found out the sex of the baby today!!! also discovered just how bad our finances are...**edit**
dh makes more than the min payment to keep the interest down, we have 4 cards, ( 2 of them owe less than $1,000, my cards, his are MUCH higher) so in total, yeah about $800 mo. i dont know how to haggle for lower rates. i certainly hope he can sell those cattle and simply pay them off, but imo, that would almost be too easy. he had a rude awakening last night, one i expected and saw coming, and tried to talk to him about, but he would just be all "well what am i supposed to do about it?" and get all pissy.
i handle my income, he handles his, which is much higher than mine. i pay for childcare, groceries, my credit cards, as well as the power/energy bills. (or any other bill i need to pay) i have also bought all the xmas presents this year.
we dont have a joint account, he doesnt explain our finances to me, he doesn't communicate for shit.
Quoting rowansmum:
Call the card companies and try to get a better interest rate. Why are the payments so high? Dh's cards are 7000 and the min payments are 200. Even on months when we can pay extra on them its no more than 500 without putting us in a situation.
Consolidation is better than a repo or bankruptcy and it is less important now because you already have a mortgage. Do you guys plan your finances? I find money issues go hand in hand with lack of planning/budgeting. Who handles the money?
My dh was in sad shape financially when I took over. I'm the budgeter in our house and it works best for us. He's actually relieved and i'm far less stressed too. Could that be an option?
Quoting D.O.E.:well, we are in canada, so medical costs, i dont worry about, no matter what happens. so thank god for that. and i breastfeed and if we can get our shit together in the next 4 months we will be ok.
Quoting Due9:How are you going to afford another child? that must be really difficult
actually, i have been wanting to foster since i was a foster kid myself. but we needed a house with enough bedrooms, which we now have. and of course the financial aspect will factor into our decision. we couldn't afford 2 extra kids otherwise.
as a foster mom i will be able to dedicate myself to the kids, as well as to online studies, so that in a few years time, i can get a job that pays over $20/hr, i will be taking crisis councelling as well as my youth care worker certification.
and i dont want to take out another student loan either, so it does help to be paid to foster kids, i can then turn around and pay for my classes individually.
also, it will be great to tae the classes offered by social services to foster parents, it will help both me and dh.
there are a lot of benefits to being a foster parent, not just financial.
Quoting ff-princess:sounds like it was a perfect time to buy a home, eh? and your altruistic motivation for taking in foster children is awesome. oh, wait, it's only financially beneficial.
aww thanks mrs. G :) it's gonna be rough, but those are the best lessons learned, the hard ones. everything will be fine. if not, thank god i have a mommy :) lol
Quoting MrS.GiFFord:I like the way you write. ;) I am sorry things are shitty right now...I hope they start looking up soon!
By paying a lot but not paying off the whole balance you're not saving yourself anything. An effective strategy is to pay only the min on (say if you had 2 cards hypothetically) the card with the lowest interest rate and put all the extra towards paying the other off as fast as possible. Now Dave Ramsey says to pay the min on the biggest one and pay off the smaller ones first. I tend to agree but it works out in our house that the higest interest card is also the one with the lowest balance.
As far as haggling for a better rate, often you don't need to haggle. Just say that you want to see if you're eligible because XYZ company has offered say 10%.
Men do get touchy when money is discussed especially when they're having trouble. I worked for a few months asking dh to hand over the reigns. What worked for me was that I drew up a budget for the month and showed how all the bills were paid and we had a small amount of savings at the end where he was just flying by the seat of his pants. I asked if he'd let me do the budget for 2 months and if it wasn't going the way it should then I'd hand the finances back to him. Its been a year now and he said the other day if anything ever happened he would have no idea how to deal with the budget lol.
Go to financial peace university (website) and sign up for the free trial. You get access to a lot of very helpful tools and resources (my favorites are the lectures). As soon as you start budgeting you will see the light at the end of the tunnel I promise. Even if you only start budgeting your stuff. Once he sees how well you're doing he will be more receptive to listening as long as you don't speak to him like he is a child or harp and preach.
My thoughts on selling the cattle are that it will not fix the problem. Its a bandaid on a broken arm. Know what I mean? Unorganized finances are a real problem and credit just allows impulse spending which adds up to a ridiculous amount. I had to go bankrupt several years ago because of the credit and impulse stuff. I didn't want to think about money and since I was making a certain amount I figured it was enough and I could do what I wanted. Not so much and I'm seeing that situation in your post :(
Quoting D.O.E.:dh makes more than the min payment to keep the interest down, we have 4 cards, ( 2 of them owe less than $1,000, my cards, his are MUCH higher) so in total, yeah about $800 mo. i dont know how to haggle for lower rates. i certainly hope he can sell those cattle and simply pay them off, but imo, that would almost be too easy. he had a rude awakening last night, one i expected and saw coming, and tried to talk to him about, but he would just be all "well what am i supposed to do about it?" and get all pissy.
i handle my income, he handles his, which is much higher than mine. i pay for childcare, groceries, my credit cards, as well as the power/energy bills. (or any other bill i need to pay) i have also bought all the xmas presents this year.
we dont have a joint account, he doesnt explain our finances to me, he doesn't communicate for shit.
Quoting rowansmum:
Call the card companies and try to get a better interest rate. Why are the payments so high? Dh's cards are 7000 and the min payments are 200. Even on months when we can pay extra on them its no more than 500 without putting us in a situation.
Consolidation is better than a repo or bankruptcy and it is less important now because you already have a mortgage. Do you guys plan your finances? I find money issues go hand in hand with lack of planning/budgeting. Who handles the money?
My dh was in sad shape financially when I took over. I'm the budgeter in our house and it works best for us. He's actually relieved and i'm far less stressed too. Could that be an option?
Quoting D.O.E.:well, we are in canada, so medical costs, i dont worry about, no matter what happens. so thank god for that. and i breastfeed and if we can get our shit together in the next 4 months we will be ok.
Quoting Due9:How are you going to afford another child? that must be really difficult
yes you have hit a few nails on the head :)
Quoting rowansmum:By paying a lot but not paying off the whole balance you're not saving yourself anything. An effective strategy is to pay only the min on (say if you had 2 cards hypothetically) the card with the lowest interest rate and put all the extra towards paying the other off as fast as possible. Now Dave Ramsey says to pay the min on the biggest one and pay off the smaller ones first. I tend to agree but it works out in our house that the higest interest card is also the one with the lowest balance.
As far as haggling for a better rate, often you don't need to haggle. Just say that you want to see if you're eligible because XYZ company has offered say 10%.
Men do get touchy when money is discussed especially when they're having trouble. I worked for a few months asking dh to hand over the reigns. What worked for me was that I drew up a budget for the month and showed how all the bills were paid and we had a small amount of savings at the end where he was just flying by the seat of his pants. I asked if he'd let me do the budget for 2 months and if it wasn't going the way it should then I'd hand the finances back to him. Its been a year now and he said the other day if anything ever happened he would have no idea how to deal with the budget lol.
Go to financial peace university (website) and sign up for the free trial. You get access to a lot of very helpful tools and resources (my favorites are the lectures). As soon as you start budgeting you will see the light at the end of the tunnel I promise. Even if you only start budgeting your stuff. Once he sees how well you're doing he will be more receptive to listening as long as you don't speak to him like he is a child or harp and preach.
My thoughts on selling the cattle are that it will not fix the problem. Its a bandaid on a broken arm. Know what I mean? Unorganized finances are a real problem and credit just allows impulse spending which adds up to a ridiculous amount. I had to go bankrupt several years ago because of the credit and impulse stuff. I didn't want to think about money and since I was making a certain amount I figured it was enough and I could do what I wanted. Not so much and I'm seeing that situation in your post :(
Quoting D.O.E.:dh makes more than the min payment to keep the interest down, we have 4 cards, ( 2 of them owe less than $1,000, my cards, his are MUCH higher) so in total, yeah about $800 mo. i dont know how to haggle for lower rates. i certainly hope he can sell those cattle and simply pay them off, but imo, that would almost be too easy. he had a rude awakening last night, one i expected and saw coming, and tried to talk to him about, but he would just be all "well what am i supposed to do about it?" and get all pissy.
i handle my income, he handles his, which is much higher than mine. i pay for childcare, groceries, my credit cards, as well as the power/energy bills. (or any other bill i need to pay) i have also bought all the xmas presents this year.
we dont have a joint account, he doesnt explain our finances to me, he doesn't communicate for shit.
Quoting rowansmum:
Call the card companies and try to get a better interest rate. Why are the payments so high? Dh's cards are 7000 and the min payments are 200. Even on months when we can pay extra on them its no more than 500 without putting us in a situation.
Consolidation is better than a repo or bankruptcy and it is less important now because you already have a mortgage. Do you guys plan your finances? I find money issues go hand in hand with lack of planning/budgeting. Who handles the money?
My dh was in sad shape financially when I took over. I'm the budgeter in our house and it works best for us. He's actually relieved and i'm far less stressed too. Could that be an option?
Quoting D.O.E.:well, we are in canada, so medical costs, i dont worry about, no matter what happens. so thank god for that. and i breastfeed and if we can get our shit together in the next 4 months we will be ok.
Quoting Due9:How are you going to afford another child? that must be really difficult
I hope they don't come after you for a slogan for Foster Parenting.
They paid for my house, my bills, my schooling and extra stuff too.
Quoting D.O.E.:actually, i have been wanting to foster since i was a foster kid myself. but we needed a house with enough bedrooms, which we now have. and of course the financial aspect will factor into our decision. we couldn't afford 2 extra kids otherwise.
as a foster mom i will be able to dedicate myself to the kids, as well as to online studies, so that in a few years time, i can get a job that pays over $20/hr, i will be taking crisis councelling as well as my youth care worker certification.
and i dont want to take out another student loan either, so it does help to be paid to foster kids, i can then turn around and pay for my classes individually.
also, it will be great to tae the classes offered by social services to foster parents, it will help both me and dh.
there are a lot of benefits to being a foster parent, not just financial.
Quoting ff-princess:sounds like it was a perfect time to buy a home, eh? and your altruistic motivation for taking in foster children is awesome. oh, wait, it's only financially beneficial.
well dont bash yourself too much
too many people get in big debt because of credit cards
but at least you are owning up to your mistakes. i know alot of people wouldnt
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- rowansmum
Gold Member on Dec. 4, 2012 at 5:26 AMConsolidation is better than a repo or bankruptcy and it is less important now because you already have a mortgage. Do you guys plan your finances? I find money issues go hand in hand with lack of planning/budgeting. Who handles the money?
My dh was in sad shape financially when I took over. I'm the budgeter in our house and it works best for us. He's actually relieved and i'm far less stressed too. Could that be an option?