GF debt

[LivingAlmostLarge]

Don't pay debt until married but you could carry rent and let her live rent free and "live" with you.

[rutgers07]

One thing to watch out for: As your GF opens new accounts, she needs to be careful not to fall back into the habit of charging on all those old cards. I have known many smart people fall 'off the wagon' and run up even more debt as the number of credit accounts expands.

All signs point to that she's over that phase on her life. She seems truly tired of her debt and just wants it gone at this point. She just had a yard sale and put all the money from her it towards the debt. I'm not too concerned about that happening at this point. She gets fairly down on herself when she realizes the hole she's dug for herself and feels like she'll be stuck forever.

[snafu]

DGF needs to base decisions on facts. $ 2K 0% requires payment of $ X. to be cleared at least two business days before due date where interest is applied.
DGF needs to learn if she can transfer $ 2K @ 14%, or $ 5K @ 29.99% or $9.5K @ 16% to 0% and get it done. Likewise work out the exact payment needed to clear the balance before major interest kicks in.

I suggest she cut non essential spending to the bone for the short term to clear that ghastly 29.99% CC and snowballs through the remaining CC debt while continuing the minimum payments for SL.

It's very generous of you to absorb total rent, utilities and food costs until DGF get's her CCs cleared. From that point I suggest joint expenses be shared based on income differentials. If you gross more it's reflected in a higher percentage of joint expenses. Before being tenants-in-common you will need a system to workout agreements on buying items over a certain dollar value.

I add my voice to the others who ask you do not pay-off or take-on responsibility for any debt of DGF/SO. After you are legally married and have jointly created debt you are both responsible for the other

[rutgers07]

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I guess I need to sit down and rethink the approach to this. I suppose taking a fair share of the rent is the best way to go for now.

[rutgers07]

It's been almost a year since this post. Thought I'd give a bit of an update since I got good advice . I'm still debt free which is helpful and her debt is down to ~4k. We're now engaged with a tentative date of August 2015. She should get rid of her 4k debt in a few months which means I'll make her pay for the rent for a little bit.

She basically worked her butt off and I absorbed a lot of the day to day costs of living. It was pretty tough at times but we were still able to maintain a great quality of life including being able to pay for our upcoming cruise. We got smart and started putting away $200/month for the vacation so it wasn't this huge cost when it came time to pay for it. I picked up a 2nd job to help with the costs of things and I will admit I did help with the last couple grand or so of her big CC just to get it out of the way and I had a decent windfall from car insurance company. I'm okay with it and she's already repaying me.

Thanks again to everyone here. I'm at a point where I'll be bringing home at least 3k/month which isn't really that much but combined we should be able to save about 2k/month. Feeling financially free is liberating!

[My English Castle]

Congratulations!

Great job on that debt. Being able to work together like that bodes well for your marriage too!

[isaac]

It's been almost a year since this post. Thought I'd give a bit of an update since I got good advice . I'm still debt free which is helpful and her debt is down to ~4k. We're now engaged with a tentative date of August 2015. She should get rid of her 4k debt in a few months which means I'll make her pay for the rent for a little bit.

She basically worked her butt off and I absorbed a lot of the day to day costs of living. It was pretty tough at times but we were still able to maintain a great quality of life including being able to pay for our upcoming cruise. We got smart and started putting away $200/month for the vacation so it wasn't this huge cost when it came time to pay for it. I picked up a 2nd job to help with the costs of things and I will admit I did help with the last couple grand or so of her big CC just to get it out of the way and I had a decent windfall from car insurance company. I'm okay with it and she's already repaying me.

Thanks again to everyone here. I'm at a point where I'll be bringing home at least 3k/month which isn't really that much but combined we should be able to save about 2k/month. Feeling financially free is liberating!

I enjoyed reading this whole post. Congratulations on your engagement and I hope ya'll have a blast on your cruise. Also huge congratulations on paying off $14,000 in less than a year, that's incredible.

If you don't mind, could you share a bit more on how you achieved this, like things you cut back on and the strategy you used to pay back the debt?

[rutgers07]

I enjoyed reading this whole post. Congratulations on your engagement and I hope ya'll have a blast on your cruise. Also huge congratulations on paying off $14,000 in less than a year, that's incredible.

If you don't mind, could you share a bit more on how you achieved this, like things you cut back on and the strategy you used to pay back the debt?

Honestly, we didn't cut back on a huge amount of things. we didn't really live an expensive lifestyle to begin with. What helped is taking the day to day bills off her plate so she can strictly focus on her debt. It was pretty rough but we make a decent enough salary and we both had OT we were able to access which made things much easier.

[LivingAlmostLarge]

Great job! And it just proved she's the woman for you! Working together to pay off debt is a huge step.

[dcperilli]

Hi all. This is my first post in the forum. My girlfriend (who I plan on proposing to in the next couple/few months) has a good amount of debt. We're starting to work on finances since I'll be moving in with her in about 2 months or so. I knew she had debt, she's been upfront about all of this, and it was nice to sit down and see the numbers and do some math. I don't have much debt myself, about 11k for my car but it's only at 1.9% interest so I'm not too worried about that. I make about 34k and she makes 33k but I also work a ton of overtime so my pay tends to be upwards of 50k. Now that you have all that, here is her situation:

Credit Cards:
~5k with 29.99% APR!!!
~9.5k with 16%
2k with 14%
2k with no interest

Student Loans:
Total is 73k - interest is 6.8 or 3.2 (around that) depending on which loan.

Our monthly bills will be fairly low totaling around 1200 or so. Our take home after taxes but before my overtime willl be a little under 4k monthly. I also put 6% into our 401k and she's planning on doing the same.

So my question is (sorry for all this information) is how to go about paying off her debt? I have about 6k in savings with 1k as my emergency fund. The 5k can be paid off easily but I have some thoughts of having her transfer some of her balance (or all if possible) to a 0% APR card. We found a good one that has no fees and is 0% for 15 months. We can easily put the money aside into my MM account, earning some interest along the way, to pay it off when the introductory rate expires. My thought is by transferring (unless one of us loses our job the total transferred can easily be paid off in 15 months) allows us to put more money into her student loans for now instead of putting everything towards the CC's. What do you guys think?

My advice is to transfer some of those balances to a new credit card that offers 0% introductory (or a lower) APR on balance transfers. Better to pay towards the principal and not the interest as much as possible.