A year ago my philosophy would have been to pay it off in full with the earnings from the matured CD and reinvest the difference. But lately with the way the economy has been and the uncertainty about inflation I'm worried to not have that cash in the bank. I just thought I'd see what others might be doing or advising. Right now the monthly HELOC payments are pretty much equal to the interest earned on the CD. So it's a wash. I am eager to close out the CD and reinvest in a much higher interest rate. But I also want the HELOC gone and to reduce my debt. Normally it's a numbers game to me by comparing the interest rates. But now cash (or a really short CD) is starting to sound like a much better idea to get my family through a potential crisis. Thoughts?

So this past week, I received a letter from a debt collection agency. It's real bc I do owe that debt. But I am on a payment plan with the original company.

The letter says I can dispute the charge bc... gives a list of reasons/ other option. Can I write them and say I dispute bc I am on a payment plan? Or do I call the original company (which honestly not sure who I'd call. Its my doctors office so I assume just them) and ask why they sent me to collections? Do both?

I 100% owe the money and since the plan was made/when I scheduled the autopay, every payment was made on time. It's supposed to pull the next payment on the 5th. Do I stop that or pay it as scheduled?

Since I’ve gone into the rabbit hole of super crazy budgeting I kind of regret buying a more expensive car (to note i get a monthly $1k+ allowance from my employer) @2.3APR and still have 24k left to pay.

I have $60k in my emergency fund and expect a bonus of $50k+ end of February.

The interest is just ~2% more than I get back from the treasuries, minus fedTax, but I hate having this balance but I also hate losing money in my emergency fund. Plus thinking of upping that emergency fund with all the things that are going on right now (with bonus)

What is the general opinion of action here?

Hello, i have an old car loan. long story short, started the loan in 2017, last payment in 2019, car was impounded at that time without my knowledge and sold at auction. thus making an unsecured loan. they never sold the loan or closed, still considered active and open. interest has almost doubled the loan amount. they mailed a payoff offer 2 years ago(can’t remember how much), but i was in a horrible financial place, so i ignored it. now im interested in seeing how much to settle, but dont want to restart the statute of limitations and open myself up to lawsuit. how could i go about doing this without resetting the clock?

I use my credit cards for my monthly spending to earn points and rewards. I pay it down every month. I also paid off another student loan and have two left with about $11k total. I paid off 9k this last year :)

How do I even get a card with that much of a limit if I already have debt? Never did this before so aid you have please chime in

Have made some balance transfers but the interest free periods are expiring in the summer and i need a solid plan to pay off my debt.

I got an offer for a 10yr loan at 11.6% from achieve, $280 a month but id likely be making larger payments closer to $400 with no penalty to paying off early.

Cons to this?

I’m currently a broke ass student struggling to pay off my card my min payment is 250 and my apr is 23% and I’m absolutely losing my mind. I pay my own rent now as me & my partner parted ways so financially I’m just cutting it. I just paid 100 and tried to ask the discoverchat if we could work out any financial hardship payment plan with lower apr and he just said no maybe try again next time???? lol??

So I need to take out a loan for $4000 and it looks like now it wants to charge me $1000 for the next 60 months how does that work ? Keep in mind I no nothing about loans and only have a credit card for $1500 so I know next to nothing

Poll was for your #1 Unhealthy Money Habit. 66 Responses

Impulsive Spending: 20

Comparing Yourself to Others: 14

Avoiding Financial Reality: 12

Money as Measure of Self Worth: 9

Emotional Spending: 9

Over-reliance on Credit: 2

Helpful Video on Habits: Money and You

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ihz9RVJRVKc&t=4s

Five years ago, I was buried in debt, constantly stressed about bills, and making barely $50K.

Today:

Credit Score: 801

401k: $25,217.89

Emergency Fund: $19,342.50

Checking Account: $7,498.33

Credit Card: -$1,763.92

Total: $50,294.80

Not wild compared to some of the getting-out-of-debt stories people post here, but for someone who was once dodging collection calls and rationing groceries to make rent, this feels massive. 

What worked:

• Picked up freelancing to make an extra $500–$1,000/month
• Every bonus and tax return went straight to debt
• Stopped chasing credit card points and focused on paying them off
• Switched jobs twice (now making $72K)
• Moved in with roommates to cut rent in half

Most months are still tight but checking my accounts and seeing positive numbers instead of a sea of red feels unreal.

Next goal: Saving for a down payment and maxing out my 401k. One step at a time

https://preview.redd.it/wkd9zza3rrge1.png?width=10424&format=png&auto=webp&s=289fa5e20cfbc43712cfdfd6a68730cf1d1bac9c

https://preview.redd.it/mam7fle8rrge1.jpg?width=946&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=126e38b1afdc7adf5ca3520529d0cbfbe9acecc1

I’m making slow progress. Two months ago I quit certain subscriptions like Spotify, Amazon Prime and Blue Apron. The only one I kept was Netflix.

As of one month ago I stopped buying lunches everyday and started packing.

I have looked at my credit card bill from the last 3 weeks and realized I used it on stupid stuff (snacks, fast food, movie theatre, etc) so I made myself a $200 “treat” budget for each month

Currently my bank automatically pulls $500 for each credit card a month (so about $1,000 a month) and I save what I can and pay whatever else I can.

Does anyone have any other tips? Anything is much appreciated.

My wife and I are on the way to divorce. And are currently separated. I’ve been the sole provider for my family of 4x I have a high income right now, but it tends to fluctuate. We have about $74,000 in credit card debt. $35,000 of that is on an AMEX gold card.( never doing that again) and I have about $45,000 in a Robin Hood account (non-retirement). Not to mention 12k irs bill for this year.

My goal here is to take care of the most immediate high cost a debt to take a load off and make things a little easier. And transition from using the Amex gold card so heavily for household expenses and cancel it. The gold card out of all of our debt can have ridiculously high minimum payments. This seems like the best course of action for now since we don’t have enough cash on hand to pay this off and not have an emergency fund. Any feedback or thoughts would be great.

Hi all, I've been doing Dave ramsey baby steps, they say to close all accounts and wait for credit score to go to indeterminable. Thing is, I have just one late payment. I want to buy a house in the next couple years. If I close everything and trash my credit, I don't think the late payment will drop off in time to make my score go to zero? Thoughts?

I currently have about $100k there and am in my mid-30s. My employer stopped our match but I’m looking for a new job. I’m contributing 15%.

Edit: thanks (almost) everyone. I have changed my spending habits since incurring this debt in my 20s, and did look at this sub before posting. All the same, I found this helpful to post. I won’t touch the amount in there but will pull back on what I’m contributing to aggressively pay down my debt.

Hi there. My husband and I have 60k in credit card debt. We got married, paid for the wedding out of pocket (and with the help of my dad), then moved into our first place and that’s when the debt really started getting worse.

We are considering filing bankruptcy. My husband already financed some of his debt a few years ago, but then we used cards again and got into more debt. I also have a disability so I missed my previous job a lot with no pay, which lead us to using cards for bills.

Nobody taught us anything about credit cards or debt, we learned the hard way. I haven’t used my cards in months, same with my husband. It’s taken us a lot to even get to the point of basically cutting them up. We take full responsibility and understand getting in the hole basically ruined our future.

Anyways; I lost my job in October, the job market is awful. I apply left and right, I’m working with an agency to find something too, nothing sticks even with loads of experience and open availability.

I’m currently working a contract job, that’s ending soon. Going on unemployment will leave us $900 under water each month, even if we push back car payments (we only have one car and need it), we are still under.

So that brings us to consider bankruptcy as maybe it’s the best option to start over? My husband will still work full time, but only at 55k a year.

Looking for thoughts/opinions?

About 24k in debt after many bad decisions that are in the past. Currently have about 1.7k after needs are payed to be able to go towards debt. Wondering if just snowball method is the best idea or debt consolidation loan? All cards are "frozen" now and havent been used in months.. Also getting about $6k from Tax Refund and wondering where it would be best allocated. Lastly , thoughts on my budget sheet? Thank you all for the help and for the wise words.

https://preview.redd.it/lquj6r6oknge1.png?width=766&format=png&auto=webp&s=793a4e010d4b05f66637d6e0c48c070ebd4ed414

https://preview.redd.it/0qp18r6oknge1.png?width=968&format=png&auto=webp&s=2db396953fe86e0f40bcb3b725a66d17b5635ef1

Just here to say thanks to the people of Reddit. Reddit is full of wisdom and motivation sometimes. A lot of the stories i read on here provided so much motivation.

Today I paid off all of my credit card debt, my wife’s credit card debt and our cars. I never want to be in the hole again. We learned our lesson.

Save, invest, and spend accordingly!

I know I know, in America plenty of people have far worse debt. I have a B.S. in Financial Analysis and will probably be working stable accounting/finance or clerical admin jobs until I retire. Still, to know I'll be doing this on my own is terrifying. A majority of the debt as you can imagine is MOHELA student debt, the rest is credit cards. Was young and dumb in my 20s and didn't know what I was doing. Can anyone share similar stories? Offer up some hope? Call me a dummy? Anything is welcome lol

Thinking about getting a consolidation loan to pay off $18,000 in credit card debt to control the interest rate. I paid off a smaller card so this would be my main focus. Should I get a loan or would I be alright tackling it head on. I don’t want to ruin my chances if I need to apply for a regular loan if something pops up.

Here are the results of the housing poll we did.

Thanks everyone for participating. Here is a link to the results of over 200 participants. There was a lot of formatting so I missed some of you. I apologize. As I do more of these I will get better. Please pass this along to anyone that might enjoy it.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RruGNZRr6ko

Hello, i have about 30k in credit card debt spanned across 3 credit cards. All have mid 20% APRs.

Me and my wife bring in between 9-10k a month and our monthly bills are around 6-7k a month. Don’t have much in savings, a few thousand and current cash is a couple thousand as well.

I have about 30k in my 401k. Me and my wife both have about 15k in our Roth IRA each. we max out our Roth and pay monthly which i budget for when doing the monthly expenses.

I have about 15k in our 529 for our kids. Kids are 5 and 3.

Would it be a good idea to take out money from the 529 to pay off half of the debt or if we take from our Roth we would pay almost all of it off? I don’t feel right withdrawing monday from the kids 529 but i would still contribute monthly after withdrawing.

Other option would be to take a loan and consolidate the debt into one payment.

I can send a breakdown of everything if needed but wanted to know what is the best course of action here?

Hoping to have it done by the end of the year, or early next year.

Realized I went in too far on the card and needed to get this weight off my shoulders.

i'm on track to really get started on my debt payoff journey starting in march. however, i have some concerns about job security coming my way - essentially, i'm guaranteed my job until may, and then after that is totally dependent on how the client i'm working on wants to move forward (either stay with us as a provider or move on to someone else). that, plus the terrible job market, and the almost guaranteed exponential rise in cost of living has me wondering how much of a emergency fund i should build before diving into the debt payoff.

i know typically the advice on this sub is to save $1k, but i don't know if that's enough these days. would $3k be a safer number given everything going on?

My Affirm was almost $4,000 late fall/early winter 2024. I paid off several bigger loans and saved a lot of money in interest. I also paid off several $60 and under loans just to get rid of them early. Today it is $1,100. I expect to have it paid off in the next two weeks with expected funds. I am making a spreadsheet of all my loans and analyzing my choices to use Affirm so I can see what was unnecessary and what was necessary and to make a new plan to make sure I never do it again.

It’s painful to give all this money to Affirm. So painful. 😣 But at least I know I had $400-plus in my budget that I can now use on credit cards. My new Affirm payment is $166, but it will be paid off.

Still have $6065.10 left total between student loans and a credit card full of medical bills but it feels so nice to have the first hurdle cleared.