Desperately need help

[Anonymous]

Hiya .. the second job would be a tremendous help, particularly with overall cashflow. At 34, I got a 2nd job at Bloomingdales (owned by Macys) & they paid every Friday, which was a game changer. I earned about $130-$200/check each week, totaling between $800-$1000/mo. I also worked a ton over the holiday bc my day job had off between xmas & NYE. It was the difference of paying off debt & not having to go into more debt for basic necessities. I was able to work between 16-24 hours/week. With your teaching schedule, you could probably do about 25-30hrs, nights & weekends! Retail shifts can start as late as 6p & the staff is diverse with lots of 30+ year olds. Is there a Macys or Bloomies in your area? I'd start there because of the weekly pay schedule. I would avoid the loan as well, it's honeslty a never-ending cycle. You should get the second job, paying weekly & do the debt snowball, pay off the $1200 first, then the next smallest amount & then the big card. + you'll get a great discount & might actually enjoy the change of environment. You owe it to yourself to grind it out .. you're still so young & relief is within reach! Wishing you all the best.

[randomguy1]

Verizon's tethering is pretty good. Have you considered using Verizon in place of your Comcast via tethering your phone to your laptop/computer? Try disconnecting your phone from WiFi and use tethering for a week, then a month, and see if it works for you. I work in Tech and did this for over a year to save money.

[RSX]

Tons of good advice so far.  Each of these suggestions will add up.  And as long as you keep positive about your progress, giving up internet for 1 year won’t even matter 

selling $5k of items will have an immediate positive impact.  And your thought process should be, that you will love buying some of those items again in 1/2/3 years with cash, not credit

cutting back can be uncomfortable, but not when you see the direct impact it makes on your outstanding debt

create a Snapshot of your current financial situation. All debts.  Then watch it drop every month. This will fuel your progress

and maybe you keep that second job until your student debt is paid off.  

Good luck.  And keep reading on here.  

[Anonymous]

It's a new concept to me, but I think I understand what your saying. I'd have to try it out and see how it is. It would be unfortunate though because I just worked hard to get that comcast bill down from $130 to $50 with a good internet speed to my apartment to go with it. But with someone in my situation I should consider all avenues. I'll tell you one thing though, is that my my cell phone plan with Verizon is the next thing to go most likely. My plan is around $67, but as I'm researching there are some providers out there that offer unlimited talk and text, and then you just pay by the amount of gigs you use in data. Which I only use about 1 gig every month. If my android was acceptable I would have already switched over to comcast mobile and would only be paying $12 to $24 tops a month, which would be another good savings. The phone situation definitely needs to be tackled for me. 

[Anonymous]

Alright let me look into this more than. I do know that I used a total of 36 months I believe of hardship deferment. Early on there were payments. If I had to softball best guess at to total payments, prob 30 payments tops. Either way I'll try to read more into this, maybe get into contact with a Edfinancial services agent who can walk me through some of it. Knowing that some of it is retroactive is good though, because my education employment has been pretty spread out among different schools over the years, but the bulk of it was done at 2 schools over a period of 6 years out of the ten spent in education. I'll get back to you if I find something interesting to get your perspective back on it. 

The other thing which I was hoping to get others feedback on is an option from my 401k. It appears I can borrow a loan from my 401k close to 5k. Now how it goes is that money would be taken out bi-weekly from my paycheck to pay for this loan over 5 years, but that money would go right back into my 401k anyways. Ultimately that monthly amount taken out of my checks would be somewhere around $65. Now that 5K could almost wipe out the $6500 cc and with a little savings and aggressivness I could prob do just that, but I'm not sure if it's worth it. But with one of the credit cards wiped out using that method, it may have a strong impact on my Credit UTI. Do you guys have any thoughts about this or should I stay away from this move? I looked into hardship withdrawel from 401k but the only way I would qualify is if I got an eviction notice and even then it sounds like they may not give me a high enough value of money I'm looking for, and instead may just give me enough to pay rent for a month or two. 

[Anonymous]

The one bit of advice I can give is to make sure you student loans are on an income based repayment schedule and to make it clear what your taxable income is (which is not always the same as your gross income). If you have pre-tax deductions, they should be taking this into account. 

And I agree with everyone else, a second job should make a big difference. You're a teacher - have you considered doing something like online tutoring? Or teaching English to kids in China online? Both can be really flexible and can pay relatively well per hour. 

Regardless, keep your head up. You will get past this. 

[Anonymous]

Hanzo18:

Are you sure that you always used the hardship deferment? Sometimes people confuse the unemployment deferment and hardship deferment. If you broke the hardship deferment up, there's a possibility you may have requested an unemployment deferment (I think it can be good up to a year at a time) for up to 36 months . Keep in mind unemployment if simply when you are not employed full-time, not that you don't have a job.
" Full-time employment is defined as working at least 30 hours per week in a position expected to last at least 3 consecutive months."
This saves you a bit because the hardship one is of you don't qualify for anything else. Get an official count from your servicer if you haven't already.

Also, on the IDR application select the plan w the lowest payment option. You can use the repayment Estimator to see what might with out best for you. While it asks for your adjusted gross income, there is a bit of fine print that most people miss. If at any time your income significantly changes from what you originally submitted (usually the IRS link in the online application), you may have your payments recalculated. Most people overthink it.
Significant changes is never defined, so for people like us where every dollar counts....well, I count a dollar as a significant change. And there is no mention of if the change is temporary or permanent; you similar need to turn in supporting documents. Basically if you have a paycheck that's going to calculate to be lower than what you submitted as your AGI (for any reason), turn in the IDR application with your paystub to have it recalculated. It has to be within the last 90 days and type the frequency of your pay on the PDF of the paystub. Upload or email it to your servicer. When they get it you should get it request another administrative forbearance while they process it. When they are done, these payments will be good for the next 12 months. No need to report an increase. Do the same thing before the 12 months is up to extend it again.

[Anonymous]

Yea I used to survive off of tutoring but that clientel has all dried up over the years and all those kids have moved on. Online tutoring seems to be more popular these days with things like varsity tutoring. They don't offer what I would get privately but they do seem to offer somewhere around $20 an hour, I would just have to get a camera and get familiar with tutoring that way. It's actually something I feel I should start doing immediately until another real 2nd job opens up. 

[Anonymous]

Ok cool, I will look into this. To my knowlege, I recall a phone agent saying I only had 3 months of deferment left and I recently just put in the other three. But I never looked into how that works with unemployment, because I was unemployed for a couple of years after things went south from my first teaching job and not getting a raise. 

[SBR249]

Also check out Wyzant if you are looking at online or in person tutoring. They are not the most tutor-friendly, but you get to set your own rates as a free lancer.