Hi! I'm Raquel. I'm feeling a little vulnerable. I stumbled across this site, gathered all my information, tried to settle my nausea, and hit update. I finally got my head out of the sand a few weeks ago. Unfortunately we got a rude awakening when we received court documents regarding a debt. What a sinking feeling. I thought to myself, I better do something about this before I get 10 more. So, I put all of our debt on here. As of last week, we have payments set up on all of these except 2. The one with the court hearing and the personal loan that we have not been asked to pay on.
My work requires that I contribute to retirement. (403b) We are required to contribute at least 2% and they put in 5%. I do the minimum 2%. And we have $604 in savings as of recently. We wanted to build up an emergency fund.
Can't wait to read everyone's stories and learn some new things.
Feels like I'm standing here naked.....
July 9th, 2020 at 07:40 pm
July 9th, 2020 at 08:16 pm 1594325770
Are you current on your home mortgage, utilities and car payment? An emergency fund is definitely a good idea if you don't have one. It may have to be just a thousand or a few thousand to start since you have quite a bit of debt. Any actions you take to pay off the debt will be well worth it, it's rare to regret paying off debt!
July 9th, 2020 at 08:29 pm 1594326556
July 9th, 2020 at 09:08 pm 1594328891
July 9th, 2020 at 09:36 pm 1594330586
July 9th, 2020 at 09:38 pm 1594330693
creditcardfree - The debt with the court case is the $4,084.99. We are hoping to settle and set up a payment plan.
July 9th, 2020 at 10:32 pm 1594333956
July 10th, 2020 at 12:14 am 1594340090
July 10th, 2020 at 12:17 am 1594340222
I can't help but wonder how you owe $4,000 for tires. What's that about?
Now that you've shared your debts, the info we really need to make any helpful suggestions is your income and spending figures. Otherwise, the debt figure has no context to tell how manageable it is for you.
The other useful piece of info would be the interest rates on each debt as that really determines the order in which you should attack them.
July 10th, 2020 at 01:25 am 1594344301
July 10th, 2020 at 02:22 am 1594347744
July 10th, 2020 at 08:07 am 1594368466
Do you have any ideas where you will start? Some people do the highest interest rate first, but a lot of us do the snowball method, which is to start with the smallest debt first, paying only minimums on everything else and putting all extra towards that debt, then when you pay off that one you add all extra to the second biggest debt. That is the method I would recommend if you need the psychological impetus to keep at it. It really boosts your enthusiasm to see a couple of the smaller debts drop away. Studies have shown that people are more likely to stick with it than the highest interest rate first method. The only time I wouldn't put the smallest first is if you had a 0% interest rate. That one could wait.
July 10th, 2020 at 10:33 am 1594377223
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July 12th, 2020 at 01:34 am 1594517691
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July 14th, 2020 at 04:46 am 1594701967