How many MFP'ers are struggling with money?

I have school loans out and that is all. I do have a spending problem, so i tend to rack up the credit card. But not anything i cant pay off within a years time. I have recently been making moves to become as much of a minimalist as possible, not buying anything that wont be used all the time or that will have a purpose and place in this house. Husband and i are also spring cleaning and getting rid of half or more of our belongings. I mean, who really needs 3 sets of silver wear and 16 cups for a family of 4?

Its hard to change habits, but luckily im only 26 so i havnt had these havits very long.

bump for later

Mint is good as well. Both a website and app form.

We only owe for a house & car, the rest is paid off monthly. We do use a credit card for most monthly expenses like groceries, gas and household stuff because we earn points we can redeem for RCI cruises and onboard credits and such.

JM

While I am good with money, my husband is not always, and we are experiencing our highest debt-load and most expensive years of our lives right now. BUT, we have a plan.

Since we started putting money away at every paycheque to save up for our wedding I have had an excel spreadsheet budget. It would list everything that would go in, and come out. It started just being a bi-weekly thing that we kept on our fridge in our apartment. We even budgeted in an allowance for each of us.

It has since grown and we now do up a budget/plan for 1 year at a time. We don't keep it on our fridge anymore, but it has everything you could think about in it. Seasonal clothing purchases for the kids, we set money aside bi-weekly into a separate account for bigger things that we pay each year like our car insurance. We also set aside money bi-weekly to accrue for things like home maintenance and repairs, extra cost of groceries and fuel when we go camping in the summer months. We budget our spending money, our groceries, our fuel, all the utilities etc. We also worked out how much we can comfortably put towards our line of credit on top of the monthly payment. It works out that we should have only our mortgage left as debt in about 5 or 6 years.

Im completely debt free. I use mint.com. Ive used it for 3-4 years and its completely free. I cant recommend it enough.

BUMP

I am currently only in debt becuase of student loans, I am working towards paying them off. I do indeed struggle with money though due to the fact that where I work we only get paid once a month. It makes it easier on getting all my bills paid at once and on time but it is hard to spread what you have over a months time.

Im completely debt free. I use mint.com. Ive used it for 3-4 years and its completely free. I cant recommend it enough.

Awesome, I use mint too.
I have a few loose ends here and there but i'm damn close to being debt free.

I'll be honest. I'm in a lot of trouble and aside from going back to a ****-paying wage in retail or food service (I'm a freelance voiceover artist but the living is incredibly meager because of little opportunity in my area as well as a lack of professional experience and connections), I'm not really sure how I'm going to get out of it.

I'm in a little under $7K in debt. I'm about to finally get my Associate's in Arts degree, and plan to pursue my BA or BS, at least, in the future. However, there's absolutely no way I can even apply for student loans with this kind of debt—which, aside from the fact that I struggle to pay my bills every month is the biggest concern. It built since I was 16 (I'm 24 now), and while I have absolutely never missed a [minimum] payment, I have four credit cards that are next to maxed out that I've used time and again to buy my groceries, necessities, holiday and occasional gifts, among other things.

I have since become much more frugal, as I have to be in order to even survive this, but asking my family for the money to pay this off is not an option I'm willing to consider not only because I truly want to fix my situation on my own, independantly, but also because of the dynamic in my family that has always surrounded money and finance and I absolutely refuse to create an entirely new situation in which the stress and judgment will be fostered as it has in the past. I've considered selling everything I own, including my car and just picking up a bicycle or some kind of motorbike. I've considered destroying my credit for the next half a decade or longer and filing for bankruptcy. I've also considered just, as I said, going back into a **** industry if I can find a job in it and work for a year or longer to get it all paid off. There are physical reasons why I am doing my best to avoid that kind of work, though, and in all honesty, at 24 years-old, I'm honestly just incredibly disgusted with myself and my situation of living at home and barely scraping by with no apparent uphill progress and just not living my life in general. Realizing that I could be a third (or more) into my lifespan and having spent six years immobile is really hard to face, some times.

A big portion of my debt was brought upon by a gambling problem when I first turned 21. I've since kicked that. About $3K of it was a series of incredibly stupid financial mistakes in trying to salvage my last relationship (we were in an LDR for four years). And the rest was scattered purchases.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do, and I have to decide within the month.

So, yeah, I'm definitely struggling with my situation that I've stupidly created for myself over a long period of time.

I don't understand the complaints about the price of the YNAB software. $60, spread over the course of a year, is not much money. I would call that a smart investment, if it can get you ahead of the curve. Many of us waste more than that within a month.

Disclaimer: I do not use YNAB. I never heard of it before today. I did look at some reviews for it. It seems to be a decent and helpful product for many.


I will say that the book "Making the Most of Your Money" helped me many years ago, when it came to getting my finances in order. It covers budgeting, and much more.

http://www.amazon.com/Making-Most-Your-Money-Now/dp/0743269969/

Check your local library, and see if they have a copy.


***Edited for typos***

How can a website designed to help you with money, have the audacity to charge $60 for it's services? It's not even like it's a small fee. Mint.com also doesn't seem to be available for us UK'ers. :grumble:

You can probably do the same thing in excel - I download all my business account statements into excel when I do my accounts. I don't know if you can do his with personal accounts though - not sure why you couldn't though.

I dont have any debt, but neither do we earn much money - you get used to budgeting, but then, I met my wife when we were students and neither of us had any money then either, so budgeting has ben a way of life.

Currently, things are looking a little better than they were. My husband and I were living in a house we were renting and still paying a mortgage on a house we were trying to sell, and paying utilities for both. We did that for a year and a half, until it just got to be too much for us to handle. I think we wasted about $7,000 in rent, and I don't even know how much in utilities. We moved back to the small house, and we're trying really hard to get caught up, it's not easy. I think I'm going to look into this Mint.com everyone is talking about!!

You can probably do the same thing in excel

You can. I wrote us a great budget in Excel. It lets us track EVERY purchase into groceries, household, personal, eating out, gas, vehicle maintenance, emergency etc. It also allows us to split our expenses and track who spends what and where. A little fancy formula work made for some great results.

JM