Credit Cards

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IMADreamer
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Re: Credit Cards

Post by IMADreamer »

Sounds like you guys are determined and on the right track. Have you checked out Dave Ramsey by any chance? I listen to him sometimes on the radio he gives pretty sound advice. Just listening to his show can kind of be motivating.

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Leroy
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Re: Credit Cards

Post by Leroy »

If only I could get back that money from that TV preacher that was screwing the hockey player...

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GeddyWrox
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Re: Credit Cards

Post by GeddyWrox »

IMADreamer wrote:Sounds like you guys are determined and on the right track. Have you checked out Dave Ramsey by any chance? I listen to him sometimes on the radio he gives pretty sound advice. Just listening to his show can kind of be motivating.
This.

Diddy
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Re: Credit Cards

Post by Diddy »

Does he have a pod cast? The truck I'm driving now is 30 years old and doesn't have a functioning radio.

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GeddyWrox
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Re: Credit Cards

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GeddyWrox
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Re: Credit Cards

Post by GeddyWrox »

And a blog (which is where I found the link for the podcasts)
https://www.daveramsey.com/blog/

AWvsCBsteeeerike3
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Re: Credit Cards

Post by AWvsCBsteeeerike3 »

That's awesome. I remember getting out of college and going haywire thinking money grew on trees for a while.

No idea what your situation is, but there are a lot of credit cards that offer 0% APR for a year or longer if you transfer debt to them (usually a 3-5% fee). It may be worth looking into if you're paying 15%+ or have a substantial amount to pay off. You can also borrow against 401ks or other retirement accounts at rates much lower than credit cards typically charge.

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go birds
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Re: Credit Cards

Post by go birds »

Congrats!

I recently became 100% debt and there aren't many better feelings in this world. Feels like the weight of the world is off my shoulders.

Like others, once i graduated college i thought i was mister moneybags and boy did i end up paying for it. My issue was that i was never really taught good money management. Granted, most of it is common sense, but i fell right into the credit card trap (there were also other unforeseen circumstances however). I wish my parents had really instilled the value of saving and good money management throughout my childhood. That's really where it starts.

Anyway, stick to your goal and stay disciplined. You can do it!

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lukethedrifter
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Re: Credit Cards

Post by lukethedrifter »

Per my new post on cars I'm looking to get into some new debt (sort of). That said, I've gone to using my credit card all month then paying it down sometimes multiple times in a month to keep it at zero. Will need to be even more disciplined about spending with the upcoming car pmt.

Money problems can really be stressful. Makes it hard to enjoy when you do spend. Really sucks when a couple can't agree on a plan or stick to it.

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Re: Credit Cards

Post by Arthur Dent »

MrCrowesGarden wrote:
Diddy wrote:
MrCrowesGarden wrote:Congrats. The fact we made it thru this Christmas without having to use them was a big deal for us.

I know I'm still paying for my wife's poor financial decisions before we met... and for ones while we've been together.
We severely underestimated the cost of having a kid. Coupled with back to back severe droughts. Eating out was, and still continues to be, to big of an expense for us. It's cheaper, healthier, and generally better tasting to eat at home, but it's to easy to eat out when you've both had long days at work and don't want to cook or clean afterwards.
That'd be a lot more defensible than us. She made a series of bad financial decisions, and coupled with student loan payments after getting her Masters means I've had to shoulder the load for most of our bills. When her car needed a new transmission, we didn't have the money to pay for repairs, so we took out a credit card. We no longer have the car but I'm still the one paying for it. I feel like sometimes I become boring old Mr. Reliable who she knows is going to do what it takes to keep us afloat, and to that end, I get taken advantage of.
I feel your pain.

Like others have said, I don't think good financial habits don't get taught enough, and the US economy is littered with temptations to make devastating mistakes. The taboo about discussing personal finances enables this and a lot of other ills.

My wife has faced a combination of some terrible health and other luck and some bad habits, that having now met her parents, I can see the origin of. From my side, habits from my parents are in the opposite direction -- they've been too cheap, preventing themselves from buying things that would bring real value that they'd have no problem affording. Getting together with my wife was a major motivation in developing some better habits personally because the clash meant pressure to spend more than I was comfortable with. Previously, I had used a more or less anxiety based system to determine what I could pay for, which meant depriving myself in some pointless ways and also just creating a lot of unneeded guilt and anxiety. I ended up using Mint.com to setup a personal budget. As an engineer, having a rationale system that based on real data and analysis explicitly granted me permission for discretionary purchases every month took a big chunk of the anxiety away.

For my wife, going the other way is, of course, much harder. Before we got married, watching her repeatedly put herself in avoidable crises was tough. The psychology surrounding spending and saving is deep and tough to change. In addition to just entrenched habits, we identify ourselves with the things we spend on and come to see them as needs or devastating losses to give up. And in my wife's case, having a history of expensive tragedies made her feel that being responsible was pointless because something would surely come along and take away everything you'd worked for. Of course, this thinking can easily get to the point where fairly mild unexpected events (a moderate car repair, etc.) lead to an unmanageable crisis. The ubiquitous debt mongers are only too happy to capitalize offering the chance to get through the week with a solution that dramatically increases the severity of the underlying problem.

She's been doing much better lately, which hasn't been an easy process, but eliminating this overwhelming perpetual atmosphere of financial crisis and impending disaster is just so much healthier. For me, having pretty absolutist budget is more or less mandatory at this point. Though I'm probably an excessive hardass on this point, I think the approach works. Within that framework, there's still plenty of freedom, but I cannot deal with constant pushing of boundaries of what is determined and agreed to be appropriate. Those plans have to include allocation for the unexpected (you can't have a plan to never have a car repair or treat it as a special case every time there's a unexpected expense), but it is certainly tough as there are legions of marketers studying psychological weaknesses to determine how best to get people to spend, profit off of poor decisions, and exploit those in the weakest positions.

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