My Debt Blog

I’m going to be on vacation for the next week but still need to keep our ship floating while we’re gone. The bills that are due while we’re gone have been paid. There are some others that will have to be paid when we get back. The reason I bring this up was last time we went on a trip some bills were simply not paid on time. I have made every effort not to repeat this problem so everything stays current.

My number one concern with this vacation next week is our spending. This month we’ll see a reduction of income for the week my wife will be off work. At the same time, that’s a week of groceries, gas, and household expenses we don’t have to consider. At the same time that doesn’t mean overspending on vacation should happen, or we’re going to have a problem paying the rest of the bills this month. I’m already seeing an increase in spending which is making me nervous.

We set aside some money to pay for our trip from that stimulus check. That has been spent now with the costs of our trip, so I hope any additional spending will be minimal. We have to bring a little cash for tips and some eating out, but most of that expense is covered as part of our trip. I’m not a huge fan of souvenirs, crap they sell you while you’re on the trip that you don’t really need and will eventually get rid of anyway.

Don’t get me wrong I am excited about going on a vacation. We have not been on one in 3 years now so this week of pure freedom from responsibility will be much enjoyed. I’m also glad we don’t have kids yet, because family vacations are probably stressful for parents. The other part I’m excited is to come back and get back to attacking the crap out of the debt. I’ll also update everyone with what happened with the IRA.

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I’m not having a very good July even though it’s only been a week. We can’t pay down debt and on top of that it has gone up because the student loans are growing. My wife got in a car accident, she’s okay but the repairs to the car will clear our EF. I am financially and emotionally drained right now and not sure when I’m going to bounce back.

So where do we go from here? I looked at her student loan statements the other day, she refuses to even bother with them, and the payments make me feel defeated. They can go into a forbearance or possibly economic hardship but we still need to find a way to pay them at some point. I guess for now I will put that issue aside since we have so many other fish to fry.

I know I don’t mention it too much but I still contribute to my 401k plan. I’m down probably 1.5k which is a huge chunk of money. At the same time while it’s down at the moment it will eventually go back up. It is still depressing to see the numbers go down so far and quickly, but that is the risk of the market. I’ve also debated the idea of stopping my contribution in order to increase cash flow to pay down debt.

Our vacation is planned here in the coming weeks and I doubt we can afford to go. My parents are picking up the bulk of our cost but the $600 intended to cover our expense may not cut it. With no EF to fall back on I hope the damage to the credit card will be minimal if we have to resort to it at all. If my parents were not involved in paying for this trip, it would be canceled.

Sorry I haven’t posted as frequently lately but I’m trying to keep the funk to a minimum. I’ll come up with a strategy at some point but right now I’m tired. The stress of the situation could very well be leading to depression. It makes me wonder how much more crap I have to do before things will get better.

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My birthday was about two weeks ago and something I have wanted to try out was Quicken 2008. I had looked at this software for a few months and considered buying it near the tax time because of the rebates and such. When my birthday came around, and I don’t want or desire much, I received a copy of Quicken 2008 Deluxe. Installed it, got our primary accounts setup, and wondering where to go from there.

This weekend we went to Borders bookstore and I bought a guide on how to use Quicken. Going through this book I have made a lot of progress in the program now. I have entered all the transactions for May and up to the weekend for June, and am tempted to go back and manually enter stuff for January to April to track things on a YTD basis. What I really like about this program is the ability to easly see cash flow for the month. It has the income and the outgo boxes showing what income to expect and an idea of the bills and such, then it shows what is left over we could save (or use to pay off debt).

There is a budget feature in the program, but with only one month in there I’m not sure how it will calculate things. Plus a budget should not be a template that is going to be the same month to month. We haven’t had much luck with a budget, but things were easier to lay out when I put the bills in a list. This makes things rather clear when the bills come in, how much we have to spend to pay them, and then what is left over. One thing I think that Quicken will help us with is the ability to at least track how much is being spent on clothing and eating out.

Doing some quick math on what my wife will make from her summer job, it will be slightly more than what she currently earns at her current job. The flipside though is it will cost more in gas to get to the new job, so this will have to be tracked to see if there is any increase. If there is an increase it will help us pay debt and save more, as long as we keep things relatively the same as they are today. I’ll see if I can get a pie graph or something with where we are spending our money.

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A two days ago my wife and I hit the two year mark on our marriage. She is essentially working a job and a half this week, school in the morning and training for her summer job after that. With that being said, we decided it would be better to celebrate this time on the weekend. I think we’re going to go downtown Chicago and visit the Museum of Science and Industry which we haven’t been to in years. Best of all is she can get us in for free, along with some other places, as a perk of her new job. That evening we’re going out to dinner at the Olive Garden.

I remember last year the first anniversary was a huge stressful deal. We had to buy each other gifts, got a suite in a hotel, and ate at a very pricey restaurant. Last year the grand total of everything was probably over $500 and it just totally busted the month along with the car insurance bill. This year though we agreed that our home entertainment upgrade to HDTV was our gift to each other. So this weekend I’m estimating it will run at most $100, which still allows breathing room to deal with the car insurance bill this month.

When we started dating in college, every time we hit a year we would go out to a nice dinner. Six and a half years we’ve been together (two married) later I don’t see why it should be any different. I do think that when we hit a milestone, our ten year anniversary, we will take a vacation somewhere nice. What would be even better is to be debt free before that day comes. Most likely other things will happen along the way but it’s good to have a long term goal. We’ll stay DINKs for now though because neither of us desire family expansion right now. Two years married though and I think we have grown stronger than we were last year.

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This was the first three day weekend I have had so far this year. It was really nice to have this past Monday off for Memorial Day so we can remember those who have served our country so that we can live in freedom. Beer and barbeque outside in the really nice weather makes a lot of things we stress over just melt away. On top of that we even went out to the movie theater to see the new Indiana Jones movie.

I should have an update to our debt reduction effort in a few days when I crunch the numbers. While our debt didn’t go up this month, it didn’t really go down much either. The concern coming up here is my wife’s student loans payments will be starting up here soon. Since she doesn’t have a full teaching job yet we might try to defer those off because the payment on them alone would consume the income she currently brings in. This why I am eager to pay off credit cards quickly so it will free up the payments to tackle student loans. While it may seem daunting right now if we throw 1-2k a month at them, they will go away in a couple years easily.

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Over the past few months we had the rare opportunity of actually having some money in hand to get things done. Normally we could only pay a bit extra on our debt, partly due to my wife not working. When I got my bonus in March, and then our tax refund in April, we had quite a bit of money in our hands. Sure we’re in six figures worth of debt, so paying it off smallest to largest helps climb the mountain.

During March and April it was very exciting to make payments of several hundred to over 1k and pay off credit cards. When I say exciting in my head I’m thinking what else I could do with the money. Quickly, I click the button and the confirmation screen that a payment was made is a sigh of relief. We paid off 7 cards in two months, who does that?

A portion of the money was used to buy a new TV. Sure this isn’t something that was truly necessary, it was something we have been wanting for quite some time. I wasn’t willing to go increase our debt just to have something. It’s amazing to look at my living room and actually own everything. I’m trying to figure out what I can do with the old TV.

The stimulus check came this month and half of it will be held over to July for our long scheduled vacation. The remaining half has been or will be spent within the month. I had a car repair done, will need to have some dental work done, and the EF needs to be back to the 1k mark. Car insurance is another expense that is going to be looming here this summer too, so we’re preparing for that.

I cannot explain how good it feels to reduce our debt and have an EF. In the past when a problem would come along, we would throw the credit card down to make it go away. We’re still paying for those past problems and it’s important to be prepared for whatever could happen in the future.

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My wife and I have contemplated over purchasing a LCD HDTV since last year when the prices really started to drop. Being a guy I think TV is one of those things we gravitate towards. This past Christmas it wasn’t realistic to go out and buy one of these things simply because we couldn’t afford it. Our debt actually increased this past Christmas so that is something we plan to avoid this year.

With my bonus from work we paid off a lot of credit card debt. We got our tax return finally and the money went in the bank Friday. I would like to say I started making some payments on our debt that day, but instead we both went to the store to consider buying a TV. Retail stores seem to look down on younger people as though they’re not worth helping. The guy we talked to was very rude and pissed me off to the point we left the store. We went to a different store and found a younger sales guy that was very nice with us. After considering the different models of the particular brand we were after, we made our selection on a nice 40″ LCD TV. The thing wouldn’t fit in the car too, but some bungee cords were able to keep the trunk partly closed and we got it home.

The damage is done but WE OWN IT and that is all that matters. We have some credit cards the remainder of the tax return is going to completely PAY IN FULL. I’m emphasizing these things because HD does not mean for HIGH DEBT. Now the only problem is finding a HD receiver as it seems a lot of people used their tax return to buy a HDTV.

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