Next challenge:
Jun. 4th, 2010 11:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jamethiel posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
actyourwageHi Guys! The next challenge is:
FIND OUT WHAT YOUR DEBT IS.
Do you know off the top of your head what your debt is? In spite of my anal-retentiveness about tracking my money, I actually don't. I mean, the credit card, yes, but then I thought about it.
I have two other debts. My HELP debt (higher education loans program debt. I'm not going to worry about this one at this stage. It doesn't affect your credit rating and is garnished automatically from your salary when you reach a certain threshhold. Maybe after I've gotten rid of the other sorts of debt.)
The other debt is the rent for my computer. This is a stupid debt.
Look, at the time I had no money and no prospect of ever getting a computer otherwise. And they said "It's only $111.56 a month!"
What they don't stress (it was there in the small print but I was taken in by the advertising) is that the loan period is 4 years. Making it so that by the time I have paid it out, I will have paid TWICE the cost of the computer in interest. It's barefaced robbery--I would have been far better off going to the bank and getting a loan. Also, I'm still paying for a laptop that's increasingly unreliable and will be worth NOTHING by the time I've paid it off. I broke one of the cardinal rules of finance: If you can possibly avoid it, NEVER TAKE A LOAN FOR SOMETHING THAT DECLINES IN VALUE. (I think the word I'm looking for is depreciates, but I'm not sure so declines it is for now). This includes cars, stereos and any of the other kind of consumable ephemera that seems to control our lives these days.
So: by the end of next week I will have called the company that I pay the money to. I'll find out how much the debt is worth, when I will have paid it off, if there is anything I can do to speed that up and if I have to pay a fee to keep the laptop on settlement.
So. I know this is hard. I know that facing up to your debt is really, really anxiety making. I had panic attacks when I first looked at the balance of my credit card. But I did it, and I made better decisions which corrected earlier bad decisions and I kept at it and now in 1 weeks time, I will be out of credit card debt.
What do you say. Who's with me? Who's going to make the commitment to finding out what their debts are and having that information all in one place to build a bigger picture?
Please, don't share any details you're not comfortable with complete strangers knowing on the internet. A comment of "I did it!" without discussing finances is enough unless you're comfortable with sharing that much.
FIND OUT WHAT YOUR DEBT IS.
Do you know off the top of your head what your debt is? In spite of my anal-retentiveness about tracking my money, I actually don't. I mean, the credit card, yes, but then I thought about it.
I have two other debts. My HELP debt (higher education loans program debt. I'm not going to worry about this one at this stage. It doesn't affect your credit rating and is garnished automatically from your salary when you reach a certain threshhold. Maybe after I've gotten rid of the other sorts of debt.)
The other debt is the rent for my computer. This is a stupid debt.
Look, at the time I had no money and no prospect of ever getting a computer otherwise. And they said "It's only $111.56 a month!"
What they don't stress (it was there in the small print but I was taken in by the advertising) is that the loan period is 4 years. Making it so that by the time I have paid it out, I will have paid TWICE the cost of the computer in interest. It's barefaced robbery--I would have been far better off going to the bank and getting a loan. Also, I'm still paying for a laptop that's increasingly unreliable and will be worth NOTHING by the time I've paid it off. I broke one of the cardinal rules of finance: If you can possibly avoid it, NEVER TAKE A LOAN FOR SOMETHING THAT DECLINES IN VALUE. (I think the word I'm looking for is depreciates, but I'm not sure so declines it is for now). This includes cars, stereos and any of the other kind of consumable ephemera that seems to control our lives these days.
So: by the end of next week I will have called the company that I pay the money to. I'll find out how much the debt is worth, when I will have paid it off, if there is anything I can do to speed that up and if I have to pay a fee to keep the laptop on settlement.
So. I know this is hard. I know that facing up to your debt is really, really anxiety making. I had panic attacks when I first looked at the balance of my credit card. But I did it, and I made better decisions which corrected earlier bad decisions and I kept at it and now in 1 weeks time, I will be out of credit card debt.
What do you say. Who's with me? Who's going to make the commitment to finding out what their debts are and having that information all in one place to build a bigger picture?
Please, don't share any details you're not comfortable with complete strangers knowing on the internet. A comment of "I did it!" without discussing finances is enough unless you're comfortable with sharing that much.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-04 12:07 pm (UTC)Despite the very large number, I think of myself as being nearly debt-free. If we sold the house we could easily clear the remainder of the mortgage, and if we keep living in it, the monthly payment is less than rent and there are a lot of hidden savings in it (like, the location is good enough to save us about $20 in gas money weekly.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-04 01:56 pm (UTC)Apart from that, our only debt is my husband's college loan, which is just shy of $15k. He will probably need a new car in the next couple of years, but we should have enough cash in savings to cover most if not all of that cost. We pay off our credit cards in full every month.
The nice thing about mortgage and student loan debt (at least in the USA) is that the interest is tax deductible. Other forms of interest are generally not.