Really bad financial decision making (2)
Needless to say, we haven't been able to swing the paycut my wife took. After redoing the budget last night, we're going about $250 in the hole each month. That's with $350 budgeted for food/clothes/hygeine each month, and $100 for vehicle maintenance. Add to that the fact that we have a baby on the way (a joyous surprise!), and I have no idea if/when we'll ever be able to pay off our debts, or even how to go about doing it.
We just found out that we were denied health insurance through the Oregon Health Plan for my wife because I had 8 hours of overtime on my last paycheck and that just kicked us over the edge of being able to qualify. Now we have to wait two months until our incomes are back to normal to get her in. Somehow, we're going to have to pay for the first prenatal doctor's visit without insurance (and possibly more), and I'm sure it's not going to be cheap.
We definitely made some stupid choices earlier on. We could have spent less, and put more towards paying off credit cards. It just seemed as though every time we'd make some major advance in paying them off, something would happen and we would have no money, and have to put it on credit cards. Part of that was due to the lack of frugality on our part, but there were also circumstances beyond our control at times.
I could save a little bit of money selling my car and buying something cheaper, but it wouldn't amount to much. We still owe $4000 on the P5, so I'm not sure that it would be economical to sell that in exchange for something less reliable. I'm not even sure that we would have enough money to purchase a vehicle with the leftovers. It would be sad to see such a fun, reliable, nice car go away, especially when we're getting close to paying it off.
I've considered turning off the internet, but I do conduct a lot of business via the internet, so I see it as hindering our financial progress rather than helping. Our cable bill amounts to $6.50, since we get free basic cable with the internet and we just purchased the HD upgrade. We have netflix for movies, $8.99/month. Other than that, no "just for fun" expenses.
Just not sure what to do. With a baby on the way, monthly expenses far exceeding income, and no way to get out of debt, and no health insurance, I'm just kind of lost...
There's some sort of government program to help people refinance their homes who are in my position, but we're probably overqualified, just like we're just barely over the limit for every other kind of government assistance. I'll still check in to it. Other than that, my only idea is to talk to one of those debt consolidation services and see if we can move all the CC debt to some sort of bulk debt with a lower monthly payment (the cards are all around $40/month payment, and we have 6 of them). Not sure if those are the types to screw people over or not though... I need to do more research.
Hopefully, I can badger for a raise in a couple months, AFTER we requalify for the health insurance through the state. It's just frustrating, because all I see is a long, dark tunnel with no way out.
We just found out that we were denied health insurance through the Oregon Health Plan for my wife because I had 8 hours of overtime on my last paycheck and that just kicked us over the edge of being able to qualify. Now we have to wait two months until our incomes are back to normal to get her in. Somehow, we're going to have to pay for the first prenatal doctor's visit without insurance (and possibly more), and I'm sure it's not going to be cheap.
We definitely made some stupid choices earlier on. We could have spent less, and put more towards paying off credit cards. It just seemed as though every time we'd make some major advance in paying them off, something would happen and we would have no money, and have to put it on credit cards. Part of that was due to the lack of frugality on our part, but there were also circumstances beyond our control at times.
I could save a little bit of money selling my car and buying something cheaper, but it wouldn't amount to much. We still owe $4000 on the P5, so I'm not sure that it would be economical to sell that in exchange for something less reliable. I'm not even sure that we would have enough money to purchase a vehicle with the leftovers. It would be sad to see such a fun, reliable, nice car go away, especially when we're getting close to paying it off.
I've considered turning off the internet, but I do conduct a lot of business via the internet, so I see it as hindering our financial progress rather than helping. Our cable bill amounts to $6.50, since we get free basic cable with the internet and we just purchased the HD upgrade. We have netflix for movies, $8.99/month. Other than that, no "just for fun" expenses.
Just not sure what to do. With a baby on the way, monthly expenses far exceeding income, and no way to get out of debt, and no health insurance, I'm just kind of lost...
There's some sort of government program to help people refinance their homes who are in my position, but we're probably overqualified, just like we're just barely over the limit for every other kind of government assistance. I'll still check in to it. Other than that, my only idea is to talk to one of those debt consolidation services and see if we can move all the CC debt to some sort of bulk debt with a lower monthly payment (the cards are all around $40/month payment, and we have 6 of them). Not sure if those are the types to screw people over or not though... I need to do more research.
Hopefully, I can badger for a raise in a couple months, AFTER we requalify for the health insurance through the state. It's just frustrating, because all I see is a long, dark tunnel with no way out.
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Created: Nov 2014
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"My wife and I were both in school (college) as of last year. We got married when we were 20/19, and were both attending school full time. I just graduated this last Winter term, and she graduated last June.
Anyway, because we both started working full time after getting married (even though we were also going to school full time), our income got high enough to where we got nothing for financial aid (we were just average-grade students). So we had to work harder, longer, and pull out a lot of money on student loans, and every so often, some on credit cards. We still had to live, after all.
A year after we got married, she switched schools to one almost an hour away. She had to commute every day, and we had an old Ford Tempo with 200k+ miles on it. She needed something reliable, so we went car shopping and ended up with the P5 (Rover).
At this point, we are doing fine financially, so we tended to not be frugal and wasted money, instead of trying to put extra towards credit card payments or anything else. Our rent was $600/month for a 2 bedroom house. We decided to look at buying a house, with the first homebuyer credit that came from the government (the $7,500, interest-free loan, essentially). We found one that gave us a mortgage payment of $1,200/month, after all was said and done. It was an FHA loan because we didn't have much to put as a down payment, so $200/month is just mortgage insurance. Of course, this was right before the huge market downturn, which means we're pretty much upside down on our house right now. Can't refinance or sell or do anything with it.
My older Miata was getting unreliable to the point of ridiculousness (it was a salvage title with MANY problems), so I went car shopping. Was just going to get a standard NB (1998-2005 Miata), but the Mazdaspeed (highly modified Miata with a turbocharger) came along at a pricetag of $5400 with a bad engine. I couldn't pass it up. At the time, we could afford it without a problem. Put some cash down and paid the rest on a personal line of credit I've had for years.
A month after we purchased my MSM, the opportunity of a lifetime came along for my wife, to do what she's always wanted to do - work full time at a horse barn. It was a cut in pay of about $500/month, but we figured we could swing it.
Fast forward to my graduation date, and after it's all said and done, we owe $55,000 in student loans, and have about $10,000 on credit cards and the personal line of credit. We're still making payments on the P5.
I didn't look closely at the interest rates we were being charged on some of our cards. They ranged from 12% to 29.9%. I was shocked. Needless to say, I did a little finagling and moved some of the balance from the high interest cards to new zero-interest ones. I wasn't able to move everything from the high interest cards because I didn't get enough credit. There's still about $1,200 left, IIRC.