New here and need help

[creditcardfree]

I agree with everyone else about looking at your total budget...everywhere you spend money. Just pull out last months check register and see what you paid.

Insurance deductibles are an easy one. Stop eating out. Have a garage sale, sell furniture or clothes that you no longer need. This could get you to $1k EF quickly. Save your coins, cash them in at the end of the month. Take surveys online for a few dollars.

I'm just rattling off a few ideas to spark your brain. Get the EF in place and attack the CC. Every little thing you can come up with goes to the cc...birthday money, rebates, surveys, garage sales and the amount you can cut out in your budget.

Best of luck to you!!

[Scanner]

If the discrepancy is $1000/month, it's more likely you are spending more than $1000. . .since you have a $8100 credit card bill.

That is, if you bring home $4300 and know where $3300 of it goes but not the other $1000 and you have a $8100 credit card bill, that tells me you probably spend like $4600/month.

To help you with a mindshift. . .I find it valuable to run your household like a business. If you owned a florist shop or a bakery. . .would you be in business for long if you were taking in $5000/month and had $6000/month in outgoing?

No. . .you'd be out of business.

So. . .act like a CEO and figure it out and do some investigation.

It's not all that bad. . .you do have money earmarked for EF and you put away money for retirement. . .you are just having a cash flow problem which may have been exacerbated when you enrolled the kids in private school.

That may have been what "tipped" you into debt but it doesn't mean you can't sacrafice other things such as cable, phone, etc. to get your kids the education you want. I know for some with deep seated faith values, a private education is a must.

[Scanner]

Let me help you with some practical advice too:

(car #1 is a 2003 Toyota Camry - good gas mileage; car #2 is a gas eater - 2004 Toyota Sequoia)

I would go out to your driveway, wash your cars with some soap and water, wax them, take your DH in your arm and say,

"Honey, I hope you like our cars. . .because buckle down. . . we are going to have them a long time."

(I gave my wife this speech on our house, which luckily, she bought )

YOu can save $315/month after your car payment is retired and you drive your cars for 10 years each. Yeah, the gas bill is a bummer but it beats another car payment, unless gas maybe goes to $5.00-6.00/gallon then maybe scratch what I said and sell your car for scrap metal.

[disneysteve]

I agree with everyone else about looking at your total budget...everywhere you spend money. Just pull out last months check register and see what you paid.

Reviewing the check register is a good start, but you can't stop there. You also need to review your credit card statements, your bank statements if you use a debit card or have anything on auto-pay. Plus, you need to keep a written spending log for a month to catch all the stuff you pay in cash. It is often the little stuff that sinks the budget, whether it is a donut and coffee in the morning or hitting the vending machine at work mid-day or running through the drive-through on your way home to pick up dinner or handing the kids money for a movie or whatever.

[jIM_Ohio]

Pay cash for everything- gas, groceries and similar for 3 months. If you have a budget and set aside the cash each month, you will see where the money goes quickly. Lunches for work, hair cuts, gas or similar.

[disneysteve]

Pay cash for everything- gas, groceries and similar for 3 months. If you have a budget and set aside the cash each month, you will see where the money goes quickly. Lunches for work, hair cuts, gas or similar.

I respectfully disagree. I think it is way easier to blow through money and lose track of your spending if you are dealing with cash. Plus, unless you keep a log or save all of your receipts (if you even get a receipt from everything), spending cash doesn't give you a good record of spending.

I think if your goal is to track your spending, you either need a written log or you need to pay everything with a method that leaves a paper trail - checks, credit or debit cards.

[annmarie93]

Ya'll have great advise.

I have been really worried about the Sequoia. The payments are manageable but the gas is outrageous. I filled up the last time I got paid and the gas pump stopped at $75 and wouldn't let me fill up anymore.

As for getting ourselves into the $8100 mess - most of it comes from dh. He worked shift work for years, which brought in almost $100k a year, but it was killing him slowly. He switched jobs which cut our income basically in half. We did have to restructure our spending at that point, but we didn't have enough coming in. He then switched to another job which was NOT a good environment and now he is finally in a job he loves and that makes decent money. He isn't going anywhere so I know that his income will only go up, but we were really hurting for those two years or so of job changes.

One thing I just did that I think will help is that I took our Walgreens acct. off of express pay. It was so easy to just pull up, get the Rx and then pay later, but the problem was that I wasn't paying later. Now I am paying strictly cash for our Rx's.

I was going to try the envelope system that DR suggested. How about if we used cash and then also recorded everything we spent that cash on? Would that be a good idea?

[annmarie93]

It's not all that bad. . .you do have money earmarked for EF and you put away money for retirement. . .you are just having a cash flow problem which may have been exacerbated when you enrolled the kids in private school.

That may have been what "tipped" you into debt but it doesn't mean you can't sacrafice other things such as cable, phone, etc. to get your kids the education you want. I know for some with deep seated faith values, a private education is a must.

We have about $650 in EF and the last time I knew what was in retirement was about $150k, but I don't know now since the market has changed lately. Dh usually tracks it daily. I'm 33 and dh is 38.

We've been doing private school, technically, since the kids were born. We're Catholic and the school we use has an infant room through age 3 and then across the street is the "big school" which is pre-k4 through 8th grade. We've been paying daycare for a long time and now we are finally getting a break because the "big school" is cheaper than the "little school."

[disneysteve]

How about if we used cash and then also recorded everything we spent that cash on? Would that be a good idea?

Yes. If you are going to go to an all cash system, you absolutely need to keep a written spending log.

As for the prescriptions, check if anything you use is on the $4 plan at Wal-Mart or others that do that. You might be able to save some money by switching from Walgreen's.

[Ima saver]

I have used the envelope method for over 40 years and it has always worked for me. Of course, you can NEVER borrow from another envelope. For example, my highest electric bill EVER has been $160, so I budget $40 a week for electric. When it is less than that, I put the remainder in my savings. (aka known as the $20 challenge on this forum)