Quote:
Originally Posted by snafu
I'm not sure I read your list correctly. You have a $24,000. home equity loan unrelated to your mortgages [plural]. I have the impression you are paying car loans added to one another for vehicles you no longer own!
Adding to suggestions already posted, I believe you need to increase your income. Can you rent a room/share your home with a college student? Can you and DH get serious and knowledgeable about finance?
The 1st rule DH and I learned was that you only borrow/go into debt for items that have the potential to increase in value in the future. Your education has that potential as does your home. Cars usually only depreciate for so spending as little as possble for reliable transportation is a better plan. Hyundai isn't sexy but they offer reliable transportation really cheap.
Perhaps designate a figure for each expenditure. For example, $ X for utilities [hydro, phone, heat, water, etc.] $ Y for food which includes take-out-restaurant, $ W for auto expenses inluding gas, maintenance, insurance, parking etc? If you overspend in one category, you compensate by spending less in another category.
Because of the way interest is calculated it's important to work the figures to get out of CC, Auto and Equity debt as fast as possible or you will have an enormous albatross dog you and limit your choices in the future.
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The home equity loan is due to renovations we did on the rental... we replaced the flooring in the entire house (when we moved in we had to bleach the concrete slab cause the prior owners cats were AWFUL... we really tried to make it work... but then we moved in and realized how bad the smell was)... I replaced the appliances in the kitchen as they broke (fridge, dishwasher, stove)... we replaced the windows.
The negative equity on the cars is actually because of how many times we've flipped cars.
Trust me, I know its bad and I hope I don't sound like I'm trying to defend my position... I appreciate all the help and advice. But the cars and the houses are the only things I think are immovable because... I have four kids, we can't downsize to a Yaris or anything that size. And we tried looking at used vans but they needed transmission work or ended up putting us the same amount in debt as the van we have now... or we couldn't buy them cause being used they wouldn't absorb the neg.equity into the loan and the interest rate was higher. We tried looking at '03 minivans for $20-$25K but we had $6K in neg equity to roll over... so the only thing that would hold that was a new car. We even tried leasing just so we could be out of something in 3 years... but the dealer said a lease would be more expensive.
The only way DH and I justified the '07 minivan (which the dealer was trying to get us to buy the '08) was that we would keep it till it broke down cause we can't really "upgrade" the only thing else that can hold the 4 kids would be a suburban or something.