Anybody have kids AND money?

[Zundfolge]

No kids AND no money here!

[sniper7]

We just started really budgeting and checked how much we spent eating out and it was shocking. We cut our food bill by nearly 70% by eating at home. It also feels a lot more like a treat now when we do go out.

The wife also suggested something she had heard that we're going to try out. If you do go out to eat, don't go somewhere unless you have a coupon for it. It helps you try new places AND saves you money.

we do that as well. coupon or a gift card.

[PugnacAutMortem]

kids definitely factor in a pretty good cost. Mine is 2 and I keep thinking it will get better but new things always come up. at first it is the massive cost of getting all the stuff you need. then diapers, forumla, clothes (constantly needing new ones), the list goes on.
now he is getting into activities....like swim lessons, then sports, then preschool to get him with more kids.

We have learned to be smarter with our money. look at what you can do to save 10-15-20 dollars a month. you might find several things that add up. now take that money and put it into a separate fund to start up a good backup fund.

look at how much you drive. gas is a significant expense today depending on your vehicle. we have all SUVs and trucks so MPG isn't great. With that, we make trips count. don't make a $12 in gas trip to go buy $5 in groceries or get fast food for dinner. all of a sudden your cheap fast food dinner cost a whole lot more than it would have to eat steak and potatoes at home.

food cost has gone up quite a bit. look at what you are buying, see if there is an equivalent that is cheaper. Is there something you can do without...like cookies, or pop, or instead of buying pop in cans, get them in 2 liter bottles.

If you have multiple credit cards with balances, pay off the smallest one first, focus on that with extra money, get the balance to 0 and cut the card up. that will save you money in interest every month as well as free up that payment to move on to the next bill.

Vehicles: do you have a 3rd car? Do you need it? if not, sell it. that saves maintenance, potential problems, theft, and insurance. are the cars paid off? If not, consider if you really need a car payment, is it worth it? do you need something that is pretty much completely reliable, or can you settle for something else that gets the job done?

vices: alcohol at dinner...cut it off. buy beer at home. tons of money can be saved depending on how much you go out. plus you reduce the risk for DUI. eating out a lot? eat at home. typically healthier and will save a good bit of money on food and gas. still get the wife out for a good time for both of you, but if you are going out a couple times a week, that can be cut down to once every couple weeks just fine.

go through the house and come up with things you don't need and sell them. do nothing with the money but put it into your backup fund. you would be surprised how much is lying around the house. probably $500 pretty easily.

if you are buying a lot of expensive kids clothes, think about salvation army. you get them cheap, the kids don't wear them hardly at all, then donate them when you are done with them and get the tax benefits making them even cheaper.

All excellent advice...and actually all stuff that we are doing currently. We cut cable completely out, we eat out once a week instead of all the time, I'm unloading stuff on craigslist, I carpool with my mom to work since she works across the street from me (AND she doesn't make me pay a cent in gas...score!), we own both of our cars outright and Kid to Kid has become quite the awesome place to grab stuff for the kids (to fill in the holes from hand me down stuff we keep getting from friends and family). We've come to a happy medium with where we are living lifestyle wise...we just can't seem to take the next step to digging out of debt in a timely manner. We can make it by if we stick with the minimum payments on everything (and keep our student loans in deferment...but we can only do that for another year tops), I just wish we could start making some headway on this stuff, know what I mean?

And truly, that is a great list of things to look at to put some more coin in your pocket. If we didn't do these things, we would be in big trouble.

[MrPrena]

Kids, but no money.

I try to lower the cost by going
-prepaid cell phone (virgin mobile)
-Only base $39.99 broadband internet
-pay semi annual on all insurance (save average of 150 per semi)
-use internet and clip-on coupons
-basically no going out at all.

I am still poor and constantly broke.

[PugnacAutMortem]

we have 6 kids and home and 1 in college. we afford it just fine. we have less than $70,000 a year.

Why? we dont spend a bunch of money
eating out or fast food,
smart phones
cable
movies
NEW CARS
on stupid drains of money.

We have a 6 year old 4100 sqft house on 61 acres with a 1000 sqft 3 car garage. We have lots of toys. We save money by doing all the work that can be done by ourselves...by ourselves. It should work fine, but people need to stop thinking they need to live the lifestyle of a millionaire even though they dont make that much money.

See that's the thing, we can afford it just fine as well. But just barely. We do all of the cost cutting measures and don't spend frivolously, we're just trying to figure out how to dig out of debt to where we can make our money start working for us...instead of us working for our money.

[ruthabagah]

kids definitely factor in a pretty good cost. Mine is 2 and I keep thinking it will get better but new things always come up. at first it is the massive cost of getting all the stuff you need. then diapers, forumla, clothes (constantly needing new ones), the list goes on.
now he is getting into activities....like swim lessons, then sports, then preschool to get him with more kids.

We have learned to be smarter with our money. look at what you can do to save 10-15-20 dollars a month. you might find several things that add up. now take that money and put it into a separate fund to start up a good backup fund.

look at how much you drive. gas is a significant expense today depending on your vehicle. we have all SUVs and trucks so MPG isn't great. With that, we make trips count. don't make a $12 in gas trip to go buy $5 in groceries or get fast food for dinner. all of a sudden your cheap fast food dinner cost a whole lot more than it would have to eat steak and potatoes at home.

food cost has gone up quite a bit. look at what you are buying, see if there is an equivalent that is cheaper. Is there something you can do without...like cookies, or pop, or instead of buying pop in cans, get them in 2 liter bottles.

If you have multiple credit cards with balances, pay off the smallest one first, focus on that with extra money, get the balance to 0 and cut the card up. that will save you money in interest every month as well as free up that payment to move on to the next bill.

Vehicles: do you have a 3rd car? Do you need it? if not, sell it. that saves maintenance, potential problems, theft, and insurance. are the cars paid off? If not, consider if you really need a car payment, is it worth it? do you need something that is pretty much completely reliable, or can you settle for something else that gets the job done?

vices: alcohol at dinner...cut it off. buy beer at home. tons of money can be saved depending on how much you go out. plus you reduce the risk for DUI. eating out a lot? eat at home. typically healthier and will save a good bit of money on food and gas. still get the wife out for a good time for both of you, but if you are going out a couple times a week, that can be cut down to once every couple weeks just fine.

go through the house and come up with things you don't need and sell them. do nothing with the money but put it into your backup fund. you would be surprised how much is lying around the house. probably $500 pretty easily.

if you are buying a lot of expensive kids clothes, think about salvation army. you get them cheap, the kids don't wear them hardly at all, then donate them when you are done with them and get the tax benefits making them even cheaper.

Words of wisdom, ^^^^ right there. I was in the same situation as you 3 years ago, and now everything is paid up and I only have a small mortgage to pay.

3 things I would like to add:

Cut everything you don't need. For example: you will see how easy it is to go from a 100$ cable/satellite bill, to a 50$ one and still enjoy good tv. Do you have a cell phone? How many minutes do you actually use? Can you get a cheaper plan?

If you eat out everyday for lunch: Stop it. Make yourself a sandwich @ home before you go. That's right away 8/9$ a day in your pocket (x22 = 176/198 a month).

Pay off your cc, starting with the smallest balance, but once it's at 0, just put it away, do not close the account. Why? It will damage your credit.... I know it is silly, but it's better to have an open account in good standing than no account. Trust me, I wrote some of the programs for Experian a while back....

[PugnacAutMortem]

one reason we are where we are is we have bought 3 foreclosures. we have now lived in and sold one, we live in one now and will hopefully sell it in the spring and we bought one last week. We made alot of money on the first house. SWEAT EQUITY. We should make alot of money on this house. i dont know if thats something you can or are willing to do, but it has worked for us. no, we dont like living in the house while we fix it up, but the reward is good.

That is the dream actually. That's always something I have wanted to do, and the next house we move into will most likely be one we can fix up and make some money on. The nice thing about the house we live in now is we bought it from the City of Aurora through one of those Neighborhood Stabilization programs. $1,000 down and they subsize the rest of the down payment and closing costs...plus they completely gutted and fixed this one up. Over $100K put into this house. Only bummer is we're stuck here for 5 years minimum, so we couldn't get into a foreclosure or a fix-n-flip for another 3 years.

[PugnacAutMortem]

Pay off your cc, starting with the smallest balance, but once it's at 0, just put it away, do not close the account. Why? It will damage your credit.... I know it is silly, but it's better to have an open account in good standing than no account. Trust me, I wrote some of the programs for Experian a while back....

Is there some sort of delay between closing CC accounts and it showing up on your credit? We closed and shredded all of our CC at the end of May this year. The wife and I had to reapply to put me as an authorized user on her CC that we kept open, and when they pulled our credit we were both well above 700.

[ruthabagah]

Is there some sort of delay between closing CC accounts and it showing up on your credit? We closed and shredded all of our CC at the end of May this year. The wife and I had to reapply to put me as an authorized user on her CC that we kept open, and when they pulled our credit we were both well above 700.

Depends of the CC issuer (bank, retail). Your Credit score will only reflect past transactions and may not be updated until you apply for new credit.

[th3w01f]

Depends of the CC issuer (bank, retail). Your Credit score will only reflect past transactions and may not be updated until you apply for new credit.

Definitely depends on the bank, I closed a Chase card (actually replaced with a different one) and both were reported to all 3 bureaus within 60 days.

The issue with credit score is related to 'credit utilization'. It's better to show a lower % of your total credit in use; for instance it's usually better to have $20K in credit and be using $10K of it than to have 5K in credit and be using $5K of it.

Lots of other factors of course but just one to keep an eye on.