Internet's first get-out-of-debt community - 134,000 members

Posted: Mon Aug 25, 2008 10:11 pm Subject: Can't sleep because of debt

Hi! It's really great to find this website. I'm a first-time mom who has a 2 month old son. My husband and I currently has a debt of 30,000 not including the car loan and the mortgage. And with the new baby, we're now struggling with our finances. As of last month, we're still able to pay the minimum payments but with the baby now and all these medical bills, we are now running behind.. getting bank overdrafts and just basically paying our utilities with credit cards. Even with both of our incomes combined, we're practically just hanging there. All of our income just go towards the bills and there's just basically nothing left for us. And now that I have to send my son to daycare, this will be an added burden to us.
We have tried everything that we could do and the recent thing we did is transfer most of our cc balances into one that has the lowest rate. Still, it didn't help us much. We have also tried refinancing my mortgage but was denied because of the current market today. They said that our loan is higher than the current value of our house.
I've been having sleepless nights and actually tonight, I've been thinking about bankruptcy but part of me is saying no to that idea. That's when I decided to go online and found this website.
I need some input from you guys on how to handle this. Little by little, I've been selling my stuff on craigslist and this is what's paying my monthly medical bills. My husband and I can't do double-jobs right now because we're still thinking twice about the daycare. We really want to be debt-free so we could save money towards our son's future.
I'm sorry if this is very long. I just don't have anyone else to turn to. Thank you for your time.

Guest · Posted: Mon Aug 25, 2008 10:25 pm Subject:

If you do not want to entertain bankrupcy then do debt settlement

Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 4:54 am Subject:

Hi there cathzee and welcome to the community. Smile

I just wanted to acknowledge your post and let you know that someone with more knowledge in this area will be around to advise you when they are available. Keep checking back. Very Happy

Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 6:21 am Subject:

Sorry Cathzee that things are kind of tough for you now. The first thing I would do is write a monthly budget. I would start with the past few months to see where your money is going and then write one for the next month before the month begins. Once you have your past and current budget written I would try to eliminate non necesities. You might conisder dumping things like cell phones, cable and gym memberships if you have them. Those can easily cost you $200/month or more combined. If you don't clip coupons then you should consider doing so because you can save a lot of money there. Check out couponmom and thegrocerygame dot com. One is free and the other is a pay site. Another option is to move down in cars depending on how much your car is worth and how much the payment is. I don't think I would do anything with the home at this point unless things get really tight and you can't make the payment. I would always pay necesites before credit cards.

Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 7:23 am Subject:

Cathzee, wow this seems to be a familiar story to me. I was there a couple of years ago with my family just starting out and my wife and I made a decision for her to stay home with baby. Daycare is far to expensive, basically her entire check would be going to cover daycare expenses. So she stayed home and then everything went downhill from there. I started getting sick, stress and lack of sleep contributed to a whole lot of health problems. Our credit card debt alone was a lot and we first went with a law firm because we thought they'd be better, the only thing they did was get me sued in about 4 months. then we left them and went with superior debt and now we are almost done only have 3 creditors left to be settled. Today my stress is at a normal rate, I sleep a thousand times better and most of my health issues have resolved itself.

Dollars and since, you have some great recommendations thank you! There are people, like myself that need a cell phone for business and such, but we did shut off the landline since cell phones are much more convinent for my family's situation. As for gym and cable those are our only means of recreation so we did not stop them but we did stop some of the unnecessary station. My wife and I are gym rats and have always been so that was not going to change. Clipping coupons, that was not quite realistic for my family. Yes they save a lot but after clipping them you have to use them. Just not able to remember to bring them to the store. But my wife is an sales ad woman, we normally eat things that are on sale for that week. Our credit was in the dumps and there was no way of lessening our car payments or even refi-ing the house. The main thing is our lives did not stop nor did we eat ramen noodles, but we adjusted to meet our current obligations and have even be able save a little along the way. It is amazing how creative you can be with a few dollars in your pocket; not to mention the free 'going on's' that you can find in your area. Every week it seems there is something at the park or library that can inform, educate, and build great friendships.

Cathzee, good luck!

Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 7:54 am Subject:

Are there any jobs that you could do from home to earn money while keeping your son out of daycare? When I thought back to #1 how much I missed of my childrens childhood because I was always working and #2 how much Daycare cost compared to what I made, Daycare just doesn't seem like money well spent. Now if you are making 6 figures, that is different!

Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 12:21 pm Subject:

While I agree that dealing with coupons can be a pain and they do take some discipline and time I would still recomend investing the time especially if you are a stay at home mom or dad. The trick is to combine the coupons with in store sales. Those sites I listed help save a lot of time and still furnish really nice savings including poiting out a lot of free items if you combine the coupons with the sales price. I have enough shampoo and cleaning supplies to last me for a couple years now and I got it all free. I don't even get the free ones now because I have enough already. I'll give you a few examples of my savings just within the past few weeks.

Walgreens had a sale on kellog's cereal any type at $2.50/box plus a $5 instore credit for each $10 spent on that cereal. Now, in the sunday paper a couple weeks earlier kellog's had a few different coupons for $1 off various brands of cereal and they had a mail in rebate for $10 if you purchased 10 boxes. What I did is I picked up 5 sets of coupons so I could use multiple coupons and 2 rebates. I bought 20 boxes of cereal which after subtracting the coupons and rebates they will pay me $5 for each set of 10 boxes. For each set of 10 boxes I paid $25 - ($10 in store credit) - ($10 coupons) - ($10 mail in rebate). The only minus to this deal is I have to wait 6-8 weeks to get my two $10 mail in rebates so I do have $1 per box invested but that is still a great deal for name brand cereal.

Another great deal I acted on was Kroger had a 10 for $10 sale on crest toothpaste and I had 5 coupons at 0.75 off so I got 5 tubes for 0.25 each or $1.25 total which is cheaper than the cost of 1 tube normally.

Anyway I like thegrocerygame site even though it cost a small amount of money. It has deffinetly saved me much more than the membership fee and what I spend on newspapers for coupons. They always have a lot of items on their lists that are 50% off - free. The trick is stock up on items that keep and plan your meals and needs around the list because the items vary quite a bit from week to week.

Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 2:55 pm Subject:

Excellent suggestions and well worth the time invested.

My wife is great about making sure the meals for the week is circled around sales in the paper. She loves Kroger and they 10 for $10 items or their in-store specials! She knows where to go to make our dollar stretch and the meals that she prepares is amazing. I would never know what to do if something should happen. Also shared your site with my wife and she is already in love. Thank you so much!!!

Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 3:31 pm Subject:

Cathzee - I sent you a PM. Check your In-Box.

Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2008 8:07 pm Subject:

Cathzee~

First of all, congratulations on your baby. They are quite the blessing!

If it were me I would cut back on anything that is not essential. Do you have a cell phone plan? Would it be cheaper to switch to a pay as you go service? I know I used to have a plan with 1400 minutes a month. I never even came close!! Just cutting back my cell phone plan to 800 minutes a month saved me like $50.

If you have digital cable switch to basic.

Start clipping coupons. It is a total pain in the but while you are clipping. But when you get to the store and see how much you save it's worth it. The first time I did it I clipped $40 off our grocery bill. It was like the best high. But I love clipping, so maybe that's just me.

Just make sure you don't buy things you normally wouldn't just because they are on sale. For example, my friend started clipping coupons and her grocery bill went up, she told me that it was a waste of time. So I looked at her receipts. It was obvious. She shopped once a week. She usually only purchased cleaning products once a month when she ran out. But she got coupons in the Sunday papers for them so she started buying 2 months worth of cleaning products every week for 3 weeks. Leaving her with 6 months worth of cleaning products and a higher bill. You see what I mean? Just because it's on sale, doesn't mean you should go out of your way to buy it.

Write a grocery list and stick to it. Try to find coupons for the things you already buy.

If you are like me and like to shop online. Do this. Every time you go to purchase something, most website have a place in the checkout area that says "enter coupon code here". Before you check out, open another internet browser screen and type in the name of the website and the words "coupon code" after it. So it ends up looking like, for example "amazon.com coupon code". A bunch of websites should pop up, browse them and see what you can find. Return to the website and enter you newly found code. Watch the total drop!

Posted: Wed Aug 27, 2008 4:18 am Subject:

These are all very good ideas for budgeting, but if you read the OP, it appears that she is in financial crisis and is heading toward BK. We need to help her in ways to tackle her debt currently on hand.

Posted: Wed Aug 27, 2008 5:46 am Subject:

Why just handle one part of her issue when most likely she can make an additional immediate impact with reducing what she is spending now?

And the ideas offered are things she might not have thought about?

The title of her post is "can't sleep because of debt", and I read the main point of her post as "She wants to be debt free", not just asking for BK advice. Maybe I misread or misinterpreted the meaning behind her post?

Reducing the amount she is spending on her everyday things is one step on that path to her goal of being debt free. She is selling things on Craigslist, and hell maybe she is already implementing the ideas offered.

What suggestions do you have for her regarding bankruptcy? I know nothing about BK so I have no advice to offer. All that I (and probably some of the other posters) can offer are suggestions that, while having nothing to do with BK, DO have the ability to help her now.

Posted: Wed Aug 27, 2008 6:31 am Subject:

Everyone situation is different but before talking to to a bankruptcy attorney, contact all of your creditors first you maybe in a position where they will accept lower payments or can work something out. As for the utlities, alot of companie offer equal payment plans where you can pay a certain about each month over the year.

Posted: Wed Aug 27, 2008 8:12 am Subject:

smo - my post was trying to bring light to the fact that we were only focusing on one part of her problem - which had to do with saving money and budgeting. That is good. Now we also need to focus on the overall financial picture. Nowhere did I say that she should file BK, I referenced that the OP said she was heading for BK. If we can help the OP avoid that route, that would be a blessing.

Perhaps since the OP only posted once in this thread, maybe all she needed was someone to listen to her vent. Sometimes an ear is just as helpful as a hand.

Posted: Wed Aug 27, 2008 9:41 am Subject:

true enough

Posted: Thu Aug 28, 2008 9:28 pm Subject: Thanks for all the replies

I didn't know I'm going to get so much responses. I wasn't able to update my post right away because I just started going back to work. We are still in financial crisis and do need some help. I'm actually earning more than my husband that's why I couldn't quit my job. I'm earning about almost 2,500 a month (that's why I can't quit) and he's 1600. Our debt combined were all because of our past marriages. He's giving $500 monthly to his ex-wife for child support while my debt were from tuition fees and most of them were used to pay for my mom's medical bills and also school fees of my 2 siblings (I'm the eldest that's why). At this time, we're doing our very best to stay positive because we don't want our marriage to be affected with this financial problem.
When it comes to savings, we have free basic cable at our condo and we're only paying for the internet. We don'thave a home phone line and we only have the basic cellphone plan. Our mortgage combined plus HOA is almost $1400 monthly (due to high interest) and we tried refinancing but was not declined because of the current market. We even tried to cut back our electricity by not using too much a/c but we don't want our baby to feel uncomfortable.
Since we had our baby, we've been trying all possible means to save money. We did cut coupons, we stopped eating out and stopped using 4 of our credit cards. The only card that we're using right now is the one that's paying some of my medical bills and we actually transferred almost all our credit card balances to this one.
Like what I've said from the OP, I've been selling stuff on craigslist. I just also started selling books on cash4books.net this week and have recently applied as a mystery shopper. But I know this won't be enough for us. With the daycare coming which will costs us 200 a week, I just don't think we'll be able to handle it. But of course, we have to stay positive.
I'm curious about that debt settlement but I'm pretty skeptical about it. Does this affect one's credit? Our credit as of this month is still in good condition since we're still paying our bills on time (some using our cc) but I really want to know more of your suggestions since I don't we'll be able to keep this up.
One posted about financial future and of course, I'm really into that especially now with the baby. My husband and I were hoping that as soon as we got our debt cleared then we will start working on our son's future.
I wanna have a good night sleep again and with all your posts above, it's already helping me. We know we couldn't do this alone that's why I'm really glad I found this site.
Thanks guys and please keep posting. You're all a blessing to me and my family.

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