Debt Dumpers - 2017

DH says his parents are the grudge holding types. He called his mom today and she said that he should act as though they were dead. That really shocked me that she would say such a thing. I would assumed that they would eventually let this go and want a relationship with their granddaughter, but who knows.

I'm so sorry to hear this. Not to throw the cultural aspect around again, but my close friend is Pakistani and her mother will act very similarly about anything she perceives as a slight. I believe her mother has said the same thing to my friend before, among other barbed insults. She always comes around, and that's without an adorable granddaughter to lure her back. I hope for everyone's sake they put this behind them soon.
 
Wow! I've been away for quite a while and so much has happened!
Jen, congrats on the birth of your daughter! She's beautiful! :thumbsup2 Sorry to hear you're go through all this negative stuff. Personally, I'd rather dh & I struggle a tad on our own & just follow our instincts than have family staying with us (from either side) pretending to be helping. This just adds more stress. You will adjust and it takes time. You will find a new routine and maybe miss some aspects of your old life time to time but then the baby will do something amazing and remind you it's all worthwhile. Just when you have it all down pat, along comes #2 and life pulls the rug out from beneath you again. lol! :goodvibes

This is a time where you have to be a bit selfish and not be so concerned about what others think, say or do. Stick to what works for YOU. Keep visits short with EVERYONE. Honestly, it's better to go visit others than to have them visit your house and this way YOU are in control of how long the visit lasts. Plus no added guilt that your house might look a mess and maybe you don't feel like playing hostess right now. Serving snacks, drinks, etc. I quickly realized people just wanted to see the baby much more than seeing me :teeth: and that's ok too.

I hope it gets better for you soon. :hug: It's good that your dh stood his ground with his parents. They'll either get over it or they won't but right now you really need to be able to lean on him for support.

When I had ds20, almost 2 weeks overdue, we had just sold our condo & bought a single family home 2 days before. It was an eyesore of a house so we stayed with my parents a few weeks (also stressful but not as bad as what you describe) Lots of family came over to help dh scrape off old wallpaper & paint. My brother installed a new furnace/AC unit. I am STILL eternally grateful for that help.
I had a C-section so I couldn't even drive to see the house. My parents both worked and dh got no sick/vacation time back then. He already missed a few days without pay while I was being induced and we couldn't afford for him to miss any more. So I was home alone with the baby and that suited me fine. He worked all day and painted all evening. I missed him but my mom cooked dinner every night and I knew he was working frantically to get us back in our own home.
Two weeks after buying our house, dh got laid off. We hadn't even made our 1st mortgage payment. We were scrimping by on my 6 weeks disability (after that, 12 weeks unpaid FML) and his unemployment ins. Somehow we survived it all & it worked out. Ds will be 21 in Jan. :scared1:

So you know the saying, "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger"? So true. This is all a distant memory for me now and just one of the many parts of the roller coaster ride called parenting. Hang it there!! :hug::hug:
 
As for debt dumping, all we have left is our home equity loan for the back porch enclosure and due to part of dh's inheritance, we have paid off about 25% of it at just 12 months into a 10 yr loan. Once my in-law's house sells, we will use dh's share to pay it off. :thumbsup2
We are taking a small break from the 'gazelle intense' attack on our debt. We plan to start up again with a vengeance next summer.
I recently reached our goal of $5k for our Christmas fund. Part of that, $2k, is dh's gift to me. He knows I just want to travel (vs. getting material things as gifts) so that will go toward my current goal I'm working on and that is our cruise to Norway next summer. Part of me feels guilty for these big trips but this will be our last big one for a while. I should have the cruise fare saved by Jan, not including any Christmas gift $. It's not due until April so next I can start working toward airfare & excursion $$.
My car will be 12 soon and even though the engine is still reliable, this is the longest I've ever kept a car. Dh keeps encouraging me to start looking at new cars but part of this is because we take turns, usually every 5 years one of us gets a new car when our old one turns 10. Right now, it's been my turn but I've held out over a year so far and will probably be 2 years by the time I buy something. This now forces him to wait several more years, whereas it would have only been 3 years wait for him under our old plan.
Still he is very happy with our financial progress so he doesn't push too much. :love2:

Just keep swimming! :fish:
 
Escrow analysis came in and mortgage is only going up $12!! Wohoo. So that’s a huge relief. Still, we’ve taken on more debt and monthly payments in the form of our solar loan ($90 a month) and DH’s car payment ($244 a month) so we are treading water. We are headed to Hershey Park this weekend to enjoy their Christmas candy lane. It was paid for in May so we just have to pay for food.
 


Escrow analysis came in and mortgage is only going up $12!! Wohoo. So that’s a huge relief. Still, we’ve taken on more debt and monthly payments in the form of our solar loan ($90 a month) and DH’s car payment ($244 a month) so we are treading water. We are headed to Hershey Park this weekend to enjoy their Christmas candy lane. It was paid for in May so we just have to pay for food.
We’ll be at Hershey next weekend too. We have annual passes so I just had to get a ticket for DS’s BFF to go with us. It is so pretty there for the holidays and it looks like more of the rides will be open than in past years.
 
We’ll be at Hershey next weekend too. We have annual passes so I just had to get a ticket for DS’s BFF to go with us. It is so pretty there for the holidays and it looks like more of the rides will be open than in past years.
We’re staying at the lodge. We’re doing candy lane on Friday the 10th.
 
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Spent a little more than I had planned this weekend, but not too upset about it. I took my niece out yesterday for her birthday and told her she had $50 to spend wherever she wanted. She decided she wanted some clothes at Hollister. With what she wanted it ended up being $70 and asked if she could pay me the extra $20. I told her that instead I would just do a smaller Christmas gift for her and she was fine with that. So I will go ahead and pick her up the illustrated Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban for Christmas and perhaps a small Harry Potter Pop figure to go with it or something of that nature.

I also pulled the trigger on buying tickets for Busch Gardens Christmastown this morning. They were on sale for $20 and I've been telling DH I want to go every year for about the past five years, so I figured I've finally earned the right to spend $20 on it! My in-laws also bought tickets for it and I bought a ticket for my mom as part of her Christmas gift, so we can all go down there together and enjoy a day there. I've heard it's fantastic, so I'm excited! This will also pretty much wrap up Christmas gifts for my mom since I also bought her ticket for us to go see The Sound of Music on Broadway when it comes to our city. I'll frame a picture of me and my horse for her so she'll have something to open Christmas day, but that will probably be it.
 


Officially paid off our furniture lease! I also made 2 extra payments towards each of Our loans so I don't have any payments on those until after Christmas. I was able put extra money on our electric account as well, so that bill should be paid for in December and January.

My daughter turned 2 yesterday, so we took her to the aquarium, the mall to see Santa come in on a fire truck and joined in the welcome parade around the mall, did her first build a bear, and hit up the Disney store for their buy one, get one for $2 stuffed animal sale. Then we stopped by my parents for a couple more presents and cake (we got her her own to smash into and eat).

Today my parents are going to watch the girls for a few hours so we can go to toys r us and start looking for Christmas presents and then we're going to have a nice dinner out for our "anniversary".
 
Just wanted to interrupt the flow and say hi! We're planning some pretty intense debt dumping for 2018 so I'm hoping to be fairly active in next year's version of this thread. Wishing you all lots of success with the remaining months of 2017!
 
Spent a little more than I had planned this weekend, but not too upset about it. I took my niece out yesterday for her birthday and told her she had $50 to spend wherever she wanted. She decided she wanted some clothes at Hollister. With what she wanted it ended up being $70 and asked if she could pay me the extra $20. I told her that instead I would just do a smaller Christmas gift for her and she was fine with that. So I will go ahead and pick her up the illustrated Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban for Christmas and perhaps a small Harry Potter Pop figure to go with it or something of that nature.

I also pulled the trigger on buying tickets for Busch Gardens Christmastown this morning. They were on sale for $20 and I've been telling DH I want to go every year for about the past five years, so I figured I've finally earned the right to spend $20 on it! My in-laws also bought tickets for it and I bought a ticket for my mom as part of her Christmas gift, so we can all go down there together and enjoy a day there. I've heard it's fantastic, so I'm excited! This will also pretty much wrap up Christmas gifts for my mom since I also bought her ticket for us to go see The Sound of Music on Broadway when it comes to our city. I'll frame a picture of me and my horse for her so she'll have something to open Christmas day, but that will probably be it.
Where did you find the Busch Garden tickets for $20? We’ll be at GWL for Thanksgiving and that weekend and thought it might be nice to go there.
 
Where did you find the Busch Garden tickets for $20? We’ll be at GWL for Thanksgiving and that weekend and thought it might be nice to go there.

They are just in the regular website. It might be $25 per person that weekend, the price varies based on the day you go. I’ve heard it’s really nice and that even some of the roller coasters are open too! We’ve had a pretty mild fall so far (it’ll be 75 tomorrow) so hopefully you’ll still have good weather tomorrow.


Unfortunately the weekend ended on not a good note. I received a hysterical phone call from my mom (who lives next door) this afternoon. She had an accident on her farm where she twisted her ankle and fell face first on a piece of metal. I went over and got her and rushed her to the ER. We are so fortunate that she had no fractures and her ankle is just sprained, but she hit her head pretty hard and split her lip and got a couple stitches. Unfortunately, she also hit one tooth hard and shoved it back so it is sitting at an angle. I could not get our dentist on the phone and of course the ER couldn’t do anything about it, so she has to live with the pain of that tonight. While it will hopefully be purely cosmetic and fixable, she has beautiful teeth and is pretty upset, which I can’t blame her. She does not have great health or dental insurance and does not get paid time off work. I paid her $150 copay at the ER and my brother, who fortunately is fairly wealthy, has said he will take care of anything she needs while she is out of work. I just worry about her. My brother and I are going to discuss some different options because the farm is just getting to be too much for her to handle even with me there every day to help take care of the horses too.

I feel like DH and I are so young to have to start having these concerns about our parents and having to start making some hard decisions with and for them, but it seems to be the theme over the last year and a half between my mom’s health and his dad’s heart attack.
 
Update: Was at the dentist's office when they opened this morning and the tooth was shoved back into place (insert full body cringe here). They wired it to the other teeth and said only time will tell whether the root lives or dies. It actually looks good and is back where it should be, but I hope it stays alive and she doesn't have to undergo a root canal. I think she feels a lot better now that the tooth is back in place. She hasn't had much pain from it yet, but texted me a few ago to say she was starting to feel it. I came into work for a couple hours after taking her to the dentist and getting her prescription filled, but I'm going to go home if she needs to take a pain pill since I don't want her home alone having to take one of those.

I do not recommend falling face first into metal to anybody! I am usually a pretty tough person and am not bothered by blood or anything, but the tooth kind of freaked me out. I stayed calm yesterday and told her it didn't look bad and that we would get it fixed, but when we got to the dentist this morning and he said he was going to essentially grab it and drag it back into place, I immediately went into a full body sweat and excused myself to "use the bathroom real quick." Cue me sprinting out of the building and taking a couple deep breaths of cold air before getting it together again.
 
Update: Was at the dentist's office when they opened this morning and the tooth was shoved back into place (insert full body cringe here). They wired it to the other teeth and said only time will tell whether the root lives or dies. It actually looks good and is back where it should be, but I hope it stays alive and she doesn't have to undergo a root canal. I think she feels a lot better now that the tooth is back in place. She hasn't had much pain from it yet, but texted me a few ago to say she was starting to feel it. I came into work for a couple hours after taking her to the dentist and getting her prescription filled, but I'm going to go home if she needs to take a pain pill since I don't want her home alone having to take one of those.

I do not recommend falling face first into metal to anybody! I am usually a pretty tough person and am not bothered by blood or anything, but the tooth kind of freaked me out. I stayed calm yesterday and told her it didn't look bad and that we would get it fixed, but when we got to the dentist this morning and he said he was going to essentially grab it and drag it back into place, I immediately went into a full body sweat and excused myself to "use the bathroom real quick." Cue me sprinting out of the building and taking a couple deep breaths of cold air before getting it together again.

Glad they were able to at least put it back into place for her! Will have my fingers crossed that she won't have to undergo a root canal.
 
Update: Was at the dentist's office when they opened this morning and the tooth was shoved back into place (insert full body cringe here). They wired it to the other teeth and said only time will tell whether the root lives or dies. It actually looks good and is back where it should be, but I hope it stays alive and she doesn't have to undergo a root canal. I think she feels a lot better now that the tooth is back in place. She hasn't had much pain from it yet, but texted me a few ago to say she was starting to feel it. I came into work for a couple hours after taking her to the dentist and getting her prescription filled, but I'm going to go home if she needs to take a pain pill since I don't want her home alone having to take one of those.

I do not recommend falling face first into metal to anybody! I am usually a pretty tough person and am not bothered by blood or anything, but the tooth kind of freaked me out. I stayed calm yesterday and told her it didn't look bad and that we would get it fixed, but when we got to the dentist this morning and he said he was going to essentially grab it and drag it back into place, I immediately went into a full body sweat and excused myself to "use the bathroom real quick." Cue me sprinting out of the building and taking a couple deep breaths of cold air before getting it together again.
I hope your Mom feels better soon.
 
Just got our second payment for our DVC points rental today. I am very pleased with the process of renting points through David's. It was very easy and payment was prompt. I put that money into our DVC contract fund and now we have $4225! I can't wait until we hit $5k since that is our half was mark for our savings goal. I haven't done a ton over the last month with my rewards programs, since things have been pretty busy with baby. But now that things are starting to feel more calm and we have more of a routine going, I have started to pick things back up for this month. Hoping to start making a big dent and get as close to $5k before the end of the year as possible.
 
Update: Was at the dentist's office when they opened this morning and the tooth was shoved back into place (insert full body cringe here). They wired it to the other teeth and said only time will tell whether the root lives or dies. It actually looks good and is back where it should be, but I hope it stays alive and she doesn't have to undergo a root canal. I think she feels a lot better now that the tooth is back in place. She hasn't had much pain from it yet, but texted me a few ago to say she was starting to feel it. I came into work for a couple hours after taking her to the dentist and getting her prescription filled, but I'm going to go home if she needs to take a pain pill since I don't want her home alone having to take one of those.

I do not recommend falling face first into metal to anybody! I am usually a pretty tough person and am not bothered by blood or anything, but the tooth kind of freaked me out. I stayed calm yesterday and told her it didn't look bad and that we would get it fixed, but when we got to the dentist this morning and he said he was going to essentially grab it and drag it back into place, I immediately went into a full body sweat and excused myself to "use the bathroom real quick." Cue me sprinting out of the building and taking a couple deep breaths of cold air before getting it together again.


Hope your mom is feeling better soon and her tooth is saved.:teeth: :hug:
 
Yep, agree. Up your coverage as high as you can go. We don't own a house. I have our Auto insurance comprehensive liability set at $1 million per accident. You can also damage someone else's property in an accident...so keep that in mind. We live in a very high cost of living area where people routinely drive Maseratis, Bentleys, Ferraris, etc. Most of our neighbors have Tesla's and high end European sports cars. I cringe to think what would happen if we were responsible for totaling one or several of those in an accident, not to mention the medical bills. We Max out the coverage amounts in every category. We only pay $160/month for our two cars. WELL worth it.

I'm looking at redoing my car insurance. How do you have this rate? My comprehensive is only about $500k, and I'm paying $375/month for 2 vehicles. And this part of the country is NOT a high cost of living area.
 
I'm looking at redoing my car insurance. How do you have this rate? My comprehensive is only about $500k, and I'm paying $375/month for 2 vehicles. And this part of the country is NOT a high cost of living area.

I don't know. We have USAA (military). No accidents, no tickets in 17 years. One car is a 2007 Honda CRV, the other is a 2017 Civic. Our credit scores are aound 800.
 
Update: Was at the dentist's office when they opened this morning and the tooth was shoved back into place (insert full body cringe here). They wired it to the other teeth and said only time will tell whether the root lives or dies. It actually looks good and is back where it should be, but I hope it stays alive and she doesn't have to undergo a root canal. I think she feels a lot better now that the tooth is back in place. She hasn't had much pain from it yet, but texted me a few ago to say she was starting to feel it. I came into work for a couple hours after taking her to the dentist and getting her prescription filled, but I'm going to go home if she needs to take a pain pill since I don't want her home alone having to take one of those.

I do not recommend falling face first into metal to anybody! I am usually a pretty tough person and am not bothered by blood or anything, but the tooth kind of freaked me out. I stayed calm yesterday and told her it didn't look bad and that we would get it fixed, but when we got to the dentist this morning and he said he was going to essentially grab it and drag it back into place, I immediately went into a full body sweat and excused myself to "use the bathroom real quick." Cue me sprinting out of the building and taking a couple deep breaths of cold air before getting it together again.

When I was in first grade, I fell on the metal jungle gym (Remember those?). My two front teeth hit a bar on the way down. Blood everywhere. I remember telling a playground aide "I think I chipped my tooth." She looked like she was going to pass out and said "I think you did, let's get you to the nurse." The teeth went straight up into my gums. They were luckily still baby teeth. The dentist pulled them out. I was toothless for almost 8 months since the adult teeth weren't ready to come in yet.

Hope your mom feels better soon!
 
We’re staying at the lodge. We’re doing candy lane on Friday the 10th.
I told DS to ask his friend what he wants to do. We are supposed to go on Sat and the high is supposed to be 40 degrees. Doubt they would want to do many rides in that temp.
 

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