Update On The Debt And Holidays

Wow, seems like a long time since I have made any kind of post. You know we all start out with the best of intentions and I intended to talk more about my own debts journey but, you know how things go with intentions, right?

Holidays come up work continues, kids have activities, and a bunch of other things just kept me from posting here. To go along with what's we were going to talk about on here for myself and my own debt, it's going okay. Not great, not poorly, but okay.

You know, I did have to take one of those holiday jobs to actually get a little extra cash for the holidays, and it wasn't too bad. You know stockroom kind of stuff in the evenings, and on the weekends. Probably around 20 hours a week in total, but it did make the difference in terms of maybe another couple hundred dollars over the holiday season, which I can use to pay some bills off, or just more money for Christmas and things like that.

So how are things going with you guys? You need brilliance revelations for debts or anything like that? Any new developments? I'd love to know and to hear more about it.

Anyway? What I did want to talk about today was one thing that I do want to do when I finally get out of debt. You know something really nice and cool to go for when everything is all paid off. I'd love to have you know a really noble goal to save a bunch of money and to never have to get into debt ever again, and in fact I do have every intention on just paying cash for this, but it's something I want, and you know there's nothing wrong with that right?

Anyway, here is a picture of my baby and what she's going look like roughly. What you all think?

More later, I just wanted to post something at least before the holidays to get things rolling here again.

Debt Consolidation Loans

Things that got me on the road back into good standing for my personal finances is when I used debt consolidation loans to bring all of the debt that I had back into one roof.

So, what exactly did I do? Really, what I did was a couple steps. Let me outline them below so you can understand what I did and hopefully they will help you out, or at least give you a guide for what to do in the future.

First I assessed what debt I had. What I had was the following: credit cards  two of them actually, in a home equity line of credit. Gosh, between those three items we had maybe $50,000 worth of debt. Obviously, what I was most concerned with was the credit card debt.

We consider getting a bigger home-equity line of credit, but our house had not appreciated enough to do that.

Next, we even considered consolidating our credit cards but that wouldn't work because we were pretty much maxed out on both cards and there was not room for both cards on any single one.

So this is what we did, we looked at refinancing our mortgage, because the rates were so low, and discovered that between the GUI we had in our house, and how the cost of her home at appreciated over the last seven years, we were able to do a lot with refinancing and this would be our best option.

Okay so we went ahead and refinanced, were able to wrap both the home-equity line of credit, and the smaller of the two credit cards, which was about $10,000 into the actual mortgage.
In fact, here is a quick vid on the whole debacle.




So, all in all we were able to reduce our monthly payments overall by about $400, which is pretty good in my book.

Now, this did a couple things for us. First is that it reduced our payments from four down to two payments, and while we weren't able to consolidate that debt into one payment it really streamlined the whole thing for us and made it easier to pay all of them overall.

Secondly, as I mentioned above we reduce the total payment by about $400 a month which we really really needed. We didn't use the entire amount to pay down debt, but probably around $250 a month went straight back into paying off more debt. The rest we used to actually afford paying more of our bills every month.

Along with that, getting rid of one of the cards in the interest rate associated with that, and wrapping that get into the debt consolidation loans mortgage did more than you might think. So we got rid of the high interest rate and traded that for her mortgage interest, which of course is tax-deductible come tax time every year. Now this saves you even more money in the long run.

While at the same time we had to pay and start the clock again on our mortgage, 30 years starting again, it works out very well overall.

What you think about that?

Personal Finance Insights

One of the things that has gotten me into trouble time and time again is the whole idea of debt. I do know about you but when I grew up while my parents gave me a pretty good financial education they really never trained me on debt, what it is, and how all that it can really be for you if used improperly.


so really, this site is about my personal finance journey, nothing professional by any means but, at the same time this is kind of what I've gone through and this is what I've learned over all.

I'd love to hear from other people in their own observations and everything about, whether it's about investing or debts, or mortgages or just their own struggles to pay bills on a daily basis.

In my mind has become incredibly complex in the last couple years, make that the last couple decades. What used to be a simple as putting aside a little bit of money every month to save up for a retirement one day has become a litany of investment choices, pitfalls with depth, and things are just making when I make your head spin.

(Gota go get rid of the credit cards!)

For me, honestly I got myself into over $30,000 worth of debt, just by not being vigilant and really just poor use of micro cards. Not that I'd had a lot of frivolous purchases, but by using them carelessly and not managing how it was using them and when I was spending them on, over the course of just a cute short years, the debt became very very big unfortunately.

Couple that the mortgage, two little kids, and all he expenses that come with that it became almost unsurmountable in my opinion. But it doesn't have to be, and doesn't need to be.

So with all that said, let's get the party started, and share our personal financial insights.

James