accomplish it..that may work
A long time ago I had a hard time talking to kids about my finances because "it was none of their business" attitude, but when #1 daughter was going to college (1 out of 6) hubby and I had frank discussion with all of them and most recently I had one with my 15yr old (others have grown up).
As that my situation is I am the only adult in house everything depends on me, I am also a firm believer in "child labor". I agreed to buy the mower so son could walk the neighborhood and earn some money. He knows that "fun" is at the moment out of reach for us (eating out, movies), however with his mowing money he puts 50% in savings, 25% back into mower payments..gas ect.. and the last 25% is his to spend as he likes
I am lucky I have a great kiddo and can understand the "big" picture, our goal is for my debt to be paid down and hopefully between his jr & sr year we go to Europe for a month and I only use cash for the trip
Good Luck!!!
**edited for spelling
You came here for help, no one is going to chastise you for trying.
In addition to medic's suggestion of curbing bills.
Electricity- is this a budget amount or a changing monthly bill. With my utility company, if you have resided over a year, you can be on the budget plan so you don't have shocking bills in the dead heat of the summer and cold of winter. I open the windows for cross breeze alot and not turn on the ac until it is absolutely necessary. I also have worked on the phantom electric ie, appliances, electronics that still consume energy when turned off. I would take a picture of my meter once a week, to see how much it affected it. Alot. Also the time of day the kwh is higher than other hours. With summertime. I cut down on the dryer by using the collaspable drying racks outside on the patio. It also kept the house cooler, as the dryer though vented can still warm up the house and kick on the ac. I unplugged the coffee pot after use, toaster, everything but essential refrigerator, stove. Don't let phones stay charged up all night long, once they reach 100 percent or near that. It will last through the night while asleep. I closed blinds, drapes in afternoon when the sun is pounding through the window at 3-4 pm till it started to set down some and then opened them for natural light. Our budget had accumulated enough that it was reduced by another $10 or so after months of doing this. Even clocks on batteries, is better than a led clock plugged up 24/7. Go to the website of your utility company, it will have a breakdown how much kwh and times of day it cost, plan the bulk of laundry, or things you might do at various times during the day. Check the water heater settings, it does not have to be on scald zone. Handwashing the dishes saves more than running the dishwasher.
Entertainment nights can be games-trivia, monopoly , a rental at Redbox for newer movies, and the library rents them free. Towns also have alot of free arts in the park, or festivals that go on during the summer. Got a tent or can borrow? Camp out in backyard, my son and his friend did this a bit. Of course, I loss some sleep as I kept a watchful eye.
If your parents only use their cell phones (if they are of iphone or andriod type) only for texting or calls, cut the data to 0 on those lines, too many hidden apps use data that they probably don't even use. Make sure all phones are synced to the wifi at home so it does not go against data on your plan while home.
Summer is coming up so that can reduce school lunches a bit, as they will be eating at home albeit, you will have to provide lunch during these months they are not in school. Make good use of leftovers, make bigger portions of spaghetti, chili, to tide through some lunches the next day when possible. That large of a family, might not be that much leftover.
Don't know if there is a mix of girls and boys, but it's yard sale time! Purge through things you don't use anymore, movies, trinkets, the kids can keep the $ from the things they sell if they belong to them, like playstation games. Clothing to you. They can even help you with it, to draw more garage sales audience talk to a neighbor if they want to have a joint one, or do the parents have stuff they can get rid off themselves. The bigger trinkets, frames, lamps, bicycles, games, movies,books, dishes, shoes, they will stop rather than having clothing alone with very little other things. It's work to price, and set up, but the payoff can quite a bit. Anything expensive can be sold at a consignment shop. I belong to our towns Yard Sale site on FB, great for advertisting free, and for me to sale when I don't have enough for a huge yard sale. I sold a dorm refrigerator that when my son graduated and we no longer needed, to a piece of furniture, candlestick holders, patio cushions.
With a restraint and patience, you will dig yourself out of this predicament.
@Anonymous wrote:What does everyone on here think about suggesting a consolidation loan for all credit cards from their bank ? Putting all cards on ice, getting a loan with a much lower interest rate and only having ONE monthly payment on all of it ?
I just hate the thought of those bigger balances on the credit cards ringing up all of that interest until they can snowball and get to making payments on those, we are talking 2-3 more years at those high interest rates.
A consolidation loan may be just what you need---- or a home equity loan to pay them all off.... there is a "catch" to all of this though, you absolutely CAN NOT use those cards again until that loan is paid off.
Thoughts ??
If you can get it, go for it.
As you state, it does require the same discipline as the budgeting exercise / implementation already mentioned here though, as it's not a license to continue the behavior which caused the situation in the first place (that's a route to a CH 13 or worse).
The problem is when there's a massive pattern of utilization like the above case where we're talking major damage to one's credit score, it's difficult to get an unsecured loan to consolidate on. Not impossible, just challenging.
Beyond that if you can reduce your APR non-trivially that's just a smart financial move for anyone, though I'm guessing if a loan could be obtained in this case, it'd be about the same APR.
Nothing says other than the UW trickiness of it that you can't consolidate most of your revolving balances on a high APR loan, and then refinance that on a lower APR loan when possible... optimizing revolving debt from just about as bad as one can get for that second of the scorecard, to near optimum as we preach here constantly, is a huge win FICO wise.
It's worth a chat with a credit union or two certainly, I'm leery of some of the other "Get money here, FAST!" lenders that are available now just for that CFA reason which is a negative on scores I care about (mortgage trimerge) at least, but hard to say which ones are or not. CU's are safe though for sure and likely the most willing to work with the current situation, even if that means closing some of the cards.
@Anonymous wrote:Thanks everyone! You have all been amazing and understanding.
Consolidation: Although a consolidation loan sounds like an easier option - even if I could get one (which I doubt we could with our scores), I am not sure it would give us enough breathing room. We consolidated some debt not long ago and it obviously didn't work - lol. I think we have to do this the hard way and fight our way out and get serious.
Need your opinion:
I like the idea of budgeting like a rockstar... but I find it extremely time-consuming.
For awhile there, we did very well by budgeting on YNAB's mobile app... and that was a nice way to see where our money was going.
1. What do you all use to budget? Excel spreadsheet, paper and pen, YNAB or another tool?
we are always on the go - so something quick is best.
2. How much time do you spend and how do you fit it into your week?
what is your "budgeting schedule"
YNAB; me, personally anything with the new version since I put all spending on credit cards and can import those from every major financial institution. I set my budget allocation for a month, and then once every week or two I simply import everything and reconcile all the transactions and to me that's worth the $5/month or whatever it is... saves a fabulous amount of time for me.
On the flipside from a disclosure perspective, I'm not tracking every single dollar in the sense if I go a little above or below my budget it makes little difference to me financially (I make substantially more than I spend right now) so if you're looking to get more rigid tracking and reconciling daily or whatever that'll add some additional amount of time but it's really just querying the bank transaction records ~14x more than I do... some amount of time to be sure.
Excel to do transaction level budget reconcilation, ain't got time for dat personally and I wouldn't think of trying it personally as way too much manual labor.
I'd also suggest if you used YNAB in the past, and it worked for you, go back to it. You don't need a bunch of complication or learning curve when you're trying to address this... pick something which works for you instead of going down a path which might not and waste valuable time and money instead.