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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Maybe a dumb question... debt snowball
which is more effective- highest interest first or lowest balance first?
Re: Maybe a dumb question... debt snowball
I think it all really depends on what you want to get rid of most in your life. I think ultimately, it makes more "mathematical" sense to reduce your high interest debts first, but...for some, it is motivation to simply see debt going away....and usually you can attack a small balance pretty quick and have that satisfaction to help motivate you to continue to pay down debts....
Ok. BC mathematically, it might be quicker in the long run to do highest interest first, but I need instant gratification.
Just wondering
Pretty much ditto. In our case we have three cards, all three of them have 0% interest right now. One of them's 0% APR is up in April, and it is the one with the highest balance. Luckily my DH is fixing to go on outage at the end of next month (he works for nuclear power plant so they have to bring units down- which is basically just lots of overtime) so we agreed with the extra that we'd pay off one of the other's totally, and then pay off half of the highest balance at once...that way we'd know we'd be able to get it taken care of before April gets here. That way we don't get the kickback.
I'm like you...I need to see something moving to get motivation.
you should pay off high interest first while trying to pay something on your other balance (lower interest) at the same time. Make sense? You would want to eliminate your high debt first although its usually the hardest to get rid of.
Do the math and figure out your debt to income ratio when paying off both.
Hope this makes sense.
Otherwise you could be paying on your high interest for a long time........
I understand the motivation.
Like Candi did there are usually "specials" where you can transfer a balance for 0% interest for a certain period of time. Be careful of these as you will switch over to a new rate when that intro period is over. However, if you can pay it off or a huge chunk of it during that time, it is a good way to get rid of a lot of your balance.
We did our debt snowball so that we could pay off our smallest debt first. It is much easier to me to pay off the card with a balance of $350 first.....then use that money and throw it at the card with the $3k balance. That way you have quickly eliminated some of the debt....which builds motivation and frees up funds to tackle the larger debt.
I know that my $3k cc holds an APR right now....and the smaller one does not. But.....if I hurry and pay the smaller debt off first...then I won't have to worry about the zero APR offer ending soon....and I will have several hundred more dollars to spend each month on paying down the larger debt. I know that it is not what most "experts" will tell you to do.....but it is what is working for us
Well... I have 4 cards, my lowest is at $219, my highest is $828. I mean it's not that bad... It's just that I want to knock it out now before it gets worse.
Do any of you have a formatted xls sheet for the snowball? I don't even really know how to keep up with it... I'm really overwhelmed.
this *might* help?
http://www.whatsthecost.com/snowball.aspx
Me too, me too! I obviously need all the help I can get!