Re: Need advice on personal finance
Wow. I've got a lot to suggest. I'll try and organize this but apologize in advance for jumping around.
First, can you give us a monthly budget, rather than just total debt? How much are you bringing home each month and what are your monthly bills including debt payments? That would make things a little clearer.
Absolutely get out of all the whole life policies immediately. Call your agent tomorrow and cancel all of them. They are a huge waste, especially for the kids. There is no reason at all to have life insurance on your children. You would not suffer any financial loss if they were to die (other than funeral expenses, which you could save for much more efficiently on your own). You do need a term policy on yourself even though you are a SAHM. If you were to die, your husband would need to pay for childcare and household help until the kids were grown.
It's nice that you want to save for the kids' weddings, but that just isn't realistic right now and a life insurance policy isn't the way to do it.
Is your husband currently contributing to his 401K? If so, how much, and is there a company match?
Stop the 529 contributions. It makes no sense to be putting money there while running up CC debt to buy groceries. You've got to realign your priorities.
Can you lower your auto insurance premium by raising your deductibles?
So that gives you:
$40 from cable bill
$96 from whole life (I didn't count yours as you will buy term instead)
$100 from 529 plans
That's already $236/month freed up. I would put a little of that, maybe $25-50 toward boosting the emergency fund and put the rest toward debt repayment. I recommend starting with CC#2 with the 10.24% rate.
I'm concerned about the 0% CCs because it sounds like you have no plan to pay off those debts before the 0% period expires. Do you know what the rates will be when they expire? Probably a whole lot higher.
It might make sense to liquidate your mutual fund and stocks and use that $5,600 to repay debt, but it would depend on the tax consequences of those sales.
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