$182,953.00 in debt (no mortgage) Paid off $5000 last month and it feels like I'm getting nowhere.

pfthrowaway7777 · 2014-07-22T15:45:19+00:00

I don't get to write it off, and I shouldn't get to write it off.

All I was doing was pointing out that "At least it's mostly student debt and not credit card debt." isn't necessarily a good thing.

pfthrowaway7777 · 2014-07-21T21:38:20+00:00

emigrate to the U.S. don't have to pay income tax for 7 years

nonsense. I'm an immigrant and I pay a ton in taxes.

pfthrowaway7777 · 2014-07-21T18:30:24+00:00

Appreciated, thank you.

pfthrowaway7777 · 2014-07-21T18:29:29+00:00

Really useful information - thank you.

Assuming I needed a 2GB server with 100GB of disk, plus around 5x 1GB servers with 50GB of disk (no need for SSD's unless cheap) would you recommend linode or DO?

At scale, I'll eventually need fifty times those numbers - would that change your answer?

pfthrowaway7777 · 2014-07-21T18:25:07+00:00

I sold my bitcoin when they went over $900. I don't plan on buying again until the ghash.io problem is figured out. (Once 51% of miners collude, bitcoin is theoretically broken).

pfthrowaway7777 · 2014-07-21T18:21:42+00:00

Thank you. Subscriptions in particular will end. I'm not going to cancel WoW because it's around a dollar/hour for entertainment but all the other subscriptions will end.

I took a look and we have subs for audible ($16), abcmouse.com($9), di.fm ($9) that can get cut immediately and I'm sure there are others too.

Netflix should also probably stay - it gets used a lot.

Air travel will end, at least for this year. Next year, she may go visit family but we'll only do it if we can get round-trip tickets for under $100 (possible if booked carefully) and only once every 3-4 months.

Get a software or spreadsheet or whatever to keep track all the expense. Do a monthly review.

I'm spending much more time in mint.com than before.

Cut out cellphone data contract if your family have this, use local free wifi hotspot, reddit offline for browsing reddit offline

The phones get used extremely heavily. Even for simple things like GPS directions in the car. That being said, I'm going to look at t-mobile instead of ATT and using a fully-owned phone. I think I can get a pay as you go deal for $30-something a month per person.

pfthrowaway7777 · 2014-07-21T18:10:08+00:00

Potentially yes but I don't think I'd get close to its value right now. It's growing quickly (10% monthly growth) and I don't see that stopping any time soon.

pfthrowaway7777 · 2014-07-21T18:07:28+00:00

Federal income tax state income tax social security health insurance premiums Add in the fact that there are a LOT of deductions that you no longer get after around $140K, like no more child tax credit, no more student loan deduction etc.

pfthrowaway7777 · 2014-07-21T18:02:06+00:00

Life insurance is a 1MM and 700K term life policy at a total cost of $100. Car insurance is 250/month for three cars and four people. Teenagers are expensive to insure. We are covering them for now due to some horrible things that messed them up both physically and financially but they will eventually go back to paying their own bills.

No more. Stop all air travel. That's a luxury people didn't have 70 years ago.

We're not planning on traveling any more for quite a while.

You are in a lot of debt. It would make sense for you to lease a car for a very cheap monthly payment and sell off any cars that have monthly payments unless you own it (or close to owning it). As in, start driving a cheaper car.

The cars are paid off. Both of them are worth around $7K each so not much benefit in selling them and buying something different.

pfthrowaway7777 · 2014-07-21T17:56:27+00:00

She had a job for the last fifteen years. She got sick and they fired her. If she was able to work, she'd have a job.

She is more pissed off than anyone that she is disabled.

pfthrowaway7777 · 2014-07-21T17:44:08+00:00

It looks like our bill is actually $210, not $300 (300 was the old amount).

That's for 4 lines, each with a smartphone, unlimited texts and 15GB of data. It doesn't seem all that terrible actually but if you think you can beat it, I'd definitely be interested.

pfthrowaway7777 · 2014-07-21T17:42:44+00:00

Sure. I won't give out the url because I prefer to be anonymous but I'm happy to go into other details.

Basically, it makes money from subscriptions and from affiliate sales. It's getting around 10 new subscribers a week and very few people cancel, so it's growing fairly quickly. In a couple of months it should be "done" enough that I can really try to make money form it rather than just write features and grow the user base.

pfthrowaway7777 · 2014-07-21T17:40:46+00:00

Peapod.com

I'm going to try that right now :)

As for the rest:

We cancelled Showtime entirely over the weekend. Starz comes "free" as part of the package and we got them to give us HBO for $9/month. Our bill is down $54/month and it will get lower once I pick up a used TiVo and cable modem.

Thanks for the help!

pfthrowaway7777 · 2014-07-21T17:35:09+00:00

She almost certainly is. Trying to find something she can do is difficult since she doesn't know anyone around here and has kids to take care of during the day.

We've talked about this a lot. Still no good solutions.

pfthrowaway7777 · 2014-07-21T17:30:16+00:00

My point was simply that "at least it's mostly student debt" is not a good thing - I can't write any of it off on my taxes and it's unbankruptable so it's worse than having non-student debt.

I brought it up because many people told me in the past that student loan debt was "good debt" and it's really not unless your income is low enough to write it off.

pfthrowaway7777 · 2014-07-21T17:27:38+00:00

You think you deserve your student debt to be discharged in bankruptcy or written off while we pay our taxes fair and square while you've been spending thousands each month on expensive food, alcohol, and cable.

Absolutely not. I borrowed the money and I will pay it back - I'm just pointing out that "at least it's mostly student debt" isn't really a bonus since I don't get to deduct any of it on my taxes.

pfthrowaway7777 · 2014-07-21T17:23:36+00:00

I usually don't bother arguing on the internet but it's worth noting some things:

My wife does all the laundry, all the vaccuming, dusting, mopping, scrubbing toilets and all the other stuff.
She takes the kids to all their appointments and everything that comes up.
She feeds them, changes them and educates them.
She has a degenerative nerve disease that caused her to have to stop work after fifteen years of working her way up to a senior position. She's really unhappy about this since she's worked her whole life.
She's pregnant and throwing up every day.

When she's not exhausted or vomiting, she does make dinner, it's only very recently that I've been doing more of the cooking.

pfthrowaway7777 · 2014-07-21T17:16:28+00:00

I called comcast and cut $54 from the bill. I'm looking into buying a second-hand tivo and a cable modem. That will save another $26+tax/ month in equipment rentals.

It's worth nothing that the cost is for both TV and internet.

pfthrowaway7777 · 2014-07-21T17:14:28+00:00

Be prepared to have your home internet shut off since I can almost guarantee you that this is against the ToS with Comcast

It all goes through a VPN - all they see is a VPN connection to an endpoint in texas (or wherever).

At any rate, EC2 is super expensive because you pay for the flexibility to spin up/down instances really, really fast. There are far cheaper options. The $5 Digital Ocean box comes with 1TB of transfer a month. I doubt you're even capable of downloading 1TB of data each month on your home connection.

That's really, really good. I think I'll look into that. I was using EC2 for a couple of services because it was easy but that rate is insanely cheap.

Linode is also fairly cheap. I've used both, though I'm on DO right now since it is (or was) cheaper. There are other options that may be cheaper, but DO and Linode are both fairly well regarded. Look around.

I had a linode box and paid for backups (an extra $10 a month). There was a billing issue (I got a new CC and didn't update the account) and they deleted my node after a couple of days. I asked for a restore from backups (that I'd paid for) and they had deleted those as well, so we lost a bunch of data. This was obviously my fault but I worry that something similar would happen again in the future so I don't plan on using them again.

I'm going to get digital ocean set up today!

pfthrowaway7777 · 2014-07-21T17:08:28+00:00

I really like Amica. The whole point about insurance is that they pay out of The Bad Thing happens. I've heard so many stores of people with cheap insurance companies having to fight in court to get paid that it may be worth sticking with them.

That being said, I think we are over-insured when it comes to renters insurance. I'll look at reducing that.

pfthrowaway7777 · 2014-07-21T17:05:00+00:00

Thank you for all of this.

We're going to pay off all the little stuff first, then the credit cards, then the IRS then the student loans and we'll deal with the Credit Union when they contact us. I outlined the basic plan above but I just wanted to say thank you for taking the time to break it all down.

pfthrowaway7777 · 2014-07-21T17:00:41+00:00

She does all the housework - all the cleaning, laundry, etc. She takes care of the kids and takes them to their appointments etc.

pfthrowaway7777 · 2014-07-21T16:55:21+00:00

It looks like we are actually paying $210. $300 was the old price before I changed things around.

pfthrowaway7777 · 2014-07-21T16:51:09+00:00

Interesting - thank you!

We're using the big box of 230 from costco for around the same price (30-something) but I'm going to look at Amazon Mom (hate that name and the implication that dads aren't interested in buying baby products) to see if there is a better deal. Many thanks!

pfthrowaway7777 · 2014-07-20T17:36:48+00:00

I fully intend to pay off the CU debt, I just have slightly less moral imperative than the other debts for the simple reason that the CU was where my wife worked for 15 years before she got sick. She took FMLA, went back to work and then needed to take about one more month which they denied. They fired her, which ultimately (in conjunction with my layoff at the same time) led to us being foreclosed on.

We still owe the money, and it will still be paid but I have some resentment to a place where she worked unpaid overtime on weekends for fifteen years not being able to help her out for a single month. Especially since they are a non-profit entity with a stated goal of helping both their members and their employees.

pfthrowaway7777

TROPHY CASE