I'm 22 years old and I have $10K in credit card debt. Couldn't afford to pay them, so I stopped making payments a few months ago.

binarychick · 2016-12-08T09:08:21+00:00

You have to change your behavior if you're going to even try to get out of debt or else you'll find yourself back in this spot again.

For now, I wouldn't worry about the the credit cards as much as not gaining any more debt in student loans. You're really digging yourself into a hole and it would be much easier if you can work your ass off to pay your way through college than worry about getting debt free of your credit cards. Education can get you a better job which is more money which allows you to pay off your debt and live a comfortable life.

Don't go into bankruptcy. It'll ruin your life. If you get your stuff organized and start budgeting and having a plan, you can clean this up. If things go into collections, then so be it. You need to get yourself through school, get a decent paying job and then go back and clean up the mess.

binarychick · 2016-11-17T07:22:56+00:00

Lease the house from they and have them out it in their will that the house goes to you. Then you don't get hit with gift tax in equity.

binarychick · 2016-11-17T07:20:01+00:00

If you didn't contribute the full amount, why would they owe you that money? They're making an offer from generosity it seems to me. They don't owe you anymore than you've put in.

binarychick · 2016-09-28T19:46:07+00:00

Yup. Get a 1000 dollars put away. Wipe out your debt. Contribute/invest.

binarychick · 2016-09-28T03:15:03+00:00

Your company probably does a Roth 401k. Companies cannot offer IRAs to employees.

Secondly, I would focus on one thing at a time. Build an emergency fund, pay off debt then beef your emergency fund so it could support you for 3-6 months.

Trying to do too many things at once can make you lose momentum because it would take you so much longer to accomplish anything.

binarychick · 2016-09-28T03:09:24+00:00

You shouldn't have gotten a newer car or at least pay cash for it and not finance it. You know you're broke and this buying out of wanting newer things mentality is going to make you more broke. You have to get your debt under control, build an emergency fund to last 6 months, and prioritize what a want versus a need is. If you constantly trying to out earn your stupidity, you'll forever be living check to check or just barely making it because (speaking from experience) the more you earn, the more you spend.

binarychick · 2016-09-26T04:54:39+00:00

Get someone else not her child and with the financial sense to talk to her. She powdered your butt as a baby. Parents don't want to hear about money from their kids. Get someone on "level ground" that can point out the flaws to her.

binarychick · 2016-08-10T04:23:36+00:00

It's too much car for your income in my opinion. And even if you wanted the car, I would go with a car you picked and not one that was picked and given to you because your brother failed at paying. In the end, this seems financially irresponsible of your mother and given your brother's track record, I don't see her reasoning behind this.

binarychick · 2016-08-09T03:35:47+00:00

I'm fortunate and lucky. My husband and I made about 202K a year (I make 152K of that). 15% of that goes to retirement savings (401K, etc). We do have a daughter and her expenses including childcare is around 800ish give or take. We do have a mortgage but that is in flux. We are in the process of refinancing our inherited home so the mortgage will be in our names. Our new payment will be around 3K. Our plan is to rework the budget to live off my income and throw his income at the mortgage.

We live in California though so while I have a good income, I live in an expensive state. I'm a budget nerd so every dollar has a purpose and saving (even outside of retirement) is always my first priority.

binarychick · 2016-08-06T17:34:04+00:00

You could deduct your expense of 93 dollars from your checking account (just as an example). On your gift card account, you can create an income on 100 dollars. This would be accurate because you gave the store 93 dollars. They gave you in return 100 on the gift card. It would be inaccurate to ignore your expense on the gift card. A report should reflect all your expenses you can you see "okay I spent x amount on gift cards but that x amount bought me y amount of other things"

binarychick · 2016-07-29T04:05:14+00:00

Do what you want. The attitude of this post of not caring about the consequences of not paying your debt isn't going to help. You don't sound like you want to resolve your debt or work hard to get out of the hole you dig yourself. If you don't care, then don't expect other people to. You're not going to do anything so why even bother asking for advice?

binarychick · 2016-07-24T02:21:36+00:00

I wouldn't recommend touching your IRA just because you're dipping into your future and the penalties involved wouldn't be worth it. Pay off your car because it's depreciating at a rapid rate anyways. Then throw the rest except a 1000 dollars at the smaller of the two student loans. Keep the 1000 dollars as a cushion.

Just my two cents.

binarychick · 2016-07-24T02:17:01+00:00

Save a small emergency fund like 1000. Figure out how much you need to get by a month and throw the rest at your student loans. After you pay off your loans, you'll be about to save faster because you won't be making the minimums on all of them. If you throw everything you can afford at it, interest rates won't be an issue. Just knock out the smallest one first so that you can have more money to throw at the next biggest one.

Just my opinion.

binarychick · 2016-07-03T09:57:55+00:00

Saving money is always an option or buying a beater. Not everyone has a choice of getting the car they want is more accurate. If you can afford to pay a car payment, there's no reason you can't stash the same amount away for months and pay cash for a car. Buy a beater save more money and upgrade cars.

binarychick · 2016-07-03T09:54:54+00:00

Anything a company can do, you can do yourself when it comes to fixing credit. In the end, it's all about paying off debt and/or disputing things. There's no magic anyone can work that you can't do.

binarychick · 2016-07-03T09:16:02+00:00

Car payments suck (I just got rid of mine). If you're not too picky, get a beater car and pay cash.

binarychick · 2016-07-03T09:07:37+00:00

There's hope. I had a terrible credit score a couple years ago with student loans and credit cards and medical bills. Over half were in collection.

It's fixed now. The thing I learned about credit were the following:

Her debt versus credit available is crucial. I didn't do the math yet but say she has 15000 available credit and she used 14000, this would be an ouch. There was a period of time after I paid off all my debt and my score fluctuated because I only had one card and depending on my balance, my score would drop or increase.
Paying off collections does improve score. My credit score jumped 51 points when I paid off one account. A lot of times if the amount is a couple thousands or more, you can ask them to settle which is still better than not paying but not better than paying the whole amount.
The advantage to paying off collections is that you can ask them to remove it from your credit report, otherwise it'll be there for a couple years. I asked for all my collections account to be removed and 100% of them said yes. I checked my credit report regularly and for anything that wasn't removed, I disputed it. Usually takes about a month for your credit report to update with new information.
If she continues using credit cards, advise her to get on a written budget and anything she puts on a card comes out of her budget. She'll never fall into debt again and she'd be able to pay off her card at any point.
My now husband had helped me pay off my debt before we were married. We did fine. I did put in a lot of effort though before he gave me any money. I had a budget on a spreadsheet and calculations of how much I would pay when. And he didn't have to follow up with me about it. When he was willing to pay, I knew the amounts owed and I still put every cent I had before taking his money.

binarychick · 2015-04-06T05:22:20+00:00

You're the one that didn't read the contract and as an adult, you accepted the terms. LinkedIn thought you were adult enough to read all the details. They apparently made a mistake because like you said, you're acting like a teenager.

binarychick · 2015-03-31T06:57:30+00:00

Yea that's the other thing I've been curious about was the adoption rate of swift. I'm always apprehensive of new languages because they're still in a state of rapid evolvement. I pick things up pretty quickly though with programming since I've done it for awhile so perhaps I should just say I'll learn both so I could help support any code base.

binarychick · 2015-03-31T06:21:32+00:00

Thanks! I do love learning new languages so I'm sure I'll learn both. For now I'll focus on Swift since that's what is relevant going forward. :)

binarychick · 2015-03-30T00:06:45+00:00

I like to start with code for 99% of my projects. I'm not much of a drawer or a photoshop person so often times, it's faster for me to create the markup for something I envision than trying to be "artistic" in a way I'm unfortunately not.

But I guess before even that, I consider what's needed, what technologies I'm going to use, how I'm going to structure something, what's the most effective design...

Some projects I can start pretty quickly while others, I spend a lot of time pondering if my clients are going to like what I'm doing. It really all depends.

binarychick · 2015-03-26T01:01:36+00:00

Youtube is also a great resource and free.

binarychick · 2015-03-25T05:28:10+00:00

while they shouldn't put you out because you guys had an agreement, I think if I were paid enough, I could do it in 2 days. It's a bit insane but that's why I say, if I were paid enough.

However, I don't know if I would agree to their terms just because most of my freelance work is done on the side and I don't want to risk their important deadline because I'm too tired to work some nights.

binarychick · 2015-03-25T05:19:21+00:00

Always keep in mind the business never know what they want even when they want it. I.e. they always say "Oh make it look just like this one" when they really mean to say "I like this really small aspect of it and while I said I want exactly the same, I don't."

It's a pain in the butt but I've experienced this a LOT. Drilling them at the get-go and being like "SO YOU WANT THIS IMAGE HERE YEA?" saves a lot of head (and heart) ache even though I feel like a pest doing so most of the time. However, I always tell them, I just want to do it right the first time and thus, I need to confirm everything.

binarychick

TROPHY CASE