Austin Nesties
Dear Community,
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.
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.
Paying down debt... faster
Hello everyone,
My husband and I live south... way south- Kyle. We are looking for places to go and learn about ways to pay off our debt faster- I'm not sure if that would be called debt consolidation or what? Basically, we are fine making our credit card payments- but we feel we are really going nowhere- not really making a dent in the debt.
My question for you all is, do you either have experience with this sort of thing? Any recommendations on places we can trust to be in our best interest? We don't mind a drive if it is up north but preferably south/central Austin would be ideal.
Thanks!
Re: Paying down debt... faster
I remember hearing a financial planner on NPR (a few months ago) say that debt consolidation is a really bad idea. The gist of it was that most of those services just help you go through bankruptcy. I think you might be better off finding a financial planner, but I don't have any recs for you.
I know several nesties have done the Dave Ramsey program and it worked well for them. GL!
I was going to recommend Dave Ramsey's financial peace program. I haven't personally done it but others swear by it.
From personal experience, I was watching Suze Orman one time and she said if you had 3 credit cards to pay off, pay the minimum payment on 2 and then work on paying one at a time. That's what we did. We got 5 credit cards paid off in one year because of doing this. I would pay the minimum payment on all of them but one and then pay in excess on one until it was gone. We no longer have any credit card debt now. Also, another thing we did was plan out our meals every week so we weren't buying a lot of excess at the grocery store that was getting thrown out. That saved a lot of money there and we used that excess to pay off debt.
TTC #1 since February 2011
BFP #1 1/14/12 EDD 9/24/12 m/c at 8w4d on 2/20/12
March 2012- Dx with PCOS, started metformin
July 2012- SA completely normal
My Bio (wedding pics added 7/6)
My 101
by reading the MM board, finding a budget template, and reading Total Money Makeover (Dave Ramsey), we got our money situation under control. we budgeted to live on one salary (and bank the other) and paid off $24 in 10 months using the debt snowball method. debt free is awesome!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt-snowball_method
DH and I listen to Clark Howard on the radio all the time (he also has a podcast of the show). Clark recommends visiting http://www.nfcc.org/ for advice.
Here are some other links from his site about debt management:
http://www.clarkhoward.com/news/personal-finance-credit/bankruptcy/behind-the-rising-personal-bankruptcy-trend/nC3p/
http://www.clarkhoward.com/news/personal-finance-credit/credit-debit-cards/new-relief-program-for-those-with-credit-card-debt/nDjk/