Did you meet your financial goal last month?

Hey, you have to start somewhere, right? I'm new to this community. I recently took the finances away from my husband. I finally did this after I realized that he wasn't telling me the true state of our financial affairs and how bad they were. I share a lot of the blame for not taking a more proactive role. I had originally did the bill-paying in our household but got sick of him thinking we had all sorts of money for whatever toys he wanted to buy. This totally backfired and now we have HUGE amounts of debt.

How much did you pay towards debt?

I don't have a total figure. I'm still assessing exactly where we are. We were 3 months overdue on a minimum payment for one of our credit cards and our township sewer/trash bill was also 3 months behind. I got a nice registered letter about that on Wednesday. I've made payment arrangements on both of these bills, have a bunch of outstanding ones still sitting here in a stack and have a goal of getting caught up at least with our minimum payments asap. I've instituted some major financial cutbacks and am still looking for more. Hubby now gets a $20 allowance each week and is only allowed to use the atm card for gas. We haven't used credit cards in years but those minimum payments/late fees/starting my business has taken a major toll. My goal is to re-work our entire budget, start catching up and then start paying down our debt.

What is your remaining total balance owed?  

$36,313.43. That doesn't include our mortgage, home equity loan, or outstanding medical bills (about $600 owed in total between my periodontist from oral surgery last year and husband and son #1 visits/allergy shots to the allergy/asthma specialist. Yikes. I'm just concentrating on the credit card debts for now. Baby steps....

 In the last two days- talked to the credit union, the guy looked at our article in the paper, sent it to the underwriters- got $20,000 at 6.9% introductory rate to put almost all of our cc debt on!  Refinancing our home equity to a fixed rate at 2% lower interest!

I feel like I have accomplished a great deal- Ta Da!  Dh doesn't really understand the inplications, says "okay"  thought some of you would see giant step that that was, our credit score went up 135 points since last August, so this was the payoff I've been waiting for.

Tracy 

Tracy, does this actually free any available funds up each month?

 I think that the payments will drop from $732 to $432, a savings of $300 a month, that I want to continue to put towards the debt until dh can quit his second job, and the home loan will be about the same, but 180 months instead of interest only with no payoff point. 

I'm very happy with this.  

Brandy- your August grocies are so low!  Good job with that-

Tracy 

 I was wondering if you were going to be able to add extra funds to debt because of this. What a relief.

Without my husband home, we can eat more of the cheaper foods. He has our son with him right now as well so I am feeding only myself and my four year old really.

latenightleader:

got $20,000 at 6.9% introductory rate to put almost all of our cc debt on! 

HI Tracy,

Does this mean you consolidated $20,000 of unsecured credit-card debt onto your secured home mortgage, and also decreased your home equity by $20,000?

Greg

 Hi Greg-

I just got a mastercard at my credit union at 6.9% for the life of the balance,  The home equity quote went from 8 to 9.79 when the equity in the house was refigured, we are not changing either mortgage unless we can streamline the home equity to fix the rate.  So, not as good as I thought, but pretty good. 

Tracy 

Oh. Whew! Ok.

For a moment there I thought you had traded unsecured credit-card debt for secured home debt and put your home at risk at the same time.

Greg