Here's my story

[averagedad]

A second job for my wife and I is not going to happen. It isn't that we would not want to do something like that; it's just that we don't have time. with my 60+ hours a week, There is no way I can. And she is the only one that can take care for the kids when they are not at school or daycare when I'm not around. We are not as fortunate as some with multiple family members to watch our kids. We have to pay a baby sitter.

With CCs, I have looked into the 0% interest on balance transfers thing. Is there any reason why I should be loyal to Capitol One since I have been with them for so long? I'm literally looking at around twelve years on my account. My wife's is probably about five years old. Does loyalty mean anything anymore?

In truth, My credit score does not really matter much anymore. Since we have moved into our new house and don't intend to ever get any more loans of any sort, why do I continue to be worried about my credit? I know this is a question that only I can answer, but surely I am not the first person here who has been afraid to just throw their credit down the drain. A part of me worries that I will have nothing to fall back on if I ever get into a pinch.

Any vehicles bought from here on out will be used and likely paid for in cash. I am no stranger to the fact that interest is nothing good. Unfortunately, to have anything on a loan or credit, interest is in the equation.

[averagedad]

Yes, Property taxes are in on my mortgage payment - just like the insurance.

[doingitallwrong]

There is absolutely no reason to be loyal to Capital One, I guarantee that they will not be loyal to you! Apply for a 0% balance transfer card (someone might have mentioned, but Chase Slate has an offer with no balance transfer fee) and pay off as much as you can on the other cards. (Just be sure you're prepared to have it all paid off by the time the 0% rate ends, otherwise you'll be stuck paying high interest again!) You don't have to close your Capital One account, it's probably better for your credit to keep it open, but cut up the card and any new cards the py send you so that you're not tempted to use it and rack up more debt.

As far as your credit/credit score -- it seems at this point like you should have a decently good score, your biggest issue is utilization but from what you've written it doesn't seem like you've had negatives such as late payments, etc. Opening a new card(s) might ding your score a bit in the short-term, but it won't trash your credit. Good credit isn't only about loans, though of course that's its biggest advantage. (Someday you may want to refinance your mortgage, for example.) You also tend to get better rates on care and homeowners insurance if you have a good credit score, plus you can qualify for good rewards cards (once you're out of debt are able to use credit without taking on debt).

[JoeP]

I immediately took that money and paid off the remianing balances on our vehicles, and paid off our CCs. When all was said and done, I believe we had about $1k left, which we quickly spent. We did really good for a while, but we eventually ran both cards all the way up again. So my card was close to maxed out at $3500, and my wife's was maxed out at $4900 or so.

As has been said, you do not yet know how to use credit cards. People here who use credit cards are very strategic: the cards have to have some sort of reward, they are mostly used for recurring expenses, and they are paid off in full every month. The latter implies that you have the actual CASH sitting in a separate account, and it is specifically earmarked for credit card payment and nothing else. No exceptions.

If I were you, I would call Capital One and tell them to reduce your interest rate.

Two phones with data should be a lot less than $200 a month. Even though it feels good to have all the data, be realistic. As others have suggested, use your home Wi-Fi and train yourself to pull back on your data usage when away from home. You say there's not enough time to cook, so you should not have enough time to watch youtube on your data plan.

Speaking of eating out, Dave Ramsey says you should not see the inside of a restaurant unless you're working there. I agree. It doesn't take much effort to grill up a bunch of chicken breasts on a weekend, and then tap into those for dinners during the week. Go to this site's recipe forum for tons of ideas on easy, nutritious, and inexpensive meals. Learn to make meals you can freeze...simply nuke it for a quick hot meal.

I'd keep trying on the auto/home insurance front to find lower cost. You can also take defensive driving to reduce your liability cost. Some like Liberty Mutual even offer a device you install for 3 months to track your driving habits, and give you at least 5% just for using it for that period. (FWIW, our vehicles are looking at discounts of 7%, 14% and 28%.)

Finally, I'd focus on Dave Ramsey's formula for saving $1k as seed money for an emergency fund, and then going after your largest non-mortgage debt. Envision being free from all debt besides the mortgage. Envision saving up into an emergency fund so that you hit $15k. Envision having a Car Fund that has money set aside for your next vehicle, which will be paid in full with that money. It might seem impossible, but if you apply the advice given here, you can do it.

[JulieAlbright]

You need to view Capital One for what it is, a business relationship.

Your loyalty needs to be toward things like your family, your friends, maybe things like your community or your religion. Things that you care about … not a faceless institution of stockholders.

If you find a method to meet your needs for liquidity, convenience and credit for a cheaper amount or another advantage, then you owe it to your wife and your children to use the better option.

[sandrark]

<snip horrendously long post, in which binge-buying and recovery are described over and over again, along with justifications of things that "had to" be purchased, driving up CCd debt to the point where the parents and kids are eating Spaghettios due to mis-managed income and spending>.

Oh and one last good thing: I do have a 401K where I contribute the full amount my employer matches. I have close to $30k in there.

Do you SEE the disconnect here?

YOU CANNOT AFFORD GROCERIES BECAUSE OF YOUR SPENDING ADDICTION, AND YET YOU'RE PUTTING MONEY IN YOUR RETIREMENT FUNDS??!!

OK, enough scolding. I think that you're worried about what you know to be an issue, you've spent years rationalizing bad choices, your brain is on fast-forward autodrive, and you're looking for easy answers.

You are totally someone who needs to strip away the dialogue, and make a very clear, easy-to-follow plan, with no excuses, and no more enabling spending.

1) Stop contributing to your retirement fund. Yes, I know it's free money, and I LOVE free money. But you cannot afford this until you get the financial house in order. So stop contributing, and add that additional income back into your calculations.

2) Have you estimated your taxes for 2014 yet? If you are in the habit of getting large refunds (and then spending them paying down your big debt balances), you need to adjust your withholding so you get that income NOW, with every paycheck. Since so much of 2014 is past, I'd work hard to file your tax return ASAP once you have your W-2's.

3) Go to cash with groceries.

4) Take ALL of the credit cards and debit cards out of your wallets, and lock them up. Stash an extra couple of $20s in your wallet in case of emergency.

5) Write down every penny you spend - either via Mint, or YNAB, or Excel, or pen and paper - whatever. No more pillows for the couch, kitchen gadgets, drapes for the house, etc.

6) Find an allocated spending plan worksheet, and do them for EVERY PAYCHECK as your main budget document. Part of your problem is that you're budgeting on a monthly amount of 4 or 5 weeks, and you're dealing with that on the fly.

7) Agree that you will have a Christmas with a $5 tree (possible if you buy it Xmas Eve) and gifts are cookies. You are in no position to be spending money on Xmas this year.

8) Put everything you can into getting the small balance items paid off ASAP. If you do get a refund with the taxes in February - see if you can pay off the debt with the largest monthly minimum payment. Get some breathing room.

9) Find more breathing room by moving anything with 20% interest rates to 0% intro cards (Chase was already recommended) - if you can get one with no transfer fee, AND get it paid off in the grace period, that will be a huge win!

10) Get your wife on board. She needs to understand you're doing this so that you can all have a future in the home you love, with your kids, in a less stressful future. Stop fighting with each other, and start supporting each other.

Finally, stop thinking that this is all about being able to out-think your debt - that hasn't worked. What you need now is positive action, not excuses. So roll up your sleeves, get to work, and come back for updates regularly - we're rooting for you!

[Eagle]

I've been making my own laundry detergent for years mostly because it does so much better a job than Tide. [find How To on You Tube]

@AverageDad
You've gotten a lot of good advice here on this thread. To Snafu's comment here's the recipe for laundry detergent we use. It only costs us about $10-15 and lasts about 6-12 months depending on use.

Here's a recipe for a home-made laundry detergent that will save you money. We've used this for 7-8 months and so far it's great!

These are all the ingredients needed:

1 Box (4 lbs.) Arm & Hammer Baking Soda

1 Box (55 oz.) Arm & Hammer Super Wash Soda

1 Box of Borax (4 lbs.)

1 Tub (3 lbs.) of Oxyclean

3 Bars of Fels-Naptha Soap

1 Bar of Irish Spring Soap (you can use pretty much any brand)

If you let the soap sit out for a week, prior to mixing all the ingredients, it makes it easier to grind. However, my wife didn't do that though and it worked just fine.

Of note we have an HE washer and it has worked just fine.

Grate the soap and mix the other ingredients together in a 5 gallon container. Feel free to put it in different containers for storage.

The process takes about 45 min to an hour!

That should work out to about $10-$15 for 4-5 gallons (512-640 oz) of laundry detergent!

I hope this helps.

[Eagle]

For one reason or another, the cards got maxed out.
So in short, we have some CC debt again. We have about $2500 on my card, and my wife's card has $200. She also has a third card now which is a clothing store card, which has about $700. All in all, that is our only debt. So say about $3500 total in CC debt, plus the mortgage.
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We have struggled on and off over the years to do a budget. My problem is that I try to overcomplicate it. I can't understand it and I eventually give up on it. But, for the last two months, we have done some things and gotten a new budget worked up to try and better track our money. There has been no unnecessary spending. Our main focus right now is to get the CC's paid off. Just like all the other times we have done this, I have considered cutting them up, but something keeps from doing that. Mainly knowing that if we have an emergency situation we can use them, (until we get our own emergency fund saved up.. which has never happened yet.) In reality, we don't really need them anymore as far as a credit score. We have bought our new house and that was one of the main reasons to have a credit score. We don't really need a credit score anymore.
-----

What can change: I am not going to go over the entire details of our budget, but suffice it to say that there is not anything in there for spending. There is a spot, but it has not had money in it in two months. We have not done anything fun or anything that costs money. It has been a real strain on the family. Our oldest child does not understand why they can't have a small toy every time we go into a store. We can't just stop at a gas station and grab a snack anymore.
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The reality is, until we get the CC's paid off, we will be like this. It isn't enjoyable to us and we are starting to argue. My wife and I hardly never fight, but when we do it is about money. It has been difficult for us for the past few months because little things she would like to have for the house, or just simple small purchases are not happening. We simply don't have the money.
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I will admit, we have too much house payment. It would have been wiser to buy a smaller house with less land, but we did get what we wanted. The bad news is that even though we got what we wanted, we can't afford to do anything else.
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It is really hard to not go out and just spend money to grab something we want. But, we have to remember, that's what kept getting us behind to begin with. Unless we want to be two weeks behind on the house payment again and taking money out of savings ot correct it, we have got to stop spending money like we did. We have done good for the last month, but the shock of not being able to do anything at all is getting rough.

@AverageDad You mentioned Dave Ramsey so let me share some quotes of his:

“Budgeting means spending every dollar on paper, on purpose before the month begins.”

“Living on less than you make is a matter of controlling yourself, not a matter of math.”

“You are not entitled to anything until you save and pay for it.”

“Doing a budget means learning an ancient and powerful word: NO!”

“If you want something you’ve never had you’ll have to do something you’ve never done.”

I recommend you read “Total Money Makeover” by Dave Ramsey.

Here's the 7 baby steps to financial peace:



I also recommend you join free support groups like this one on Facebook called “Dave Ramsey – Financial Freedom”. They are going through the TMM book chapter by chapter. Currently on chapter 3.

Good luck!

[Spiffster]

My apologies if these suggestions have been repeated but I did not have time to read all of the posts.

I have two kids, a 2 month and 2 years old. We save a bundle on diapers, formula, and many other consumables using amazon subscriptions which does require a prime membership. IIRC you just need to have 5 subscriptions to get an additional 20% discount on everything, which is easy when you realize what you will pay for many consumable items available on Amazon. Thats a HUGE saver for us.

The cell phone bill of 200/mo... Thats about 125 too much. We have Cricket which is EXACTLY the same coverage as AT&T and we pay 100/mo for FIVE phones. Unlimited everything except for (high speed) data. We have never hit the data limit but would only be throttled down if we did. Ting sounds really great too but Im partial to unlocked GSM phones where only a SIM swap is needed to change service... You can get and unlocked Moto G for next to nothing on eBay, and they are exceptional phones.

Internet.. 80/mo is INSANE. We have (20Mb DSL) costs us $29.95.mo... yes thats an introductory rate, but all we have to do is call our ISP when it expires and threaten to leave them for cable (This works the other way too). This only requires one relatively quick call every 6 to 12 months and saves us about $30/mo. Keep in mind Netlfix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime HD streams only use 3-5Mb. So theoretically we could be streaming 4-6 HD shows at a time with our seemingly modest 20Mb connection.... many go overkill on internet, thinking they need way more bandwidth than they actually do.

I hope this helps.. Good luck!

[JoeP]

@AverageDad
You've gotten a lot of good advice here on this thread. To Snafu's comment here's the recipe for laundry detergent we use. It only costs us about $10-15 and lasts about 6-12 months depending on use.

Here's a recipe for a home-made laundry detergent that will save you money. We've used this for 7-8 months and so far it's great!

These are all the ingredients needed:

1 Box (4 lbs.) Arm & Hammer Baking Soda

1 Box (55 oz.) Arm & Hammer Super Wash Soda

1 Box of Borax (4 lbs.)

1 Tub (3 lbs.) of Oxyclean

3 Bars of Fels-Naptha Soap

1 Bar of Irish Spring Soap (you can use pretty much any brand)

If you let the soap sit out for a week, prior to mixing all the ingredients, it makes it easier to grind. However, my wife didn't do that though and it worked just fine.

Of note we have an HE washer and it has worked just fine.

Grate the soap and mix the other ingredients together in a 5 gallon container. Feel free to put it in different containers for storage.

The process takes about 45 min to an hour!

That should work out to about $10-$15 for 4-5 gallons (512-640 oz) of laundry detergent!

I hope this helps.

Interested in making this! What is the typical amount for a large load? We have a HE top-loader with extra large capacity. For the Oxi-clean, I am reading other reviews for detergent where people used the scented variety and it made a few people nauseous and other had sinus/asthma issues, so would the "free" variety be effective?

Thanks.