Personal Debt/Goals/Accomplishments

[ceeboo]

Hey Cam

@ceeboo and physicsguy - that’s awesome. I love seeing people take control over some aspect of their lives that was niggling them and turn it around.

Thanks, man!

Anyway. If there’s a devil, I firmly believe he works in the finance sector.

There is - And he does.

[ceeboo]

Hey Cultellus

Ridiculous? If you made all three of your business goals in 2020, that's fantastic! Congrats! And now that you have those goals behind you, you should have plenty of time, energy and focus to concentrate on you now. Run baby! Run!

I will do it ceeboo. I promise.

I believe you - I will do it too.

I will do it. Back to dogs and kids and family and self and trees and stuff.

Yes, the really important stuff that we often forget and/or neglect (myself certainly included)

I will make it happen. I am not one to get on a treadmill or run in a circle. I will find a fence line, and I will fix it. Same thing as running, just without the actual running.

Understood. In addition to some changes revolving around what I put in my mouth, I am going to start to try to be more active. Slow at first, maybe some daily walking to start then see where it goes from there.

[Xenophon]

Excellent work from everyone that posted here.

Many of you are probably already aware of it but in case you missed it I just try to live financially by The Index Card:

• Max your 401k
• Buy inexpensive, well diversified mutal funds
• Never buy or sell individual security
• save 20% of your money
• Pay your credit card balance in full every month
• Maximize tax-advantaged savings vehicles like Roth, SEP and 529 accounts
• Pay attention to fees. Avoid actively managed funds
• Make financial advisors commit to the fiduciary standard
• Promote social insurance programs to help people when things go wrong

For those like me that didn't have a ton of financial education growing up I found it to be a great jumping off point. I'm certainly not 100% on all these but it gives me a simple set of goals I'm working on.

[Gunnar]

Hey all,

Table setting: I grew up in a very lower middle class family. When I left the nest after graduating high school, I dropped out of a local community college (twice) and had many lower paying jobs before I got into sales. Sales is what I have been doing for the last 30 years. I should also mention, because it played a major factor in what I will describe below, that I had a horrific gambling problem for decades until about 3 years ago.

It was about 3 years ago that my gorgeous wife and I decided that we wanted to get out of our personal debt that we accumulated over many years. When we first began discussing this, we wrote out all of our debt (not including the mortgage) and we were stunned by the number. This debt was credit cards, one car note, and one personal line of credit. In total, we had over $58,000.00 in personal debt. I understand that this number wouldn't be concerning to many - it's all relative to income and such - but to us, this was a big number and we felt a little overwhelmed and we were clearly seeing that we were slaves to these lenders. We wanted out! We wanted to be free!

So, over the past three years, we started working on this. I got a second job delivering Amazon packages and Whole Foods deliveries (Amazon owns Whole Foods) a couple of nights a week and on the weekends. My bride (who hadn't worked for over 15 years) landed a part time gig taking care of an elderly woman in her home near by. I still remember the first thing we paid off (Our plan was taking them from smallest balance first and hitting them as hard as we could until it was paid off before we moved to the next one in line) it was a Macy's credit card with a balance of a little more than $1,800.00. It tool bout 6 weeks before we wrote a check and paid this one off and it might sound strange, but it really felt good when we wrote that check. In some ways, it gave us a strong desire to tackle the next one in line - So we did - and we kept doing this, one by one over the course of about 3 years. A little less than 3 years actually.

In addition, we started paying attention to a household budget we wrote out (This was something we had never done before in our marriage - but probably should have.) So instead of eating out 3-4 times a week, we treated ourselves to eating out once a week. We also made some other small changes.

So, as of about 3 months ago, we were able to pay off this entire debt (a little over $58,000.00) and are now debt free (except for the house) - To not have to write out 18-20 or so checks a month is awesome! We are now working on hammering our retirement accounts (401k through the company I work for and a personal Roth IRA I recently set up) We are trying to play catch up as these things should have been put in place many moons ago.

One last thing, I remember thinking that we would never be able to do this - The number seemed to high. but once we started (and that, in my opinion, is the key - to just get started) it all seemed to work, and it worked much faster than I thought it would.

Next on the agenda for us is to try to eat better/healthier and start some sort of workout program (Starting slow, maybe walking every day or something until I can get my rusty bones moving again)

So, what goals and/or accomplishments are you working on or have you completed? Debt? Health? Education?
Marriage?

Good advice, ceeboo. Personally, I am far from perfect in my lifestyle, and I need to make a greater effort to exercise, and I am far from being a wealthy man. But I manage to live within my means. My house is paid for, my car is paid for, and I have no debts to speak of. I buy almost everything I buy using my Sam's Club credit card, but I always settle up at the end of every month, before any interest is due, and get anywhere from 3% to 5% rebates on all my purchases, depending on what they are for. This prevents a lot of stress that I would otherwise have were I not more careful to avoid unnecessary debt. I probably could improve my dietary habits, but I am blessed with a very forgiving metabolism such that it doesn't seem to matter much how much I increase or reduce my food intake. If I eat more, I excrete more, and if I eat less I excrete less, and my weight stays close to the optimum for my height. When I was a youth, I was the skinniest guy in my group of friends, despite the fact that I could out eat any two of them combined, and often did. About the only way I could gain weight was to work out vigorously and put on muscle.

[Gunnar]

Excellent work from everyone that posted here.

Many of you are probably already aware of it but in case you missed it I just try to live financially by The Index Card:

• Max your 401k
• Buy inexpensive, well diversified mutal funds
• Never buy or sell individual security
• save 20% of your money
• Pay your credit card balance in full every month
• Maximize tax-advantaged savings vehicles like Roth, SEP and 529 accounts
• Pay attention to fees. Avoid actively managed funds
• Make financial advisors commit to the fiduciary standard
• Promote social insurance programs to help people when things go wrong

For those like me that didn't have a ton of financial education growing up I found it to be a great jumping off point. I'm certainly not 100% on all these but it gives me a simple set of goals I'm working on.

All good suggestions that I wish had followed much more scrupulously than I did. I could easily have wound up much better off than I am now if I had. I don't have as much reserve saved up as I would like to have, but I still managed wind up free of debt, with both my house and car paid off. That is something, I guess.

[Bret Ripley]

I probably could improve my dietary habits, but I am blessed with a very forgiving metabolism such that it doesn't seem to matter much how much I increase or reduce my food intake. If I eat more, I excrete more, and if I eat less I excrete less, and my weight stays close to the optimum for my height. When I was a youth, I was the skinniest guy in my group of friends, despite the fact that I could out eat any two of them combined, and often did. About the only way I could gain weight was to work out vigorously and put on muscle.

Hi Gunnar: nothing personal, my friend, but I'm thinking about hating you just a little bit.

[Xenophon]

All good suggestions that I wish had followed much more scrupulously than I did. I could easily have wound up much better off than I am now if I had. I don't have as much reserve saved up as I would like to have, but I still managed wind up free of debt, with both my house and car paid off. That is something, I guess.

Apart from the wealthiest folks I know I don't think I've met anyone that didn't wish they had sarted younger. I know I certainly wish I could shake some sense into 18 y/o Xen. It is why I've worked with my wife's youngest siblings to try to help them prepare, if I can give them the 15 year head start I didn't have I'll count it as a win. I'm happy to hear you were able to make serious strides and that you're in a stable place now.

[Jersey Girl]

ceeboo what you did exactly matches Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover. At this point, he'd tell you to start hacking away at the mortgage. with regard to to money handling, we've never been in debt. We've always lived below our means and still do to this day, and our means are such now, that I could literally buy anything I want but I don't. I can stretch a buck like nobody's business and I do. That comes from growing up poor and the two of us being fiercely independent.

We live in a custom built home (that I drew on a sketch pad, every single room including sq footage and took to an architect/GC) that was paid for the day we moved into it. We did have some inheritance money that made that possible. I know a lot of folks in my family who have come into various amounts of inheritance money and blew it away in a few months on splurges. We sat on that money putting it into CD's (certificate of deposit) and making it grow back when you could actually do that, and did so for years, until we were ready to pull the trigger on our forever house. We actually started on the CD's long before we received inheritance money, we started piling up money and kept piling it up, bought a house in Washington and when we sold that, put the proceeds right back into CD's, then lobbed the proceeds of my childhood home on to that and sat on it. Back then, you could do that. Today, it seems like CD's are entirely worthless tools.

I'd have to count but I think we've only had I dunno--two cars with payments and that was decades ago. Today we drive used vehicles and except for those couple of new cars, we always have. We do have a lot of cars (don't ask!) but they aren't all on the road at the same time. I currently drive a 2000 Honda CRV. I looked on the registration card to check it for this post. We could buy newer vehicles but we drive beaters because they cost less, JB does all the maintenance and repairs and I mean ALL (including his own wheel alignment--who the freak does that?) , always has it's his superpower, and...where we live is such that you're going to end up in a ditch in winter or someone is going to slide off the road into your vehicle anyway--so why bother banging up a newer model vehicle? The only time our vehicles go into a shop is when getting new tires put on.

We did inherit some stocks but we don't manage them per se. We don't know jack about it so we watch them grow and use the dividends I guess it's called. I'm not going to identify the stocks because I will be beaten bloody about the head and neck for it here. They're of the devil, okay? All I can say is that we didn't go looking for them, they were given to us and we'd live the same way that we do with or without them.

We currently pay to keep the lights and heat on, gas in the car, food, and we're probably going to cash out at least one life insurance policy that we don't need. We pay cash for everything and if it's put on a card, we pay that off monthly.

We are simple people. We live a simple debt free life with no worries. The best thing about that is that if one of our tribe needs help we divide and conquer. I take care of the people (emotionally, physically, practically) and JB writes a check. All things considered, we have done okay for two kids from Jersey who started out with all their earthly belongings in the back of a VW Beetle and well, here we are.

I've probably written too much. Sorry. Anyway, you done good, Ceeboo! Really, REALLY, good! Get that mortgage off your back!

So, what goals and/or accomplishments are you working on or have you completed? Debt? Health? Education?
Marriage?

I don't know how to answer that. Whatever I've been working lately hasn't been work at all. More like self discovery. More internal than external. All I know is that I've settled into a place of contentment and I just pray that it stays that way. If you ask me what my biggest accomplishment/challenge/struggle/striving has been in my life, I would have to say it was keeping a child alive when they didn't want to live. That that person is alive and living before me now, is a complete miracle and one of my greatest blessings.

Other than that, philosophically speaking, it's been a life long process of learning how to stretch and grow. That's what matters most to me.

[Jersey Girl]

I probably could improve my dietary habits, but I am blessed with a very forgiving metabolism such that it doesn't seem to matter much how much I increase or reduce my food intake. If I eat more, I excrete more, and if I eat less I excrete less, and my weight stays close to the optimum for my height. When I was a youth, I was the skinniest guy in my group of friends, despite the fact that I could out eat any two of them combined, and often did. About the only way I could gain weight was to work out vigorously and put on muscle.

Hi Gunnar: nothing personal, my friend, but I'm thinking about hating you just a little bit.

I've hated on him for almost 22 years. Join my club!

[ceeboo]

Thanks to all for the posts!


Hey Jersey Girl

I've probably written too much. Sorry.

Actually, I wish you would have written more. (I enjoyed all of it - Thanks!)

If you ask me what my biggest accomplishment/challenge/struggle/striving has been in my life, I would have to say it was keeping a child alive when they didn't want to live. That that person is alive and living before me now, is a complete miracle and one of my greatest blessings.

Other than saying thank you for sharing this, I really don't know what else to write - So I won't even try.