Ok, this is kinda personal......

[RCT]

.....we will be DEBIT FREE completely by the end of May.....unfortunetly...we have no savings....we have been living from pay check to pay check for a couple years....no bonds, IRA's nadda....I am curious to know who else is living paycheck to paycheck...and if/and when you stopped living that way...did you go straight savings...or did you invest? IRA? just being incrediably nosey.....

years ago ...when we had a savings account...and CD's....I never gave much thought to what was going on....NOW I KNOW BETTER.

TIA

[vea29]

I too have absoulutly no really savings! Most everything is spent before I get it...and if there is extra it usually goes towards loans or Credit cards...I know I should save more but I've so desperate to get out of debt.

Congrats on being debt free...I bet that feels nice!!!

[bizymum]

First off Congratulations, being debt free seems like an unatainable dream.

Anyway we are struggling right now even with DH working two jobs.:(

We basically live by the pat cheques and have no savings what so ever. Most paycheques are spent before we get them and when I get paid at the end of the month it is gone before I see it..

One daay I hope to get some into savings and get all this debt cleared. I would to be able to take DK's to disney Land one day before they are to old to really enjoy it...I myself have never been.

[AnnW]

Congrats on being debt free!!

Being on commission, we can't afford to live pay check to pay check, cause you don't know when the next one might be coming or what it will be. It forces you to live on cash and save.

[Diane]

Originally posted by AnnW
Congrats on being debt free!!

Being on commission, we can't afford to live pay check to pay check, cause you don't know when the next one might be coming or what it will be. It forces you to live on cash and save.

We do have a savings account because seeing dh and I are both self employed... we have to save in order to pay our taxes at the end of each/every year. There is always some left over but like Ann... my dh gets paid only one time a month and is paid by commision only. We never know from one month to the other how much or little it will be. I get paid by the week... and that helps to pay for some of the things that might happen in between getting his check, or to pay off a bill that needs to be paid before he get's his. We don't have too much when it came to bills... was never into using charge cards or purchasing things unless we had the $$ upfront to pay for it, and for that I'm grateful. Congratulations on being debt free!!! :)

Diane P.

[BevJ]

I am a little consufed and I don't mean to be nosey, lol, but didn't you own the house in NY and therefore, don't you have the money from the sale of that?

We have some savings, not a lot and not something I ever want to draw on, but for some reason it's dwindled a little, and I think it mainly has to do with my being off last summer and us using it for credit card payments for all the purchases lately we've been making (i.e. new tires for the car, etc.). I don't think we'll ever be debt free...we have another year left to pay on one of our vehicles, we have a small homeowners loan of $1200 and now we want to put new siding and insulation on our house. It's hard I think, for anyone to have much savings.

[RCT]

Originally posted by BevJ
I am a little consufed and I don't mean to be nosey, lol, but didn't you own the house in NY and therefore, don't you have the money from the sale of that?



not being nosey at all...we had a mortgage....we also had incured a huge VISA bill when we moved there...for up keep and little fixing up we had to do....when we sold the place after the mortgage was paid...we had to settle with VISA..what we made off the house didn't pay off what we owed...we actually lost money when we moved....a big life lesson....now we are on steadier ground...and its WARM...:lol:

[Amy]

We used to have a lot of money in the stock market and IRA's, but since it has been so weak lately, we don't contribute to it anymore. Most of our money is now into our house and a money market fund. We would be petrified to live paycheck to paycheck. LOL We always put money away every month and save up for cars and big trips so we don't have any debt.

[BevJ]

Thanks for the clarification, Renee. I am sorry you didn't come out ahead with your move and the sale of you NY home. I am sure your savings will start to pick up.

[lindaM]

We just refinanced the house and paid off all debt and lowered the mortage payment. Now we have a budget that we are pushing each other to live on. It's really not to hard because we sat down and looked at what we spend on everything for the whole year and budgeted it in. (I mean everything dh is a little compulsive)

Now we can put some money in savings and we have an account to put money in for 1 time year expenses like car insurance, homeowners, water bill......, So we aren't shocked when they come in. And we have another account for large house purchases (like my deck we are building this summer, shed, and vacations) These are separate from the "savings" account. Now we won't go buy these big ticket items till we have the money saved.

DH also puts money in a 401K at work we have always done it even when money is really tight. He can put in 1%-6% percent of his check and the company matches it. Right now he is at 4%.

[angie r]

Brichard and I have worked hard, or just brichard I should say to pay off our debt. We no longer live paycheck to paycheck. Yea! We put money in B's 401K, my IRA and the older 2 kids have Roth IRA's we contribute to monthly.

For the first time we are saving to go on vacation, and for when we will need a new vehicle in another year or two. I'd love to really get to work on paying off our mortgage.

Good for you Renee!!

[BevJ]

Originally posted by angie r
I'd love to really get to work on paying off our mortgage.



We just had to renew our mortgage and got a pretty good rate, but we had hoped to increase it to pay for the siding/insulation, but we didn't have anything ready yet, lol. However, I was excited when she showed us that our mortgage will only be considerably smaller in five years:D

[littlesista06]

We just refinanced our rental property and got enough cash out to pay off our credit cards, get some $$ in the bank for a downpayment on another house when we find one and we'll use a little bit of that to do some repairs on this one.

We have so many bank accounts and no money it seems! lol
Dh has his 401K, we opened an MMA and we do have savings. We don't live paycheck to paycheck but we are careful of what we spend and are keeping track of it much better now.

It's a great feeling to have those cc's paid and to realize you don't need them! I used to think the only way I'd ever be able to have anything was to use the cc - never had $$. Well duh....!!! ;)
Nice that I've finally seen the light! LOL

[Lynda-WA]

We have a fairly large amount in investments and such. But that's not the whole picture! We won't touch anything that makes it to what we term *savings* and that doesn't mean the bank accounts. What's in the bank savings account is the down payment we got back from selling our house. That's designated as the downpayment for the next house so its there for an emergency but not it would need to be one heck of an emergency to touch it! So we aren't even close to broke but we still consider ourselves to be living paycheck to paycheck (ignoring DH's 401K that comes out first). We do have credit card debt and a truck load. We could pay all of our debt off today but that would mean dipping into the house down payment fund. I know that may make sense but we find it easier to force ourselves to budget for a bill then to budget for savings. If it wasn't for DH, I'd be broke, broke, broke. He's the one that saves in our family.

We also just went though the same deal as RCT. We owned that house for about three years and didn't make a thing on it when we sold. Add in moving costs ect. Like she said, it was a learning experience. Or at least we keep telling ourselves that! the worst part for us was that we really messed up when we signed up with a realtor. He did nada for us and that pushed back the sale by 6 months. We planned on updating to newer vehicles as soon as we bought a new house. With the delay and our frustration we decided to move into a rental for awhile and regroup. Now the truck has started knocking. NOT a good thing.

One light in the horizon though! I will be going back to work. We've decided the kids can stay home for short times alone (together). DH works a rotating shift so there's only one week a month that he works traditional days. During the school year, hopefully the kids will be at school that week. That'll just leave us to deal with one week a month during the summer.

I'm taking the rural carrier associate exam for the post office at the end of the month. That's only a part time type job but it'll help. Plus if I can get into the post office, I'll be making a good wage and my ten years military time will count. If that falls thorugh, I'll take anything!