major life decisions help!!
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major life decisions help!!
| Tue, 02-23-2010 - 3:37pm |
I've posted here before, but it's been awhile. Long story short, I just want to know the best plan of action. We have CC debt and are paying it through MMI, a Credit Counseling service. They have gotten our interest rates lower and payments lower. But, we still pay them $380 every 2 weeks. It's really hard. We also have a mortgage of $3220 a month. I am wondering if we just get out of the plan with MMI and negotiate with the CC companies, maybe they could give us better payments. I have one CC that is not on MMI and they said they would take my payments I offered after I was behind a few months. So should I let the cards get behind and just deal with companies directly? The payments are killing us. We make good money..about $180K a year. But we have so many bills! Now we found out we owe on taxes too.
I could work more, but we have 3 kids and I don't want to be away from them a lot. I am also considering taking a loan from my 401K to help get by....and we also have a bathroom project that needs to be finished. We have late charges on our mortgage too. I am trying to deal with them about getting a hardship modification to our loan, but I think our income is too high to qualify.
Also, we send my husband's Goddaughter to private school, and he won't budge on that issue. I just want to get my money priorities in line! Our youngest daughter is starting school in Aug. We also want her to go to private school. I feel odd doing that since we have a lot of debt, but we feel it's important. I know the house payment is the most important thing, but I'm not so sure about what to do with the CC debt. What would you do? Take a loan out? I know there are people losing their homes, so I try to stay positive but it seems like all I think about is our financial situation every day! I'm ashamed that with such a good income we haven't managed things as well as I would have liked. We have lived above our means. We are not charging any more.
Sorry this is so long, but I'm at my wits end. all I do is worry about what to do, which thing is most important to pay for, etc. I think the house and the kids school are top of the list....along with food and utilities of course.
help, please be gentle with me as I am very depressed about the whole thing. I'll try to be open-minded with any advice. My main concern is the CC debt and not feeling guilty about private school. My oldest 2 are in public,, they are in 8th and 10th grade (from my first marriage) and they have no interest in changing schools. so, just an FYI... my current husband went to private school and wants our daughter to as well. Now if my older ones wanted to go to private school, i would somehow do it.
What would your priorities be? I'm almost ready to say to "he@#" with the CCs!! But I know that's not right either.
I could work more, but we have 3 kids and I don't want to be away from them a lot. I am also considering taking a loan from my 401K to help get by....and we also have a bathroom project that needs to be finished. We have late charges on our mortgage too. I am trying to deal with them about getting a hardship modification to our loan, but I think our income is too high to qualify.
Also, we send my husband's Goddaughter to private school, and he won't budge on that issue. I just want to get my money priorities in line! Our youngest daughter is starting school in Aug. We also want her to go to private school. I feel odd doing that since we have a lot of debt, but we feel it's important. I know the house payment is the most important thing, but I'm not so sure about what to do with the CC debt. What would you do? Take a loan out? I know there are people losing their homes, so I try to stay positive but it seems like all I think about is our financial situation every day! I'm ashamed that with such a good income we haven't managed things as well as I would have liked. We have lived above our means. We are not charging any more.
Sorry this is so long, but I'm at my wits end. all I do is worry about what to do, which thing is most important to pay for, etc. I think the house and the kids school are top of the list....along with food and utilities of course.
help, please be gentle with me as I am very depressed about the whole thing. I'll try to be open-minded with any advice. My main concern is the CC debt and not feeling guilty about private school. My oldest 2 are in public,, they are in 8th and 10th grade (from my first marriage) and they have no interest in changing schools. so, just an FYI... my current husband went to private school and wants our daughter to as well. Now if my older ones wanted to go to private school, i would somehow do it.
What would your priorities be? I'm almost ready to say to "he@#" with the CCs!! But I know that's not right either.


















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My dh is not a perfect man, but he is not using CC's at all anymore, in fact I put everything on the last card...and he was not happy about it. I think I painted him as a bad guy, he really is not. He doesn't expect me to figure it all out. we have a lot of discussions about expenses. We've stopped eating out as much. He went to private religious school is whole life and will NOT budge on it. How many of you here have a problem like that with your dh...that he won't budge on some kind of issue? I bet I'm not the only one...whether it's finances or something else.
Also, my ex-husband is very behind on child support, so that's been affecting us too.
I have been considering taking my youngest out of preschool. That will save us a lot of money.
MMI charges $35 a month. I see the evidence that they're negotiated with the cc companies to lower our payments. They've also saved me the headache of keeping track of different cards and trying to deal with harassing phone calls. I'll have to do more research and see if I'm better off without them. I'm not so sure we would be.
I'm not trying to be rude in my responses here, but I am a little defensive. I am hoping someone here will speak up if they have kids in private school.
"I am hoping someone here will speak up if they have kids in private school."
Ok. . . I am sheepishly coming out to say we are currently $18,576 in cc debt and my kids attend a private religious school. My oldest has been there since kindergarten and he is now in 3rd grade. My youngest is in full-day kind this year, so we have two full-time students. Our monthly tuition is $462, and I'm assuming it's higher where you live. We paid the first year tuition (kindergarten) on our own, because it was actually cheaper than the preschool had been. Then, when he went to 1st grade, things were really really tight and my in-laws paid the tuition. At that point we realized if WE couldn't pay the tuition AND pay our other bills too, we had no business being in a private school. I realized I needed to start earning more money because my husband was doing all he could. I got licensed by the state to operate a home daycare and started working full time in my home. We took over paying the school tuition for 2nd grade and have been doing it on our own ever since. Over the past year, my husband was able to find a great, higher paying job and I was able to cut back my daycare hours to part time. BUT the deal still remains that I have to earn enough to cover that private school monthly tuition.
I know we could pay our debt off much faster without that monthly tuition bill, but we have cut out ALL extras in order to keep our kids at that school. We do not go out to eat, we do not take vacations, we do not sign the kids up for expensive extra-curricular activities, I cut everyone's hair myself, we gave up cable tv, etc, etc, etc. We've made a lot of sacrifices to send our kids to the religious private school, because my dh and I agree it is a priority for us at this point. Now, we've already started discussing that our kids will probably go to public high school because we simply cannot afford private high school tuition (although we do hope to be debt free except for the mortgage in two years).
I hope all of my rambling helps at least a little. If private school is non-negotiable (which I understand how it might be) then you have to be willing to drop all the other "extras" and bring in some income.
I hope that helps a little. Keep working on your budget plan and hang in there!!
Edited 2/24/2010 10:47 am ET by twosillymonkeys
Thankyou for not taking my comments the wrong way.
I can't comment on private school vs public school but if you are that worried about the bills, you can't afford it. You can home school in the evenings in addition to what she would learn at the public school. As for the godchild, yes that is your husbands decision but my DF has sent a lot of money to his daughter to help with bills, that was his money and his family so I couldn't say either way how to handle it. The first thing that changed when he was laid off is that dear daughter got a long discussion about not buying random junk and to start being smarter with her money. She still calls begging for money but at the same time admits to stupid things like moving without saving any money for the move and then being upset that places want deposits. She had to find another way to get that money rather than from a hand out. DF wasn't going to support her in detriment of our family. That is something that may need to be really discussed as a family, not an ultimatum, if you can't pay the mortgage on time.
You do not want to do a 401K loan, they have such great arguments as to why it is a great deal. It isn't, you lose a ton of the time benefit for the money so while you may be paying interest back to yourself, it isn't what could have been earned and it is due immediately if you lose your job. I would stop or cut back the payments into the plan instead.
You can not depend on cs, there are too many non custodial parents that don't pay, or don't pay the full amount. Yes they need to pay. I just called my enforcement office to find out how my ex can't seem to work due to his dyslexia but found the money for a trip to China?? I can nag, complain and completey tick off my case worker but when it comes down to it, they won't do anything to force someone to work and pay. You can not count on the money until it is in your hand.
You can't sell the house because it has no equity, that is fine but you do need to cut the spending. Take control of your cards back from MMI. They only charge $35 a month but that is money you need. For now pay the 4 walls, if you can't afford the cards, put them off or send a letter with a min amount that you can afford to send. Once you are current with the mortgage (lates means that you aren't current now) and the bills you need to pay (that means no private school for anyone - what good does it do when you have no home?) then start catching up on the credit cards. They can't take your house if you are behind but if you are behind on the mortgage, they the bank can take the house. Reality sucks, believe me I know but you have to face it head on or you can't fix the problems.
good morning! if you feel comfortable can you post your budget, including monthly take home income and listing all of your expenses? also if you can post your debt balances/ interest rates/ monthly minimum payments? if you don't want to, that's ok, but these are things that can give you some very good feedback about places in your budget that you might be able to cut back and therefore leave enough money for the school tuition... without more specifics it's hard to offer targeted help. it's also hard to tell exactly what your priorities really are, and we can't really tell you what they are or should be.
re: private school. we all have items in our budgets that we consider "non-negotiable". for us, we pay btwn 920-1150/month for daycare for our infant. it's more than 15% of our take home pay, which is high, but we are super in love with the place. it only gets to be a non-negotiable item because we met the following: we are current with all our payments, we are able to stick to a budget that allows us to pay that amount for daycare while keeping all our payments current, and we have a plan in place that will get us out of our ~30,000k credit card debt in 18 months- 2 years (even with the high daycare payment). those were the criteria that we set up for ourselves (my dh and i) when we were going through our budget. if we didn't meet those criteria we would have had to find a cheaper place for our son (or earn more money). you will need to crunch numbers with your dh as well and work to find the money for those "non-negotiable" items. it can be done. but it's not worth risking the security of your family for them, kwim??
it really is one step at a time, the first step is not taking on any more debt, start tracking your expenses and putting together a written budget if you don't have one. there are some examples of them floating around here, and i know that several pp's offered budget and debt reduction spreadsheets, if you want them, let them know.
re: mmi- if you are happy with their service and it's eased your worry about your cc's then continue it. if you do continue to use them i would recommend doing a spot check of your cc's every once in a while. call your credit card companies and make sure that they are receiving payments on time and that the amount is as agreed. letting someone else take over payments can sometimes shield you from problems that arise and you don't find out about it until much much later. (i don't know anything about mmi, but know that there are people who have posted that their management plan was always paying bill's late, and didn't clue them in that they were racking up the late fees like crazy). so if you decide to use their service, just make sure you follow up on the job that they are doing for you. you don't pay someone to fix your car without making sure they did the job right, don't hire this company without verifying that they are working hard (and continue to) for you.
hope that helps a little. we all make sacrifices for the non-negotiable in our budgets, but it's not at the expense of meeting our obligations, it's as a part of meeting our obligations. i have read through this several times, i hope you find it helpful, i know you are feeling a bit defensive, i hope you don't find it harsh!
andi
I'm glad to hear from someone who understands what I mean about religious school. I think I'm going to take her out of preschool, though. It's not necessary for us. I work in the evenings, so I think she can wait until Kindergarten to go. That would save us almost $400 a month! I have mixed feelings about it, but it's not necessary to go to preschool.
I'm also thankful I don't have to pay for daycare at all, I never have because our work schedules are flexible. Your tuition is very low. Our Kinder. is $413 a month for 1 child. And that's inexpensive for my area. My husband strongly feels a religious school is a more rounded education. But I will not let my mortgage get behind because of unnecessary debt.
I don't think any one meant to jump on you, and I'm sorry if you took it that way.
If private school is a must for you, then that's the way it is and you need to cut back else where.
Bex -
I'm mostly a lurker here, but read almost every day. I am like your husband - my three kids went to Catholic school by my choice. I would not budge. Not that my dh asked me to as he understood how important that was to me (I'm in the Chicago suburbs, BTW). Plus I was a sahm for 12 years, until my youngest started second grade. I believe that private school is something you either do because you believe in it or you don't do it. No big deal, just your choice. Now it was not easy at all - we sacrificed alot and did run up debt which we are dealing with properly now. Do I have money
Hi.
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