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Lolie posted:Your monthly water and electricity costs are significant and those are costs you're going to have whether you move or not. There's probably plenty of room for reducing both. How many showers per day are people taking, how long are those showers, and how many loads of laundry are you doing per week? I'm going to take a stab at this one - if they're living in a rural area there's a good chance they have well water and are on a flat-rate sewage billing plan with the county. Up until September 2011 I was paying $60/month flat rate with the county - even if I didn't use a drop of water - and I don't even live that far outside of the city.
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May 26, 2013 05:26
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Eggplant Wizard posted:If they're going to have a foreclosure on their history, how much worse can a bankruptcy really make it? Three more years on your credit, a foreclosure is 7 years on your credit. A bankruptcy is 10 years.
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May 26, 2013 05:55
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Our electric bill is around$200 when we don't need the space heaters. The space heaters in the winter can bump it up to $500+. If we move somewhere with central heat, that won't be an issue. We have already worked on our water bill and it runs $90-100 a month. Can someone link to the other forum I should be posting in? I appreciate the help and need blunt replies. My husband's anxiety is under control now that he is out of the work environment he was in. He does work now, just not full time in a pressure job. He is going to go to school in the fall. It is an inexpensive school and tuition and books are covered by the scholarships, grants and federal loans. Nothing will be coming out of our pocket. It isn't far from home, so there won't be much more gas usage. And my wonderful husband takes care of the laundry and cooking most days while I sleep. We are going to sit down and redo our budget to try to figure this out. I guess Tuesday we will contact the lawyer handling the foreclosure. There is an auction date set, so that seems pretty final.
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May 26, 2013 06:50
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Link to BFC. They'll want lots of numbers from you so it helps to include as much information about your budget as possible in your OP. http://forums.somethingawful.com/forumdisplay.php?forumid=200 Expect a lot of questions about your discretionary expenditure. Lolie fucked around with this message at 07:29 on May 26, 2013 |
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May 26, 2013 07:18
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Just to be clear, OP, you and your husband are idiots who have basically made every bad financial decision conceivable. Ignore all these goons - just write down whatever you think you should do and then do the exact loving opposite.
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May 26, 2013 07:33
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Trouble Man posted:Just to be clear, OP, you and your husband are idiots who have basically made every bad financial decision conceivable. Ignore all these goons - just write down whatever you think you should do and then do the exact loving opposite. They have no credit card debt, so they haven't made every bad financial decision conceivable - just most of them.
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May 26, 2013 07:39
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Lolie posted:They have no credit card debt, so they haven't made every bad financial decision conceivable - just most of them. We haven't had a credit card in about 10 years. At one point we had about $15k in credit card debt and got rid of that. I'm an idiot with money and am really working on it. I blame my parents who gave me whatever I wanted. My husband is better, but has a bad habit of ignoring things he doesn't like rather than deal with them. We are getting better, I just feel so overwhelmed right now.
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May 26, 2013 07:57
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LoveMeDead posted:We haven't had a credit card in about 10 years. At one point we had about $15k in credit card debt and got rid of that. I look forward to following your BFC thread. With homelessness imminent, your husband doesn't get the choice of ignoring stuff he doesn't like. You're going to need to work as a team to fix this and to prevent future financial problems. Check out the How to Create a Budget thread in BFC, too. Different methods of budgeting work better for different people but tracking how you actually spend your money (as opposed to how you think you spend it or how you plan to spend it) is essential to creating realistic budgets and avoiding financial problems. Every cent coming into the house needs to be allocated to an expenditure category. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3549291 Lolie fucked around with this message at 09:02 on May 26, 2013 |
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May 26, 2013 08:08
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Geez I haven't made a post in a long-rear end time, but reading this brings me back to when my wife and I were buried under foreclosure notices and pink utility envelopes just over a year ago. I know how horrible it feels to have no idea how to climb out of this kind of hole, and there's no clear single strategy for fixing it, but I can offer a list of tidbits may help. 1. Negotiate with your utility companies. Many power companies offer time-of-use plans that give you discounts for not using as much power during certain times of the day. This can slash your electric bill in half if you're careful. Utility companies also sometimes offer hardship programs or budget-billing programs that average your bills. It may not save you a lot of money, but at least you don't have to worry about sudden spikes when the weather changes. 2. Drop the life insurance. Yeah, it would really suck if something happened right after canceling the plan, but it would suck right now living in a motel. This is your time for hard choices, just reactivate it when you have your budget under control. This goes for all your other investments as well. You can't plan tomorrow until you fix today. 3. Learn to cook larger amounts of food cheaper. I'm not going to join the bandwagon to micromanage your meals, but you can save a lot of money by making large pots of soup with cheap whole chickens, vegetables and noodles. This is also very healthy. Also learn to eat Asian style, buy a huge sack of rice, and throughout the week make large dishes that can be served over a cup of rice, with cheaper cuts of meat like chicken and pork, thrown in a crockpot with some seasonings and veggies. 4. Go money-nazi on your family. Get them to go nazi with you. If someone is spending money on anything that's not essential for survival, you have to say something. Follow those links others have posted. 5. Go back to #4 and look at it again. Can you identify non-essentials? Can you knock that premium liquid coffee creamer out of your husband's hands and make him get the powdered poo poo instead? Can you put the new shirt back on the rack even if it means your kids are wearing the same stuff to school every day? Again, hard choices must be made. I have a feeling your household is hemorrhaging money it doesn't need to just because it's hard to keep track of what everyone is doing, what they have and what they need. 6. The dollar store is your friend. Not one of those lousy "dollar-ish" stores either that just have slightly discounted stuff, but find a real one that sells everything for a dollar. They have food, snacks and other essentials that are perfectly fine. 7. The only ones that should be going to school right now are your kids. You and your husband need to be using any time not working to plan, compile resources, budget and work on getting out of that house, or fixing it until it's livable/sell-able. 8. Attack this with a positive attitude. I know it sounds ludicrous if you're under so much stress, but you have resources. You guys are bringing in money, you're not disastrously ill or injured, you have enough intelligence to use the internet and type coherently, so you're not a lost cause. 9. Get your budget itemized, isolate where the money is going, do all of the above, and if there's still a deficit you can't overcome, you may qualify for government assistance. Check your state webpages for SNAPS and other programs, they should have an online eligibility form.
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May 26, 2013 11:20
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Water is SO expensive here in Tennessee for some reason. My last place with city water had bills well over $100 each month. I was talking to a friend in Arizona the other day and we determined that she pays less for water than I do. She couldn't believe it. "we get our water from another STATE and its still cheaper than yours and you have rivers and stuff!!" I am so glad my house has a well.
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May 26, 2013 13:02
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almightyerin posted:Water is SO expensive here in Tennessee for some reason. My last place with city water had bills well over $100 each month. I was talking to a friend in Arizona the other day and we determined that she pays less for water than I do. She couldn't believe it. "we get our water from another STATE and its still cheaper than yours and you have rivers and stuff!!" I am so glad my house has a well. And in the OPs case they're paying that much for water when it come into their house for free through the roof.
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May 26, 2013 13:42
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LoveMeDead posted:He is going to go to school in the fall. It is an inexpensive school and tuition and books are covered by the scholarships, grants and federal loans. Nothing will be coming out of our pocket. Please please please do not think for ONE loving SECOND that federal loans are not coming out of your pocket. Thousands of college students are in massive amounts of debt because of education . They, for the most part, don't have a house already in foreclosure and three kids to support. That money may not be going out right now, but it is non-dischargeable debt you will be accruing and has sunk people with less financial constraints than you. Think really hard if this is feasible right now before letting him start.
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May 26, 2013 14:10
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Eponymous Bosch posted:Please please please do not think for ONE loving SECOND that federal loans are not coming out of your pocket. Thousands of college students are in massive amounts of debt because of education . They, for the most part, don't have a house already in foreclosure and three kids to support. That money may not be going out right now, but it is non-dischargeable debt you will be accruing and has sunk people with less financial constraints than you. Think really hard if this is feasible right now before letting him start. Seriously. That's been bothering me too.
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May 26, 2013 14:15
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If it rains into your house does that mean you live in a literal well or just a figurative one?
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May 26, 2013 14:20
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Eponymous Bosch posted:Please please please do not think for ONE loving SECOND that federal loans are not coming out of your pocket. Thousands of college students are in massive amounts of debt because of education . They, for the most part, don't have a house already in foreclosure and three kids to support. That money may not be going out right now, but it is non-dischargeable debt you will be accruing and has sunk people with less financial constraints than you. Think really hard if this is feasible right now before letting him start. Yeah, it's basically debt you get to put off for a while, but it's still debt.
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May 26, 2013 14:44
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Oh good it got moved to BFC. Sic em boys
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May 26, 2013 16:55
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Eponymous Bosch posted:Please please please do not think for ONE loving SECOND that federal loans are not coming out of your pocket. Thousands of college students are in massive amounts of debt because of education . They, for the most part, don't have a house already in foreclosure and three kids to support. That money may not be going out right now, but it is non-dischargeable debt you will be accruing and has sunk people with less financial constraints than you. Think really hard if this is feasible right now before letting him start. I know that we will have to pay off loans when he is done with school. We are paying off mine now. He will also be making a lot more money then, and I think it's a good investment. His income will not be cut while he is in school. He was making about $35k a year as a restaurant manager. He is going to school for Computer Engineering, and there are jobs in that field. He should be making about double what he was making before. My loans are going to be 80% forgiven in 2 years because of a rural nurses program I'm doing. We found a couple of rental houses in the area that look promising and will be calling Tuesday about them. We are going to sit down with our budget and try to figure out what we are doing wrong.
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May 26, 2013 17:05
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Computer engineering seems like an odd thing to go back to school for as an adult from a completely different field - do you know any specifics about it? Is it a 4 year program? Maybe they use the term differently than at engineering schools.
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May 26, 2013 17:22
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LoveMeDead posted:He will also be making a lot more money then, and I think it's a good investment. His income will not be cut while he is in school. He was making about $35k a year as a restaurant manager. He is going to school for Computer Engineering, and there are jobs in that field. He should be making about double what he was making before. I moved 10+ times when I was a kid and did fine. If moving to a different school is necessary for you to become financially stable, you should move. Your kids will be fine. It will suck a bit, sure, but it's not the end of the loving world. Don't make this a big deal in your considerations. You should not be saving for your kids' college. Blah blah future is important: if they have the grades and the extracurriculars, they should be getting mad scholarships anyway, and they can work themselves to pay their way just like 99% of kids have to do. It's a luxury to help your kids through school, and it's a luxury you can't afford right now. Make sure you talk with your kids about the financial side of college and help them to make smart decisions about where they go to school. Paying their way will help them; teaching them to be financially responsible will help them more. The most important thing is getting out of that house, because it's going to eat you alive if you stay.
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May 26, 2013 17:44
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What does he plan to do with the CompE degree?
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May 26, 2013 17:56
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moana posted:I moved 10+ times when I was a kid and did fine. If moving to a different school is necessary for you to become financially stable, you should move. Your kids will be fine. It will suck a bit, sure, but it's not the end of the loving world. Don't make this a big deal in your considerations. I'd like to second this. I moved twenty-one times before I was eighteen, including five times during high school. Your kids will be just fine. That house has to go. On another note, it's pretty much pointless to try to save for college education in your case especially with three kids and existing debts. Not only can you not save enough to make up for the rate at which education expenses are growing or the short timeline you have due to the kids already being in high school, but 529 plans are counted as parental assets under FAFSA and (not 100% sure that this applies to all schools) as student resources by at least some schools' financial aid offices. That second part means that, to give an example, if you had a $5K annual distribution for your 529 and your kid qualified for $20K of grant aid from a university, he's only getting $15K of it because of the 529 being an available student resource. There may be other 529 advantages with respect to bankruptcy which I am absolutely not qualified to even guess at (go ask someone), but for the purposes of using your minimal money to its best effect, it should be going to preventing your children from ending up homeless, not to college costs that it will never even put a dent in. Sundae fucked around with this message at 18:09 on May 26, 2013 |
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May 26, 2013 18:04
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OP can you post a full financial picture? Income, Expenses, Debts? With a foreclosure on your record and bankruptcy won't be much worse. Might not be a bad idea to get as clean of a slate as you can. With your income you should have no issue once the debts are cleared. Just be ready to rent for the next several years.
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May 26, 2013 18:05
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kansas posted:OP can you post a full financial picture? Income, Expenses, Debts? We are working on a budget through the Mint software. One issue is that May has been a weird month because we had about double the gas driving our oldest to take GED tests. The other problem is that since I'm on our son's bank account and they are linked, it includes his account and his spending. That's not that much per month (he keeps $200 of his SSI for spending). So here is what we have: Income: $3380 Auto Insurance: $178 (having a 17 year old boy doubled our insurance) Car payment: $278 Gas: $450 (much higher than most months, last month was $275) Internet: $56 Utilities: $453 ($96 on water, $356 electric) Student loan: $46 Movies and DVDs: $26 Life Insurance: $46 (we are going to cancel this) Fast food: $87 (higher than usual, I think because my husband and son ate out on GED days. We have $50 budget for this and it should probably be lower) Groceries: $900 (we've spent $768 on this, shopping only once per week. We will go shopping again on Friday) Restaurants: $93 ($40 of this is from my son's spending) Kid's school lunch $84 Personal care: $298 (not sure why this is so high. All trips to wal-mart go in this category and there may be misc stuff that was our son's spending) Clothing: $224 (I needed new work shoes and my husband and son needed shoes. This is also way more than usual and we budgeted $72) Misc: $947 (We bought a tent and mattress, about $60 is our son's spending, and there is a lot of crap in this category. Probably $200 of it is end of school expenses like camps for the teenagers) So that misc poo poo is the core of the problem. We currently have $1100 in our account. I am lovely with money. My mother worked for the bank I had an account at when I was a teenager and first in college. She would just transfer money when my account was low. I'm also a very giving person and tend to be too generous. I'm working on that and have gotten much better. My husband likes to ignore problems and has a hard time saying no to me. He's getting better about that also.
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May 26, 2013 18:44
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Clearly you need to trim the spending down, but what's the big problem? Ditch the lovely house and move somewhere else. You're a nurse with experience, which is supposedly the easiest thing to find a new job.
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May 26, 2013 19:03
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moana posted:This is not guaranteed one bit, and you should never count your chickens before they hatch. It's a poor person's habit to push problems onto your future self, especially assuming your future self is making more money than you are currently. I know you're trying to justify the decision, but please be wary about assuming the best possible outcome - it often leads to ruin. Hope for the best and plan for the worst. No kidding. It should be pretty obvious by now that a college degree is not a guarantee of a job in this economy, even if people told you there are TOTALLY a ton of jobs in the area for that sort of thing. Plus, is your husband going to be going to school full time? Going to school full time and working part time with his untreated anxiety sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.
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May 26, 2013 19:07
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Lyz posted:No kidding. It should be pretty obvious by now that a college degree is not a guarantee of a job in this economy, even if people told you there are TOTALLY a ton of jobs in the area for that sort of thing. He hasn't had any problems with anxiety since he quit his other job 18 months ago. It was situational. His anxiety isn't an issue at this point. He needed a career change and wants to do something with computers. I know he's done research and talked to people about it, but I'll admit I'm not 100% sure what it is he's majoring in. He wants to do IT work, but can't find anyplace that will hire with just certifications, everyone wants a degree. I know everyone is beating me up about him going to school right now. With my income, we should be able to afford living here. We just suck at sticking to a budget apparently. I think we'll be ok once we stick to a budget. We do need to add in something for college applications and testing for our son. He'll be a senior next year. We've already told him to narrow down his schools because he wanted to apply to 10 colleges. Is it ok to have a misc category on our budget for this sort of thing? How did I get to be 40 years old and be such an idiot about money?
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May 26, 2013 19:21
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LoveMeDead posted:How did I get to be 40 years old and be such an idiot about money?
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May 26, 2013 19:26
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As others have said, the house is the biggest and most pressing issue but there are smaller things you can start working on while you're tackling the monster. The biggest question I have is are you creating a budget each month at the beginning of the month or did you list this months spending? The reason I ask is that it's odd to see someone in this much trouble having a "Movies/DVDs" header in their budget. If you really anticipate spending that much money each month on entertainment you have much better options like Netflix mail service or if you own an appropriate device, Netflix, Amazon or Hulu streaming. Looking at your budget I'm also concerned with the "Misc: $947." That's something like 1/4 of your income being spent on "general stuff I have no idea how to track." Misc should be little things or one off things that don't really fit into a category. Not a place that a huge chunk of your money disappears into. For example, you mentioned purchasing a tent. In my budget a tent would go into the Entertainment category. A new mattress would be probably end up in Household goods. With kids in school you should probably have a separate School Supplies header as well. Since this month is nearly at a close you should already be anticipating next months budget. Have you put that together already and if so, can you post that as well?
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May 26, 2013 19:58
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I see no housing expenses in your budget... are you just not counting the mortgage at this point? How much is rent going to realistically cost once you are foreclosed on? Issues I see: 1) Car Payment - What kind of car do you have that you are paying $278 a month for? Sounds like something outside your price range. 2) Utilities - I guess you explained this but it sounds absurd. Do you typically wear a sweatshirt and warm clothes during the winter months? 3) Groceries - As point our earlier, even for five people $900 is a lot. There is tons of room for improvement. 4) Personal Care - How in the world do you spend $300/mo on personal care... What are you counting in this category? 5) Misc - Ok so you bought a mattress and a tent, is it typically this high? What else goes into misc?
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May 26, 2013 20:27
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Does husband already have a degree? He doesn't need to spend four years on another one if he wants a software job.
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May 26, 2013 20:45
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TouchyMcFeely posted:As others have said, the house is the biggest and most pressing issue but there are smaller things you can start working on while you're tackling the monster. The "Movies/DVDs" was a header already on the software. Our Hulu+ and Netflix streaming are in that category. We do not have cable anymore. We will very occasionally rent a movie from Redbox for $1.50. We are going to go through the Misc category and figure out what it all is. I know that $30 is video game stuff from my son's account, $250 is the tent/mattress, $90 is for AP testing for our son, $81 to reserve campsites for a trip in June (we are cancelling this), $87 for makeup that I shouldn't have spent, about $100 in restaurants from my son's account. It's a little harder using this program since I can't take my son's account and spending off of it. It's also hard to plan school expenses for the kids sometimes because our son will come home and just "need" $100 for something, like the AP exam. I didn't even know it was something we would have to pay for. And we need to figure out how much we can afford in rent. There are two places we found, one is $525 a month and the other is $800. The cheaper one only has one bathroom and is further away from the kid's school. Safe and Secure! posted:Does husband already have a degree? He doesn't need to spend four years on another one if he wants a software job. He does not have a degree. He worked 50-80 hours a week managing restaurants until 18 months ago. It took him a year to figure out what he wants to do. I hear what everyone is saying about college, I just don't want him to be so miserable again.
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May 26, 2013 21:40
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kansas posted:I see no housing expenses in your budget... are you just not counting the mortgage at this point? How much is rent going to realistically cost once you are foreclosed on? 1. We had to buy a car in October after our only reliable car lost a fight with a deer on the highway. We needed something that could hold 5 adults and stuff for trips. We bought a 6 year old SUV, which was the best deal we could find and be sure it was reliable. Unfortunately, we are going to have to buy another car, although we want to find something small with good gas mileage. We need two cars, and the other car we have is a 1996 Roadmaster that looks like it lost a demolition derby (inherited that way from my grandfather). It gets about 6 miles to the gallon and is falling apart. 2. We only heat the bedrooms and living room in the winter. The house is old and leaks air and space heaters suck electricity. Even with them going, it isn't more than 60 degrees in any room in the house during the winter. In the summer our electric bill is less than $200/month. 3. We are looking at our receipts and trying to figure out how to cut our groceries further. I'm not sure what else to do, but I'm sure we can figure out something. 4. I just took all of the trips to Wal-mart and put them in Personal Care because that's what we usually buy there. I'm sure some of it was other things. 5. We didn't buy a mattress, just a memory foam pad that we can use so we don't have to buy a new mattress. Plus we use it for camping. We don't buy a tent every month.
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May 26, 2013 21:48
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LoveMeDead posted:The "Movies/DVDs" was a header already on the software. Our Hulu+ and Netflix streaming are in that category. We do not have cable anymore. We will very occasionally rent a movie from Redbox for $1.50. Do you have an emergency fund at all? I can understand not always knowing when a charge comes up, happens to all of us, but that's where the emergency fund comes into play. If not, you should start saving to $1000 and shove it into an account that you can access easily without leaving it in your checking account. Also, Mint does allow you to hide accounts pretty easily. Mint posted:How can I hide an account so it doesn't appear in Mint?
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May 26, 2013 22:07
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It really sounds like you're just not in a frugal mindset. 40% of your eating budget comes from meals you're not preparing at home ($87 fast food + $93 restaurants +$100 from your son's account for restaurants + $84 for school lunches). You're spending a third of your money just on food! I know you claimed that you don't eat out much, but the numbers don't lie. The house is a money sink, but the larger problem is that you're living as if you have money to spare when you don't. Even if we don't count the miscellaneous category you're at $279 left over for the month- not nearly enough to pay rent on a house. You say that your spending for gas, clothes, and fast food were all higher than average, but I bet if you look at most months you'll find one or two categories that stand out. Buying makeup, tents, and reserving camping sites when you can't even afford the roof over your head doesn't make any sense. Why do your sons need to go to camp? They can babysit or find other jobs, and many camps will take teenagers for free or pay them a small salary to help out with the younger kids. I know parents want to provide what's best for their kids, but you need to sit down as a family and talk about saving money. It'll mean sacrifices on everyone's part, but it's better than homelessness.
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May 26, 2013 22:45
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in_cahoots posted:It really sounds like you're just not in a frugal mindset. 40% of your eating budget comes from meals you're not preparing at home ($87 fast food + $93 restaurants +$100 from your son's account for restaurants + $84 for school lunches). You're spending a third of your money just on food! I know you claimed that you don't eat out much, but the numbers don't lie. The $100 my son spent on restaurants was his own doing with his own money. He gets $650 in SSI a month, he gets $200 and the rest goes to the household. That way he can get his video games and go out with his girlfriend to dinner, and he also helps the house. The other restaurant spending is excessive. For a long time we didn't go out at all, even fast food, so I don't know why we have started going out more. We need to figure out the school lunch situation. This is the first school year we have not qualified for free or reduced school lunch. When lunches at school were free or 60 cents a meal, it was cheaper than making lunches at home. Now that they are $1.75 per lunch, we should probably find cheap lunches for them to bring. The only camp the kids are doing is band camp for school and it's $50 per kid. The 17 year old will be paying for half of his, but it comes out of our account anyway. We pay him $60 a month to keep the lawn up. If he ever gets a job, this job goes to his 15 year old sister.
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May 26, 2013 22:59
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LoveMeDead posted:He does not have a degree. He worked 50-80 hours a week managing restaurants until 18 months ago. It took him a year to figure out what he wants to do. I hear what everyone is saying about college, I just don't want him to be so miserable again. This is a difficult one but I think you need to take another look at it removing the emotion from the equation. Are there computer engineering jobs in Wisconsin (which is where you're planning on moving when your teenagers finish high school) is one question. Whether there are computer engineering jobs for 40 year olds with no experience in the industry is another question entirely. You're at an age in your lives where some choices may no longer count as "good debt" and you've mentioned no retirement savings whatsoever. If you're absolutely determined that your husband is going to get this degree and take on non-dischargeable debt to do so, then you may need to move based on actual job prospects and understand that they may not lie in Wisconsin. Right now, your budget doesn't work even with housing costs removed from the equation and that's a real worry because you're not in the income range where eating beans and rice should be an economic necessity. I also noticed that your most recent budget doesn't include the 10% of your income which you put into college funds for the kids. If you're not going to stop doing that (and realistically, it's an expense you can't afford), then it's an item which needs to be included when you post your June budget. Also, you need to be careful about making assumptions which may prove untrue. The rental house you find may well be super energy efficient and your utility bills may plummet. Or it may have crappy, old, expensive heating or no heating at all. You're not in a situation where you can wait for your ideal rental home to come along. Information about how you pay your bills might also be helpful. For instance, I pre-pay all of my bills. I get paid every two weeks so I pay half the monthly cost each time I get paid (I pay literally everything online the day I get paid). Not only does this mean that the money for those bills isn't sitting around available for me to dip into for other things, it also means that I'm at least a full month ahead on all of those bills at the end of each year. I also use bill smoothing for my electricity and natural gas accounts. This means that the energy company calculates how much I've used over the previous 6 or 12 months and divides it into set fortnightly or monthly payments, so there are no huge fluctuations from one billing period to the next. There's seriously no "right" or "wrong" way to budget but there are strategies which work better for individual people. You need to find the mind trick which will allow you to regard an allocated amount and stick to it no matter what. Your budget isn't going to work if it's based in unrealistic figures to begin with and you find reasons to justify exceptions every month (see zaurg threads for examples of this). You also haven't budgeted for gifts. With 5 family members, I'm interested on what gets spent on birthdays and Christmas. Our family spends horrifying amounts on birthdays and Christmas (celebrations always involve a special meal as well as a gift) and it would be a real problem if it wasn't budgeted for. Lolie fucked around with this message at 00:29 on May 27, 2013 |
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May 26, 2013 23:45
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LoveMeDead posted:1. We had to buy a car in October after our only reliable car lost a fight with a deer on the highway. We needed something that could hold 5 adults and stuff for trips. We bought a 6 year old SUV, which was the best deal we could find and be sure it was reliable. Unfortunately, we are going to have to buy another car, although we want to find something small with good gas mileage. We need two cars, and the other car we have is a 1996 Roadmaster that looks like it lost a demolition derby (inherited that way from my grandfather). It gets about 6 miles to the gallon and is falling apart. If you bought a six year old used car, that probably wasn't too bad of a decision. I'm surprised the loan is that high though, was for a shorter term/high rate? Your next car should be something extremely cheap paid for in cash, maybe a honda or toyota only a handful of years newer than the roadmaster. You simply can't afford anything otherwise. It sounds like your utility problem will take care of itself once you are foreclosed on... The problem is becoming clearer, it basically comes down to compulsive spending. Between groceries, personal care, and misc you are just spending way too much money. These are all items where you go to a store and pick things out. I think you need to start drafting a list before you go and every time buy only what is on the list. If you see something else you need just pass, you'll be back at the store soon enough and if it is something you truly need you can add it to the list. I just looked at my groceries, misc, and personal care over the past year and we averaged $820 for all three of those categories combined. This is for a family of three in the suburbs of NYC. You are at almost $2000. Also didn't see a response to the housing expense question, do you just not include them anymore/what happens when you need to rent?
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May 27, 2013 00:01
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kansas posted:If you bought a six year old used car, that probably wasn't too bad of a decision. I'm surprised the loan is that high though, was for a shorter term/high rate? Your next car should be something extremely cheap paid for in cash, maybe a honda or toyota only a handful of years newer than the roadmaster. You simply can't afford anything otherwise. We didn't include housing in the budget. Right now I don't know what we are going to do. My husband wants to file Chapter 13 to keep the house until we find something else. There is very little impulse spending during our weekly grocery trip. 75% of what we buy is on sale, discounted, or we have coupons for. We are going to look over old receipts and see what we can cut. We don't usually make a list because we have about 15 go-to meals and choose which one based on what cheap meat we can find. The impulse spending comes when we go to wal-mart and random other trips. We are planning on getting a cheap, economy car for our second car. I think our payments ended up being so high because we didn't have too much to put down.
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May 27, 2013 00:34
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LoveMeDead posted:We didn't include housing in the budget. Right now I don't know what we are going to do. My husband wants to file Chapter 13 to keep the house until we find something else. This could turn out to be a worse option than letting the bank foreclose. What does your husband intend to do with the house once you find a rental property? A short sale? How much do you anticipate the deficiency will be when the house is sold (whether by the bank at auction or as a short sale by your husband)? You already have $1100 saved. You can probably find enough over the next few weeks to pay the security deposit and first month's rent on a rental property. Lolie fucked around with this message at 01:04 on May 27, 2013 |
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May 27, 2013 00:56
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LoveMeDead posted:There is very little impulse spending during our weekly grocery trip. 75% of what we buy is on sale, discounted, or we have coupons for. We are going to look over old receipts and see what we can cut. We don't usually make a list because we have about 15 go-to meals and choose which one based on what cheap meat we can find. The impulse spending comes when we go to wal-mart and random other trips. How much do you guys throw out? From the restaurant numbers and the school lunches it seems like you're buying somewhere around a quarter of your meals from stores. I don't see how you can spend so much on groceries and nearly $100 in fast food in a month.
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May 27, 2013 01:07
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