So I'm bad, awful really, with my money. But unfortunately my wife is just as bad if not worse. Not to mention, I have been unemployed for 3+ months and everything is out of whack and super super super late. The silver lining is I have a good paying job now and am scheduled to get a 3 dollar raise at the end of this month so I'll be making 23 per hour by Feb.
This is my cry for help on something that I should have learned in high school and is affecting not only my life but the life that I want for my two kids.
I'll start with what I think are all my debts and income.
2500 - High interest rate (25-36%) loan
1500 - fed student loan
3000 - owed to a college
14,000 - owed for my car
1200 - credit card debt
1840 - what i owe my apartment as of today (1200 rent, 490 in damages, and 140 in late fees)
300 - for a payday loan (went to collections already)
500 - owed to america first
500 - owed to wells fargo
500 - owed to paypal
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25,840 - my total debt
My wife's debt is another issue as she won't actually share what she owes or what she pays on monthly. I estimate her debt to be in the 15-20k range so we'll just tack on 20k for a total of
45,840 - total family debt
Now my payments
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600 per month rent
334 per month car payment
~60 per month power bill
~30 per month gas bill
75 per month on one credit card
25 per month on the other credit card
150 per month to college debt
100 per month to HIR loan
~150-200 a month in fuel
400+ in food a month (two kids, two adults and we eat out pretty frequently because they are toddlers and we are tired. trying to fix this by eating at home more but i can't cook and my wife gets lazy/frustrated that she has to cook)
~150 in car insurance for 3 cars (I own 3 cars, but only have one car that i don't outright own and we need that car because the other ones aren't safe for my little ones)
200 a month for my wife's consolidated debt
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2374 - total monthly payments (I don't know everything that my wife pays so I can't put it here.)
Moving on to my income per month.
I make 20 per hour right now at my job and am payed hourly.
I estimate my net income to be around 3300 a month to work with in the next month but like I said I'm scheduled for a 3 dollar pay raise at the end of January.
My idea for getting back on track is to first pay off everything I owe to my apt complex as I need a roof over my head. My next scheduled pay day is the 18th of Jan. and I'm paying everything but the damages plus I'm paying 200 dollars today.
Next I am dead set on catching up on everything that is late FIRST then going after my high interest rate loans. I imagine its going to take a couple months before I can tackle and start aggressively paying down my debts including the people that helped me out these last few months.
Now we come to my biggest problem. I've been trying to convince my wife that we need to get a joint account where we put 75% or more of both our incomes into it to pay off all our debts and bills. Then putting 15-20% away for savings in an emergency fund and having 5-10% for "play" money.
I am currently putting 100% of my income into her account because Wells Fargo wouldn't work with me when I lost my job and just closed my account with me owing them 500 dollars. She won't decide on what she wants to do at the moment because she wants "her account" and me to have "my account" even though it has just been me paying from my account for the last 3 years 90% of the bills from my income while she tries to pay down her debt aggressively. Spoiler: She didn't pay down her debt aggressively and actually accrued more debt.
I'm not angry with her because what she did with the money went to our kids, food, and Christmas for the last 3 years and also she didn't really make that much (usually 8-10 an hour part time jobs). And I was totally fine with this. Until I lost my job and while I was searching for a new one she acted like I was just trying to be stay at home dad for the rest of my life. Which I wasn't but that is a story for another thread.
Anyway, the reason I'm posting this is because I've read of the avalanche method and snowball method of paying of debt and I get the concepts of both and have an idea, albeit an unclear and unfocused one, of how to proceed with MY debt. But I need advice on how to get a handle on my wife's debt. And what are some things you (being Reddit) would suggest on separate or joint accounts.
tl;dr I lost my job a little more than 3 months ago, finally got a new one and am dead set on budgeting properly to give my kids a better quality of life. Wife's debt is less than mine but I have no idea what is going on with it because she doesn't let me know anything with it for the most part.
p.s. I'm working with USD here.
Submitted January 06, 2019 at 10:06AM by levelonesc http://bit.ly/2VxuCeb
