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danielv835

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pf_coach_v0.1

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User (bka510): "If there are any links to explain I would appreciate that as well. \n\nedit: Thank you all for your responses today" Self: "The american use of credit cards always seems so strange to me.. I've never met anyone that actually uses a Credit card, everyone I know uses Debit cards.\n\nDebit card are waaaayyyy more normal here than Credit Cards, but Credit Card is a much more used term then Debit Cards, so even though 99%+ of all cards here are in fact Debit cards, everyone call them Credit Cards. Just like 99% of all people here couldn't tell you the difference between a debit or credit card, because all they know is debit cards (which we call Credit cards...)." kataxist (kataxist): "My understanding of the non-american credit cards is that the fees for those got neutered by law. There very little incentive for the bank to take on the financial burden of credit if they can't charge a reasonable fee to do so. our debit cards used to have rewards to until they got neutered. \n\nour debit card fee structure is 10cents + 0.1% (something like that)\nour credit card fee structure is 10cents + 2-3% (for visa signature)\n\nthat 2-3% is huge when you factor in a mass market of consumer spending which gives them the leeway for some people to default/fall behind on payments. it also means they can offer crazy benefits like travel insurance, car rental insurance, and rewards all for "free."" Self: "I don't know about credit cards, but the maximum fee allowed on a Debit card transaction in a shop here is approximately $0.10...."

User (bka510): "If there are any links to explain I would appreciate that as well. \n\nedit: Thank you all for your responses today" Self: "I've just recently joined the "use-credit-cards-for-everything" club, and it's great. Opened my fifth card since September last night. Obviously, I've been chasing sign-up bonuses, mostly to fund a vacation at the end of next year, hence the influx of new cards. \n\nOne thing I find, though, is that it's easier to budget when I use a credit card for pretty much everything. I check my balances and activity every day, and I know what my limit is in terms of how much I can spend on them and pay off by the due date. I know my other expenses (mortgage, auto loan and insurance, personal loan, and paying the guy who trims my horses' hooves) which are always the same, and then I look at what I have left over and know that's my actual cc limit for that month. I always err to the high side when figuring how much: electric, water, groceries, gas, etc. will run that month, and if anything is left over, it goes to savings. \n\nI don't know, it just simplifies things. And it's a no-brainer that if I have to pay for these everyday expenses and bills anyway, I might as well get some type of rewards back for doing so. " sethoscope (sethoscope): "r/churning for anyone interested" ChrisMF112 (ChrisMF112): "Am interested, not seeing a new to this thread on the sub though. Care to point me in the right direction ?" kataxist (kataxist): "Their wiki does a good job: https://www.reddit.com/r/churning/wiki/index" ChrisMF112 (ChrisMF112): "Awesome. Thank you ."

User (bka510): "If there are any links to explain I would appreciate that as well. \n\nedit: Thank you all for your responses today" Self: "I'm sure there are other benefits as well, but I think it's good to use it on these types of things because they're things you're going to purchase anyway. If you're going to buy something no matter what, you might as well build your credit while you do it. So you'll build your credit without spending money you don't have on things you don't need."

User (badrelationswmoney): "Hi guys, been some time since I've posted. I received the last part of my stock from the sale of a company I worked for this past October. It netted me about 50k. It is sitting in a regular bank account (Capital One 360) getting 1%. I'm still looking at a mountain of debt that needs to be paid off but I'm scared to just use the 50k to pay it down because I don't have any other emergency money than that.\n\nWe have about $1000 snowball that we're throwing at the debt each month but it is slow going with 80k in debt (Credit Cards) 56k (Loans) , 235k (Mortgage)\n\nThoughts and/or advice? I can provide more info if needed.\n\nUpdate with More Info:\n\nCurrent Take Home Pay is about 9K per month. I still have the same job but there are concerns around stability. I am also currently paid over market and have looked at other jobs and could potentially have to take a 30-40k paycut if I had to change jobs.\n\nMortgage - 235k - 3.99% - 1700.00 \nPersonal Loan - 28k - 9.75% - 740.00 \nBank of the West Loan - 15.5k - 7.99% - 200.00 \nDiscover Card 1 - 14k - 0% - 280.00 \nBofA Visa 1 - 13k - 0% - 131.00 \nStudent Loan - 12.5k - 6.5% - 131.00 \nCiti Visa - 9k - 0% - 135.00 \nBofA Visa 2 - 8k - 4.25% - 110.00 \nDiscover 2 - 5.8k - 4.99% - 120.00 \nBofA Amex 1- 0% - 5.6k - 56.00 \nChase Visa - 0% - 5.3k - 53.00 \nBofA Amex 2 - 0% - 4.2k - 43.00 \nCiti - 0% - 3.7k - 56.00 \nAmazon - 0% - 2k - 50.00 \nPaypal - 0% - 1.6k - 25.00 \nFurniture - 0% - 1.5k - 50.00 \n\nTotal Min Payments - 3880.00 \nFixed Expenses - 1670.00 (Includes utilities, insurances, services, etc) \nHousehold Budget - 2300.00 \nRemainder - 1150.00 \n\nEdit: The Rest of It\n\nIf I'm being honest with myself, most months we are in the red. We spend way too much money on stuff we don't need. I just don't say no to anyone, myself, my wife, my kids. So yeah, the guy below who said I knew that this stock bonus was coming so I lived it up was right, that's exactly what I did. I flat out need to get my financial shit together but have never done it. My wife wants to move because the schools where we live are crappy, I mean, really crappy which is having an effect on our youngest son (he's in 5th grade). So, part of me was saving this 50k so we had a way to get out of this house and into another one but I know deep down that that's only going to make matter worse for us. More mortgage, more expenses. The Bank of the West loan is a camper that we bought this year, we've gone out half a dozen times since we bought it in September and we have loved every minute of it, we were big tent campers for years. Both of our cars are paid for but they are old, a 2003 and a 2005 so I know that's coming sooner than later as well. We have less than 40k in 401k and Retirement accounts, I'm way behind there too. I'm only contributing 2% at this time. It's all pretty bad and most of it is behavioral. I've never been debt free my entire adult life, I'm 47 years old.\n\nEdit 2: Objective Thinking\n\nFirst off I'd like to thank everyone for the responses. This has given me an opportunity to think about different approaches to what i'm facing. When I moved all of these balances around a year or so ago I was drowning in payments. We refinanced our house and saved about $700 a month (we had 2 mortgages) and then opened additional credit to take advantage of 0% offers. What I see now is that the piper is coming due. What I did was start looking at the balance transfer offers in the statements and determining what interest rate I was going to and when it was going to happen. What I found was eye opening. The "ticking timebomb" comment was the one that really made me think. ALL of the 0% credit cards are coming up in 2017. To the tune of $65,665.47 which is actually the lions share of my credit card debt. This is 15k more than I even have in the bank. So, here is my plan. Keep putting as much towards the debt as possible, before each 0% deal expires, take the money out of savings and pay it off, do NOT let it roll to the regular interest rate. Yes this means the 2 loans will stay where they are but all of the credit cards will be higher if/when they turn to regular rate. What do you guys think about that plan?\n" Self: "Do you have a new job yet?\n\nIf no: keep it in the savings and pay off the minimum each month.\n\nIf yes: how soon can you accumulate the remaining amount? If you paid a lump sum of say $35k - would $15k leave you a nice buffer emergency fund? Adjust accordingly.\n\nEdit: Since *your* edit:\n\nI would get rid of that personal loan ASAP. Almost 10% interest is killing you. I don't know how much the other "Bank of the west" loan is for, but I would get rid of that too. That frees up almost an extra thousand dollars a month. \n\nMaybe get rid of some of the smaller debts, at $50/monthly, that can add up to $200-300 a month easily.\n\n"

User (badrelationswmoney): "Hi guys, been some time since I've posted. I received the last part of my stock from the sale of a company I worked for this past October. It netted me about 50k. It is sitting in a regular bank account (Capital One 360) getting 1%. I'm still looking at a mountain of debt that needs to be paid off but I'm scared to just use the 50k to pay it down because I don't have any other emergency money than that.\n\nWe have about $1000 snowball that we're throwing at the debt each month but it is slow going with 80k in debt (Credit Cards) 56k (Loans) , 235k (Mortgage)\n\nThoughts and/or advice? I can provide more info if needed.\n\nUpdate with More Info:\n\nCurrent Take Home Pay is about 9K per month. I still have the same job but there are concerns around stability. I am also currently paid over market and have looked at other jobs and could potentially have to take a 30-40k paycut if I had to change jobs.\n\nMortgage - 235k - 3.99% - 1700.00 \nPersonal Loan - 28k - 9.75% - 740.00 \nBank of the West Loan - 15.5k - 7.99% - 200.00 \nDiscover Card 1 - 14k - 0% - 280.00 \nBofA Visa 1 - 13k - 0% - 131.00 \nStudent Loan - 12.5k - 6.5% - 131.00 \nCiti Visa - 9k - 0% - 135.00 \nBofA Visa 2 - 8k - 4.25% - 110.00 \nDiscover 2 - 5.8k - 4.99% - 120.00 \nBofA Amex 1- 0% - 5.6k - 56.00 \nChase Visa - 0% - 5.3k - 53.00 \nBofA Amex 2 - 0% - 4.2k - 43.00 \nCiti - 0% - 3.7k - 56.00 \nAmazon - 0% - 2k - 50.00 \nPaypal - 0% - 1.6k - 25.00 \nFurniture - 0% - 1.5k - 50.00 \n\nTotal Min Payments - 3880.00 \nFixed Expenses - 1670.00 (Includes utilities, insurances, services, etc) \nHousehold Budget - 2300.00 \nRemainder - 1150.00 \n\nEdit: The Rest of It\n\nIf I'm being honest with myself, most months we are in the red. We spend way too much money on stuff we don't need. I just don't say no to anyone, myself, my wife, my kids. So yeah, the guy below who said I knew that this stock bonus was coming so I lived it up was right, that's exactly what I did. I flat out need to get my financial shit together but have never done it. My wife wants to move because the schools where we live are crappy, I mean, really crappy which is having an effect on our youngest son (he's in 5th grade). So, part of me was saving this 50k so we had a way to get out of this house and into another one but I know deep down that that's only going to make matter worse for us. More mortgage, more expenses. The Bank of the West loan is a camper that we bought this year, we've gone out half a dozen times since we bought it in September and we have loved every minute of it, we were big tent campers for years. Both of our cars are paid for but they are old, a 2003 and a 2005 so I know that's coming sooner than later as well. We have less than 40k in 401k and Retirement accounts, I'm way behind there too. I'm only contributing 2% at this time. It's all pretty bad and most of it is behavioral. I've never been debt free my entire adult life, I'm 47 years old.\n\nEdit 2: Objective Thinking\n\nFirst off I'd like to thank everyone for the responses. This has given me an opportunity to think about different approaches to what i'm facing. When I moved all of these balances around a year or so ago I was drowning in payments. We refinanced our house and saved about $700 a month (we had 2 mortgages) and then opened additional credit to take advantage of 0% offers. What I see now is that the piper is coming due. What I did was start looking at the balance transfer offers in the statements and determining what interest rate I was going to and when it was going to happen. What I found was eye opening. The "ticking timebomb" comment was the one that really made me think. ALL of the 0% credit cards are coming up in 2017. To the tune of $65,665.47 which is actually the lions share of my credit card debt. This is 15k more than I even have in the bank. So, here is my plan. Keep putting as much towards the debt as possible, before each 0% deal expires, take the money out of savings and pay it off, do NOT let it roll to the regular interest rate. Yes this means the 2 loans will stay where they are but all of the credit cards will be higher if/when they turn to regular rate. What do you guys think about that plan?\n" Self: "List out your debt individually, with interest rate. You should be able to target some specific items to easily target.\n\nBut I don't know what you're scared about. $50k is a huge emergency fund. What are your normal monthly expenses? And sitting on $50k while paying interest on debt is *costing* you money."

User (badrelationswmoney): "Hi guys, been some time since I've posted. I received the last part of my stock from the sale of a company I worked for this past October. It netted me about 50k. It is sitting in a regular bank account (Capital One 360) getting 1%. I'm still looking at a mountain of debt that needs to be paid off but I'm scared to just use the 50k to pay it down because I don't have any other emergency money than that.\n\nWe have about $1000 snowball that we're throwing at the debt each month but it is slow going with 80k in debt (Credit Cards) 56k (Loans) , 235k (Mortgage)\n\nThoughts and/or advice? I can provide more info if needed.\n\nUpdate with More Info:\n\nCurrent Take Home Pay is about 9K per month. I still have the same job but there are concerns around stability. I am also currently paid over market and have looked at other jobs and could potentially have to take a 30-40k paycut if I had to change jobs.\n\nMortgage - 235k - 3.99% - 1700.00 \nPersonal Loan - 28k - 9.75% - 740.00 \nBank of the West Loan - 15.5k - 7.99% - 200.00 \nDiscover Card 1 - 14k - 0% - 280.00 \nBofA Visa 1 - 13k - 0% - 131.00 \nStudent Loan - 12.5k - 6.5% - 131.00 \nCiti Visa - 9k - 0% - 135.00 \nBofA Visa 2 - 8k - 4.25% - 110.00 \nDiscover 2 - 5.8k - 4.99% - 120.00 \nBofA Amex 1- 0% - 5.6k - 56.00 \nChase Visa - 0% - 5.3k - 53.00 \nBofA Amex 2 - 0% - 4.2k - 43.00 \nCiti - 0% - 3.7k - 56.00 \nAmazon - 0% - 2k - 50.00 \nPaypal - 0% - 1.6k - 25.00 \nFurniture - 0% - 1.5k - 50.00 \n\nTotal Min Payments - 3880.00 \nFixed Expenses - 1670.00 (Includes utilities, insurances, services, etc) \nHousehold Budget - 2300.00 \nRemainder - 1150.00 \n\nEdit: The Rest of It\n\nIf I'm being honest with myself, most months we are in the red. We spend way too much money on stuff we don't need. I just don't say no to anyone, myself, my wife, my kids. So yeah, the guy below who said I knew that this stock bonus was coming so I lived it up was right, that's exactly what I did. I flat out need to get my financial shit together but have never done it. My wife wants to move because the schools where we live are crappy, I mean, really crappy which is having an effect on our youngest son (he's in 5th grade). So, part of me was saving this 50k so we had a way to get out of this house and into another one but I know deep down that that's only going to make matter worse for us. More mortgage, more expenses. The Bank of the West loan is a camper that we bought this year, we've gone out half a dozen times since we bought it in September and we have loved every minute of it, we were big tent campers for years. Both of our cars are paid for but they are old, a 2003 and a 2005 so I know that's coming sooner than later as well. We have less than 40k in 401k and Retirement accounts, I'm way behind there too. I'm only contributing 2% at this time. It's all pretty bad and most of it is behavioral. I've never been debt free my entire adult life, I'm 47 years old.\n\nEdit 2: Objective Thinking\n\nFirst off I'd like to thank everyone for the responses. This has given me an opportunity to think about different approaches to what i'm facing. When I moved all of these balances around a year or so ago I was drowning in payments. We refinanced our house and saved about $700 a month (we had 2 mortgages) and then opened additional credit to take advantage of 0% offers. What I see now is that the piper is coming due. What I did was start looking at the balance transfer offers in the statements and determining what interest rate I was going to and when it was going to happen. What I found was eye opening. The "ticking timebomb" comment was the one that really made me think. ALL of the 0% credit cards are coming up in 2017. To the tune of $65,665.47 which is actually the lions share of my credit card debt. This is 15k more than I even have in the bank. So, here is my plan. Keep putting as much towards the debt as possible, before each 0% deal expires, take the money out of savings and pay it off, do NOT let it roll to the regular interest rate. Yes this means the 2 loans will stay where they are but all of the credit cards will be higher if/when they turn to regular rate. What do you guys think about that plan?\n" Self: "It's not all or nothing. :-)\n\nWould you be comfortable with, say, a $10K e-fund? (Without knowing your debt interest rates or expenses, that's somewhat arbitrary.) You could pay down half of your debt and sill keep some around for an emergency." TyMotor (TyMotor): "Also, if they are already snowballing, it leads me to think that the 80k remaining may be in pieces and not one big loan. OP can pay of one or more of smaller loans (hypothetical) and grow the snowball."

User (badrelationswmoney): "Hi guys, been some time since I've posted. I received the last part of my stock from the sale of a company I worked for this past October. It netted me about 50k. It is sitting in a regular bank account (Capital One 360) getting 1%. I'm still looking at a mountain of debt that needs to be paid off but I'm scared to just use the 50k to pay it down because I don't have any other emergency money than that.\n\nWe have about $1000 snowball that we're throwing at the debt each month but it is slow going with 80k in debt (Credit Cards) 56k (Loans) , 235k (Mortgage)\n\nThoughts and/or advice? I can provide more info if needed.\n\nUpdate with More Info:\n\nCurrent Take Home Pay is about 9K per month. I still have the same job but there are concerns around stability. I am also currently paid over market and have looked at other jobs and could potentially have to take a 30-40k paycut if I had to change jobs.\n\nMortgage - 235k - 3.99% - 1700.00 \nPersonal Loan - 28k - 9.75% - 740.00 \nBank of the West Loan - 15.5k - 7.99% - 200.00 \nDiscover Card 1 - 14k - 0% - 280.00 \nBofA Visa 1 - 13k - 0% - 131.00 \nStudent Loan - 12.5k - 6.5% - 131.00 \nCiti Visa - 9k - 0% - 135.00 \nBofA Visa 2 - 8k - 4.25% - 110.00 \nDiscover 2 - 5.8k - 4.99% - 120.00 \nBofA Amex 1- 0% - 5.6k - 56.00 \nChase Visa - 0% - 5.3k - 53.00 \nBofA Amex 2 - 0% - 4.2k - 43.00 \nCiti - 0% - 3.7k - 56.00 \nAmazon - 0% - 2k - 50.00 \nPaypal - 0% - 1.6k - 25.00 \nFurniture - 0% - 1.5k - 50.00 \n\nTotal Min Payments - 3880.00 \nFixed Expenses - 1670.00 (Includes utilities, insurances, services, etc) \nHousehold Budget - 2300.00 \nRemainder - 1150.00 \n\nEdit: The Rest of It\n\nIf I'm being honest with myself, most months we are in the red. We spend way too much money on stuff we don't need. I just don't say no to anyone, myself, my wife, my kids. So yeah, the guy below who said I knew that this stock bonus was coming so I lived it up was right, that's exactly what I did. I flat out need to get my financial shit together but have never done it. My wife wants to move because the schools where we live are crappy, I mean, really crappy which is having an effect on our youngest son (he's in 5th grade). So, part of me was saving this 50k so we had a way to get out of this house and into another one but I know deep down that that's only going to make matter worse for us. More mortgage, more expenses. The Bank of the West loan is a camper that we bought this year, we've gone out half a dozen times since we bought it in September and we have loved every minute of it, we were big tent campers for years. Both of our cars are paid for but they are old, a 2003 and a 2005 so I know that's coming sooner than later as well. We have less than 40k in 401k and Retirement accounts, I'm way behind there too. I'm only contributing 2% at this time. It's all pretty bad and most of it is behavioral. I've never been debt free my entire adult life, I'm 47 years old.\n\nEdit 2: Objective Thinking\n\nFirst off I'd like to thank everyone for the responses. This has given me an opportunity to think about different approaches to what i'm facing. When I moved all of these balances around a year or so ago I was drowning in payments. We refinanced our house and saved about $700 a month (we had 2 mortgages) and then opened additional credit to take advantage of 0% offers. What I see now is that the piper is coming due. What I did was start looking at the balance transfer offers in the statements and determining what interest rate I was going to and when it was going to happen. What I found was eye opening. The "ticking timebomb" comment was the one that really made me think. ALL of the 0% credit cards are coming up in 2017. To the tune of $65,665.47 which is actually the lions share of my credit card debt. This is 15k more than I even have in the bank. So, here is my plan. Keep putting as much towards the debt as possible, before each 0% deal expires, take the money out of savings and pay it off, do NOT let it roll to the regular interest rate. Yes this means the 2 loans will stay where they are but all of the credit cards will be higher if/when they turn to regular rate. What do you guys think about that plan?\n" Self: "Do it. It will save you a incredible amount of money."

User (badrelationswmoney): "Hi guys, been some time since I've posted. I received the last part of my stock from the sale of a company I worked for this past October. It netted me about 50k. It is sitting in a regular bank account (Capital One 360) getting 1%. I'm still looking at a mountain of debt that needs to be paid off but I'm scared to just use the 50k to pay it down because I don't have any other emergency money than that.\n\nWe have about $1000 snowball that we're throwing at the debt each month but it is slow going with 80k in debt (Credit Cards) 56k (Loans) , 235k (Mortgage)\n\nThoughts and/or advice? I can provide more info if needed.\n\nUpdate with More Info:\n\nCurrent Take Home Pay is about 9K per month. I still have the same job but there are concerns around stability. I am also currently paid over market and have looked at other jobs and could potentially have to take a 30-40k paycut if I had to change jobs.\n\nMortgage - 235k - 3.99% - 1700.00 \nPersonal Loan - 28k - 9.75% - 740.00 \nBank of the West Loan - 15.5k - 7.99% - 200.00 \nDiscover Card 1 - 14k - 0% - 280.00 \nBofA Visa 1 - 13k - 0% - 131.00 \nStudent Loan - 12.5k - 6.5% - 131.00 \nCiti Visa - 9k - 0% - 135.00 \nBofA Visa 2 - 8k - 4.25% - 110.00 \nDiscover 2 - 5.8k - 4.99% - 120.00 \nBofA Amex 1- 0% - 5.6k - 56.00 \nChase Visa - 0% - 5.3k - 53.00 \nBofA Amex 2 - 0% - 4.2k - 43.00 \nCiti - 0% - 3.7k - 56.00 \nAmazon - 0% - 2k - 50.00 \nPaypal - 0% - 1.6k - 25.00 \nFurniture - 0% - 1.5k - 50.00 \n\nTotal Min Payments - 3880.00 \nFixed Expenses - 1670.00 (Includes utilities, insurances, services, etc) \nHousehold Budget - 2300.00 \nRemainder - 1150.00 \n\nEdit: The Rest of It\n\nIf I'm being honest with myself, most months we are in the red. We spend way too much money on stuff we don't need. I just don't say no to anyone, myself, my wife, my kids. So yeah, the guy below who said I knew that this stock bonus was coming so I lived it up was right, that's exactly what I did. I flat out need to get my financial shit together but have never done it. My wife wants to move because the schools where we live are crappy, I mean, really crappy which is having an effect on our youngest son (he's in 5th grade). So, part of me was saving this 50k so we had a way to get out of this house and into another one but I know deep down that that's only going to make matter worse for us. More mortgage, more expenses. The Bank of the West loan is a camper that we bought this year, we've gone out half a dozen times since we bought it in September and we have loved every minute of it, we were big tent campers for years. Both of our cars are paid for but they are old, a 2003 and a 2005 so I know that's coming sooner than later as well. We have less than 40k in 401k and Retirement accounts, I'm way behind there too. I'm only contributing 2% at this time. It's all pretty bad and most of it is behavioral. I've never been debt free my entire adult life, I'm 47 years old.\n\nEdit 2: Objective Thinking\n\nFirst off I'd like to thank everyone for the responses. This has given me an opportunity to think about different approaches to what i'm facing. When I moved all of these balances around a year or so ago I was drowning in payments. We refinanced our house and saved about $700 a month (we had 2 mortgages) and then opened additional credit to take advantage of 0% offers. What I see now is that the piper is coming due. What I did was start looking at the balance transfer offers in the statements and determining what interest rate I was going to and when it was going to happen. What I found was eye opening. The "ticking timebomb" comment was the one that really made me think. ALL of the 0% credit cards are coming up in 2017. To the tune of $65,665.47 which is actually the lions share of my credit card debt. This is 15k more than I even have in the bank. So, here is my plan. Keep putting as much towards the debt as possible, before each 0% deal expires, take the money out of savings and pay it off, do NOT let it roll to the regular interest rate. Yes this means the 2 loans will stay where they are but all of the credit cards will be higher if/when they turn to regular rate. What do you guys think about that plan?\n" Self: "What if you never had stock in that company? Would your debt load be still the same? Are you in $80K debt knowing perfectly you would have a cushion of stock down the road to cover it?\n\nIf that's the case, it may be better to apply a majority of that money (leave aside some sensible amount like $5-10K) to your debt, and strive to get debt free as soon as possible.\n\nAlso what kind of debt is it? If it's a low interest mortgage, the answer is very different, because a) mortgage interest is very low, and b) it covers an appreciating asset (an investment). If it's credit card debt, then you need to put that money to eliminate that debt, because the CC interest will kill you."

User (badrelationswmoney): "Hi guys, been some time since I've posted. I received the last part of my stock from the sale of a company I worked for this past October. It netted me about 50k. It is sitting in a regular bank account (Capital One 360) getting 1%. I'm still looking at a mountain of debt that needs to be paid off but I'm scared to just use the 50k to pay it down because I don't have any other emergency money than that.\n\nWe have about $1000 snowball that we're throwing at the debt each month but it is slow going with 80k in debt (Credit Cards) 56k (Loans) , 235k (Mortgage)\n\nThoughts and/or advice? I can provide more info if needed.\n\nUpdate with More Info:\n\nCurrent Take Home Pay is about 9K per month. I still have the same job but there are concerns around stability. I am also currently paid over market and have looked at other jobs and could potentially have to take a 30-40k paycut if I had to change jobs.\n\nMortgage - 235k - 3.99% - 1700.00 \nPersonal Loan - 28k - 9.75% - 740.00 \nBank of the West Loan - 15.5k - 7.99% - 200.00 \nDiscover Card 1 - 14k - 0% - 280.00 \nBofA Visa 1 - 13k - 0% - 131.00 \nStudent Loan - 12.5k - 6.5% - 131.00 \nCiti Visa - 9k - 0% - 135.00 \nBofA Visa 2 - 8k - 4.25% - 110.00 \nDiscover 2 - 5.8k - 4.99% - 120.00 \nBofA Amex 1- 0% - 5.6k - 56.00 \nChase Visa - 0% - 5.3k - 53.00 \nBofA Amex 2 - 0% - 4.2k - 43.00 \nCiti - 0% - 3.7k - 56.00 \nAmazon - 0% - 2k - 50.00 \nPaypal - 0% - 1.6k - 25.00 \nFurniture - 0% - 1.5k - 50.00 \n\nTotal Min Payments - 3880.00 \nFixed Expenses - 1670.00 (Includes utilities, insurances, services, etc) \nHousehold Budget - 2300.00 \nRemainder - 1150.00 \n\nEdit: The Rest of It\n\nIf I'm being honest with myself, most months we are in the red. We spend way too much money on stuff we don't need. I just don't say no to anyone, myself, my wife, my kids. So yeah, the guy below who said I knew that this stock bonus was coming so I lived it up was right, that's exactly what I did. I flat out need to get my financial shit together but have never done it. My wife wants to move because the schools where we live are crappy, I mean, really crappy which is having an effect on our youngest son (he's in 5th grade). So, part of me was saving this 50k so we had a way to get out of this house and into another one but I know deep down that that's only going to make matter worse for us. More mortgage, more expenses. The Bank of the West loan is a camper that we bought this year, we've gone out half a dozen times since we bought it in September and we have loved every minute of it, we were big tent campers for years. Both of our cars are paid for but they are old, a 2003 and a 2005 so I know that's coming sooner than later as well. We have less than 40k in 401k and Retirement accounts, I'm way behind there too. I'm only contributing 2% at this time. It's all pretty bad and most of it is behavioral. I've never been debt free my entire adult life, I'm 47 years old.\n\nEdit 2: Objective Thinking\n\nFirst off I'd like to thank everyone for the responses. This has given me an opportunity to think about different approaches to what i'm facing. When I moved all of these balances around a year or so ago I was drowning in payments. We refinanced our house and saved about $700 a month (we had 2 mortgages) and then opened additional credit to take advantage of 0% offers. What I see now is that the piper is coming due. What I did was start looking at the balance transfer offers in the statements and determining what interest rate I was going to and when it was going to happen. What I found was eye opening. The "ticking timebomb" comment was the one that really made me think. ALL of the 0% credit cards are coming up in 2017. To the tune of $65,665.47 which is actually the lions share of my credit card debt. This is 15k more than I even have in the bank. So, here is my plan. Keep putting as much towards the debt as possible, before each 0% deal expires, take the money out of savings and pay it off, do NOT let it roll to the regular interest rate. Yes this means the 2 loans will stay where they are but all of the credit cards will be higher if/when they turn to regular rate. What do you guys think about that plan?\n" Self: "Assuming you have a steady income (if not, find a job first) and know your expenses (if not, start tracking and budgeting)...\n\nTake your must-have expenses each month (rent, utilities, food, stuff required for work like a car or bus pass, min payment on all debt)(cut out things like netflix and cable tv) and figure out what it would cost for 6 months. If you're worried about it, up it to 8 months. Keep that as your emergency savings account. The rest you can put towards snowballing down your debt unless you're planning big purchases soon (house, wedding, etc)."

User (badrelationswmoney): "Hi guys, been some time since I've posted. I received the last part of my stock from the sale of a company I worked for this past October. It netted me about 50k. It is sitting in a regular bank account (Capital One 360) getting 1%. I'm still looking at a mountain of debt that needs to be paid off but I'm scared to just use the 50k to pay it down because I don't have any other emergency money than that.\n\nWe have about $1000 snowball that we're throwing at the debt each month but it is slow going with 80k in debt (Credit Cards) 56k (Loans) , 235k (Mortgage)\n\nThoughts and/or advice? I can provide more info if needed.\n\nUpdate with More Info:\n\nCurrent Take Home Pay is about 9K per month. I still have the same job but there are concerns around stability. I am also currently paid over market and have looked at other jobs and could potentially have to take a 30-40k paycut if I had to change jobs.\n\nMortgage - 235k - 3.99% - 1700.00 \nPersonal Loan - 28k - 9.75% - 740.00 \nBank of the West Loan - 15.5k - 7.99% - 200.00 \nDiscover Card 1 - 14k - 0% - 280.00 \nBofA Visa 1 - 13k - 0% - 131.00 \nStudent Loan - 12.5k - 6.5% - 131.00 \nCiti Visa - 9k - 0% - 135.00 \nBofA Visa 2 - 8k - 4.25% - 110.00 \nDiscover 2 - 5.8k - 4.99% - 120.00 \nBofA Amex 1- 0% - 5.6k - 56.00 \nChase Visa - 0% - 5.3k - 53.00 \nBofA Amex 2 - 0% - 4.2k - 43.00 \nCiti - 0% - 3.7k - 56.00 \nAmazon - 0% - 2k - 50.00 \nPaypal - 0% - 1.6k - 25.00 \nFurniture - 0% - 1.5k - 50.00 \n\nTotal Min Payments - 3880.00 \nFixed Expenses - 1670.00 (Includes utilities, insurances, services, etc) \nHousehold Budget - 2300.00 \nRemainder - 1150.00 \n\nEdit: The Rest of It\n\nIf I'm being honest with myself, most months we are in the red. We spend way too much money on stuff we don't need. I just don't say no to anyone, myself, my wife, my kids. So yeah, the guy below who said I knew that this stock bonus was coming so I lived it up was right, that's exactly what I did. I flat out need to get my financial shit together but have never done it. My wife wants to move because the schools where we live are crappy, I mean, really crappy which is having an effect on our youngest son (he's in 5th grade). So, part of me was saving this 50k so we had a way to get out of this house and into another one but I know deep down that that's only going to make matter worse for us. More mortgage, more expenses. The Bank of the West loan is a camper that we bought this year, we've gone out half a dozen times since we bought it in September and we have loved every minute of it, we were big tent campers for years. Both of our cars are paid for but they are old, a 2003 and a 2005 so I know that's coming sooner than later as well. We have less than 40k in 401k and Retirement accounts, I'm way behind there too. I'm only contributing 2% at this time. It's all pretty bad and most of it is behavioral. I've never been debt free my entire adult life, I'm 47 years old.\n\nEdit 2: Objective Thinking\n\nFirst off I'd like to thank everyone for the responses. This has given me an opportunity to think about different approaches to what i'm facing. When I moved all of these balances around a year or so ago I was drowning in payments. We refinanced our house and saved about $700 a month (we had 2 mortgages) and then opened additional credit to take advantage of 0% offers. What I see now is that the piper is coming due. What I did was start looking at the balance transfer offers in the statements and determining what interest rate I was going to and when it was going to happen. What I found was eye opening. The "ticking timebomb" comment was the one that really made me think. ALL of the 0% credit cards are coming up in 2017. To the tune of $65,665.47 which is actually the lions share of my credit card debt. This is 15k more than I even have in the bank. So, here is my plan. Keep putting as much towards the debt as possible, before each 0% deal expires, take the money out of savings and pay it off, do NOT let it roll to the regular interest rate. Yes this means the 2 loans will stay where they are but all of the credit cards will be higher if/when they turn to regular rate. What do you guys think about that plan?\n" Self: "Do you have sources of income now (new job, etc)? What are your expenses? What interest rates are your debts at?" User (badrelationswmoney): "I listed what you have asked, thanks for looking."

User (badrelationswmoney): "Hi guys, been some time since I've posted. I received the last part of my stock from the sale of a company I worked for this past October. It netted me about 50k. It is sitting in a regular bank account (Capital One 360) getting 1%. I'm still looking at a mountain of debt that needs to be paid off but I'm scared to just use the 50k to pay it down because I don't have any other emergency money than that.\n\nWe have about $1000 snowball that we're throwing at the debt each month but it is slow going with 80k in debt (Credit Cards) 56k (Loans) , 235k (Mortgage)\n\nThoughts and/or advice? I can provide more info if needed.\n\nUpdate with More Info:\n\nCurrent Take Home Pay is about 9K per month. I still have the same job but there are concerns around stability. I am also currently paid over market and have looked at other jobs and could potentially have to take a 30-40k paycut if I had to change jobs.\n\nMortgage - 235k - 3.99% - 1700.00 \nPersonal Loan - 28k - 9.75% - 740.00 \nBank of the West Loan - 15.5k - 7.99% - 200.00 \nDiscover Card 1 - 14k - 0% - 280.00 \nBofA Visa 1 - 13k - 0% - 131.00 \nStudent Loan - 12.5k - 6.5% - 131.00 \nCiti Visa - 9k - 0% - 135.00 \nBofA Visa 2 - 8k - 4.25% - 110.00 \nDiscover 2 - 5.8k - 4.99% - 120.00 \nBofA Amex 1- 0% - 5.6k - 56.00 \nChase Visa - 0% - 5.3k - 53.00 \nBofA Amex 2 - 0% - 4.2k - 43.00 \nCiti - 0% - 3.7k - 56.00 \nAmazon - 0% - 2k - 50.00 \nPaypal - 0% - 1.6k - 25.00 \nFurniture - 0% - 1.5k - 50.00 \n\nTotal Min Payments - 3880.00 \nFixed Expenses - 1670.00 (Includes utilities, insurances, services, etc) \nHousehold Budget - 2300.00 \nRemainder - 1150.00 \n\nEdit: The Rest of It\n\nIf I'm being honest with myself, most months we are in the red. We spend way too much money on stuff we don't need. I just don't say no to anyone, myself, my wife, my kids. So yeah, the guy below who said I knew that this stock bonus was coming so I lived it up was right, that's exactly what I did. I flat out need to get my financial shit together but have never done it. My wife wants to move because the schools where we live are crappy, I mean, really crappy which is having an effect on our youngest son (he's in 5th grade). So, part of me was saving this 50k so we had a way to get out of this house and into another one but I know deep down that that's only going to make matter worse for us. More mortgage, more expenses. The Bank of the West loan is a camper that we bought this year, we've gone out half a dozen times since we bought it in September and we have loved every minute of it, we were big tent campers for years. Both of our cars are paid for but they are old, a 2003 and a 2005 so I know that's coming sooner than later as well. We have less than 40k in 401k and Retirement accounts, I'm way behind there too. I'm only contributing 2% at this time. It's all pretty bad and most of it is behavioral. I've never been debt free my entire adult life, I'm 47 years old.\n\nEdit 2: Objective Thinking\n\nFirst off I'd like to thank everyone for the responses. This has given me an opportunity to think about different approaches to what i'm facing. When I moved all of these balances around a year or so ago I was drowning in payments. We refinanced our house and saved about $700 a month (we had 2 mortgages) and then opened additional credit to take advantage of 0% offers. What I see now is that the piper is coming due. What I did was start looking at the balance transfer offers in the statements and determining what interest rate I was going to and when it was going to happen. What I found was eye opening. The "ticking timebomb" comment was the one that really made me think. ALL of the 0% credit cards are coming up in 2017. To the tune of $65,665.47 which is actually the lions share of my credit card debt. This is 15k more than I even have in the bank. So, here is my plan. Keep putting as much towards the debt as possible, before each 0% deal expires, take the money out of savings and pay it off, do NOT let it roll to the regular interest rate. Yes this means the 2 loans will stay where they are but all of the credit cards will be higher if/when they turn to regular rate. What do you guys think about that plan?\n" Self: "If I were you, I'd at least kill that personal loan, and the Bank West loan. Fortunately most of what you have is low interest, but those two are high enough balance and interest to really hurt you."

User (badrelationswmoney): "Hi guys, been some time since I've posted. I received the last part of my stock from the sale of a company I worked for this past October. It netted me about 50k. It is sitting in a regular bank account (Capital One 360) getting 1%. I'm still looking at a mountain of debt that needs to be paid off but I'm scared to just use the 50k to pay it down because I don't have any other emergency money than that.\n\nWe have about $1000 snowball that we're throwing at the debt each month but it is slow going with 80k in debt (Credit Cards) 56k (Loans) , 235k (Mortgage)\n\nThoughts and/or advice? I can provide more info if needed.\n\nUpdate with More Info:\n\nCurrent Take Home Pay is about 9K per month. I still have the same job but there are concerns around stability. I am also currently paid over market and have looked at other jobs and could potentially have to take a 30-40k paycut if I had to change jobs.\n\nMortgage - 235k - 3.99% - 1700.00 \nPersonal Loan - 28k - 9.75% - 740.00 \nBank of the West Loan - 15.5k - 7.99% - 200.00 \nDiscover Card 1 - 14k - 0% - 280.00 \nBofA Visa 1 - 13k - 0% - 131.00 \nStudent Loan - 12.5k - 6.5% - 131.00 \nCiti Visa - 9k - 0% - 135.00 \nBofA Visa 2 - 8k - 4.25% - 110.00 \nDiscover 2 - 5.8k - 4.99% - 120.00 \nBofA Amex 1- 0% - 5.6k - 56.00 \nChase Visa - 0% - 5.3k - 53.00 \nBofA Amex 2 - 0% - 4.2k - 43.00 \nCiti - 0% - 3.7k - 56.00 \nAmazon - 0% - 2k - 50.00 \nPaypal - 0% - 1.6k - 25.00 \nFurniture - 0% - 1.5k - 50.00 \n\nTotal Min Payments - 3880.00 \nFixed Expenses - 1670.00 (Includes utilities, insurances, services, etc) \nHousehold Budget - 2300.00 \nRemainder - 1150.00 \n\nEdit: The Rest of It\n\nIf I'm being honest with myself, most months we are in the red. We spend way too much money on stuff we don't need. I just don't say no to anyone, myself, my wife, my kids. So yeah, the guy below who said I knew that this stock bonus was coming so I lived it up was right, that's exactly what I did. I flat out need to get my financial shit together but have never done it. My wife wants to move because the schools where we live are crappy, I mean, really crappy which is having an effect on our youngest son (he's in 5th grade). So, part of me was saving this 50k so we had a way to get out of this house and into another one but I know deep down that that's only going to make matter worse for us. More mortgage, more expenses. The Bank of the West loan is a camper that we bought this year, we've gone out half a dozen times since we bought it in September and we have loved every minute of it, we were big tent campers for years. Both of our cars are paid for but they are old, a 2003 and a 2005 so I know that's coming sooner than later as well. We have less than 40k in 401k and Retirement accounts, I'm way behind there too. I'm only contributing 2% at this time. It's all pretty bad and most of it is behavioral. I've never been debt free my entire adult life, I'm 47 years old.\n\nEdit 2: Objective Thinking\n\nFirst off I'd like to thank everyone for the responses. This has given me an opportunity to think about different approaches to what i'm facing. When I moved all of these balances around a year or so ago I was drowning in payments. We refinanced our house and saved about $700 a month (we had 2 mortgages) and then opened additional credit to take advantage of 0% offers. What I see now is that the piper is coming due. What I did was start looking at the balance transfer offers in the statements and determining what interest rate I was going to and when it was going to happen. What I found was eye opening. The "ticking timebomb" comment was the one that really made me think. ALL of the 0% credit cards are coming up in 2017. To the tune of $65,665.47 which is actually the lions share of my credit card debt. This is 15k more than I even have in the bank. So, here is my plan. Keep putting as much towards the debt as possible, before each 0% deal expires, take the money out of savings and pay it off, do NOT let it roll to the regular interest rate. Yes this means the 2 loans will stay where they are but all of the credit cards will be higher if/when they turn to regular rate. What do you guys think about that plan?\n" Self: "Personally, I'd kill the personal loan and BotW loan, then save the rest as an emergency fund. That would free up an additional $940 a month. Then trim the household budget expenses - $2300 a month not including mortgage and utilities seems really high. Then snowball the rest of the little debts, starting with the lowest non-0% loan."

User (badrelationswmoney): "Hi guys, been some time since I've posted. I received the last part of my stock from the sale of a company I worked for this past October. It netted me about 50k. It is sitting in a regular bank account (Capital One 360) getting 1%. I'm still looking at a mountain of debt that needs to be paid off but I'm scared to just use the 50k to pay it down because I don't have any other emergency money than that.\n\nWe have about $1000 snowball that we're throwing at the debt each month but it is slow going with 80k in debt (Credit Cards) 56k (Loans) , 235k (Mortgage)\n\nThoughts and/or advice? I can provide more info if needed.\n\nUpdate with More Info:\n\nCurrent Take Home Pay is about 9K per month. I still have the same job but there are concerns around stability. I am also currently paid over market and have looked at other jobs and could potentially have to take a 30-40k paycut if I had to change jobs.\n\nMortgage - 235k - 3.99% - 1700.00 \nPersonal Loan - 28k - 9.75% - 740.00 \nBank of the West Loan - 15.5k - 7.99% - 200.00 \nDiscover Card 1 - 14k - 0% - 280.00 \nBofA Visa 1 - 13k - 0% - 131.00 \nStudent Loan - 12.5k - 6.5% - 131.00 \nCiti Visa - 9k - 0% - 135.00 \nBofA Visa 2 - 8k - 4.25% - 110.00 \nDiscover 2 - 5.8k - 4.99% - 120.00 \nBofA Amex 1- 0% - 5.6k - 56.00 \nChase Visa - 0% - 5.3k - 53.00 \nBofA Amex 2 - 0% - 4.2k - 43.00 \nCiti - 0% - 3.7k - 56.00 \nAmazon - 0% - 2k - 50.00 \nPaypal - 0% - 1.6k - 25.00 \nFurniture - 0% - 1.5k - 50.00 \n\nTotal Min Payments - 3880.00 \nFixed Expenses - 1670.00 (Includes utilities, insurances, services, etc) \nHousehold Budget - 2300.00 \nRemainder - 1150.00 \n\nEdit: The Rest of It\n\nIf I'm being honest with myself, most months we are in the red. We spend way too much money on stuff we don't need. I just don't say no to anyone, myself, my wife, my kids. So yeah, the guy below who said I knew that this stock bonus was coming so I lived it up was right, that's exactly what I did. I flat out need to get my financial shit together but have never done it. My wife wants to move because the schools where we live are crappy, I mean, really crappy which is having an effect on our youngest son (he's in 5th grade). So, part of me was saving this 50k so we had a way to get out of this house and into another one but I know deep down that that's only going to make matter worse for us. More mortgage, more expenses. The Bank of the West loan is a camper that we bought this year, we've gone out half a dozen times since we bought it in September and we have loved every minute of it, we were big tent campers for years. Both of our cars are paid for but they are old, a 2003 and a 2005 so I know that's coming sooner than later as well. We have less than 40k in 401k and Retirement accounts, I'm way behind there too. I'm only contributing 2% at this time. It's all pretty bad and most of it is behavioral. I've never been debt free my entire adult life, I'm 47 years old.\n\nEdit 2: Objective Thinking\n\nFirst off I'd like to thank everyone for the responses. This has given me an opportunity to think about different approaches to what i'm facing. When I moved all of these balances around a year or so ago I was drowning in payments. We refinanced our house and saved about $700 a month (we had 2 mortgages) and then opened additional credit to take advantage of 0% offers. What I see now is that the piper is coming due. What I did was start looking at the balance transfer offers in the statements and determining what interest rate I was going to and when it was going to happen. What I found was eye opening. The "ticking timebomb" comment was the one that really made me think. ALL of the 0% credit cards are coming up in 2017. To the tune of $65,665.47 which is actually the lions share of my credit card debt. This is 15k more than I even have in the bank. So, here is my plan. Keep putting as much towards the debt as possible, before each 0% deal expires, take the money out of savings and pay it off, do NOT let it roll to the regular interest rate. Yes this means the 2 loans will stay where they are but all of the credit cards will be higher if/when they turn to regular rate. What do you guys think about that plan?\n" Self: "Wouldn't it make sense to take the money in the bank and pay off the 28k loan at 9.75%? Thats the highest interest loan you have and would free up $740 per month of additional cash flow to work on the rest. It still leaves you with a $22 grand safety net as well. " User (badrelationswmoney): "That was my plan A, but that's going to only leave me about 3 months worth of expenses and that is if I tighten the belt which I could do. I guess I get a certain comfort level knowing the 50k is in there but I just need to pay it off." evaned (evaned): "> that's going to only leave me about 3 months worth of expenses\n\nMy reaction to that: $22K is only three months of expenses? If you're interested in it, you could post budget information. We could see if we could help you tighten the belt; to be a bit blunt, between tens of thousands of dollars of CC debt and $7K/mo expenses (especially when your mortgage is only $235K, and especially when you're concerned about job stability and are perhaps paid overmarket), I think you need a bit of a behavior adjustment.\n\n$7K a month is a *ton*. You don't need to be having the problems you're having. ~~How much of that is payment on these debts?~~ (Edit oh that's there now.)"

User (badrelationswmoney): "Hi guys, been some time since I've posted. I received the last part of my stock from the sale of a company I worked for this past October. It netted me about 50k. It is sitting in a regular bank account (Capital One 360) getting 1%. I'm still looking at a mountain of debt that needs to be paid off but I'm scared to just use the 50k to pay it down because I don't have any other emergency money than that.\n\nWe have about $1000 snowball that we're throwing at the debt each month but it is slow going with 80k in debt (Credit Cards) 56k (Loans) , 235k (Mortgage)\n\nThoughts and/or advice? I can provide more info if needed.\n\nUpdate with More Info:\n\nCurrent Take Home Pay is about 9K per month. I still have the same job but there are concerns around stability. I am also currently paid over market and have looked at other jobs and could potentially have to take a 30-40k paycut if I had to change jobs.\n\nMortgage - 235k - 3.99% - 1700.00 \nPersonal Loan - 28k - 9.75% - 740.00 \nBank of the West Loan - 15.5k - 7.99% - 200.00 \nDiscover Card 1 - 14k - 0% - 280.00 \nBofA Visa 1 - 13k - 0% - 131.00 \nStudent Loan - 12.5k - 6.5% - 131.00 \nCiti Visa - 9k - 0% - 135.00 \nBofA Visa 2 - 8k - 4.25% - 110.00 \nDiscover 2 - 5.8k - 4.99% - 120.00 \nBofA Amex 1- 0% - 5.6k - 56.00 \nChase Visa - 0% - 5.3k - 53.00 \nBofA Amex 2 - 0% - 4.2k - 43.00 \nCiti - 0% - 3.7k - 56.00 \nAmazon - 0% - 2k - 50.00 \nPaypal - 0% - 1.6k - 25.00 \nFurniture - 0% - 1.5k - 50.00 \n\nTotal Min Payments - 3880.00 \nFixed Expenses - 1670.00 (Includes utilities, insurances, services, etc) \nHousehold Budget - 2300.00 \nRemainder - 1150.00 \n\nEdit: The Rest of It\n\nIf I'm being honest with myself, most months we are in the red. We spend way too much money on stuff we don't need. I just don't say no to anyone, myself, my wife, my kids. So yeah, the guy below who said I knew that this stock bonus was coming so I lived it up was right, that's exactly what I did. I flat out need to get my financial shit together but have never done it. My wife wants to move because the schools where we live are crappy, I mean, really crappy which is having an effect on our youngest son (he's in 5th grade). So, part of me was saving this 50k so we had a way to get out of this house and into another one but I know deep down that that's only going to make matter worse for us. More mortgage, more expenses. The Bank of the West loan is a camper that we bought this year, we've gone out half a dozen times since we bought it in September and we have loved every minute of it, we were big tent campers for years. Both of our cars are paid for but they are old, a 2003 and a 2005 so I know that's coming sooner than later as well. We have less than 40k in 401k and Retirement accounts, I'm way behind there too. I'm only contributing 2% at this time. It's all pretty bad and most of it is behavioral. I've never been debt free my entire adult life, I'm 47 years old.\n\nEdit 2: Objective Thinking\n\nFirst off I'd like to thank everyone for the responses. This has given me an opportunity to think about different approaches to what i'm facing. When I moved all of these balances around a year or so ago I was drowning in payments. We refinanced our house and saved about $700 a month (we had 2 mortgages) and then opened additional credit to take advantage of 0% offers. What I see now is that the piper is coming due. What I did was start looking at the balance transfer offers in the statements and determining what interest rate I was going to and when it was going to happen. What I found was eye opening. The "ticking timebomb" comment was the one that really made me think. ALL of the 0% credit cards are coming up in 2017. To the tune of $65,665.47 which is actually the lions share of my credit card debt. This is 15k more than I even have in the bank. So, here is my plan. Keep putting as much towards the debt as possible, before each 0% deal expires, take the money out of savings and pay it off, do NOT let it roll to the regular interest rate. Yes this means the 2 loans will stay where they are but all of the credit cards will be higher if/when they turn to regular rate. What do you guys think about that plan?\n" Self: "Wouldn't it make sense to take the money in the bank and pay off the 28k loan at 9.75%? Thats the highest interest loan you have and would free up $740 per month of additional cash flow to work on the rest. It still leaves you with a $22 grand safety net as well. " User (badrelationswmoney): "That was my plan A, but that's going to only leave me about 3 months worth of expenses and that is if I tighten the belt which I could do. I guess I get a certain comfort level knowing the 50k is in there but I just need to pay it off." evaned (evaned): "You know, I don't say this much, but honestly, I think you should read some Dave Ramsey. You're the kind of person he's good for, except that you should pay your high-interest debts first because the gulf between 0% and 10% is so high.\n\nBut we can only help you so much. You (and your family) are the ones who are going to need to change.\n\nSee if your local library has anything by Ramsey (eg. Total Money Makeover); don't buy it if you don't have to. :-)" User (badrelationswmoney): "I've been listening to Dave a lot lately. Just to try and find some motivation to change, something. "

User (badrelationswmoney): "Hi guys, been some time since I've posted. I received the last part of my stock from the sale of a company I worked for this past October. It netted me about 50k. It is sitting in a regular bank account (Capital One 360) getting 1%. I'm still looking at a mountain of debt that needs to be paid off but I'm scared to just use the 50k to pay it down because I don't have any other emergency money than that.\n\nWe have about $1000 snowball that we're throwing at the debt each month but it is slow going with 80k in debt (Credit Cards) 56k (Loans) , 235k (Mortgage)\n\nThoughts and/or advice? I can provide more info if needed.\n\nUpdate with More Info:\n\nCurrent Take Home Pay is about 9K per month. I still have the same job but there are concerns around stability. I am also currently paid over market and have looked at other jobs and could potentially have to take a 30-40k paycut if I had to change jobs.\n\nMortgage - 235k - 3.99% - 1700.00 \nPersonal Loan - 28k - 9.75% - 740.00 \nBank of the West Loan - 15.5k - 7.99% - 200.00 \nDiscover Card 1 - 14k - 0% - 280.00 \nBofA Visa 1 - 13k - 0% - 131.00 \nStudent Loan - 12.5k - 6.5% - 131.00 \nCiti Visa - 9k - 0% - 135.00 \nBofA Visa 2 - 8k - 4.25% - 110.00 \nDiscover 2 - 5.8k - 4.99% - 120.00 \nBofA Amex 1- 0% - 5.6k - 56.00 \nChase Visa - 0% - 5.3k - 53.00 \nBofA Amex 2 - 0% - 4.2k - 43.00 \nCiti - 0% - 3.7k - 56.00 \nAmazon - 0% - 2k - 50.00 \nPaypal - 0% - 1.6k - 25.00 \nFurniture - 0% - 1.5k - 50.00 \n\nTotal Min Payments - 3880.00 \nFixed Expenses - 1670.00 (Includes utilities, insurances, services, etc) \nHousehold Budget - 2300.00 \nRemainder - 1150.00 \n\nEdit: The Rest of It\n\nIf I'm being honest with myself, most months we are in the red. We spend way too much money on stuff we don't need. I just don't say no to anyone, myself, my wife, my kids. So yeah, the guy below who said I knew that this stock bonus was coming so I lived it up was right, that's exactly what I did. I flat out need to get my financial shit together but have never done it. My wife wants to move because the schools where we live are crappy, I mean, really crappy which is having an effect on our youngest son (he's in 5th grade). So, part of me was saving this 50k so we had a way to get out of this house and into another one but I know deep down that that's only going to make matter worse for us. More mortgage, more expenses. The Bank of the West loan is a camper that we bought this year, we've gone out half a dozen times since we bought it in September and we have loved every minute of it, we were big tent campers for years. Both of our cars are paid for but they are old, a 2003 and a 2005 so I know that's coming sooner than later as well. We have less than 40k in 401k and Retirement accounts, I'm way behind there too. I'm only contributing 2% at this time. It's all pretty bad and most of it is behavioral. I've never been debt free my entire adult life, I'm 47 years old.\n\nEdit 2: Objective Thinking\n\nFirst off I'd like to thank everyone for the responses. This has given me an opportunity to think about different approaches to what i'm facing. When I moved all of these balances around a year or so ago I was drowning in payments. We refinanced our house and saved about $700 a month (we had 2 mortgages) and then opened additional credit to take advantage of 0% offers. What I see now is that the piper is coming due. What I did was start looking at the balance transfer offers in the statements and determining what interest rate I was going to and when it was going to happen. What I found was eye opening. The "ticking timebomb" comment was the one that really made me think. ALL of the 0% credit cards are coming up in 2017. To the tune of $65,665.47 which is actually the lions share of my credit card debt. This is 15k more than I even have in the bank. So, here is my plan. Keep putting as much towards the debt as possible, before each 0% deal expires, take the money out of savings and pay it off, do NOT let it roll to the regular interest rate. Yes this means the 2 loans will stay where they are but all of the credit cards will be higher if/when they turn to regular rate. What do you guys think about that plan?\n" Self: "I would use 40k to pay off the highest interest loans you have. That should free up about 1000/m going down the drain.\n\nAfter that I hope you have another job or get another one soon.\n\n" User (badrelationswmoney): "I have a job." Self: "Then I would do the stuff I said for sure."

User (badrelationswmoney): "Hi guys, been some time since I've posted. I received the last part of my stock from the sale of a company I worked for this past October. It netted me about 50k. It is sitting in a regular bank account (Capital One 360) getting 1%. I'm still looking at a mountain of debt that needs to be paid off but I'm scared to just use the 50k to pay it down because I don't have any other emergency money than that.\n\nWe have about $1000 snowball that we're throwing at the debt each month but it is slow going with 80k in debt (Credit Cards) 56k (Loans) , 235k (Mortgage)\n\nThoughts and/or advice? I can provide more info if needed.\n\nUpdate with More Info:\n\nCurrent Take Home Pay is about 9K per month. I still have the same job but there are concerns around stability. I am also currently paid over market and have looked at other jobs and could potentially have to take a 30-40k paycut if I had to change jobs.\n\nMortgage - 235k - 3.99% - 1700.00 \nPersonal Loan - 28k - 9.75% - 740.00 \nBank of the West Loan - 15.5k - 7.99% - 200.00 \nDiscover Card 1 - 14k - 0% - 280.00 \nBofA Visa 1 - 13k - 0% - 131.00 \nStudent Loan - 12.5k - 6.5% - 131.00 \nCiti Visa - 9k - 0% - 135.00 \nBofA Visa 2 - 8k - 4.25% - 110.00 \nDiscover 2 - 5.8k - 4.99% - 120.00 \nBofA Amex 1- 0% - 5.6k - 56.00 \nChase Visa - 0% - 5.3k - 53.00 \nBofA Amex 2 - 0% - 4.2k - 43.00 \nCiti - 0% - 3.7k - 56.00 \nAmazon - 0% - 2k - 50.00 \nPaypal - 0% - 1.6k - 25.00 \nFurniture - 0% - 1.5k - 50.00 \n\nTotal Min Payments - 3880.00 \nFixed Expenses - 1670.00 (Includes utilities, insurances, services, etc) \nHousehold Budget - 2300.00 \nRemainder - 1150.00 \n\nEdit: The Rest of It\n\nIf I'm being honest with myself, most months we are in the red. We spend way too much money on stuff we don't need. I just don't say no to anyone, myself, my wife, my kids. So yeah, the guy below who said I knew that this stock bonus was coming so I lived it up was right, that's exactly what I did. I flat out need to get my financial shit together but have never done it. My wife wants to move because the schools where we live are crappy, I mean, really crappy which is having an effect on our youngest son (he's in 5th grade). So, part of me was saving this 50k so we had a way to get out of this house and into another one but I know deep down that that's only going to make matter worse for us. More mortgage, more expenses. The Bank of the West loan is a camper that we bought this year, we've gone out half a dozen times since we bought it in September and we have loved every minute of it, we were big tent campers for years. Both of our cars are paid for but they are old, a 2003 and a 2005 so I know that's coming sooner than later as well. We have less than 40k in 401k and Retirement accounts, I'm way behind there too. I'm only contributing 2% at this time. It's all pretty bad and most of it is behavioral. I've never been debt free my entire adult life, I'm 47 years old.\n\nEdit 2: Objective Thinking\n\nFirst off I'd like to thank everyone for the responses. This has given me an opportunity to think about different approaches to what i'm facing. When I moved all of these balances around a year or so ago I was drowning in payments. We refinanced our house and saved about $700 a month (we had 2 mortgages) and then opened additional credit to take advantage of 0% offers. What I see now is that the piper is coming due. What I did was start looking at the balance transfer offers in the statements and determining what interest rate I was going to and when it was going to happen. What I found was eye opening. The "ticking timebomb" comment was the one that really made me think. ALL of the 0% credit cards are coming up in 2017. To the tune of $65,665.47 which is actually the lions share of my credit card debt. This is 15k more than I even have in the bank. So, here is my plan. Keep putting as much towards the debt as possible, before each 0% deal expires, take the money out of savings and pay it off, do NOT let it roll to the regular interest rate. Yes this means the 2 loans will stay where they are but all of the credit cards will be higher if/when they turn to regular rate. What do you guys think about that plan?\n" Self: "You need to pay off your debts with that money. Save maybe 10k but the rest needs to go to the highest interest debts.\n\nIf you kept the 50k, and lose your job, all your debts will still be where they're at now and you'll be no better off. Sure the 50k will hold you out for a few months and you can still pay the minimum, but your minimum payments are almost $4,000! And most of that is still towards interest! At least you can get rid of some of the interest and still have an amount to live off of, and won't be required to pay as much in minimum. Sure if you run out of money, you'd need to use a CC to pay things off and go into more debt, but it's better to get rid of 40k debt now which incurs interest for a year and gain 10k debt a year later. Sure not getting into more debt is ideal, but not paying off what you can now puts you in a worse situation.\n\nIf you pay off the 28k personal and the BOWL loan (I assume its around 10k) that's 38k of debt gone. This will reduce your minimum payment by $940 and the monthly interest accrued by ~$300.\n\nStop kidding yourself. You're in 124K debt not including your mortgage. You can't afford to move houses unless you're going to downgrade. Get it in your head that this debt needs to be your first priority because having debt with 9k monthly income is insane. I know of people personally who lived with a family of 6 off 20k a year. Sure they struggled and sure they lived in a cheaper and more dangerous area, but even if you raise the standard of living they could've gotten by with 50k. You need to understand how to live below or your means. You're not going to catch up on your 401k unless you kick this debt's ass.\n\nSoem more numbers for you to realize. If you don't pay off the 40k debt mention, over the course of the year, it'll gain over 5k in interest and the entire debt will be there. Additionally, if you lose your job, you'll still have the 3.8k minimum payments plus your minim required payments and + food to worry about. Now say after 3 months of losing your job, you find a new one. Great, but you still have 124k in debt, and maybe 20k left over from your efund. your net = -104k.\n\nNow, say you paid of 40k of that debt lose your job a year later, your minim payments are 2.8, of the 30k previously used, 11.4k was from minimum payments, so you really spent 18.6, and in this case with a lower minimum payment, you'll need to take on new debt of 17k, but now you'll -101k net worth. If you also add on the additional 5k that you didn't pay in interest, your net will be 97k."

User (badrelationswmoney): "Hi guys, been some time since I've posted. I received the last part of my stock from the sale of a company I worked for this past October. It netted me about 50k. It is sitting in a regular bank account (Capital One 360) getting 1%. I'm still looking at a mountain of debt that needs to be paid off but I'm scared to just use the 50k to pay it down because I don't have any other emergency money than that.\n\nWe have about $1000 snowball that we're throwing at the debt each month but it is slow going with 80k in debt (Credit Cards) 56k (Loans) , 235k (Mortgage)\n\nThoughts and/or advice? I can provide more info if needed.\n\nUpdate with More Info:\n\nCurrent Take Home Pay is about 9K per month. I still have the same job but there are concerns around stability. I am also currently paid over market and have looked at other jobs and could potentially have to take a 30-40k paycut if I had to change jobs.\n\nMortgage - 235k - 3.99% - 1700.00 \nPersonal Loan - 28k - 9.75% - 740.00 \nBank of the West Loan - 15.5k - 7.99% - 200.00 \nDiscover Card 1 - 14k - 0% - 280.00 \nBofA Visa 1 - 13k - 0% - 131.00 \nStudent Loan - 12.5k - 6.5% - 131.00 \nCiti Visa - 9k - 0% - 135.00 \nBofA Visa 2 - 8k - 4.25% - 110.00 \nDiscover 2 - 5.8k - 4.99% - 120.00 \nBofA Amex 1- 0% - 5.6k - 56.00 \nChase Visa - 0% - 5.3k - 53.00 \nBofA Amex 2 - 0% - 4.2k - 43.00 \nCiti - 0% - 3.7k - 56.00 \nAmazon - 0% - 2k - 50.00 \nPaypal - 0% - 1.6k - 25.00 \nFurniture - 0% - 1.5k - 50.00 \n\nTotal Min Payments - 3880.00 \nFixed Expenses - 1670.00 (Includes utilities, insurances, services, etc) \nHousehold Budget - 2300.00 \nRemainder - 1150.00 \n\nEdit: The Rest of It\n\nIf I'm being honest with myself, most months we are in the red. We spend way too much money on stuff we don't need. I just don't say no to anyone, myself, my wife, my kids. So yeah, the guy below who said I knew that this stock bonus was coming so I lived it up was right, that's exactly what I did. I flat out need to get my financial shit together but have never done it. My wife wants to move because the schools where we live are crappy, I mean, really crappy which is having an effect on our youngest son (he's in 5th grade). So, part of me was saving this 50k so we had a way to get out of this house and into another one but I know deep down that that's only going to make matter worse for us. More mortgage, more expenses. The Bank of the West loan is a camper that we bought this year, we've gone out half a dozen times since we bought it in September and we have loved every minute of it, we were big tent campers for years. Both of our cars are paid for but they are old, a 2003 and a 2005 so I know that's coming sooner than later as well. We have less than 40k in 401k and Retirement accounts, I'm way behind there too. I'm only contributing 2% at this time. It's all pretty bad and most of it is behavioral. I've never been debt free my entire adult life, I'm 47 years old.\n\nEdit 2: Objective Thinking\n\nFirst off I'd like to thank everyone for the responses. This has given me an opportunity to think about different approaches to what i'm facing. When I moved all of these balances around a year or so ago I was drowning in payments. We refinanced our house and saved about $700 a month (we had 2 mortgages) and then opened additional credit to take advantage of 0% offers. What I see now is that the piper is coming due. What I did was start looking at the balance transfer offers in the statements and determining what interest rate I was going to and when it was going to happen. What I found was eye opening. The "ticking timebomb" comment was the one that really made me think. ALL of the 0% credit cards are coming up in 2017. To the tune of $65,665.47 which is actually the lions share of my credit card debt. This is 15k more than I even have in the bank. So, here is my plan. Keep putting as much towards the debt as possible, before each 0% deal expires, take the money out of savings and pay it off, do NOT let it roll to the regular interest rate. Yes this means the 2 loans will stay where they are but all of the credit cards will be higher if/when they turn to regular rate. What do you guys think about that plan?\n" Self: "> I've never been debt free my entire adult life, I'm 47 years old.\n\nYou mention a debt snowball. Are you familiar with Dave Ramsey? His advice for getting out of debt (especially for someone in your situation - high earner, but even higher spender) is really good. If you're using Dave Ramsey and it's not working then I think you need to see a non-profit credit counsellor. Not to negotiate with creditors on your behalf, but to provide advice and moral support as you tackle this debt. You can start with your company's EAP for a referral." User (badrelationswmoney): "Thanks for the EAP advice, I called. My wife and are going to go see a counselor on the 12th." Self: "Glad to hear it! This is totally doable, but reading your responses here you seem kind of downhearted. Maybe look into a personal counsellor or therapist just for you in addition to the financial one with your wife."

User (badrelationswmoney): "Hi guys, been some time since I've posted. I received the last part of my stock from the sale of a company I worked for this past October. It netted me about 50k. It is sitting in a regular bank account (Capital One 360) getting 1%. I'm still looking at a mountain of debt that needs to be paid off but I'm scared to just use the 50k to pay it down because I don't have any other emergency money than that.\n\nWe have about $1000 snowball that we're throwing at the debt each month but it is slow going with 80k in debt (Credit Cards) 56k (Loans) , 235k (Mortgage)\n\nThoughts and/or advice? I can provide more info if needed.\n\nUpdate with More Info:\n\nCurrent Take Home Pay is about 9K per month. I still have the same job but there are concerns around stability. I am also currently paid over market and have looked at other jobs and could potentially have to take a 30-40k paycut if I had to change jobs.\n\nMortgage - 235k - 3.99% - 1700.00 \nPersonal Loan - 28k - 9.75% - 740.00 \nBank of the West Loan - 15.5k - 7.99% - 200.00 \nDiscover Card 1 - 14k - 0% - 280.00 \nBofA Visa 1 - 13k - 0% - 131.00 \nStudent Loan - 12.5k - 6.5% - 131.00 \nCiti Visa - 9k - 0% - 135.00 \nBofA Visa 2 - 8k - 4.25% - 110.00 \nDiscover 2 - 5.8k - 4.99% - 120.00 \nBofA Amex 1- 0% - 5.6k - 56.00 \nChase Visa - 0% - 5.3k - 53.00 \nBofA Amex 2 - 0% - 4.2k - 43.00 \nCiti - 0% - 3.7k - 56.00 \nAmazon - 0% - 2k - 50.00 \nPaypal - 0% - 1.6k - 25.00 \nFurniture - 0% - 1.5k - 50.00 \n\nTotal Min Payments - 3880.00 \nFixed Expenses - 1670.00 (Includes utilities, insurances, services, etc) \nHousehold Budget - 2300.00 \nRemainder - 1150.00 \n\nEdit: The Rest of It\n\nIf I'm being honest with myself, most months we are in the red. We spend way too much money on stuff we don't need. I just don't say no to anyone, myself, my wife, my kids. So yeah, the guy below who said I knew that this stock bonus was coming so I lived it up was right, that's exactly what I did. I flat out need to get my financial shit together but have never done it. My wife wants to move because the schools where we live are crappy, I mean, really crappy which is having an effect on our youngest son (he's in 5th grade). So, part of me was saving this 50k so we had a way to get out of this house and into another one but I know deep down that that's only going to make matter worse for us. More mortgage, more expenses. The Bank of the West loan is a camper that we bought this year, we've gone out half a dozen times since we bought it in September and we have loved every minute of it, we were big tent campers for years. Both of our cars are paid for but they are old, a 2003 and a 2005 so I know that's coming sooner than later as well. We have less than 40k in 401k and Retirement accounts, I'm way behind there too. I'm only contributing 2% at this time. It's all pretty bad and most of it is behavioral. I've never been debt free my entire adult life, I'm 47 years old.\n\nEdit 2: Objective Thinking\n\nFirst off I'd like to thank everyone for the responses. This has given me an opportunity to think about different approaches to what i'm facing. When I moved all of these balances around a year or so ago I was drowning in payments. We refinanced our house and saved about $700 a month (we had 2 mortgages) and then opened additional credit to take advantage of 0% offers. What I see now is that the piper is coming due. What I did was start looking at the balance transfer offers in the statements and determining what interest rate I was going to and when it was going to happen. What I found was eye opening. The "ticking timebomb" comment was the one that really made me think. ALL of the 0% credit cards are coming up in 2017. To the tune of $65,665.47 which is actually the lions share of my credit card debt. This is 15k more than I even have in the bank. So, here is my plan. Keep putting as much towards the debt as possible, before each 0% deal expires, take the money out of savings and pay it off, do NOT let it roll to the regular interest rate. Yes this means the 2 loans will stay where they are but all of the credit cards will be higher if/when they turn to regular rate. What do you guys think about that plan?\n" Self: "You're accruing interest, which is the same as throwing away money. Tally up 3 months' worth of expenses, that's all you need in an emergency account from the original $50K. \n\nTake the rest and throw it at as much debt as possible, giving payment preference to loans with higher interest. If you've only got one loan, all the better. \n\nIt's important that you understand that every moment you sit and do nothing is a moment where you have money flying out the window. \n\nIf you need further help with repayment, post in another thread with all your inflows, all your outflows, and all your assets and debts. " Singmethings (Singmethings): "With kids, I would probably want more like 6 months of emergency funds. It's a tough call with all that debt though. "

User (badrelationswmoney): "Hi guys, been some time since I've posted. I received the last part of my stock from the sale of a company I worked for this past October. It netted me about 50k. It is sitting in a regular bank account (Capital One 360) getting 1%. I'm still looking at a mountain of debt that needs to be paid off but I'm scared to just use the 50k to pay it down because I don't have any other emergency money than that.\n\nWe have about $1000 snowball that we're throwing at the debt each month but it is slow going with 80k in debt (Credit Cards) 56k (Loans) , 235k (Mortgage)\n\nThoughts and/or advice? I can provide more info if needed.\n\nUpdate with More Info:\n\nCurrent Take Home Pay is about 9K per month. I still have the same job but there are concerns around stability. I am also currently paid over market and have looked at other jobs and could potentially have to take a 30-40k paycut if I had to change jobs.\n\nMortgage - 235k - 3.99% - 1700.00 \nPersonal Loan - 28k - 9.75% - 740.00 \nBank of the West Loan - 15.5k - 7.99% - 200.00 \nDiscover Card 1 - 14k - 0% - 280.00 \nBofA Visa 1 - 13k - 0% - 131.00 \nStudent Loan - 12.5k - 6.5% - 131.00 \nCiti Visa - 9k - 0% - 135.00 \nBofA Visa 2 - 8k - 4.25% - 110.00 \nDiscover 2 - 5.8k - 4.99% - 120.00 \nBofA Amex 1- 0% - 5.6k - 56.00 \nChase Visa - 0% - 5.3k - 53.00 \nBofA Amex 2 - 0% - 4.2k - 43.00 \nCiti - 0% - 3.7k - 56.00 \nAmazon - 0% - 2k - 50.00 \nPaypal - 0% - 1.6k - 25.00 \nFurniture - 0% - 1.5k - 50.00 \n\nTotal Min Payments - 3880.00 \nFixed Expenses - 1670.00 (Includes utilities, insurances, services, etc) \nHousehold Budget - 2300.00 \nRemainder - 1150.00 \n\nEdit: The Rest of It\n\nIf I'm being honest with myself, most months we are in the red. We spend way too much money on stuff we don't need. I just don't say no to anyone, myself, my wife, my kids. So yeah, the guy below who said I knew that this stock bonus was coming so I lived it up was right, that's exactly what I did. I flat out need to get my financial shit together but have never done it. My wife wants to move because the schools where we live are crappy, I mean, really crappy which is having an effect on our youngest son (he's in 5th grade). So, part of me was saving this 50k so we had a way to get out of this house and into another one but I know deep down that that's only going to make matter worse for us. More mortgage, more expenses. The Bank of the West loan is a camper that we bought this year, we've gone out half a dozen times since we bought it in September and we have loved every minute of it, we were big tent campers for years. Both of our cars are paid for but they are old, a 2003 and a 2005 so I know that's coming sooner than later as well. We have less than 40k in 401k and Retirement accounts, I'm way behind there too. I'm only contributing 2% at this time. It's all pretty bad and most of it is behavioral. I've never been debt free my entire adult life, I'm 47 years old.\n\nEdit 2: Objective Thinking\n\nFirst off I'd like to thank everyone for the responses. This has given me an opportunity to think about different approaches to what i'm facing. When I moved all of these balances around a year or so ago I was drowning in payments. We refinanced our house and saved about $700 a month (we had 2 mortgages) and then opened additional credit to take advantage of 0% offers. What I see now is that the piper is coming due. What I did was start looking at the balance transfer offers in the statements and determining what interest rate I was going to and when it was going to happen. What I found was eye opening. The "ticking timebomb" comment was the one that really made me think. ALL of the 0% credit cards are coming up in 2017. To the tune of $65,665.47 which is actually the lions share of my credit card debt. This is 15k more than I even have in the bank. So, here is my plan. Keep putting as much towards the debt as possible, before each 0% deal expires, take the money out of savings and pay it off, do NOT let it roll to the regular interest rate. Yes this means the 2 loans will stay where they are but all of the credit cards will be higher if/when they turn to regular rate. What do you guys think about that plan?\n" Self: "If you were able to secure so much in personal loan money, you can always get another one if you desperately need to for living expenses. Meanwhile, you are paying your highest interest rates on those two loans. Pay off the 43.5k in personal loans as a start. Keep the rest of it as a month of living expense. That frees up about $1000/month. Use this to bump up your 401k contributions to at least be the maximum your employer matches. From there continue to pay down your highest interest cards (and close those cards so you don't fall back into the same mistakes) no one needs the 9-10 cards you have.\n\nCut back on your toys/expenses if you can, your kids might like toys now, but they are going to be a lot happier when you're in a position to help them with college in 10 years rather than buying them crap they don't need. "

User (badrelationswmoney): "Hi guys, been some time since I've posted. I received the last part of my stock from the sale of a company I worked for this past October. It netted me about 50k. It is sitting in a regular bank account (Capital One 360) getting 1%. I'm still looking at a mountain of debt that needs to be paid off but I'm scared to just use the 50k to pay it down because I don't have any other emergency money than that.\n\nWe have about $1000 snowball that we're throwing at the debt each month but it is slow going with 80k in debt (Credit Cards) 56k (Loans) , 235k (Mortgage)\n\nThoughts and/or advice? I can provide more info if needed.\n\nUpdate with More Info:\n\nCurrent Take Home Pay is about 9K per month. I still have the same job but there are concerns around stability. I am also currently paid over market and have looked at other jobs and could potentially have to take a 30-40k paycut if I had to change jobs.\n\nMortgage - 235k - 3.99% - 1700.00 \nPersonal Loan - 28k - 9.75% - 740.00 \nBank of the West Loan - 15.5k - 7.99% - 200.00 \nDiscover Card 1 - 14k - 0% - 280.00 \nBofA Visa 1 - 13k - 0% - 131.00 \nStudent Loan - 12.5k - 6.5% - 131.00 \nCiti Visa - 9k - 0% - 135.00 \nBofA Visa 2 - 8k - 4.25% - 110.00 \nDiscover 2 - 5.8k - 4.99% - 120.00 \nBofA Amex 1- 0% - 5.6k - 56.00 \nChase Visa - 0% - 5.3k - 53.00 \nBofA Amex 2 - 0% - 4.2k - 43.00 \nCiti - 0% - 3.7k - 56.00 \nAmazon - 0% - 2k - 50.00 \nPaypal - 0% - 1.6k - 25.00 \nFurniture - 0% - 1.5k - 50.00 \n\nTotal Min Payments - 3880.00 \nFixed Expenses - 1670.00 (Includes utilities, insurances, services, etc) \nHousehold Budget - 2300.00 \nRemainder - 1150.00 \n\nEdit: The Rest of It\n\nIf I'm being honest with myself, most months we are in the red. We spend way too much money on stuff we don't need. I just don't say no to anyone, myself, my wife, my kids. So yeah, the guy below who said I knew that this stock bonus was coming so I lived it up was right, that's exactly what I did. I flat out need to get my financial shit together but have never done it. My wife wants to move because the schools where we live are crappy, I mean, really crappy which is having an effect on our youngest son (he's in 5th grade). So, part of me was saving this 50k so we had a way to get out of this house and into another one but I know deep down that that's only going to make matter worse for us. More mortgage, more expenses. The Bank of the West loan is a camper that we bought this year, we've gone out half a dozen times since we bought it in September and we have loved every minute of it, we were big tent campers for years. Both of our cars are paid for but they are old, a 2003 and a 2005 so I know that's coming sooner than later as well. We have less than 40k in 401k and Retirement accounts, I'm way behind there too. I'm only contributing 2% at this time. It's all pretty bad and most of it is behavioral. I've never been debt free my entire adult life, I'm 47 years old.\n\nEdit 2: Objective Thinking\n\nFirst off I'd like to thank everyone for the responses. This has given me an opportunity to think about different approaches to what i'm facing. When I moved all of these balances around a year or so ago I was drowning in payments. We refinanced our house and saved about $700 a month (we had 2 mortgages) and then opened additional credit to take advantage of 0% offers. What I see now is that the piper is coming due. What I did was start looking at the balance transfer offers in the statements and determining what interest rate I was going to and when it was going to happen. What I found was eye opening. The "ticking timebomb" comment was the one that really made me think. ALL of the 0% credit cards are coming up in 2017. To the tune of $65,665.47 which is actually the lions share of my credit card debt. This is 15k more than I even have in the bank. So, here is my plan. Keep putting as much towards the debt as possible, before each 0% deal expires, take the money out of savings and pay it off, do NOT let it roll to the regular interest rate. Yes this means the 2 loans will stay where they are but all of the credit cards will be higher if/when they turn to regular rate. What do you guys think about that plan?\n" Self: "Good advice here. Glad to hear you are going to get some outside advice. Keep your chin up. This is workable. "

User (badrelationswmoney): "Hi guys, been some time since I've posted. I received the last part of my stock from the sale of a company I worked for this past October. It netted me about 50k. It is sitting in a regular bank account (Capital One 360) getting 1%. I'm still looking at a mountain of debt that needs to be paid off but I'm scared to just use the 50k to pay it down because I don't have any other emergency money than that.\n\nWe have about $1000 snowball that we're throwing at the debt each month but it is slow going with 80k in debt (Credit Cards) 56k (Loans) , 235k (Mortgage)\n\nThoughts and/or advice? I can provide more info if needed.\n\nUpdate with More Info:\n\nCurrent Take Home Pay is about 9K per month. I still have the same job but there are concerns around stability. I am also currently paid over market and have looked at other jobs and could potentially have to take a 30-40k paycut if I had to change jobs.\n\nMortgage - 235k - 3.99% - 1700.00 \nPersonal Loan - 28k - 9.75% - 740.00 \nBank of the West Loan - 15.5k - 7.99% - 200.00 \nDiscover Card 1 - 14k - 0% - 280.00 \nBofA Visa 1 - 13k - 0% - 131.00 \nStudent Loan - 12.5k - 6.5% - 131.00 \nCiti Visa - 9k - 0% - 135.00 \nBofA Visa 2 - 8k - 4.25% - 110.00 \nDiscover 2 - 5.8k - 4.99% - 120.00 \nBofA Amex 1- 0% - 5.6k - 56.00 \nChase Visa - 0% - 5.3k - 53.00 \nBofA Amex 2 - 0% - 4.2k - 43.00 \nCiti - 0% - 3.7k - 56.00 \nAmazon - 0% - 2k - 50.00 \nPaypal - 0% - 1.6k - 25.00 \nFurniture - 0% - 1.5k - 50.00 \n\nTotal Min Payments - 3880.00 \nFixed Expenses - 1670.00 (Includes utilities, insurances, services, etc) \nHousehold Budget - 2300.00 \nRemainder - 1150.00 \n\nEdit: The Rest of It\n\nIf I'm being honest with myself, most months we are in the red. We spend way too much money on stuff we don't need. I just don't say no to anyone, myself, my wife, my kids. So yeah, the guy below who said I knew that this stock bonus was coming so I lived it up was right, that's exactly what I did. I flat out need to get my financial shit together but have never done it. My wife wants to move because the schools where we live are crappy, I mean, really crappy which is having an effect on our youngest son (he's in 5th grade). So, part of me was saving this 50k so we had a way to get out of this house and into another one but I know deep down that that's only going to make matter worse for us. More mortgage, more expenses. The Bank of the West loan is a camper that we bought this year, we've gone out half a dozen times since we bought it in September and we have loved every minute of it, we were big tent campers for years. Both of our cars are paid for but they are old, a 2003 and a 2005 so I know that's coming sooner than later as well. We have less than 40k in 401k and Retirement accounts, I'm way behind there too. I'm only contributing 2% at this time. It's all pretty bad and most of it is behavioral. I've never been debt free my entire adult life, I'm 47 years old.\n\nEdit 2: Objective Thinking\n\nFirst off I'd like to thank everyone for the responses. This has given me an opportunity to think about different approaches to what i'm facing. When I moved all of these balances around a year or so ago I was drowning in payments. We refinanced our house and saved about $700 a month (we had 2 mortgages) and then opened additional credit to take advantage of 0% offers. What I see now is that the piper is coming due. What I did was start looking at the balance transfer offers in the statements and determining what interest rate I was going to and when it was going to happen. What I found was eye opening. The "ticking timebomb" comment was the one that really made me think. ALL of the 0% credit cards are coming up in 2017. To the tune of $65,665.47 which is actually the lions share of my credit card debt. This is 15k more than I even have in the bank. So, here is my plan. Keep putting as much towards the debt as possible, before each 0% deal expires, take the money out of savings and pay it off, do NOT let it roll to the regular interest rate. Yes this means the 2 loans will stay where they are but all of the credit cards will be higher if/when they turn to regular rate. What do you guys think about that plan?\n" Self: "Just wanted to say keep your head up, you're in a good place - acknowledging there is an issue and being willing to work yourself out of it. Better than that, you are currently able to dig yourself out of it!\n\nI can't offer better financial advice than the individuals here (tighten the budget and pay off that high interest loan, but make sure your emergency fund will sustain you using the tightened budget), but you're on the right track! The hardest part is often behavioral, but once you get on the up and up those positive behavioral traits will only reinforce themselves.\n\nBest of luck, I look forward to your success story :)"

User (badrelationswmoney): "Hi guys, been some time since I've posted. I received the last part of my stock from the sale of a company I worked for this past October. It netted me about 50k. It is sitting in a regular bank account (Capital One 360) getting 1%. I'm still looking at a mountain of debt that needs to be paid off but I'm scared to just use the 50k to pay it down because I don't have any other emergency money than that.\n\nWe have about $1000 snowball that we're throwing at the debt each month but it is slow going with 80k in debt (Credit Cards) 56k (Loans) , 235k (Mortgage)\n\nThoughts and/or advice? I can provide more info if needed.\n\nUpdate with More Info:\n\nCurrent Take Home Pay is about 9K per month. I still have the same job but there are concerns around stability. I am also currently paid over market and have looked at other jobs and could potentially have to take a 30-40k paycut if I had to change jobs.\n\nMortgage - 235k - 3.99% - 1700.00 \nPersonal Loan - 28k - 9.75% - 740.00 \nBank of the West Loan - 15.5k - 7.99% - 200.00 \nDiscover Card 1 - 14k - 0% - 280.00 \nBofA Visa 1 - 13k - 0% - 131.00 \nStudent Loan - 12.5k - 6.5% - 131.00 \nCiti Visa - 9k - 0% - 135.00 \nBofA Visa 2 - 8k - 4.25% - 110.00 \nDiscover 2 - 5.8k - 4.99% - 120.00 \nBofA Amex 1- 0% - 5.6k - 56.00 \nChase Visa - 0% - 5.3k - 53.00 \nBofA Amex 2 - 0% - 4.2k - 43.00 \nCiti - 0% - 3.7k - 56.00 \nAmazon - 0% - 2k - 50.00 \nPaypal - 0% - 1.6k - 25.00 \nFurniture - 0% - 1.5k - 50.00 \n\nTotal Min Payments - 3880.00 \nFixed Expenses - 1670.00 (Includes utilities, insurances, services, etc) \nHousehold Budget - 2300.00 \nRemainder - 1150.00 \n\nEdit: The Rest of It\n\nIf I'm being honest with myself, most months we are in the red. We spend way too much money on stuff we don't need. I just don't say no to anyone, myself, my wife, my kids. So yeah, the guy below who said I knew that this stock bonus was coming so I lived it up was right, that's exactly what I did. I flat out need to get my financial shit together but have never done it. My wife wants to move because the schools where we live are crappy, I mean, really crappy which is having an effect on our youngest son (he's in 5th grade). So, part of me was saving this 50k so we had a way to get out of this house and into another one but I know deep down that that's only going to make matter worse for us. More mortgage, more expenses. The Bank of the West loan is a camper that we bought this year, we've gone out half a dozen times since we bought it in September and we have loved every minute of it, we were big tent campers for years. Both of our cars are paid for but they are old, a 2003 and a 2005 so I know that's coming sooner than later as well. We have less than 40k in 401k and Retirement accounts, I'm way behind there too. I'm only contributing 2% at this time. It's all pretty bad and most of it is behavioral. I've never been debt free my entire adult life, I'm 47 years old.\n\nEdit 2: Objective Thinking\n\nFirst off I'd like to thank everyone for the responses. This has given me an opportunity to think about different approaches to what i'm facing. When I moved all of these balances around a year or so ago I was drowning in payments. We refinanced our house and saved about $700 a month (we had 2 mortgages) and then opened additional credit to take advantage of 0% offers. What I see now is that the piper is coming due. What I did was start looking at the balance transfer offers in the statements and determining what interest rate I was going to and when it was going to happen. What I found was eye opening. The "ticking timebomb" comment was the one that really made me think. ALL of the 0% credit cards are coming up in 2017. To the tune of $65,665.47 which is actually the lions share of my credit card debt. This is 15k more than I even have in the bank. So, here is my plan. Keep putting as much towards the debt as possible, before each 0% deal expires, take the money out of savings and pay it off, do NOT let it roll to the regular interest rate. Yes this means the 2 loans will stay where they are but all of the credit cards will be higher if/when they turn to regular rate. What do you guys think about that plan?\n" Self: "Wouldn't it make sense to take the money in the bank and pay off the 28k loan at 9.75%? Thats the highest interest loan you have and would free up $740 per month of additional cash flow to work on the rest. It still leaves you with a $22 grand safety net as well. " User (badrelationswmoney): "That was my plan A, but that's going to only leave me about 3 months worth of expenses and that is if I tighten the belt which I could do. I guess I get a certain comfort level knowing the 50k is in there but I just need to pay it off." nyc_a (nyc_a): "Change your mindset. By paying the personal loan you are saving 700USD per month that you could save. \n\nNow, imagine the worst case, you are in emergency, you ask for another loan, since you paid it, it could be easy to get another again. \n\nBut that is a worst case, in the secure case you are losing 700 USD per month just by wanting to feel better with 50K in the bank."

User (badrelationswmoney): "Hi guys, been some time since I've posted. I received the last part of my stock from the sale of a company I worked for this past October. It netted me about 50k. It is sitting in a regular bank account (Capital One 360) getting 1%. I'm still looking at a mountain of debt that needs to be paid off but I'm scared to just use the 50k to pay it down because I don't have any other emergency money than that.\n\nWe have about $1000 snowball that we're throwing at the debt each month but it is slow going with 80k in debt (Credit Cards) 56k (Loans) , 235k (Mortgage)\n\nThoughts and/or advice? I can provide more info if needed.\n\nUpdate with More Info:\n\nCurrent Take Home Pay is about 9K per month. I still have the same job but there are concerns around stability. I am also currently paid over market and have looked at other jobs and could potentially have to take a 30-40k paycut if I had to change jobs.\n\nMortgage - 235k - 3.99% - 1700.00 \nPersonal Loan - 28k - 9.75% - 740.00 \nBank of the West Loan - 15.5k - 7.99% - 200.00 \nDiscover Card 1 - 14k - 0% - 280.00 \nBofA Visa 1 - 13k - 0% - 131.00 \nStudent Loan - 12.5k - 6.5% - 131.00 \nCiti Visa - 9k - 0% - 135.00 \nBofA Visa 2 - 8k - 4.25% - 110.00 \nDiscover 2 - 5.8k - 4.99% - 120.00 \nBofA Amex 1- 0% - 5.6k - 56.00 \nChase Visa - 0% - 5.3k - 53.00 \nBofA Amex 2 - 0% - 4.2k - 43.00 \nCiti - 0% - 3.7k - 56.00 \nAmazon - 0% - 2k - 50.00 \nPaypal - 0% - 1.6k - 25.00 \nFurniture - 0% - 1.5k - 50.00 \n\nTotal Min Payments - 3880.00 \nFixed Expenses - 1670.00 (Includes utilities, insurances, services, etc) \nHousehold Budget - 2300.00 \nRemainder - 1150.00 \n\nEdit: The Rest of It\n\nIf I'm being honest with myself, most months we are in the red. We spend way too much money on stuff we don't need. I just don't say no to anyone, myself, my wife, my kids. So yeah, the guy below who said I knew that this stock bonus was coming so I lived it up was right, that's exactly what I did. I flat out need to get my financial shit together but have never done it. My wife wants to move because the schools where we live are crappy, I mean, really crappy which is having an effect on our youngest son (he's in 5th grade). So, part of me was saving this 50k so we had a way to get out of this house and into another one but I know deep down that that's only going to make matter worse for us. More mortgage, more expenses. The Bank of the West loan is a camper that we bought this year, we've gone out half a dozen times since we bought it in September and we have loved every minute of it, we were big tent campers for years. Both of our cars are paid for but they are old, a 2003 and a 2005 so I know that's coming sooner than later as well. We have less than 40k in 401k and Retirement accounts, I'm way behind there too. I'm only contributing 2% at this time. It's all pretty bad and most of it is behavioral. I've never been debt free my entire adult life, I'm 47 years old.\n\nEdit 2: Objective Thinking\n\nFirst off I'd like to thank everyone for the responses. This has given me an opportunity to think about different approaches to what i'm facing. When I moved all of these balances around a year or so ago I was drowning in payments. We refinanced our house and saved about $700 a month (we had 2 mortgages) and then opened additional credit to take advantage of 0% offers. What I see now is that the piper is coming due. What I did was start looking at the balance transfer offers in the statements and determining what interest rate I was going to and when it was going to happen. What I found was eye opening. The "ticking timebomb" comment was the one that really made me think. ALL of the 0% credit cards are coming up in 2017. To the tune of $65,665.47 which is actually the lions share of my credit card debt. This is 15k more than I even have in the bank. So, here is my plan. Keep putting as much towards the debt as possible, before each 0% deal expires, take the money out of savings and pay it off, do NOT let it roll to the regular interest rate. Yes this means the 2 loans will stay where they are but all of the credit cards will be higher if/when they turn to regular rate. What do you guys think about that plan?\n" Self: "Wouldn't it make sense to take the money in the bank and pay off the 28k loan at 9.75%? Thats the highest interest loan you have and would free up $740 per month of additional cash flow to work on the rest. It still leaves you with a $22 grand safety net as well. " User (badrelationswmoney): "That was my plan A, but that's going to only leave me about 3 months worth of expenses and that is if I tighten the belt which I could do. I guess I get a certain comfort level knowing the 50k is in there but I just need to pay it off." mrchaotica (mrchaotica): "FYI: [**YOUR DEBT IS AN EMERGENCY**](http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/04/18/news-flash-your-debt-is-an-emergency/). Not only should you immediately pay off the 9.75% loan, you need to drastically cut your budget. $22k/3 = $7.3K is a **huge** expense, especially when it's over 80% of income (and when you're so far in the hole). There is really no good excuse for your budget to be more than, say *half that* ($3.5k/month) in your situation -- and even that's assuming you live in a HCOL area or something." bdlugz (bdlugz): "3.5k is not realistic for a lot of people, especially with kids. I spend about what he does (8k a month) in expenses, but I have student loans for private med school ($1,100/mo), 2 kids in daycare ($1,740/mo) a mortgage ($2,100/mo) right off the bat, so there's $5,000 without spending a dollar on anything else." powblamo (powblamo): "Exactly, my rent for a cheap 2 bedroom is 3k a month. And don't even ask about daycare prices over here. "

User (badrelationswmoney): "Hi guys, been some time since I've posted. I received the last part of my stock from the sale of a company I worked for this past October. It netted me about 50k. It is sitting in a regular bank account (Capital One 360) getting 1%. I'm still looking at a mountain of debt that needs to be paid off but I'm scared to just use the 50k to pay it down because I don't have any other emergency money than that.\n\nWe have about $1000 snowball that we're throwing at the debt each month but it is slow going with 80k in debt (Credit Cards) 56k (Loans) , 235k (Mortgage)\n\nThoughts and/or advice? I can provide more info if needed.\n\nUpdate with More Info:\n\nCurrent Take Home Pay is about 9K per month. I still have the same job but there are concerns around stability. I am also currently paid over market and have looked at other jobs and could potentially have to take a 30-40k paycut if I had to change jobs.\n\nMortgage - 235k - 3.99% - 1700.00 \nPersonal Loan - 28k - 9.75% - 740.00 \nBank of the West Loan - 15.5k - 7.99% - 200.00 \nDiscover Card 1 - 14k - 0% - 280.00 \nBofA Visa 1 - 13k - 0% - 131.00 \nStudent Loan - 12.5k - 6.5% - 131.00 \nCiti Visa - 9k - 0% - 135.00 \nBofA Visa 2 - 8k - 4.25% - 110.00 \nDiscover 2 - 5.8k - 4.99% - 120.00 \nBofA Amex 1- 0% - 5.6k - 56.00 \nChase Visa - 0% - 5.3k - 53.00 \nBofA Amex 2 - 0% - 4.2k - 43.00 \nCiti - 0% - 3.7k - 56.00 \nAmazon - 0% - 2k - 50.00 \nPaypal - 0% - 1.6k - 25.00 \nFurniture - 0% - 1.5k - 50.00 \n\nTotal Min Payments - 3880.00 \nFixed Expenses - 1670.00 (Includes utilities, insurances, services, etc) \nHousehold Budget - 2300.00 \nRemainder - 1150.00 \n\nEdit: The Rest of It\n\nIf I'm being honest with myself, most months we are in the red. We spend way too much money on stuff we don't need. I just don't say no to anyone, myself, my wife, my kids. So yeah, the guy below who said I knew that this stock bonus was coming so I lived it up was right, that's exactly what I did. I flat out need to get my financial shit together but have never done it. My wife wants to move because the schools where we live are crappy, I mean, really crappy which is having an effect on our youngest son (he's in 5th grade). So, part of me was saving this 50k so we had a way to get out of this house and into another one but I know deep down that that's only going to make matter worse for us. More mortgage, more expenses. The Bank of the West loan is a camper that we bought this year, we've gone out half a dozen times since we bought it in September and we have loved every minute of it, we were big tent campers for years. Both of our cars are paid for but they are old, a 2003 and a 2005 so I know that's coming sooner than later as well. We have less than 40k in 401k and Retirement accounts, I'm way behind there too. I'm only contributing 2% at this time. It's all pretty bad and most of it is behavioral. I've never been debt free my entire adult life, I'm 47 years old.\n\nEdit 2: Objective Thinking\n\nFirst off I'd like to thank everyone for the responses. This has given me an opportunity to think about different approaches to what i'm facing. When I moved all of these balances around a year or so ago I was drowning in payments. We refinanced our house and saved about $700 a month (we had 2 mortgages) and then opened additional credit to take advantage of 0% offers. What I see now is that the piper is coming due. What I did was start looking at the balance transfer offers in the statements and determining what interest rate I was going to and when it was going to happen. What I found was eye opening. The "ticking timebomb" comment was the one that really made me think. ALL of the 0% credit cards are coming up in 2017. To the tune of $65,665.47 which is actually the lions share of my credit card debt. This is 15k more than I even have in the bank. So, here is my plan. Keep putting as much towards the debt as possible, before each 0% deal expires, take the money out of savings and pay it off, do NOT let it roll to the regular interest rate. Yes this means the 2 loans will stay where they are but all of the credit cards will be higher if/when they turn to regular rate. What do you guys think about that plan?\n" Self: "Wouldn't it make sense to take the money in the bank and pay off the 28k loan at 9.75%? Thats the highest interest loan you have and would free up $740 per month of additional cash flow to work on the rest. It still leaves you with a $22 grand safety net as well. " User (badrelationswmoney): "That was my plan A, but that's going to only leave me about 3 months worth of expenses and that is if I tighten the belt which I could do. I guess I get a certain comfort level knowing the 50k is in there but I just need to pay it off." mrchaotica (mrchaotica): "FYI: [**YOUR DEBT IS AN EMERGENCY**](http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/04/18/news-flash-your-debt-is-an-emergency/). Not only should you immediately pay off the 9.75% loan, you need to drastically cut your budget. $22k/3 = $7.3K is a **huge** expense, especially when it's over 80% of income (and when you're so far in the hole). There is really no good excuse for your budget to be more than, say *half that* ($3.5k/month) in your situation -- and even that's assuming you live in a HCOL area or something." BlackDeath3 (BlackDeath3): "MMM has some good advice once you sift through the condescending bullshit, but I've never been able to get behind the "YOUR DEBT IS AN EMERGENCY!!!" thing. It just sounds like something that somebody who's never actually experienced an emergency would say. The sentiment is great, the indebted should certainly fully understand the gravity of the situation that they're in, but that language just sounds like an unnecessary embellishment."

User (badrelationswmoney): "Hi guys, been some time since I've posted. I received the last part of my stock from the sale of a company I worked for this past October. It netted me about 50k. It is sitting in a regular bank account (Capital One 360) getting 1%. I'm still looking at a mountain of debt that needs to be paid off but I'm scared to just use the 50k to pay it down because I don't have any other emergency money than that.\n\nWe have about $1000 snowball that we're throwing at the debt each month but it is slow going with 80k in debt (Credit Cards) 56k (Loans) , 235k (Mortgage)\n\nThoughts and/or advice? I can provide more info if needed.\n\nUpdate with More Info:\n\nCurrent Take Home Pay is about 9K per month. I still have the same job but there are concerns around stability. I am also currently paid over market and have looked at other jobs and could potentially have to take a 30-40k paycut if I had to change jobs.\n\nMortgage - 235k - 3.99% - 1700.00 \nPersonal Loan - 28k - 9.75% - 740.00 \nBank of the West Loan - 15.5k - 7.99% - 200.00 \nDiscover Card 1 - 14k - 0% - 280.00 \nBofA Visa 1 - 13k - 0% - 131.00 \nStudent Loan - 12.5k - 6.5% - 131.00 \nCiti Visa - 9k - 0% - 135.00 \nBofA Visa 2 - 8k - 4.25% - 110.00 \nDiscover 2 - 5.8k - 4.99% - 120.00 \nBofA Amex 1- 0% - 5.6k - 56.00 \nChase Visa - 0% - 5.3k - 53.00 \nBofA Amex 2 - 0% - 4.2k - 43.00 \nCiti - 0% - 3.7k - 56.00 \nAmazon - 0% - 2k - 50.00 \nPaypal - 0% - 1.6k - 25.00 \nFurniture - 0% - 1.5k - 50.00 \n\nTotal Min Payments - 3880.00 \nFixed Expenses - 1670.00 (Includes utilities, insurances, services, etc) \nHousehold Budget - 2300.00 \nRemainder - 1150.00 \n\nEdit: The Rest of It\n\nIf I'm being honest with myself, most months we are in the red. We spend way too much money on stuff we don't need. I just don't say no to anyone, myself, my wife, my kids. So yeah, the guy below who said I knew that this stock bonus was coming so I lived it up was right, that's exactly what I did. I flat out need to get my financial shit together but have never done it. My wife wants to move because the schools where we live are crappy, I mean, really crappy which is having an effect on our youngest son (he's in 5th grade). So, part of me was saving this 50k so we had a way to get out of this house and into another one but I know deep down that that's only going to make matter worse for us. More mortgage, more expenses. The Bank of the West loan is a camper that we bought this year, we've gone out half a dozen times since we bought it in September and we have loved every minute of it, we were big tent campers for years. Both of our cars are paid for but they are old, a 2003 and a 2005 so I know that's coming sooner than later as well. We have less than 40k in 401k and Retirement accounts, I'm way behind there too. I'm only contributing 2% at this time. It's all pretty bad and most of it is behavioral. I've never been debt free my entire adult life, I'm 47 years old.\n\nEdit 2: Objective Thinking\n\nFirst off I'd like to thank everyone for the responses. This has given me an opportunity to think about different approaches to what i'm facing. When I moved all of these balances around a year or so ago I was drowning in payments. We refinanced our house and saved about $700 a month (we had 2 mortgages) and then opened additional credit to take advantage of 0% offers. What I see now is that the piper is coming due. What I did was start looking at the balance transfer offers in the statements and determining what interest rate I was going to and when it was going to happen. What I found was eye opening. The "ticking timebomb" comment was the one that really made me think. ALL of the 0% credit cards are coming up in 2017. To the tune of $65,665.47 which is actually the lions share of my credit card debt. This is 15k more than I even have in the bank. So, here is my plan. Keep putting as much towards the debt as possible, before each 0% deal expires, take the money out of savings and pay it off, do NOT let it roll to the regular interest rate. Yes this means the 2 loans will stay where they are but all of the credit cards will be higher if/when they turn to regular rate. What do you guys think about that plan?\n" Self: "Wouldn't it make sense to take the money in the bank and pay off the 28k loan at 9.75%? Thats the highest interest loan you have and would free up $740 per month of additional cash flow to work on the rest. It still leaves you with a $22 grand safety net as well. " User (badrelationswmoney): "That was my plan A, but that's going to only leave me about 3 months worth of expenses and that is if I tighten the belt which I could do. I guess I get a certain comfort level knowing the 50k is in there but I just need to pay it off." mrchaotica (mrchaotica): "FYI: [**YOUR DEBT IS AN EMERGENCY**](http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/04/18/news-flash-your-debt-is-an-emergency/). Not only should you immediately pay off the 9.75% loan, you need to drastically cut your budget. $22k/3 = $7.3K is a **huge** expense, especially when it's over 80% of income (and when you're so far in the hole). There is really no good excuse for your budget to be more than, say *half that* ($3.5k/month) in your situation -- and even that's assuming you live in a HCOL area or something." kjdtkd (kjdtkd): "To be fair, 3.5k would barely even cover his minimum debt payments at this point. If you cut out his minimum monthly payments for debt (excluding mortgage), his monthly expenses is somewhat closer to 5.5k. While this isnt great itself, its not as bad as 7.3k. Really its the fact that he's already massively in debt that he spends so much a month. " mrchaotica (mrchaotica): "You realize $5.5k/month in discretionary expenses is insane, right? A reasonable family budget excluding debt repayment and housing would be something like $1k (e.g. maybe $400 food/$200 utilities/$200 transportation/$200 other), and even that is being generous.\n\nBesides, we're talking about an *emergency fund budget* here, not even a normal one. It should be based on the bare minimum, because if you're spending your emergency fund then presumably it's an emergency." kjdtkd (kjdtkd): "Insane es, just slightly better than you were originally painting. Just trying to look on the bright side"

User (badrelationswmoney): "Hi guys, been some time since I've posted. I received the last part of my stock from the sale of a company I worked for this past October. It netted me about 50k. It is sitting in a regular bank account (Capital One 360) getting 1%. I'm still looking at a mountain of debt that needs to be paid off but I'm scared to just use the 50k to pay it down because I don't have any other emergency money than that.\n\nWe have about $1000 snowball that we're throwing at the debt each month but it is slow going with 80k in debt (Credit Cards) 56k (Loans) , 235k (Mortgage)\n\nThoughts and/or advice? I can provide more info if needed.\n\nUpdate with More Info:\n\nCurrent Take Home Pay is about 9K per month. I still have the same job but there are concerns around stability. I am also currently paid over market and have looked at other jobs and could potentially have to take a 30-40k paycut if I had to change jobs.\n\nMortgage - 235k - 3.99% - 1700.00 \nPersonal Loan - 28k - 9.75% - 740.00 \nBank of the West Loan - 15.5k - 7.99% - 200.00 \nDiscover Card 1 - 14k - 0% - 280.00 \nBofA Visa 1 - 13k - 0% - 131.00 \nStudent Loan - 12.5k - 6.5% - 131.00 \nCiti Visa - 9k - 0% - 135.00 \nBofA Visa 2 - 8k - 4.25% - 110.00 \nDiscover 2 - 5.8k - 4.99% - 120.00 \nBofA Amex 1- 0% - 5.6k - 56.00 \nChase Visa - 0% - 5.3k - 53.00 \nBofA Amex 2 - 0% - 4.2k - 43.00 \nCiti - 0% - 3.7k - 56.00 \nAmazon - 0% - 2k - 50.00 \nPaypal - 0% - 1.6k - 25.00 \nFurniture - 0% - 1.5k - 50.00 \n\nTotal Min Payments - 3880.00 \nFixed Expenses - 1670.00 (Includes utilities, insurances, services, etc) \nHousehold Budget - 2300.00 \nRemainder - 1150.00 \n\nEdit: The Rest of It\n\nIf I'm being honest with myself, most months we are in the red. We spend way too much money on stuff we don't need. I just don't say no to anyone, myself, my wife, my kids. So yeah, the guy below who said I knew that this stock bonus was coming so I lived it up was right, that's exactly what I did. I flat out need to get my financial shit together but have never done it. My wife wants to move because the schools where we live are crappy, I mean, really crappy which is having an effect on our youngest son (he's in 5th grade). So, part of me was saving this 50k so we had a way to get out of this house and into another one but I know deep down that that's only going to make matter worse for us. More mortgage, more expenses. The Bank of the West loan is a camper that we bought this year, we've gone out half a dozen times since we bought it in September and we have loved every minute of it, we were big tent campers for years. Both of our cars are paid for but they are old, a 2003 and a 2005 so I know that's coming sooner than later as well. We have less than 40k in 401k and Retirement accounts, I'm way behind there too. I'm only contributing 2% at this time. It's all pretty bad and most of it is behavioral. I've never been debt free my entire adult life, I'm 47 years old.\n\nEdit 2: Objective Thinking\n\nFirst off I'd like to thank everyone for the responses. This has given me an opportunity to think about different approaches to what i'm facing. When I moved all of these balances around a year or so ago I was drowning in payments. We refinanced our house and saved about $700 a month (we had 2 mortgages) and then opened additional credit to take advantage of 0% offers. What I see now is that the piper is coming due. What I did was start looking at the balance transfer offers in the statements and determining what interest rate I was going to and when it was going to happen. What I found was eye opening. The "ticking timebomb" comment was the one that really made me think. ALL of the 0% credit cards are coming up in 2017. To the tune of $65,665.47 which is actually the lions share of my credit card debt. This is 15k more than I even have in the bank. So, here is my plan. Keep putting as much towards the debt as possible, before each 0% deal expires, take the money out of savings and pay it off, do NOT let it roll to the regular interest rate. Yes this means the 2 loans will stay where they are but all of the credit cards will be higher if/when they turn to regular rate. What do you guys think about that plan?\n" Self: "Wouldn't it make sense to take the money in the bank and pay off the 28k loan at 9.75%? Thats the highest interest loan you have and would free up $740 per month of additional cash flow to work on the rest. It still leaves you with a $22 grand safety net as well. " User (badrelationswmoney): "That was my plan A, but that's going to only leave me about 3 months worth of expenses and that is if I tighten the belt which I could do. I guess I get a certain comfort level knowing the 50k is in there but I just need to pay it off." mrchaotica (mrchaotica): "FYI: [**YOUR DEBT IS AN EMERGENCY**](http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/04/18/news-flash-your-debt-is-an-emergency/). Not only should you immediately pay off the 9.75% loan, you need to drastically cut your budget. $22k/3 = $7.3K is a **huge** expense, especially when it's over 80% of income (and when you're so far in the hole). There is really no good excuse for your budget to be more than, say *half that* ($3.5k/month) in your situation -- and even that's assuming you live in a HCOL area or something." bdlugz (bdlugz): "3.5k is not realistic for a lot of people, especially with kids. I spend about what he does (8k a month) in expenses, but I have student loans for private med school ($1,100/mo), 2 kids in daycare ($1,740/mo) a mortgage ($2,100/mo) right off the bat, so there's $5,000 without spending a dollar on anything else." mrchaotica (mrchaotica): "The median US household income is $56,516, or $4709.67/month (gross). Assume a bare-minimum 20% going to taxes and/or savings and the amount left to budget with would be $3767.73, right in line with my $3.5k ballpark figure. That means 50% of Americans are, realistically, working with a budget of that much *or less*.\n\nIf you simply don't want to live that frugally, that's one thing (assuming you can afford it -- which anyone with as much debt as the OP has clearly can't). But if you think it's "unrealistic" then there's something wrong with your perspective." bdlugz (bdlugz): "So you understand that with your recommendation being about 7% below the median household income level, my comment that it isn't realistic for, "a lot of people" holds true, correct?\n\nThis is an individual we're working with, not a statistical average. Running in making recommendations based on the average of a couple hundred million people is pointless. I was simply pointing that out. "

User (badrelationswmoney): "Hi guys, been some time since I've posted. I received the last part of my stock from the sale of a company I worked for this past October. It netted me about 50k. It is sitting in a regular bank account (Capital One 360) getting 1%. I'm still looking at a mountain of debt that needs to be paid off but I'm scared to just use the 50k to pay it down because I don't have any other emergency money than that.\n\nWe have about $1000 snowball that we're throwing at the debt each month but it is slow going with 80k in debt (Credit Cards) 56k (Loans) , 235k (Mortgage)\n\nThoughts and/or advice? I can provide more info if needed.\n\nUpdate with More Info:\n\nCurrent Take Home Pay is about 9K per month. I still have the same job but there are concerns around stability. I am also currently paid over market and have looked at other jobs and could potentially have to take a 30-40k paycut if I had to change jobs.\n\nMortgage - 235k - 3.99% - 1700.00 \nPersonal Loan - 28k - 9.75% - 740.00 \nBank of the West Loan - 15.5k - 7.99% - 200.00 \nDiscover Card 1 - 14k - 0% - 280.00 \nBofA Visa 1 - 13k - 0% - 131.00 \nStudent Loan - 12.5k - 6.5% - 131.00 \nCiti Visa - 9k - 0% - 135.00 \nBofA Visa 2 - 8k - 4.25% - 110.00 \nDiscover 2 - 5.8k - 4.99% - 120.00 \nBofA Amex 1- 0% - 5.6k - 56.00 \nChase Visa - 0% - 5.3k - 53.00 \nBofA Amex 2 - 0% - 4.2k - 43.00 \nCiti - 0% - 3.7k - 56.00 \nAmazon - 0% - 2k - 50.00 \nPaypal - 0% - 1.6k - 25.00 \nFurniture - 0% - 1.5k - 50.00 \n\nTotal Min Payments - 3880.00 \nFixed Expenses - 1670.00 (Includes utilities, insurances, services, etc) \nHousehold Budget - 2300.00 \nRemainder - 1150.00 \n\nEdit: The Rest of It\n\nIf I'm being honest with myself, most months we are in the red. We spend way too much money on stuff we don't need. I just don't say no to anyone, myself, my wife, my kids. So yeah, the guy below who said I knew that this stock bonus was coming so I lived it up was right, that's exactly what I did. I flat out need to get my financial shit together but have never done it. My wife wants to move because the schools where we live are crappy, I mean, really crappy which is having an effect on our youngest son (he's in 5th grade). So, part of me was saving this 50k so we had a way to get out of this house and into another one but I know deep down that that's only going to make matter worse for us. More mortgage, more expenses. The Bank of the West loan is a camper that we bought this year, we've gone out half a dozen times since we bought it in September and we have loved every minute of it, we were big tent campers for years. Both of our cars are paid for but they are old, a 2003 and a 2005 so I know that's coming sooner than later as well. We have less than 40k in 401k and Retirement accounts, I'm way behind there too. I'm only contributing 2% at this time. It's all pretty bad and most of it is behavioral. I've never been debt free my entire adult life, I'm 47 years old.\n\nEdit 2: Objective Thinking\n\nFirst off I'd like to thank everyone for the responses. This has given me an opportunity to think about different approaches to what i'm facing. When I moved all of these balances around a year or so ago I was drowning in payments. We refinanced our house and saved about $700 a month (we had 2 mortgages) and then opened additional credit to take advantage of 0% offers. What I see now is that the piper is coming due. What I did was start looking at the balance transfer offers in the statements and determining what interest rate I was going to and when it was going to happen. What I found was eye opening. The "ticking timebomb" comment was the one that really made me think. ALL of the 0% credit cards are coming up in 2017. To the tune of $65,665.47 which is actually the lions share of my credit card debt. This is 15k more than I even have in the bank. So, here is my plan. Keep putting as much towards the debt as possible, before each 0% deal expires, take the money out of savings and pay it off, do NOT let it roll to the regular interest rate. Yes this means the 2 loans will stay where they are but all of the credit cards will be higher if/when they turn to regular rate. What do you guys think about that plan?\n" Self: "Hit the highest APR credit card first and you might just close them since you have a hell lot of cards!!\n\nThen look at credit cards which have a balance but are about to have an interest coming soon!!\n\n" User (badrelationswmoney): "This is true, a lot of the 0% stuff goes back to bad in 2017." epenthesis2 (epenthesis2): "This is far and away the best advice in the thread and hasn't gotten enough attention; please listen to it.\n\nYour 0% cards are a ticking time bomb--when the promo periods expire (and I would think that some of them are coming due, given how many you have), your minimum payments are going to skyrocket, and a huge chunk of the increase will be going to interest rather than principal payments. I doubt your new APRs are going to be as reasonable as your existing ones, either. You'll be beyond screwed.\n\nAfter eliminating the personal loan, rather than going for Bank of the West, pay off the card with the least time left on the promo period, and additional cards in that order until you have just a few thousand left (a modest e-fund). You'll still decrease your minimum payments by about a grand. Then direct the snowball toward the remaining 0% cards to reduce the eventual hit as much as possible, THEN BotW and the remaining creditors from highest rate to lowest.\n\nAnd this has been said already, but spending more than you earn is absolutely unacceptable in your circumstances. You can't afford to fall further behind, or you will never be able to put anything toward your retirement (only 20 years away). Start budgeting, tighten your belt, and try to squeeze some more money out for debt repayment. Credit gives an illusion to the contrary, but your resources are not unlimited. Recognize that fact and begin to live within the limits of your paycheck." User (badrelationswmoney): "I agree, the 1st one is coming up in February and I need to knock that out so the interest doesn't go crazy. I appreciate the reminder and will work this into the plan."

User (badrelationswmoney): "Hi guys, been some time since I've posted. I received the last part of my stock from the sale of a company I worked for this past October. It netted me about 50k. It is sitting in a regular bank account (Capital One 360) getting 1%. I'm still looking at a mountain of debt that needs to be paid off but I'm scared to just use the 50k to pay it down because I don't have any other emergency money than that.\n\nWe have about $1000 snowball that we're throwing at the debt each month but it is slow going with 80k in debt (Credit Cards) 56k (Loans) , 235k (Mortgage)\n\nThoughts and/or advice? I can provide more info if needed.\n\nUpdate with More Info:\n\nCurrent Take Home Pay is about 9K per month. I still have the same job but there are concerns around stability. I am also currently paid over market and have looked at other jobs and could potentially have to take a 30-40k paycut if I had to change jobs.\n\nMortgage - 235k - 3.99% - 1700.00 \nPersonal Loan - 28k - 9.75% - 740.00 \nBank of the West Loan - 15.5k - 7.99% - 200.00 \nDiscover Card 1 - 14k - 0% - 280.00 \nBofA Visa 1 - 13k - 0% - 131.00 \nStudent Loan - 12.5k - 6.5% - 131.00 \nCiti Visa - 9k - 0% - 135.00 \nBofA Visa 2 - 8k - 4.25% - 110.00 \nDiscover 2 - 5.8k - 4.99% - 120.00 \nBofA Amex 1- 0% - 5.6k - 56.00 \nChase Visa - 0% - 5.3k - 53.00 \nBofA Amex 2 - 0% - 4.2k - 43.00 \nCiti - 0% - 3.7k - 56.00 \nAmazon - 0% - 2k - 50.00 \nPaypal - 0% - 1.6k - 25.00 \nFurniture - 0% - 1.5k - 50.00 \n\nTotal Min Payments - 3880.00 \nFixed Expenses - 1670.00 (Includes utilities, insurances, services, etc) \nHousehold Budget - 2300.00 \nRemainder - 1150.00 \n\nEdit: The Rest of It\n\nIf I'm being honest with myself, most months we are in the red. We spend way too much money on stuff we don't need. I just don't say no to anyone, myself, my wife, my kids. So yeah, the guy below who said I knew that this stock bonus was coming so I lived it up was right, that's exactly what I did. I flat out need to get my financial shit together but have never done it. My wife wants to move because the schools where we live are crappy, I mean, really crappy which is having an effect on our youngest son (he's in 5th grade). So, part of me was saving this 50k so we had a way to get out of this house and into another one but I know deep down that that's only going to make matter worse for us. More mortgage, more expenses. The Bank of the West loan is a camper that we bought this year, we've gone out half a dozen times since we bought it in September and we have loved every minute of it, we were big tent campers for years. Both of our cars are paid for but they are old, a 2003 and a 2005 so I know that's coming sooner than later as well. We have less than 40k in 401k and Retirement accounts, I'm way behind there too. I'm only contributing 2% at this time. It's all pretty bad and most of it is behavioral. I've never been debt free my entire adult life, I'm 47 years old.\n\nEdit 2: Objective Thinking\n\nFirst off I'd like to thank everyone for the responses. This has given me an opportunity to think about different approaches to what i'm facing. When I moved all of these balances around a year or so ago I was drowning in payments. We refinanced our house and saved about $700 a month (we had 2 mortgages) and then opened additional credit to take advantage of 0% offers. What I see now is that the piper is coming due. What I did was start looking at the balance transfer offers in the statements and determining what interest rate I was going to and when it was going to happen. What I found was eye opening. The "ticking timebomb" comment was the one that really made me think. ALL of the 0% credit cards are coming up in 2017. To the tune of $65,665.47 which is actually the lions share of my credit card debt. This is 15k more than I even have in the bank. So, here is my plan. Keep putting as much towards the debt as possible, before each 0% deal expires, take the money out of savings and pay it off, do NOT let it roll to the regular interest rate. Yes this means the 2 loans will stay where they are but all of the credit cards will be higher if/when they turn to regular rate. What do you guys think about that plan?\n" Self: "I think the elephant in the room is communication. You're struggling to say no. You want to show you can provide but in return you're drowning. If your wife wants the kids to be in a better school she has to join in with a more sensible lifestyle. Communicate. It's both your money and both your debt and to improve it requires saying no to spending. If you have do much debt, you trash your equity you have in your property and it makes it hard or impossible to move. Clear high interest or high payment first. Make it easier to navigate month to month. Prioritising interest which is throwing money away. " User (badrelationswmoney): "We have our first counseling session next week. I hope that some of the issues can be discussed because bringing them up now just starts arguments."

User (badrelationswmoney): "Hi guys, been some time since I've posted. I received the last part of my stock from the sale of a company I worked for this past October. It netted me about 50k. It is sitting in a regular bank account (Capital One 360) getting 1%. I'm still looking at a mountain of debt that needs to be paid off but I'm scared to just use the 50k to pay it down because I don't have any other emergency money than that.\n\nWe have about $1000 snowball that we're throwing at the debt each month but it is slow going with 80k in debt (Credit Cards) 56k (Loans) , 235k (Mortgage)\n\nThoughts and/or advice? I can provide more info if needed.\n\nUpdate with More Info:\n\nCurrent Take Home Pay is about 9K per month. I still have the same job but there are concerns around stability. I am also currently paid over market and have looked at other jobs and could potentially have to take a 30-40k paycut if I had to change jobs.\n\nMortgage - 235k - 3.99% - 1700.00 \nPersonal Loan - 28k - 9.75% - 740.00 \nBank of the West Loan - 15.5k - 7.99% - 200.00 \nDiscover Card 1 - 14k - 0% - 280.00 \nBofA Visa 1 - 13k - 0% - 131.00 \nStudent Loan - 12.5k - 6.5% - 131.00 \nCiti Visa - 9k - 0% - 135.00 \nBofA Visa 2 - 8k - 4.25% - 110.00 \nDiscover 2 - 5.8k - 4.99% - 120.00 \nBofA Amex 1- 0% - 5.6k - 56.00 \nChase Visa - 0% - 5.3k - 53.00 \nBofA Amex 2 - 0% - 4.2k - 43.00 \nCiti - 0% - 3.7k - 56.00 \nAmazon - 0% - 2k - 50.00 \nPaypal - 0% - 1.6k - 25.00 \nFurniture - 0% - 1.5k - 50.00 \n\nTotal Min Payments - 3880.00 \nFixed Expenses - 1670.00 (Includes utilities, insurances, services, etc) \nHousehold Budget - 2300.00 \nRemainder - 1150.00 \n\nEdit: The Rest of It\n\nIf I'm being honest with myself, most months we are in the red. We spend way too much money on stuff we don't need. I just don't say no to anyone, myself, my wife, my kids. So yeah, the guy below who said I knew that this stock bonus was coming so I lived it up was right, that's exactly what I did. I flat out need to get my financial shit together but have never done it. My wife wants to move because the schools where we live are crappy, I mean, really crappy which is having an effect on our youngest son (he's in 5th grade). So, part of me was saving this 50k so we had a way to get out of this house and into another one but I know deep down that that's only going to make matter worse for us. More mortgage, more expenses. The Bank of the West loan is a camper that we bought this year, we've gone out half a dozen times since we bought it in September and we have loved every minute of it, we were big tent campers for years. Both of our cars are paid for but they are old, a 2003 and a 2005 so I know that's coming sooner than later as well. We have less than 40k in 401k and Retirement accounts, I'm way behind there too. I'm only contributing 2% at this time. It's all pretty bad and most of it is behavioral. I've never been debt free my entire adult life, I'm 47 years old.\n\nEdit 2: Objective Thinking\n\nFirst off I'd like to thank everyone for the responses. This has given me an opportunity to think about different approaches to what i'm facing. When I moved all of these balances around a year or so ago I was drowning in payments. We refinanced our house and saved about $700 a month (we had 2 mortgages) and then opened additional credit to take advantage of 0% offers. What I see now is that the piper is coming due. What I did was start looking at the balance transfer offers in the statements and determining what interest rate I was going to and when it was going to happen. What I found was eye opening. The "ticking timebomb" comment was the one that really made me think. ALL of the 0% credit cards are coming up in 2017. To the tune of $65,665.47 which is actually the lions share of my credit card debt. This is 15k more than I even have in the bank. So, here is my plan. Keep putting as much towards the debt as possible, before each 0% deal expires, take the money out of savings and pay it off, do NOT let it roll to the regular interest rate. Yes this means the 2 loans will stay where they are but all of the credit cards will be higher if/when they turn to regular rate. What do you guys think about that plan?\n" Self: "Pay off these two:\n\nPersonal Loan - 28k - 9.75% - 740.00\n\nBank of the West Loan - 15.5k - 7.99% - 200.00\n\n\nThen sort your financial shit out man. There is absolutely no excuse for you to be in the position you're in with that income. \n\nSaying no to your kid might seem mean, but look at what position saying yes all this time has got you in. You can't afford to move to an area with better schools because of your reckless spending.\n\nYou need to break down your budget and cut absolutely all the fat. You could probably clear most of this within a couple of years if you do this right. Sell any extra shit you own that has some resale value, set up a non-necesssity spending ban for 6 months and get your shit in order.\n\nGood luck, this is not an impossible hole to get out of, but you need to shift your priorities and put the head down and clear your debts for you and your family's sake." User (badrelationswmoney): "Priorities is the right word. Not spending is important. I know we have a lot of things that can be eliminated and I have to start doing that. Selling stuff is a good point also. Thank you."

User (badrelationswmoney): "Hi guys, been some time since I've posted. I received the last part of my stock from the sale of a company I worked for this past October. It netted me about 50k. It is sitting in a regular bank account (Capital One 360) getting 1%. I'm still looking at a mountain of debt that needs to be paid off but I'm scared to just use the 50k to pay it down because I don't have any other emergency money than that.\n\nWe have about $1000 snowball that we're throwing at the debt each month but it is slow going with 80k in debt (Credit Cards) 56k (Loans) , 235k (Mortgage)\n\nThoughts and/or advice? I can provide more info if needed.\n\nUpdate with More Info:\n\nCurrent Take Home Pay is about 9K per month. I still have the same job but there are concerns around stability. I am also currently paid over market and have looked at other jobs and could potentially have to take a 30-40k paycut if I had to change jobs.\n\nMortgage - 235k - 3.99% - 1700.00 \nPersonal Loan - 28k - 9.75% - 740.00 \nBank of the West Loan - 15.5k - 7.99% - 200.00 \nDiscover Card 1 - 14k - 0% - 280.00 \nBofA Visa 1 - 13k - 0% - 131.00 \nStudent Loan - 12.5k - 6.5% - 131.00 \nCiti Visa - 9k - 0% - 135.00 \nBofA Visa 2 - 8k - 4.25% - 110.00 \nDiscover 2 - 5.8k - 4.99% - 120.00 \nBofA Amex 1- 0% - 5.6k - 56.00 \nChase Visa - 0% - 5.3k - 53.00 \nBofA Amex 2 - 0% - 4.2k - 43.00 \nCiti - 0% - 3.7k - 56.00 \nAmazon - 0% - 2k - 50.00 \nPaypal - 0% - 1.6k - 25.00 \nFurniture - 0% - 1.5k - 50.00 \n\nTotal Min Payments - 3880.00 \nFixed Expenses - 1670.00 (Includes utilities, insurances, services, etc) \nHousehold Budget - 2300.00 \nRemainder - 1150.00 \n\nEdit: The Rest of It\n\nIf I'm being honest with myself, most months we are in the red. We spend way too much money on stuff we don't need. I just don't say no to anyone, myself, my wife, my kids. So yeah, the guy below who said I knew that this stock bonus was coming so I lived it up was right, that's exactly what I did. I flat out need to get my financial shit together but have never done it. My wife wants to move because the schools where we live are crappy, I mean, really crappy which is having an effect on our youngest son (he's in 5th grade). So, part of me was saving this 50k so we had a way to get out of this house and into another one but I know deep down that that's only going to make matter worse for us. More mortgage, more expenses. The Bank of the West loan is a camper that we bought this year, we've gone out half a dozen times since we bought it in September and we have loved every minute of it, we were big tent campers for years. Both of our cars are paid for but they are old, a 2003 and a 2005 so I know that's coming sooner than later as well. We have less than 40k in 401k and Retirement accounts, I'm way behind there too. I'm only contributing 2% at this time. It's all pretty bad and most of it is behavioral. I've never been debt free my entire adult life, I'm 47 years old.\n\nEdit 2: Objective Thinking\n\nFirst off I'd like to thank everyone for the responses. This has given me an opportunity to think about different approaches to what i'm facing. When I moved all of these balances around a year or so ago I was drowning in payments. We refinanced our house and saved about $700 a month (we had 2 mortgages) and then opened additional credit to take advantage of 0% offers. What I see now is that the piper is coming due. What I did was start looking at the balance transfer offers in the statements and determining what interest rate I was going to and when it was going to happen. What I found was eye opening. The "ticking timebomb" comment was the one that really made me think. ALL of the 0% credit cards are coming up in 2017. To the tune of $65,665.47 which is actually the lions share of my credit card debt. This is 15k more than I even have in the bank. So, here is my plan. Keep putting as much towards the debt as possible, before each 0% deal expires, take the money out of savings and pay it off, do NOT let it roll to the regular interest rate. Yes this means the 2 loans will stay where they are but all of the credit cards will be higher if/when they turn to regular rate. What do you guys think about that plan?\n" Self: "I read your story and just want to say: you are never too old to change. And for example: to change how you handle money. This goes for your wife as well. \n\nNow seems like an excellent time to start making some changes. The 50k helps, but it won't help much if you don't change your day to day money handling decisions." User (badrelationswmoney): "I appreciate the kind words. It is good to hear and yes, changing YEARS of habit is going to take work. We are starting to talk and that is a step in the right direction."

User (Mike_Gainer): "Recently I was booted from my parents insurance provider. They do not claim me as a dependent. I am a college aged male in good health living in Southern WI, but I need to find a good insurance policy that matches my income. \n\n\nFor the last 6 months I've been insured through the marketplace. The policy was great: no deductible, cheap primary and specialized visits. My premium was $205/month, I use a $100 tax credit to reduce it to $105/month. Just recently I've had to re-apply for insurance and the rates for my current policy have gone up about 60 dollars. So with my current plan I will paying around $140/month. \n\n\nI can afford this, but it really hurts how much I can regularly save. \nI can find a cheaper plan through marketplace I'm sure. \n\n\nSo what I'm looking for is advice on where I should go from here. Rumors are that Obamacare in the form that it is now wont last. If that's the case then should I just cancel insurance all together? What kind of penalty would that have? Should I try and find another insurance provider like State Farm? \n\nI hope someone can help me out and thank you for the information." Self: "You may find the [Health Insurance wiki page](https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/health_insurance) helpful.\n\n*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/personalfinance) if you have any questions or concerns.*"

User (Mike_Gainer): "Recently I was booted from my parents insurance provider. They do not claim me as a dependent. I am a college aged male in good health living in Southern WI, but I need to find a good insurance policy that matches my income. \n\n\nFor the last 6 months I've been insured through the marketplace. The policy was great: no deductible, cheap primary and specialized visits. My premium was $205/month, I use a $100 tax credit to reduce it to $105/month. Just recently I've had to re-apply for insurance and the rates for my current policy have gone up about 60 dollars. So with my current plan I will paying around $140/month. \n\n\nI can afford this, but it really hurts how much I can regularly save. \nI can find a cheaper plan through marketplace I'm sure. \n\n\nSo what I'm looking for is advice on where I should go from here. Rumors are that Obamacare in the form that it is now wont last. If that's the case then should I just cancel insurance all together? What kind of penalty would that have? Should I try and find another insurance provider like State Farm? \n\nI hope someone can help me out and thank you for the information." Self: "Why were you removed from the policy? They're supposed to cover you until age 26 unless your parents choose to remove you for whatever reason. " User (Mike_Gainer): "They are religious and have a policy that is unconventional. It's a monthly share called Samaritan Ministries. Since I do not attend church regularly I do not qualify. They were not willing to fib for me."

User (Mike_Gainer): "Recently I was booted from my parents insurance provider. They do not claim me as a dependent. I am a college aged male in good health living in Southern WI, but I need to find a good insurance policy that matches my income. \n\n\nFor the last 6 months I've been insured through the marketplace. The policy was great: no deductible, cheap primary and specialized visits. My premium was $205/month, I use a $100 tax credit to reduce it to $105/month. Just recently I've had to re-apply for insurance and the rates for my current policy have gone up about 60 dollars. So with my current plan I will paying around $140/month. \n\n\nI can afford this, but it really hurts how much I can regularly save. \nI can find a cheaper plan through marketplace I'm sure. \n\n\nSo what I'm looking for is advice on where I should go from here. Rumors are that Obamacare in the form that it is now wont last. If that's the case then should I just cancel insurance all together? What kind of penalty would that have? Should I try and find another insurance provider like State Farm? \n\nI hope someone can help me out and thank you for the information." Self: ">Rumors are that Obamacare in the form that it is now won't last. If that's the case then should I just cancel insurance all together?\n\nI would select ACA coverage during this open enrollment period. If things change, that will be time to make another decision. \n\nIf renewing your current plan is not appealing because of the premium change, look at the other plans you have access to, and see if any of them have better premiums and the right network of providers for you. \n\n>Should I try and find another insurance provider like State Farm?\n\nCan you get coverage you like better than the ACA plan with tax subsidy?\n"

User (sqwarlock): "So here's the deal, about 10 years ago I fucked up and started at a for-profit art school for a useless degree. Fast-forward to 32 year-old me today, and you'll see someone living in an expensive part of California with $1,000 student loan payments every month. \n\nI do not have any money to save after all other bills are paid. In fact, I'm in the red every month. I have no idea where to begin to get these loan payments down. Even if I can cut them down to $700 I'd be happy.\n\nWhere do I begin? Can I go to a bank and talk to someone in person about consolidation? Do I even WANT to consolidate? I know I can go with an income-based repayment plan, but at least half of my loans are private (yes, I know I fucked up here too. Please don't remind me of that) and those payments can't be lowered to anything other than interest-only.\n\nSo please, any help or guidance or suggestions would be helpful." Self: "You may find these links helpful:\n\n- [Student Loans wiki page](http://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/studentloans)\n- ["How to handle $"](http://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/commontopics)\n- [What's the best way to pay down my debt?](http://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/debt#wiki_what.27s_the_best_way_to_pay_down_my_debt.3F)\n\n*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/personalfinance) if you have any questions or concerns.*"

User (sqwarlock): "So here's the deal, about 10 years ago I fucked up and started at a for-profit art school for a useless degree. Fast-forward to 32 year-old me today, and you'll see someone living in an expensive part of California with $1,000 student loan payments every month. \n\nI do not have any money to save after all other bills are paid. In fact, I'm in the red every month. I have no idea where to begin to get these loan payments down. Even if I can cut them down to $700 I'd be happy.\n\nWhere do I begin? Can I go to a bank and talk to someone in person about consolidation? Do I even WANT to consolidate? I know I can go with an income-based repayment plan, but at least half of my loans are private (yes, I know I fucked up here too. Please don't remind me of that) and those payments can't be lowered to anything other than interest-only.\n\nSo please, any help or guidance or suggestions would be helpful." Self: "Can you relocate to another area of town? A cheaper area, or get roommates to cut costs. Cut costs everywhere else you can first. I know my goal is to get rid of my debt as soon as possible, so I wouldn't try to lower the payment.\n\nHow much do you have left on your loans?" User (sqwarlock): "I live with my girlfriend, so rent is already cut in half there. Cheaper areas don't really exist within a reasonable (<45min) commute. At least nothing drastically cheaper. Our lease is up in a few months though so we'll be trying our best to save some $$$$ on rent.\n\nFor current balance, see my response to Data."

User (sqwarlock): "So here's the deal, about 10 years ago I fucked up and started at a for-profit art school for a useless degree. Fast-forward to 32 year-old me today, and you'll see someone living in an expensive part of California with $1,000 student loan payments every month. \n\nI do not have any money to save after all other bills are paid. In fact, I'm in the red every month. I have no idea where to begin to get these loan payments down. Even if I can cut them down to $700 I'd be happy.\n\nWhere do I begin? Can I go to a bank and talk to someone in person about consolidation? Do I even WANT to consolidate? I know I can go with an income-based repayment plan, but at least half of my loans are private (yes, I know I fucked up here too. Please don't remind me of that) and those payments can't be lowered to anything other than interest-only.\n\nSo please, any help or guidance or suggestions would be helpful." Self: "What's your budget?\n\nMaybe you need to find a less expensive place to live in, instead of an apartment to yourself, sharing a house with multiple other people would help cut down your housing expense."

User (sqwarlock): "So here's the deal, about 10 years ago I fucked up and started at a for-profit art school for a useless degree. Fast-forward to 32 year-old me today, and you'll see someone living in an expensive part of California with $1,000 student loan payments every month. \n\nI do not have any money to save after all other bills are paid. In fact, I'm in the red every month. I have no idea where to begin to get these loan payments down. Even if I can cut them down to $700 I'd be happy.\n\nWhere do I begin? Can I go to a bank and talk to someone in person about consolidation? Do I even WANT to consolidate? I know I can go with an income-based repayment plan, but at least half of my loans are private (yes, I know I fucked up here too. Please don't remind me of that) and those payments can't be lowered to anything other than interest-only.\n\nSo please, any help or guidance or suggestions would be helpful." Self: "The quick advice is to increase your effective income and pay it down with extra money. Get paid more (raise, promotion, overtime, second job, uber, etc) and/or cut expenses (stop eating out, don't pay for netflix/spotify, cheaper rent, etc). Any extra money is put towards the loans (avalanche method is better in the longterm, but you may want to snowball a loan or two to help the monthly payments first).\n\n\nLong answer is to post a more accurate financial situation for a better answer. Monthly income and monthly expenses (rent/utilities/food/entertainment/min payments, etc) so we can give budget advice. List out each separate loan with the amount remaining and the % interest. Then people can give advice on the best way to cut it down."

User (Fmlca): "So i went out car shopping on black friday im 22 years old and i was able to get into a car for 21,000 they approved me that day and i drove off with it then a couple daus later i recieved a call from the dealer saying they need a co signer and i said ok went down there with my co signer and tried getting a better deal but they only dropped off 40 bucks off original monthly payment and i told i was unsatisfied and i dont eant the car no more then the dealer turned around to me and said well its rither you take this new deal were giving you or your old deal and that he cant take the car back because its used ... can someone please help me i dont know what to do. And oh my co signer never signed they refused too. Someone or anyone help. Please and thank you." Self: "you already signed a deal. if the dealer doesn't want to renegotiate they don't have to. sounds like you are going to have to stick to the original deal (without a co-signer). The dealer may turd around and allow you to return the car eventually (in a day or 2) if they can't find any bank to take the loan."

User (Fmlca): "So i went out car shopping on black friday im 22 years old and i was able to get into a car for 21,000 they approved me that day and i drove off with it then a couple daus later i recieved a call from the dealer saying they need a co signer and i said ok went down there with my co signer and tried getting a better deal but they only dropped off 40 bucks off original monthly payment and i told i was unsatisfied and i dont eant the car no more then the dealer turned around to me and said well its rither you take this new deal were giving you or your old deal and that he cant take the car back because its used ... can someone please help me i dont know what to do. And oh my co signer never signed they refused too. Someone or anyone help. Please and thank you." Self: "I hope you picked a reliable car with good resale. You might be stuck with it for a while. Next time buy a reasonably priced used car that meets your wants and needs. There's no need to really ever buy a new car especially for a young person not earning much."

User (Fmlca): "So i went out car shopping on black friday im 22 years old and i was able to get into a car for 21,000 they approved me that day and i drove off with it then a couple daus later i recieved a call from the dealer saying they need a co signer and i said ok went down there with my co signer and tried getting a better deal but they only dropped off 40 bucks off original monthly payment and i told i was unsatisfied and i dont eant the car no more then the dealer turned around to me and said well its rither you take this new deal were giving you or your old deal and that he cant take the car back because its used ... can someone please help me i dont know what to do. And oh my co signer never signed they refused too. Someone or anyone help. Please and thank you." Self: "If you didn't sign at all, then he can take the car back, and just doesn't want to. You made the mistake of jumping before you had everything in order.\n\nWhat car did you buy? How long did you finance the car? What's the interest rate? What would your interest rate be with the cosigner? Don't think in terms of monthly payment."

User (irvin_e1986): "So let's get to the point i have 4 credit cards i want to pay off in total i owe 5000 dollars. My paycheck every 2 weeks it's 1350 so 2700 a month. What i was thinking of doing January it's instead of paying monthly bills like i would usually do i was thinking of paying off each credit card or close to it a paycheck so in roughly 5 paycheck i would be done with credit cards payment but of course by doing so every other bill like utilities and cell phones would get behind but i would catch up after paying the credit cards. So what do you think? It's the risk worth the effort? I already tried applying for a personal loan from the bank but i didn't get due to bad credit. Any advice would be appreciate." Self: "I'm not sure it would be worth it with late fees and other charges you'd accrue for neglecting your other bills. The typical advice for your situation is to pay off the smallest card first, then add whatever you were paying on that one monthly to the next smallest, and so on until you're debt free. " dahimi (dahimi): "Highest rate first is generally the better option."

User (irvin_e1986): "So let's get to the point i have 4 credit cards i want to pay off in total i owe 5000 dollars. My paycheck every 2 weeks it's 1350 so 2700 a month. What i was thinking of doing January it's instead of paying monthly bills like i would usually do i was thinking of paying off each credit card or close to it a paycheck so in roughly 5 paycheck i would be done with credit cards payment but of course by doing so every other bill like utilities and cell phones would get behind but i would catch up after paying the credit cards. So what do you think? It's the risk worth the effort? I already tried applying for a personal loan from the bank but i didn't get due to bad credit. Any advice would be appreciate." Self: "I suggest you don't do this. It's possible you'll hurt your credit even more. \n\nDon't take shortcuts. Do it right. "

User (irvin_e1986): "So let's get to the point i have 4 credit cards i want to pay off in total i owe 5000 dollars. My paycheck every 2 weeks it's 1350 so 2700 a month. What i was thinking of doing January it's instead of paying monthly bills like i would usually do i was thinking of paying off each credit card or close to it a paycheck so in roughly 5 paycheck i would be done with credit cards payment but of course by doing so every other bill like utilities and cell phones would get behind but i would catch up after paying the credit cards. So what do you think? It's the risk worth the effort? I already tried applying for a personal loan from the bank but i didn't get due to bad credit. Any advice would be appreciate." Self: "> So what do you think?\n\nI think this is a pretty bad idea. \n\nFollow this flow chart:\nhttps://i.imgur.com/1rPEkGQ.png\n\n> Any advice would be appreciate.\n\nhttps://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/commontopics" User (irvin_e1986): "Thank You for The links. I need to put all my bills on paper and go from there. "

User (irvin_e1986): "So let's get to the point i have 4 credit cards i want to pay off in total i owe 5000 dollars. My paycheck every 2 weeks it's 1350 so 2700 a month. What i was thinking of doing January it's instead of paying monthly bills like i would usually do i was thinking of paying off each credit card or close to it a paycheck so in roughly 5 paycheck i would be done with credit cards payment but of course by doing so every other bill like utilities and cell phones would get behind but i would catch up after paying the credit cards. So what do you think? It's the risk worth the effort? I already tried applying for a personal loan from the bank but i didn't get due to bad credit. Any advice would be appreciate." Self: "I'm not sure it would be worth it with late fees and other charges you'd accrue for neglecting your other bills. The typical advice for your situation is to pay off the smallest card first, then add whatever you were paying on that one monthly to the next smallest, and so on until you're debt free. " User (irvin_e1986): "Yes i know about the late fees but chances are I'm not going to do it since I'll be screwing things up on the other end"

User (irvin_e1986): "So let's get to the point i have 4 credit cards i want to pay off in total i owe 5000 dollars. My paycheck every 2 weeks it's 1350 so 2700 a month. What i was thinking of doing January it's instead of paying monthly bills like i would usually do i was thinking of paying off each credit card or close to it a paycheck so in roughly 5 paycheck i would be done with credit cards payment but of course by doing so every other bill like utilities and cell phones would get behind but i would catch up after paying the credit cards. So what do you think? It's the risk worth the effort? I already tried applying for a personal loan from the bank but i didn't get due to bad credit. Any advice would be appreciate." Self: "Don't fall behind on other things. You'd be negating any gains you make.\n\nBudget harder and cut needless expenses. Make your own food, drop netflix/spotify, pick a cheaper phone plan, etc. Pick up additional income (see about a raise/promotion, work some overtime, look for a side-job for the weekends). Put any extras towards the credit card debt (look at the wiki for snowball vs avalanche and choose one) and you'll be pretty good. Also make sure you aren't adding to the debt by putting more on those cards.\n\n$5000 might seem like a lot - but its totally doable. You don't need some crazy plan. You just need a better budget." User (irvin_e1986): "Yes i need to budget better that's the main thing. Thanks for the response."

User (quirkymonster): "I came across [Nerdwallet](https://www.nerdwallet.com/) from a suggestion I found here. Does anybody have any specific good or bad experience with this website? What's it useful for? They seem to do stuff with credit and investing, but I'd like to get some opinions about how well they do with it. Is there a better website for it?" Self: "It's ok as a source, but not great as your only source.\n\nOther sites to look at are:\n\nhttp://www.bankrate.com/\n\nhttp://www.doctorofcredit.com/\n\nThe wiki in the side bar:\n\nhttps://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/commontopics\n"

User (quirkymonster): "I came across [Nerdwallet](https://www.nerdwallet.com/) from a suggestion I found here. Does anybody have any specific good or bad experience with this website? What's it useful for? They seem to do stuff with credit and investing, but I'd like to get some opinions about how well they do with it. Is there a better website for it?" Self: "I've only ever used it to compare credit card bonuses. Its not bad for figuring out which card to get if you want a new card for a certain purpose (travel, cashback, foreign transaction fees, etc)."

User (Jjamtmac): "I recently, after a much longer than anticipated process, received a job offer. My student loan payments just started and in order to pay them I'd have to take money from a RCA account that's at about 11%. I found the option today of forbearance and spoke to a representative at Sallie Mae for about an hour about the pros and cons. My biggest concern is that it will effect my variable interest rate more than it would have if I didn't chose to do a forbearance on my loans. I'm planning on being as aggressive as I can be once I begin my job but I don't want to end up paying much more in the long run. Any help would be tremendously appreciated." Self: "You may find these links helpful:\n\n- [Student Loans wiki page](http://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/studentloans)\n- ["How to handle $"](http://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/commontopics)\n- [What's the best way to pay down my debt?](http://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/debt#wiki_what.27s_the_best_way_to_pay_down_my_debt.3F)\n\n*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/personalfinance) if you have any questions or concerns.*"

User (Jjamtmac): "I recently, after a much longer than anticipated process, received a job offer. My student loan payments just started and in order to pay them I'd have to take money from a RCA account that's at about 11%. I found the option today of forbearance and spoke to a representative at Sallie Mae for about an hour about the pros and cons. My biggest concern is that it will effect my variable interest rate more than it would have if I didn't chose to do a forbearance on my loans. I'm planning on being as aggressive as I can be once I begin my job but I don't want to end up paying much more in the long run. Any help would be tremendously appreciated." Self: "My cousin ended up decided to do a 3-month forbearance and his interest rate ended up going up much more than he thought it should have. Something to consider. Best of luck"

User (Jjamtmac): "I recently, after a much longer than anticipated process, received a job offer. My student loan payments just started and in order to pay them I'd have to take money from a RCA account that's at about 11%. I found the option today of forbearance and spoke to a representative at Sallie Mae for about an hour about the pros and cons. My biggest concern is that it will effect my variable interest rate more than it would have if I didn't chose to do a forbearance on my loans. I'm planning on being as aggressive as I can be once I begin my job but I don't want to end up paying much more in the long run. Any help would be tremendously appreciated." Self: "I've put my loans into forbearance a few times for different things (mostly moving).\n\nYour interest rate is tied to the market, forbearance doesn't do anything to that.\n\nWhat does happen is that your loans still collect interest. " User (Jjamtmac): "So you're sure it wouldn't make any difference at all as far as interest rate goes? I am just really worried it would put me into a different category and then be penalized for it." Self: "That was my understanding of the process. I could be wrong, but I don't remember my rates going up at all.\n\nI would recommend doing it for as short as possible. I'd generally do 3 months."

User (E46M54): "If I transfer a $3800 balance, would the minimum payments be less than $140 a month?\n\nThinking of paying the minimum until the intro period expires, then paying off the rest of the balance. But if the minimum payment is higher than the loan payment, I just assume pay off the loan with my own cash. " Self: "You may find these links helpful:\n\n- [Credit-related wiki pages](http://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/index#wiki_credit)\n- [Credit Cards](http://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/creditcards) \n- [FICO / Credit Scores](http://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/fico)\n- [Improving Credit Scores and Building Credit](http://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/credit_building)\n\n*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/personalfinance) if you have any questions or concerns.*"

User (E46M54): "If I transfer a $3800 balance, would the minimum payments be less than $140 a month?\n\nThinking of paying the minimum until the intro period expires, then paying off the rest of the balance. But if the minimum payment is higher than the loan payment, I just assume pay off the loan with my own cash. " Self: "That is really counter intuitive. You should be trying to pay it all off before the intro period expires, or else you would just be throwing your money in the trash due to interest fees.\n\nBut to answer your questions, most cards have just a $25-35 minimum payment" User (E46M54): "No that's what I plan on doing. Make minimum payment and pay it off at last second before interest kicks in. "

User (E46M54): "If I transfer a $3800 balance, would the minimum payments be less than $140 a month?\n\nThinking of paying the minimum until the intro period expires, then paying off the rest of the balance. But if the minimum payment is higher than the loan payment, I just assume pay off the loan with my own cash. " Self: "That is really counter intuitive. You should be trying to pay it all off before the intro period expires, or else you would just be throwing your money in the trash due to interest fees.\n\nBut to answer your questions, most cards have just a $25-35 minimum payment" dweed4 (dweed4): "> But to answer your questions, most cards have just a $25-35 minimum payment\n\nThats not true anymore. Its based on how much you owe now." Self: "I have carried a $800 balance on my wells fargo card once, my minimums still stayed at 25. Even my citi simplicity card as well" dweed4 (dweed4): "The card brand doesnt matter. Its the amount you owe. They changed it because people that have larger amounts of debt would never pay it off with a minimum payment that low. Since you put so little on your cards you still have a low minimum.\n\nhttp://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/four-ways-fight-minimum-payment-increases-1267.php"

User (E46M54): "If I transfer a $3800 balance, would the minimum payments be less than $140 a month?\n\nThinking of paying the minimum until the intro period expires, then paying off the rest of the balance. But if the minimum payment is higher than the loan payment, I just assume pay off the loan with my own cash. " Self: "That is really counter intuitive. You should be trying to pay it all off before the intro period expires, or else you would just be throwing your money in the trash due to interest fees.\n\nBut to answer your questions, most cards have just a $25-35 minimum payment" dweed4 (dweed4): "> But to answer your questions, most cards have just a $25-35 minimum payment\n\nThats not true anymore. Its based on how much you owe now." Self: "I have carried a $800 balance on my wells fargo card once, my minimums still stayed at 25. Even my citi simplicity card as well" rockydbull (rockydbull): "Its usually 25/35 or a percentage of the balance, whichever is higher"

User (xcommon): "[My portfolio:](https://i.redd.it/qk2ueljme71y.png) \n\nI know it lacks diversity, but I was intentionally betting on US oil/exploration. What I wasn't expecting was this much growth this fast.\n\nI'm keeping a 3rd of my cash liquid to reinvest on dips/downturns. I'm up 10k now, but If i cash out, I'll owe the government 4k (due to short-term capital gains tax) and I will get to keep 6k. \n\nMy wife and I are 30, we both have $12K roth IRAs, 30k/35k 401k's. We are payed twice a month and keep 1k in our checking accounts and put an average of 2.5k into a shared savings every month.\n\nWe're planning to retire in 2024 at 38 years old. Any advice is appreciated.\n\nEdit: also, we have no debt, except a car note we're paying off in January." Self: "You may find these links helpful:\n\n- ["How to handle $"](http://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/commontopics)\n- [Investing wiki page](http://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/investing)\n\n*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/personalfinance) if you have any questions or concerns.*"

User (xcommon): "[My portfolio:](https://i.redd.it/qk2ueljme71y.png) \n\nI know it lacks diversity, but I was intentionally betting on US oil/exploration. What I wasn't expecting was this much growth this fast.\n\nI'm keeping a 3rd of my cash liquid to reinvest on dips/downturns. I'm up 10k now, but If i cash out, I'll owe the government 4k (due to short-term capital gains tax) and I will get to keep 6k. \n\nMy wife and I are 30, we both have $12K roth IRAs, 30k/35k 401k's. We are payed twice a month and keep 1k in our checking accounts and put an average of 2.5k into a shared savings every month.\n\nWe're planning to retire in 2024 at 38 years old. Any advice is appreciated.\n\nEdit: also, we have no debt, except a car note we're paying off in January." Self: "If you plan on retiring in 8 years, you better have a lot more money stashed away that you didn't mention here. \n\n" User (xcommon): "Military pensions, me and the wife both. Along with VA benefits. And the GI bill (I'd like to finally go to college for real). \n\nWife's going to do photography on the side and she's looking at getting into real estate. She really likes to look at and would like to show houses. Not sure what I'll do after college. \n\nSo I guess call it retirement-lite."

User (xcommon): "[My portfolio:](https://i.redd.it/qk2ueljme71y.png) \n\nI know it lacks diversity, but I was intentionally betting on US oil/exploration. What I wasn't expecting was this much growth this fast.\n\nI'm keeping a 3rd of my cash liquid to reinvest on dips/downturns. I'm up 10k now, but If i cash out, I'll owe the government 4k (due to short-term capital gains tax) and I will get to keep 6k. \n\nMy wife and I are 30, we both have $12K roth IRAs, 30k/35k 401k's. We are payed twice a month and keep 1k in our checking accounts and put an average of 2.5k into a shared savings every month.\n\nWe're planning to retire in 2024 at 38 years old. Any advice is appreciated.\n\nEdit: also, we have no debt, except a car note we're paying off in January." Self: "If these stocks went to zero would you be screwed? If not sometimes high risk speculative investments can make sense, especially because of your early retirement. If things went bottoms up you could continue working a bit longer and make the money back." User (xcommon): "We could theoretically lose every cent and still be comfortable for the rest of our lives."

User (xcommon): "[My portfolio:](https://i.redd.it/qk2ueljme71y.png) \n\nI know it lacks diversity, but I was intentionally betting on US oil/exploration. What I wasn't expecting was this much growth this fast.\n\nI'm keeping a 3rd of my cash liquid to reinvest on dips/downturns. I'm up 10k now, but If i cash out, I'll owe the government 4k (due to short-term capital gains tax) and I will get to keep 6k. \n\nMy wife and I are 30, we both have $12K roth IRAs, 30k/35k 401k's. We are payed twice a month and keep 1k in our checking accounts and put an average of 2.5k into a shared savings every month.\n\nWe're planning to retire in 2024 at 38 years old. Any advice is appreciated.\n\nEdit: also, we have no debt, except a car note we're paying off in January." Self: "You're basically gambling here.\n\nI'd cash out while I was ahead and follow the investing links posted by the automoderator." User (xcommon): "I recognize the gamble. But given the current geopolitical landscape, I really think an oil crisis is looming. Not tomorrow, maybe not in the next two years. But in the next eight, definitely. I'd like to profit from it, at least, since there's nothing I can do to stop it." Downvotes-All-Memes (Downvotes-All-Memes): "Well you got your answer, what more do you want? You are gambling on a hunch. What do you mean an "oil crisis"? If we run out of oil, we'll switch to solar and other electrics sooner than later. There won't be an oil crisis." User (xcommon): "I'd like that too, but it's a bit too rosey of an outlook.\n\nWe're not going to be switching our jets, shipping vessels, trucks, etc. to electric. \n\nThe world runs on crude, and I think it's about to get pricey. " SiberianGnome (SiberianGnome): "If there's an oil crisis, it could hurt the US oil industry rather than helping. I'm not sure why you think you're better at this than the people who have billions of their own money, or manage billions in hedge funds, and spend their lives researching this. You think you're the only one who can see an oil crisis coming? The difference is they know a lot more about it. \n\nYou want to retire in 8 years? You're not going to do that by investing in on field. You're also not going to do that at your current savings rate.\n\nThis is really not a personal finance question. It's better suited for r/investing and r/financialindependence.\n\nI'd suggest you spend some time on both those subs, since FI seems to be you're end game and you're hoping to use investing to get there." User (xcommon): "> f there's an oil crisis, it could hurt the US oil industry rather than helping. I'm not sure why you think you're better at this than the people who have billions of their own money, or manage billions in hedge funds, and spend their lives researching this. You think you're the only one who can see an oil crisis coming? The difference is they know a lot more about it.\n> You want to retire in 8 years? You're not going to do that by investing in on field. You're also not going to do that at your current savings rate.\n> This is really not a personal finance question. It's better suited for r/investing and r/financialindependence.\n> I'd suggest you spend some time on both those subs, since FI seems to be you're end game and you're hoping to use investing to get there.\n\nreal talk, much appreciated. I'll check r/financialindependence out. "

User (xcommon): "[My portfolio:](https://i.redd.it/qk2ueljme71y.png) \n\nI know it lacks diversity, but I was intentionally betting on US oil/exploration. What I wasn't expecting was this much growth this fast.\n\nI'm keeping a 3rd of my cash liquid to reinvest on dips/downturns. I'm up 10k now, but If i cash out, I'll owe the government 4k (due to short-term capital gains tax) and I will get to keep 6k. \n\nMy wife and I are 30, we both have $12K roth IRAs, 30k/35k 401k's. We are payed twice a month and keep 1k in our checking accounts and put an average of 2.5k into a shared savings every month.\n\nWe're planning to retire in 2024 at 38 years old. Any advice is appreciated.\n\nEdit: also, we have no debt, except a car note we're paying off in January." Self: "You're basically gambling here.\n\nI'd cash out while I was ahead and follow the investing links posted by the automoderator." User (xcommon): "I recognize the gamble. But given the current geopolitical landscape, I really think an oil crisis is looming. Not tomorrow, maybe not in the next two years. But in the next eight, definitely. I'd like to profit from it, at least, since there's nothing I can do to stop it." Downvotes-All-Memes (Downvotes-All-Memes): "Well you got your answer, what more do you want? You are gambling on a hunch. What do you mean an "oil crisis"? If we run out of oil, we'll switch to solar and other electrics sooner than later. There won't be an oil crisis." User (xcommon): "I'd like that too, but it's a bit too rosey of an outlook.\n\nWe're not going to be switching our jets, shipping vessels, trucks, etc. to electric. \n\nThe world runs on crude, and I think it's about to get pricey. " Downvotes-All-Memes (Downvotes-All-Memes): "Then stay in the game. But if you got out today you'd have $6k more than you did yesterday. Just keep in mind it might just be a temporary spike because of OPEC's recent decisions. Fuck that collusion." User (xcommon): ">Fuck that collusion.\n\nI very much agree with that sentence."

User (xcommon): "[My portfolio:](https://i.redd.it/qk2ueljme71y.png) \n\nI know it lacks diversity, but I was intentionally betting on US oil/exploration. What I wasn't expecting was this much growth this fast.\n\nI'm keeping a 3rd of my cash liquid to reinvest on dips/downturns. I'm up 10k now, but If i cash out, I'll owe the government 4k (due to short-term capital gains tax) and I will get to keep 6k. \n\nMy wife and I are 30, we both have $12K roth IRAs, 30k/35k 401k's. We are payed twice a month and keep 1k in our checking accounts and put an average of 2.5k into a shared savings every month.\n\nWe're planning to retire in 2024 at 38 years old. Any advice is appreciated.\n\nEdit: also, we have no debt, except a car note we're paying off in January." Self: "If you can comfortably lose every cent, then by all means, the gamble might pay off. if you cash out now and it skyrockets in 4 years, youll hate yourself. \n\nif you need this money to live though, cash it out. "

User (FlutGOS): "I use two credit cards for the sole reason of getting cash back on my purchases. I pay them off at the end of each month. I am wanting to apply for a home loan sometime around June. At what point should I stop using my credit cards for large purchases and just put a few small purchases on there to keep them active?\n\nI have no other debt so having basically $0 in debt with a credit score of 800 should help a lot." Self: "You may find these links helpful:\n\n- [Credit-related wiki pages](http://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/index#wiki_credit)\n- [Credit Cards](http://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/creditcards) \n- [FICO / Credit Scores](http://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/fico)\n- [Improving Credit Scores and Building Credit](http://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/credit_building)\n\n*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/personalfinance) if you have any questions or concerns.*"

User (FlutGOS): "I use two credit cards for the sole reason of getting cash back on my purchases. I pay them off at the end of each month. I am wanting to apply for a home loan sometime around June. At what point should I stop using my credit cards for large purchases and just put a few small purchases on there to keep them active?\n\nI have no other debt so having basically $0 in debt with a credit score of 800 should help a lot." Self: "If you have a score of 800, continue paying off your statement balance and this will have no negative impact on you! "

User (FlutGOS): "I use two credit cards for the sole reason of getting cash back on my purchases. I pay them off at the end of each month. I am wanting to apply for a home loan sometime around June. At what point should I stop using my credit cards for large purchases and just put a few small purchases on there to keep them active?\n\nI have no other debt so having basically $0 in debt with a credit score of 800 should help a lot." Self: "If you're paying them off then the use of credit cards has no effect on getting a loan (unless you have a greater than 30% utilization). \n\nBut with an 800 score there's no reason to worry about it, just keep doing what you're doing. " SiberianGnome (SiberianGnome): "Wouldn't hurt to pay off new balances before statement closes.\n\nFor instance:\n\nSay your statement closing date is the 6th each month and payments are due by the 1st of the following month. At some point between the 6th and the end of the month you pay the statement balance. But your balance never goes to zero because you keep making charges. \n\nDepending on your limit and spending, this could result in a less than desirable credit utilization. \n\nSo just wait until a couple days before your payment is due. Go to make the payment, but instead of paying "statement balance" pay "full balance". When the new statement comes out (and gets reported) it will only snow charges made in the week or so between payment being made and statement closing.\n" User (FlutGOS): "Yeah, I was thinking that too. I'll just pay the full balance a week or so before applying and not use them again until being approved." SiberianGnome (SiberianGnome): "You can keep using for the points. Just make sure you pay in full before each statement closing date. "

User (fizzglimmer): "Hi PF,\n\nI've been a YNAB user for a few years now, but I'm still using YNAB 4. My laptop has died entirely and given that YNAB 4 will no longer be supported at the end of this year, im looking for a replacement.\n\nYNAB 5 doesn't really appeal to me. I'm in the UK so auto-import from my bank doesn't work, and I'm not keen on having all my financial data up in the cloud. That and i'm not a fan of having to pay a monthly/yearly subscription.\n\nSo, is the new YNAB really worth it, or is there something else I can look at using?" Self: "You may find these links helpful:\n\n- /r/ynab: a subreddit all about YNAB\n- [Budgeting wiki page](http://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/budgeting)\n\n*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/personalfinance) if you have any questions or concerns.*"

User (fizzglimmer): "Hi PF,\n\nI've been a YNAB user for a few years now, but I'm still using YNAB 4. My laptop has died entirely and given that YNAB 4 will no longer be supported at the end of this year, im looking for a replacement.\n\nYNAB 5 doesn't really appeal to me. I'm in the UK so auto-import from my bank doesn't work, and I'm not keen on having all my financial data up in the cloud. That and i'm not a fan of having to pay a monthly/yearly subscription.\n\nSo, is the new YNAB really worth it, or is there something else I can look at using?" Self: "Google Sheets or Excel if you're worried about the cloud.\n\nI built a sheet and formatted it to easily edit on the go or on road trips from my phone. I've had three iterations over the years. They get more complex as my finances do and easier to use every iteration.\n\nYou can build it for exactly what you want to track, make sure it's easy to understand for you, and learn a good program for the business world all in one go. \n\nEdit: Spelling" looknsharp (looknsharp): "Google sheets would be stored in the cloud too, right?" Selykg (Selykg): "Yes. "

User (fizzglimmer): "Hi PF,\n\nI've been a YNAB user for a few years now, but I'm still using YNAB 4. My laptop has died entirely and given that YNAB 4 will no longer be supported at the end of this year, im looking for a replacement.\n\nYNAB 5 doesn't really appeal to me. I'm in the UK so auto-import from my bank doesn't work, and I'm not keen on having all my financial data up in the cloud. That and i'm not a fan of having to pay a monthly/yearly subscription.\n\nSo, is the new YNAB really worth it, or is there something else I can look at using?" Self: "/r/Financier\n\nSeriously." User (fizzglimmer): "Interesting, looks like an offline YNAB clone? Never heard of it before.. thanks for the recommendation!"

User (fizzglimmer): "Hi PF,\n\nI've been a YNAB user for a few years now, but I'm still using YNAB 4. My laptop has died entirely and given that YNAB 4 will no longer be supported at the end of this year, im looking for a replacement.\n\nYNAB 5 doesn't really appeal to me. I'm in the UK so auto-import from my bank doesn't work, and I'm not keen on having all my financial data up in the cloud. That and i'm not a fan of having to pay a monthly/yearly subscription.\n\nSo, is the new YNAB really worth it, or is there something else I can look at using?" Self: "You can always recreate YNAB in excel or use a Google Doc template. Both would be free for you and do essentially the same thing. " User (fizzglimmer): "I thought about that, but it lacks a lot of functionality such as importing transactions. I'm relatively good at entering expenses as they occur, but occasionally one or two slip the net... importing transactions makes sure I have absolutely everything covered. Granted I could manually work through my bank statement, but that's quite labour intensive.\n\nIt's certainly a potential solution though, thanks for the reply :)" Phoenix-Jones (Phoenix-Jones): "I tried a few of the programs and honestly, importing causes a bunch of problems at least for me. We manually put in our figures so nothings overlooked. \n\nIn otherwords, go line by line for everything." Self: "That's exactly how I do mine. I've set up multiple budgets in YNAB and importing has always fucked it up. I don't know how or why and I never took the time to try an understand. Manual is the way I like to do it."

User (fizzglimmer): "Hi PF,\n\nI've been a YNAB user for a few years now, but I'm still using YNAB 4. My laptop has died entirely and given that YNAB 4 will no longer be supported at the end of this year, im looking for a replacement.\n\nYNAB 5 doesn't really appeal to me. I'm in the UK so auto-import from my bank doesn't work, and I'm not keen on having all my financial data up in the cloud. That and i'm not a fan of having to pay a monthly/yearly subscription.\n\nSo, is the new YNAB really worth it, or is there something else I can look at using?" Self: "I use the free version of Dollarbird. "

User (fizzglimmer): "Hi PF,\n\nI've been a YNAB user for a few years now, but I'm still using YNAB 4. My laptop has died entirely and given that YNAB 4 will no longer be supported at the end of this year, im looking for a replacement.\n\nYNAB 5 doesn't really appeal to me. I'm in the UK so auto-import from my bank doesn't work, and I'm not keen on having all my financial data up in the cloud. That and i'm not a fan of having to pay a monthly/yearly subscription.\n\nSo, is the new YNAB really worth it, or is there something else I can look at using?" Self: "/r/Financier\n\nSeriously." FatalDosesOfOsmosis (FatalDosesOfOsmosis): "Wierd. A YNAB clone that literally stores your entire budget in your browser. (F12 -> Application tab. I also enjoy the warning on the F12 -> Console tab) \n\nDefinitely not for me."

User (fizzglimmer): "Hi PF,\n\nI've been a YNAB user for a few years now, but I'm still using YNAB 4. My laptop has died entirely and given that YNAB 4 will no longer be supported at the end of this year, im looking for a replacement.\n\nYNAB 5 doesn't really appeal to me. I'm in the UK so auto-import from my bank doesn't work, and I'm not keen on having all my financial data up in the cloud. That and i'm not a fan of having to pay a monthly/yearly subscription.\n\nSo, is the new YNAB really worth it, or is there something else I can look at using?" Self: "You can always recreate YNAB in excel or use a Google Doc template. Both would be free for you and do essentially the same thing. " User (fizzglimmer): "I thought about that, but it lacks a lot of functionality such as importing transactions. I'm relatively good at entering expenses as they occur, but occasionally one or two slip the net... importing transactions makes sure I have absolutely everything covered. Granted I could manually work through my bank statement, but that's quite labour intensive.\n\nIt's certainly a potential solution though, thanks for the reply :)" newalgier (newalgier): "Many banks export .csv files that come into Excel very easily. I do this, and I have lookup tables that code transactions so that I can easily categorize them. Easy peasy."

User (fizzglimmer): "Hi PF,\n\nI've been a YNAB user for a few years now, but I'm still using YNAB 4. My laptop has died entirely and given that YNAB 4 will no longer be supported at the end of this year, im looking for a replacement.\n\nYNAB 5 doesn't really appeal to me. I'm in the UK so auto-import from my bank doesn't work, and I'm not keen on having all my financial data up in the cloud. That and i'm not a fan of having to pay a monthly/yearly subscription.\n\nSo, is the new YNAB really worth it, or is there something else I can look at using?" Self: "Is there a reason you don't want to continue using YNAB4?" TotallyOffTopic_ (TotallyOffTopic_): "I think he cannot find the download link?" Self: "If that's the case, it's here:\n\n* http://classic.youneedabudget.com/download/ynab4"

User (fizzglimmer): "Hi PF,\n\nI've been a YNAB user for a few years now, but I'm still using YNAB 4. My laptop has died entirely and given that YNAB 4 will no longer be supported at the end of this year, im looking for a replacement.\n\nYNAB 5 doesn't really appeal to me. I'm in the UK so auto-import from my bank doesn't work, and I'm not keen on having all my financial data up in the cloud. That and i'm not a fan of having to pay a monthly/yearly subscription.\n\nSo, is the new YNAB really worth it, or is there something else I can look at using?" Self: "Google Sheets or Excel if you're worried about the cloud.\n\nI built a sheet and formatted it to easily edit on the go or on road trips from my phone. I've had three iterations over the years. They get more complex as my finances do and easier to use every iteration.\n\nYou can build it for exactly what you want to track, make sure it's easy to understand for you, and learn a good program for the business world all in one go. \n\nEdit: Spelling" looknsharp (looknsharp): "Google sheets would be stored in the cloud too, right?" sasquatch_yeti (sasquatch_yeti): "You can download your account detail and paste in the transactions or input them manually. If Sheets got compromised it's not as though they would have your banking credentials or account numbers like these services that provide back end syncing functions."

User (fizzglimmer): "Hi PF,\n\nI've been a YNAB user for a few years now, but I'm still using YNAB 4. My laptop has died entirely and given that YNAB 4 will no longer be supported at the end of this year, im looking for a replacement.\n\nYNAB 5 doesn't really appeal to me. I'm in the UK so auto-import from my bank doesn't work, and I'm not keen on having all my financial data up in the cloud. That and i'm not a fan of having to pay a monthly/yearly subscription.\n\nSo, is the new YNAB really worth it, or is there something else I can look at using?" Self: "Is there a reason you don't want to continue using YNAB4?" User (fizzglimmer): "It was more that I had an opportunity to try something new because my laptop has died completely. I do like YNAB 4 but I've always had occasional sync issues with it that have caused a few problems in the past, and while I have this opportunity thought I'd just see what else is out there :)"

User (fizzglimmer): "Hi PF,\n\nI've been a YNAB user for a few years now, but I'm still using YNAB 4. My laptop has died entirely and given that YNAB 4 will no longer be supported at the end of this year, im looking for a replacement.\n\nYNAB 5 doesn't really appeal to me. I'm in the UK so auto-import from my bank doesn't work, and I'm not keen on having all my financial data up in the cloud. That and i'm not a fan of having to pay a monthly/yearly subscription.\n\nSo, is the new YNAB really worth it, or is there something else I can look at using?" Self: "You can always recreate YNAB in excel or use a Google Doc template. Both would be free for you and do essentially the same thing. " User (fizzglimmer): "I thought about that, but it lacks a lot of functionality such as importing transactions. I'm relatively good at entering expenses as they occur, but occasionally one or two slip the net... importing transactions makes sure I have absolutely everything covered. Granted I could manually work through my bank statement, but that's quite labour intensive.\n\nIt's certainly a potential solution though, thanks for the reply :)" Phoenix-Jones (Phoenix-Jones): "I tried a few of the programs and honestly, importing causes a bunch of problems at least for me. We manually put in our figures so nothings overlooked. \n\nIn otherwords, go line by line for everything." User (fizzglimmer): "I've thought about that before, but been afraid of missing something as transactions often take 3-4 days to show on my online banking. Never really had an issue with importing, as long as I restrict it to only import the latest transactions. \n\nUK banks have pretty terrible online banking systems :)"

User (fizzglimmer): "Hi PF,\n\nI've been a YNAB user for a few years now, but I'm still using YNAB 4. My laptop has died entirely and given that YNAB 4 will no longer be supported at the end of this year, im looking for a replacement.\n\nYNAB 5 doesn't really appeal to me. I'm in the UK so auto-import from my bank doesn't work, and I'm not keen on having all my financial data up in the cloud. That and i'm not a fan of having to pay a monthly/yearly subscription.\n\nSo, is the new YNAB really worth it, or is there something else I can look at using?" Self: "I'd say Mint, but it doesn't look like it's available outside the US and Canada" User (fizzglimmer): "Yeah Mint doesn't work outside of the US unfortunately :("

User (fizzglimmer): "Hi PF,\n\nI've been a YNAB user for a few years now, but I'm still using YNAB 4. My laptop has died entirely and given that YNAB 4 will no longer be supported at the end of this year, im looking for a replacement.\n\nYNAB 5 doesn't really appeal to me. I'm in the UK so auto-import from my bank doesn't work, and I'm not keen on having all my financial data up in the cloud. That and i'm not a fan of having to pay a monthly/yearly subscription.\n\nSo, is the new YNAB really worth it, or is there something else I can look at using?" Self: "I use CountAbout. It's pretty good." sierra120 (sierra120): "It's another subscription service "

User (fizzglimmer): "Hi PF,\n\nI've been a YNAB user for a few years now, but I'm still using YNAB 4. My laptop has died entirely and given that YNAB 4 will no longer be supported at the end of this year, im looking for a replacement.\n\nYNAB 5 doesn't really appeal to me. I'm in the UK so auto-import from my bank doesn't work, and I'm not keen on having all my financial data up in the cloud. That and i'm not a fan of having to pay a monthly/yearly subscription.\n\nSo, is the new YNAB really worth it, or is there something else I can look at using?" Self: "I love the new Ynab. Coming up to a year now and I prefer it over version 4 which I had been using for over 2 years previously. I use the phone app and then upload my transactions as .ofx to reconcile. No direct links to my account and I can see my budget on multiple devices. I'm very happy I made the switch and the annual subscription is a small sacrificial expense given the money it helps me save. " User (fizzglimmer): "Are there any fundamental differences with YNAB 4? I've heard that they've changed the budgeting methodology slightly?" FuriousFalcon (FuriousFalcon): "There are changes, but I haven't really had any trouble adapting to them. Probably the bigger ones:\n\n-- There is no "next month" income category any more. You can manually create one if you choose, or just budget directly in future months as you get money. The new method may be more flexible, because you can budget however far ahead you want, rather than being limited.\n\n-- Removal of the "red arrow" so you can't carry long-term debt in your categories month to month. This may be the most controversial.\n\n-- How credit cards are handled has changed so YNAB can show you how much money you have set aside towards payments, and to better separate budgeting money towards long term debts from regular budgeted expenses. If you don't like that, you can always give the card a "checking account" type and go back to the previous functionality."

User (fizzglimmer): "Hi PF,\n\nI've been a YNAB user for a few years now, but I'm still using YNAB 4. My laptop has died entirely and given that YNAB 4 will no longer be supported at the end of this year, im looking for a replacement.\n\nYNAB 5 doesn't really appeal to me. I'm in the UK so auto-import from my bank doesn't work, and I'm not keen on having all my financial data up in the cloud. That and i'm not a fan of having to pay a monthly/yearly subscription.\n\nSo, is the new YNAB really worth it, or is there something else I can look at using?" Self: "Do we actually have to switch? I mean, the app isn't going to just stop on January 1st, right? It's just no longer going to be supported so it will never get updated. " User (fizzglimmer): "No ones being forced to switch, it was more that I'm having to completely reinstall my laptop anyway so thought I'd look at alternatives. I still have occasional issues with YNAB 4 and given that it's not being supported as of the end of the year, I thought I'd look for an alternative :)" Self: "Ok phew. Cause I don't want to switch "

User (fizzglimmer): "Hi PF,\n\nI've been a YNAB user for a few years now, but I'm still using YNAB 4. My laptop has died entirely and given that YNAB 4 will no longer be supported at the end of this year, im looking for a replacement.\n\nYNAB 5 doesn't really appeal to me. I'm in the UK so auto-import from my bank doesn't work, and I'm not keen on having all my financial data up in the cloud. That and i'm not a fan of having to pay a monthly/yearly subscription.\n\nSo, is the new YNAB really worth it, or is there something else I can look at using?" Self: "Google Sheet + Google Form for data entry/ tracking." dcvick202 (dcvick202): "I'd like to learn more about this. Do you mind sending a copy of your form? " Self: "It's an easy form. Date, Description, Amount. From the sheet that the form loads, you organize and format data to fit into your budget for tracking."

User (BibbidyBoop): "A little bit about me. I am a 28 year old male, do not smoke, and work out constantly. I am also healthy (thank God) and take good care of myself. I currently have a catastrophic health insurance that I pay $153.00 monthly for. This does not include dental. This has a $12,000 deductible and it is the lowest tier of insurance possible. Now, I was just informed that my rates for the same garbage policy are going up. For next year I will be paying nearly $200 a month (up approximately 22%). \nHowever, if I do not renew and have no insurance I will only pay a $700 penalty. So either $2,400 a year or $700.\n\nNow, perhaps I am hopeful about the next year, but potential policy alterations in healthcare may occur and create more competition between providers - effectively lowering pricing. BEFORE EVERYONE FREAKS - I understand this is risky and not likely. What would you personally advise for this situation? I pay everything out of pocket as it is.\n\nThanks in advance.\n" Self: "You may find the [Health Insurance wiki page](https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/health_insurance) helpful.\n\n*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/personalfinance) if you have any questions or concerns.*"

User (kkkimchii): "I have about 50% of my emergency fund in Vanguard's VBTLX bond fund, an intermediate-term fund. I did this to try and gain a few % points on top of measly savings account rates. But with the Trump election and the expectation of rising interest rates, I'm a little worried. Should I consider moving out of bonds and back into a savings account? " Self: "The expected rise in interest rates is already priced in. Nobody knows which direction they will move next. If you have a loss, consider selling your position in December to tax-harvest the loss. If you still want to chase yield, buy a different bond fund, maybe with shorter duration."

User (sauvignonbleu): "I live in NYC. It's a clerical job and we're all on salary. Not sure what to do....she refuses to switch is to direct deposit though I don't know why. It usually means getting paid on Monday or Tuesday instead of Friday...but for some of the lower paid folks who live paycheck to paycheck that means bill payments bounce." Self: "How many people are on staff? Maybe you need to all band together and ask for the switch. I used to do payroll with cheques and never had issues being late, maybe the company is also living pay cheque to pay cheque and needs that extra time to have enough money in the account to pay all the employees. " User (sauvignonbleu): "7 employees. What's even more stupid is - we have an LA office and her assistant in NY has to go to the bank every Friday (or whenever) to deposit the LA folks' checks into their accounts!! " Self: "Brutal, my mother used to work for a company where they all had to sprint across the street and deposit their cheques before they bounced, half of them would always come back and have to get cash from the owner."

User (sauvignonbleu): "I live in NYC. It's a clerical job and we're all on salary. Not sure what to do....she refuses to switch is to direct deposit though I don't know why. It usually means getting paid on Monday or Tuesday instead of Friday...but for some of the lower paid folks who live paycheck to paycheck that means bill payments bounce." Self: "IMO, find a new job.\n\nAny company that consistantly pays late is likely going down the tubes soon." ajsmitty (ajsmitty): "I hate how this is always the top answer to an employer-related issue. "Just go get a new job." "Quit!"\n\nIt's almost *never* just that easy." Self: "> I hate how this is always the top answer to an employer-related issue. "Just go get a new job." "Quit!"\n> \n> \n> \n> It's almost never just that easy.\n\nI don't think any of us who suggest "find a new job" are implying that it's easy to do so.\n\nBut it's better start looking for and hopefully find a new job and get out now, then to go to work one day and find the doors locked with an eviction & bankruptcy notice taped to the front and have to fight for months to maybe get your final pay cheque." ajsmitty (ajsmitty): "But "find a new job" because OP gets his/her paychecks on Monday rather than the "traditional payday" Friday? Really?" Baconality (Baconality): "Because companies that skip payroll are often not in good shape. "

User (sauvignonbleu): "I live in NYC. It's a clerical job and we're all on salary. Not sure what to do....she refuses to switch is to direct deposit though I don't know why. It usually means getting paid on Monday or Tuesday instead of Friday...but for some of the lower paid folks who live paycheck to paycheck that means bill payments bounce." Self: "IMO, find a new job.\n\nAny company that consistantly pays late is likely going down the tubes soon." User (sauvignonbleu): "I've worked here for going on 7 years and made more money year over year every year. I definitely won't be leaving - it's just frustrating how cavalier my boss is about not getting these paychecks out on time." Self: "> I've worked here for going on 7 years and made more money year over year every year. I definitely won't be leaving - it's just frustrating how cavalier my boss is about not getting these paychecks out on time.\n\nIf you're certain the company isn't going under and your boss is just being too lazy to get payroll in on time... then y'all need to save up a good buffer in your bank account to tide you over during these delays." captainamericasbutt (captainamericasbutt): "Yes - I think this is the best solution. It's a mild inconvenience but at least one you should be able to anticipate."

User (sauvignonbleu): "I live in NYC. It's a clerical job and we're all on salary. Not sure what to do....she refuses to switch is to direct deposit though I don't know why. It usually means getting paid on Monday or Tuesday instead of Friday...but for some of the lower paid folks who live paycheck to paycheck that means bill payments bounce." Self: "This is where the **responsible** use of credit can really save one's ass. A credit card, IMO, is basically a 60 day 0 interest loan. Obviously, a cash emergency fund is better."

User (sauvignonbleu): "I live in NYC. It's a clerical job and we're all on salary. Not sure what to do....she refuses to switch is to direct deposit though I don't know why. It usually means getting paid on Monday or Tuesday instead of Friday...but for some of the lower paid folks who live paycheck to paycheck that means bill payments bounce." Self: "Would DD actually help given you still need your boss to process the payroll?" Kevinnnnn (Kevinnnnn): "Straight logic."

User (sauvignonbleu): "I live in NYC. It's a clerical job and we're all on salary. Not sure what to do....she refuses to switch is to direct deposit though I don't know why. It usually means getting paid on Monday or Tuesday instead of Friday...but for some of the lower paid folks who live paycheck to paycheck that means bill payments bounce." Self: "Would DD actually help given you still need your boss to process the payroll?" GeneralZex (GeneralZex): "Probably not. At my job when I first started there, the boss was real quick to process payroll and would print the checks right there. So our time sheets would be tallied in the AM and checks would be handed to us around lunch time.\n\nNow with DD we don't get paid until a day or two later depending on when the boss forwards the information to Paychex.\n\nGranted if, in OP's case, the boss is lazy and doesn't even get to the time sheets/cards/whatever until that Monday and handles it with a company like Paychex OP may not see the money for one or two days after the fact being even worse for OP."

User (sauvignonbleu): "I live in NYC. It's a clerical job and we're all on salary. Not sure what to do....she refuses to switch is to direct deposit though I don't know why. It usually means getting paid on Monday or Tuesday instead of Friday...but for some of the lower paid folks who live paycheck to paycheck that means bill payments bounce." Self: "Yikes. OP--if finding another job isn't an option right now, I would try to collaborate with coworkers and have all of you request on-time pay. New York tends to have strict labor laws, if the 7 of you would consult a labor attorney they may be willing to take your case. Otherwise, if you feel this would be a detriment to your professional career, I would look at ways for yourself to become more liquid (credit card was brought up here, there are many credit cards that offer 0% interest for the first few months or so). "

User (sauvignonbleu): "I live in NYC. It's a clerical job and we're all on salary. Not sure what to do....she refuses to switch is to direct deposit though I don't know why. It usually means getting paid on Monday or Tuesday instead of Friday...but for some of the lower paid folks who live paycheck to paycheck that means bill payments bounce." Self: "...shouldn't you be used to getting paid on Monday rather than Friday, then? If this happens all the time? Consider Monday your payday rather than Friday." tylerwatt12 (tylerwatt12): "Yeah seriously. As long as they're consistent. I get my paycheck every Monday at 12AM with direct deposit, and my company outsources their payroll to to most widely used payroll company on the planet."

User (sauvignonbleu): "I live in NYC. It's a clerical job and we're all on salary. Not sure what to do....she refuses to switch is to direct deposit though I don't know why. It usually means getting paid on Monday or Tuesday instead of Friday...but for some of the lower paid folks who live paycheck to paycheck that means bill payments bounce." Self: "If it comes on Tuesday sometimes just plan on Tuesday, "

User (sauvignonbleu): "I live in NYC. It's a clerical job and we're all on salary. Not sure what to do....she refuses to switch is to direct deposit though I don't know why. It usually means getting paid on Monday or Tuesday instead of Friday...but for some of the lower paid folks who live paycheck to paycheck that means bill payments bounce." Self: "Contact the labor department anonymously I think the company can get fined. "

User (sauvignonbleu): "I live in NYC. It's a clerical job and we're all on salary. Not sure what to do....she refuses to switch is to direct deposit though I don't know why. It usually means getting paid on Monday or Tuesday instead of Friday...but for some of the lower paid folks who live paycheck to paycheck that means bill payments bounce." Self: "IMO, find a new job.\n\nAny company that consistantly pays late is likely going down the tubes soon." User (sauvignonbleu): "I've worked here for going on 7 years and made more money year over year every year. I definitely won't be leaving - it's just frustrating how cavalier my boss is about not getting these paychecks out on time." Palendrome (Palendrome): "How long have you been getting paid late?" User (sauvignonbleu): "It's been happening intermittently for several years now." SchroederVanPelt (SchroederVanPelt): "So I had a job where for some odd reason we'd always get paid on thursday and then randomly for about a month we started getting paid on friday only to revert back to thursday. I mentioned it to my boss and she explained we submit timecards on friday, they then submit payroll on Wednesday and their bank just had a fast turn around for DD/mailing checks and we got out money the next day. And the month we were getting paid on Friday happened because they got busy and didn't submit payroll until late Wednesday or Thursday. \n\nIt sounds like to me like your job has the standard two day turn around and your boss gets lazy from time to time which is a shitty thing for a boss to do. "

User (sauvignonbleu): "I live in NYC. It's a clerical job and we're all on salary. Not sure what to do....she refuses to switch is to direct deposit though I don't know why. It usually means getting paid on Monday or Tuesday instead of Friday...but for some of the lower paid folks who live paycheck to paycheck that means bill payments bounce." Self: "IMO, find a new job.\n\nAny company that consistantly pays late is likely going down the tubes soon." User (sauvignonbleu): "I've worked here for going on 7 years and made more money year over year every year. I definitely won't be leaving - it's just frustrating how cavalier my boss is about not getting these paychecks out on time." guruscotty (guruscotty): "What you need to do, then, is save and get to a point where you have enough in the bank at all times like you just got paid, so you don't have to sweat whether the current paycheck is two or three or four days late.\n\nThen you can live normally, and not worry about precisely when you're getting paid."

User (sauvignonbleu): "I live in NYC. It's a clerical job and we're all on salary. Not sure what to do....she refuses to switch is to direct deposit though I don't know why. It usually means getting paid on Monday or Tuesday instead of Friday...but for some of the lower paid folks who live paycheck to paycheck that means bill payments bounce." Self: "Get a new job. It will only get worse"

User (sauvignonbleu): "I live in NYC. It's a clerical job and we're all on salary. Not sure what to do....she refuses to switch is to direct deposit though I don't know why. It usually means getting paid on Monday or Tuesday instead of Friday...but for some of the lower paid folks who live paycheck to paycheck that means bill payments bounce." Self: "I checked [labor.ny.gov](https://labor.ny.gov/workerprotection/laborstandards/workprot/payofwag.shtm) and the only requirement mentioned for office workers is that you must be paid twice a month. I do think that they're required to stick to a regularly scheduled payday, but if your boss consistently pays you on the 22nd for wages earned from the 1st to the 15th, I don't think they're breaking the law unless your contract says that your payday is sooner than that."

User (sauvignonbleu): "I live in NYC. It's a clerical job and we're all on salary. Not sure what to do....she refuses to switch is to direct deposit though I don't know why. It usually means getting paid on Monday or Tuesday instead of Friday...but for some of the lower paid folks who live paycheck to paycheck that means bill payments bounce." Self: "I had that issue once. Then i had 2 days off and went to work. The whole cafe was stripped. The counter everything was gone. Just an empty room. They were evicted because they weren't paying bills and rent properly either. "

User (sauvignonbleu): "I live in NYC. It's a clerical job and we're all on salary. Not sure what to do....she refuses to switch is to direct deposit though I don't know why. It usually means getting paid on Monday or Tuesday instead of Friday...but for some of the lower paid folks who live paycheck to paycheck that means bill payments bounce." Self: "IMO, find a new job.\n\nAny company that consistantly pays late is likely going down the tubes soon." User (sauvignonbleu): "I've worked here for going on 7 years and made more money year over year every year. I definitely won't be leaving - it's just frustrating how cavalier my boss is about not getting these paychecks out on time." ctarbet (ctarbet): "Love that word!\nhttp://www.dictionary.com/browse/cavalier\nadjective\nhaughty, disdainful, or supercilious:\nan arrogant and cavalier attitude toward others." LineBreakBot (LineBreakBot): "You might have incorrectly formatted line breaks. To create a line break, either put two spaces at the end of the line or put an extra blank line in-between lines. ([See Reddit's page on commenting for more information.](http://www.reddit.com/wiki/commenting))\n\nI have attempted to automatically reformat your text with fixed line breaks.\n\n----\n\n> Love that word!\n\n> http://www.dictionary.com/browse/cavalier\n\n> adjective\n\n> haughty, disdainful, or supercilious:\n\n> an arrogant and cavalier attitude toward others.\n>\n\n----\n\n^(I am a bot. Contact) ^[pentium4borg](https://www.reddit.com/user/pentium4borg) ^(with any feedback.)" ctarbet (ctarbet): "Gee, thanks. How do I format sarcasm?"

User (sauvignonbleu): "I live in NYC. It's a clerical job and we're all on salary. Not sure what to do....she refuses to switch is to direct deposit though I don't know why. It usually means getting paid on Monday or Tuesday instead of Friday...but for some of the lower paid folks who live paycheck to paycheck that means bill payments bounce." Self: "Start job hunting, the business you work for is dying."

User (sauvignonbleu): "I live in NYC. It's a clerical job and we're all on salary. Not sure what to do....she refuses to switch is to direct deposit though I don't know why. It usually means getting paid on Monday or Tuesday instead of Friday...but for some of the lower paid folks who live paycheck to paycheck that means bill payments bounce." Self: "request to have every paycheck paid the following week. its a simple fix but it means you would have to plan to skip one paycheck for it to take effect, so your work from january 1-15 is paid january 30, your work from january 15-30 is paid february 15 and so on. this will give enough buffer time for their slow accountants."

User (sauvignonbleu): "I live in NYC. It's a clerical job and we're all on salary. Not sure what to do....she refuses to switch is to direct deposit though I don't know why. It usually means getting paid on Monday or Tuesday instead of Friday...but for some of the lower paid folks who live paycheck to paycheck that means bill payments bounce." Self: "You could consider starting a Union. You can obtain language in a collective bargaining agreement that establishes when payday is and what the penalty would be to the employer for missing it. Starting a Union is a serious decision, but myself and others can help you do it. "