vizanimationpros Welcome!

Sea Green Vacuum Excellent!

Sea Green Vacuum That is amazing progress! You two should be proud. 😄

farfromtheusual Considering we paid 2.6 million last year for the entire year, 2020 is looking pretty great from this thread! Congratulations to everyone!

farfromtheusual I am two months behind on my updates. Our lockdown is nearing the end, but as I'm caring for two adults at home instead of being a lovely holiday this has been a time of no respite and my poor budget is suffering dreadful neglect. The payments have been made, but time to organise entering them in YNAB and reporting here has been sadly lacking. I am longing for level 1 (hopefully to be announced on Monday) but as the place my Mum goes to two days a week that gives me a rest is likely not to reopen at all, I'm not entirely sure that things will get easier here any time soon.

WairereRose hugs to you! I keep hearing people talk about all this extra time they have and they’re all baking bread and gardening and organizing the garage..... They must not have kids (or parents) to care for. I have two kids (6 and 2) and no school and no daycare and my husband and I are both (trying to) WFH full time- I don’t even have time to take a shower half the time, lol. Hang in there!

Steel Blue Sound Thank you! And hugs to you too!

Steel Blue Sound That is very challenging!! Hang in there!! Remember to practice some selfcare every day. It's crucial with little kids, and even more important now. If you don't look after the mama, then the house will fall apart. :)

WairereRose HUGS. It is a struggle, and I know that this year has brought more adapting of goals for more people than ever before. The fact that you're still kickin is a good thing. Hopefully you'll be able to get back on track soon!

Steel Blue Sound I don't have kids or parents to care for, but I take care of animals... so yeah, nothing stopped for me either! I was all excited about some down time when all this started. HA. That's a funny joke.

I’m nothing if not resilient, just get a bit flustered when the time I have to adjust doesn’t fit the time it takes me to figure out my new systems.

WairereRose I totally can relate to that!! Hang in there, you're doing great!

Should of added that I paid off my phone lease agreement too, which wasn't part of my overall debt amount but it was a category that can now be done away with so yay! I'm going to let the dust settle out from that (confession: cell phone billing is incomprehensible to me - it may as well be written in cuneiform), and then start shopping around for cheaper service (spouse is w/ Ting and we like Ting a lot, but I may opt for Mint Mobile...unsure yet).

3xDogDad Glad you're hanging in there!!

Powder Blue Lightning Congrats! Each payment, and pay off are steps closer to your goal. 🎉

Mmmyellow Yellow welcome!!

Mmmyellow Yellow We're glad you've joined us to tackle the credit card debt! It's more fun with friends. Welcome to the challenge!

Nicole Good luck! You can do it!

lil Ronnie WAHOO!!

lil Ronnie Hooray! And less than 40% to go. You'll get to the finish line in no time!

Slate Gray Cobra You aren't alone there! 

Slate Blue Network I hear ya. The theme for 2020 seems to be adaptation....

Slate Blue Pilot Fantastic progress!

Purple Foal Love those big payoff milestones! 🎉 Coloring in the picture is a really great way to remind yourself of progress, at a glance. Do you have it displayed?

Nicole 

Nicole said:
Do you have it displayed?

 Yes I do! For me on my desk with my colouring picture for workouts. :)

The Goat Queen Water heater... wrench. Ha! Our water heater is in the same sad state, and we're looking into similar. Were you planning on paying cash? For hot water, and preventing additional debt—adjusting the plan doesn't sound like a bad trade-off! 

Nicole Well, in a turn of events we actually just decided to roll the water heater cost into our refinance that we are currently in the process of. We will pay for the installation with cash.

But now our fridge went out. 😔 That means in the past 3 years we have literally had to replace every appliance we own. I just bought a new dryer with cash last month! Ugh. Now I'm fridge shopping. May have to use part of my extra debt repayment monies this month to pay for it. 

The Goat Queen Oh no! I'm sorry to hear that. The silver lining is that you have new shiny appliances, and should be set for a good bit. 🤞 With being at home more, plenty of opportunity to use them as well. Our household has a similar situation, timeline and paused our snowball too. We'll make it through!

The Goat Queen I feel your pain!!! The first year we were in our house, it was the A/C.... then last year it was the washer/dryer... and now it's our fridge (which we brought with us and is only 7 years old!). I figure it  a couple years everything will be brand new!

That's awesome Gator_Gal !! I hope you smash it.

Gator_Gal CONGRATS!!!!

Gator_Gal I wanna be like you someday!

Sky Blue Wizard You are too kind! I'm sure you're killing it!!

Congratulations, Gator_Gal ! 🎉 You've got this. 

Gator_Gal Excellent!! Let that snowball roll... :)

Trainee Researcher That's all super good news!!!

Trainee Researcher Yesss! That confirmation is a sweet one. Congratulations on paying it off, and closing the account.

Trainee Researcher Excellent!! Let that snowball roll... :)

Michelle D. Congrats on paying off that loan!!
The virus has certainly messed up a lot of things for a lot of people. Glad to see you're still trucking and able to continue to move forward, even if you had to make adjustments.

farfromtheusual 

Thank you!  I'm also trying to fund True Expenses and put more money into Immediate Obligations.

For a long time all gas and groceries were bought on credit.  I now have my gas category funded, but groceries is still lagging.  The Summer brings a lot more True Expenses as my car registration is due, I need to decide if I still want Amazon Prime, and bug bill is also due (important for living in FL).

If this virus has done one thing, it's really put a stop to my eating out. But, wow, is that grocery budget ballooning. 😶

Michelle D. I hear ya on that one, I've had to add extra funds to the grocery category as well. That's a bit of a strain on the budget since my BF usually pays for food out, and I usually pay for the groceries. He's getting the benefit and I'm taking the hit! This is where thrifty meals and smart grocery management pay off. I'm still working on all that...

Michelle D. When setting 2020 goals... I don't think any of us anticipated a global pandemic! Adjusting to what works for your new normal is exactly what you want to do. I've done it too!

Michelle D. 

June Check In:

CC1: Paid $209.63, added $178.22 in expenses and interest, left $432.69   Still on track to pay this off in August!

CC2: Paid $128, added $526.89 in expenses and interest (vet bills, ugh), left $1818.81 undebt.it says I can pay this off by the end of the year and that's what I'm aiming for.

CC3: Paid $239.75, added $682.35 in expenses and interest, left $9688.03 Undebt.it gives me a date of Feb 2022 to pay off. I'm hoping to beat that.

I still use the cards on a regular basis and some of the charges are funded while other charges aren't. I have a whole spreadsheet to keep track of it.  There's no real easy way to track old debt and new credit card float.  Once I have the old debt paid off, then each card will be paid off every month. I'm just trying to get to level ground here.

Michelle D. I feel your pain, I was in the same boat for a VERY long time. (Like years of time...)

I have done a few things over the years to make it easier to keep track of what is actual debt, and what is current stuff, so here's a few tid bits that I've learned - feel free to completely disregard since this is totally unsolicited advice :)
The first was to take advantage of zero percent balance transfer promotions as often as I could. Even if it meant opening another card, that would give me the breathing room I needed to work on paying things down, and zero out a card so that it was "empty". In some cases I was even able to consolidate the debt from more than one card into one promotion. This also served to cut the interest out so that what I was paying was going 100% towards the debt, so the debt stopped costing me money.

The second thing I did was for the cards that I just had to use while I was carrying debt I changed the way I tracked it in the budget so that I could separate out what was debt vs what was spending. So I made 2 categories that look something like this:

Visa Purchases - 18th

Visa Debt - 18th /$61.00

So the first category is where I put all of the purchases that I make. The second category is where I apply payments towards the old debt that I had been carrying. I have the due date, and the amount that I want to pay per month in order to pay it off before the promotional period ends. I have a card like this that I use and have a promotional balance on because the 0% interest was too good to pass up, AND it gives me 5% cash back on purchases at the store the card is from. I can't turn that down.

So yeah, I feel your pain in a major way, and sometimes you gotta get creative to figure out how to manage it so that it doesn't manage you! Feel free to shoot me a message if you want to chat about it. I've been in your shoes, and have clawed my way out so slowly, but always upward, even if there were some bumps in the road along the way.

farfromtheusual I get what you're saying and that makes sense. My brain just wants to see the big picture though so it's hard to break something like this out without getting more confused.  Currently, once I pay off one credit card, all purchases that are already funded will go to on that card and get paid off each month.  Then I can focus on the other two credit cards without adding more charges to them. I've been taking chunks off my snowball to fund my true expenses, but there's only so much money to go around, so the float will continue on for a bit at least. I'm beginning to get the handle of funding true expenses though.  This past month saw a lot of stuff sneak up on me, but I still had the wherewithal to pay for half of it. So that's a plus! 

And since I know that I have some big expenses coming up in Jan and Feb, I'm already funding them. 👍

Thanks for the help! 🙂

Michelle D.  Oh yeah, I know the feeling. It is really hard to juggle it when you don't have a "free" card that you can pay OFF every month. That makes it SO much easier when you're able to get to that level. There were times in my life where it was much more worth it to take the "hit" on my credit report and open a new card in order to get a balance transfer (both to eliminate the interest, and to "free" up a card again).

And YES, funding true expenses is a BIG part of not taking on the new debt. It's way better to actually fund what you need (even if you splurge sometimes) than pay down the debt and leave yourself so strapped you can't make it to the next pay day. What revolutionized my ability to keep from over spending categories was using the reports to examine exactly what my averages really were. Once I did that, I was able to fund them much more appropriately, which stopped the WAMing all the time, and kept me from over spending. THAT enabled me to get a better handle on keeping the debt paid, and then a couple windfalls happened and now I'm really pushing ahead (and making extra payments on my truck loan which I never thought would be possible).
Stick with it! You'll get there!

farfromtheusual Thank you!  😄

This year has been far from normal, but I can already see the trends in my spending.  It takes time, but I'm already feeling like I'm in a slightly better position than I was at the beginning of the year.

Michelle D. Good!! And you're totally right about far from normal, it's even outside my usual 'far from the usual' 😂

Michelle D. we have a high rewards card that we use for day to day expenses. YNAB handles managing that for us very well. Plus the cash back pays for Christmas. The other cards get bounced from Card to card to take advantage of 0% promos. I don’t mix spending and balance owing cards. Too confusing for me. 

Turquoise Vacuum WAHOO!! That's a silver lining to losing the vacation at least! Now you have the opportunity to do it without riding the float the next time!

farfromtheusual Absolutely. I have to say, I really LOVE YNAB. I wish I had found it years ago. When I got my annual bonus in March I funded a vacation bucket, and we won't ever book unfunded/underfunded again. It is such a simple system and I nearly instantly felt at ease, relieved from the stress of timing payments versus paydays. I'll be sharing these ideas (and probably the software) with my daughter as she gets older (she's only 6 now).

Turquoise Vacuum I agree!!
You might do a forum search, I've seen other posts where people have discussed introducing it to kids who are very young, so 6 might not even been too small to start. You might find some ideas that help to begin to have the conversation so she won't be in your shoes. ❤️

farfromtheusual Yes, and in case there are others interested, YNAB started doing a video series about money for kids. They can be found in the YNAB site and in their YouTube channel.

Salmon Motherboard That's all really good news!!!

Salmon Motherboard One down and one left to go - nice job! 😁

MoneyMonster This year has given us a number of reasons to roll with the punches. With the state of the world right now, Any progress is Great progress! Good going! 😄

Violet Drill Congrats!! Those are some pretty big steps!