Thread: Same old story
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Old 08-13-2006, 12:02 PM
Kris10Leigh Kris10Leigh is offline
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Default Re: Same old story

Ok, it looks like your life is getting a little mixed up with some miscommunications occuring by the nature of computer back and forth banter, so I'm going to try summarize. Correct me if I'm wrong.

You are married to a disabled man. You have an 11 year old daughter and a violent autistic 8 year old. I work with children like your son, so I understand as much as I can without living with the children. It's really hard, and add that to your financial burden, and Honey, you need a message! You have a car that is really expensive, but it runs well and is reliable and no one is going to give you a loan on a new car anyway.

You have listed your debts. What I would do now is list them again on a piece of paper and include the minimum payments for each one. Post this wherever you sit down to look at your finances and pay bills. There are two theories as to which debt to pay off first. One is pay off the high interest bills first. Once that is done, snowball that money into the next bill with the highest interest. The other theory is the same but paying off the smallest balance first. Since you can't consolidate and you have so many different bills coming at you, I would suggest paying off the smallest bill first.

So basically, in my opinion, pay minimum payments only on all the bills and throw everything you can at the smallest bill.

In the mean time, join us in our "no-spend" thread. We have a lot of fun with that and it's very good for the wallet. Research all the tips on this board for reducing expenses. Set easily attainable goals for yourself. One goal I just set for myself is to cut $5 off my water bill for this month. If I do it, I'll feel good about it.

I hear you about the car. We are extemely upside down our car. I told you we were $23,000 in debt. Yes, well that DOESN'T include the car! LOL! (Not so funny) Our car is $37,000, so I got you beat! It's a long story, but basically the sticker price was $17,000 and we are that upside down. But we have brand new 2006 car, and it is a Toyota so the likely-hood of needing to do much to it is slim. We will still be happy with the car once it is paid off in five years so the plan is to keep it an additional few years. I'll keep making the same "payments" but into my savings account instead until we can buy another car for cash. I've made peace with my expensive car...maybe you can too. Plus, even if I got a clunker, I'd still owe the bank like $20,000 and I'd end up paying for things like new tires, new transmission, etc., etc. All this rambeling about me and my car is to hopefully try to support you in your decision to keep it even though it's probably a good idea not to.
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