The Dog Ate My Wallet

The Dog Ate My Wallet

Personal Finance in a World of Excuses

Category Archive: Debt

Article

Four Years of Concentrated Debt Payoff, and I am Further from Being Done than When I Started

Yesterday was my 4th anniversary with the Women in Red Racers, the debt payoff board that first got me interested in personal finance. Per the Hallmark site, the traditional gift is fruit or flowers, while the modern gift is appliances. I could use a new stove or dishwasher, if anyone felt so inclined. 😉 (Here are my 2nd (post #1365) and 3rd  (post #1959)anniversary posts.) This is a slightly modified version of my anniversary post fromread more…

Date: 31/12/2013 Author: Category: Debt Bookmark: Permalink
Article

Money & Relationship Questions from Chase

Apparently, this list of questions originally came from Chase (the bank). I got them from Lance at Money Life and More, who answered them himself and challenged the rest of us to do so, too.   1. Would you discuss money on the first date? Remember first that C and I have been married for almost 10 years, and together for over 13, so it’s been a really long time since I’ve been on a firstread more…

Date: 21/03/2013 Author: Category: Debt, Inspired by, Lessons Learned Bookmark: Permalink
Article

Money Mistakes We’re Still Making (and Not Regretting)

We are bad at saying “No” to good sales pitches. We just are. I know this. It is the reason we have a timeshare (and I still don’t regret it). Maybe that lack of regret played into my decision that we should attend a Direct Buy presentation when the offer was made. I know it had something to do with the $200 worth of restaurant.com gift cards they offered, as well as the two round tripread more…

Date: 26/02/2013 Author: Category: Debt, Home Improvement, Major Financial Decisions, Money Mistakes Bookmark: Permalink
Article

Making a Smart Long Term Decision is Causing Me Short Term Panic Attacks

I have mentioned that we are refinancing the house. In fact, it is one of my goals on my Sunday Evening Post. We were paying 6% interest. We are moving down to 4% interest. We are also extending the life of our loan by 8 years. Our monthly payments will go down about $500. This is a good thing. So why am I having a minor panic attack about the whole process? I think I willread more…

Date: 12/02/2013 Author: Category: Budgets, Debt, Home Improvement, Major Financial Decisions Bookmark: Permalink
Article

I Said We Weren’t Going to Do This

Back in April, I wrote about why we weren’t refinancing– we’re not eligible for HARP, we were very likely underwater in our home, and we could afford the mortgage payments without hardship. Well, today, about 90 minutes before this posts, we will be having a phone conversation with a mortgage broker and likely starting the refinancing process. Why? What’s changed? Well, we’re still not eligible for HARP, and we can still afford our mortgage payments withread more…

Date: 24/01/2013 Author: Category: Debt, Everyday Finances, Lessons Learned, Money Mistakes Bookmark: Permalink
Article

A Weekend of Poor Impulse Control

Every once in a while, I mention something to C with the expectation he will talk me out of it. Sometimes, I even start the conversation with the note that I need him to be the reasonable one. This weekend, we both failed at being reasonable, at least when it came to talking.   Saturday. It started with me, not feeling well, wanting to be able to play video games while being on the bed, insteadread more…

Date: 03/01/2013 Author: Category: Debt, Major Financial Decisions Bookmark: Permalink
Article

The More Things Change…

In You Are Not Alone, I wrote about the circumstances that led to me joining the Women In Red message boards in 2009. This was a community started based on a series of articles written by MP Dunleavey for MSN Money. While MP is no longer with MSN or the community, and the community isn’t hosted on MSN anymore, it is still going strong. Sunday will mark my 3 year anniversary of having been a memberread more…

Date: 27/12/2012 Author: Category: Debt, Everyday Finances, Lessons Learned Bookmark: Permalink
Article

End of Year Financial Excitement

I am so excited to make today’s post. I have actually had to stop myself from writing it for over a week now. Because I did not want to write it until what I was saying was actually true. We have paid off my graduate student loans! We will start 2013 with $17k less debt. In fact, our non-mortgage debt will now only be my undergraduate student loans, which are less than $15k and at aread more…

Date: 18/12/2012 Author: Category: Debt, Major Financial Decisions Bookmark: Permalink
Article

Correlations Between Debt and Obesity

Completely off topic note: For those who are interested in an update on our little Junebug, you can head on over to today’s post at Life by Pets. While we should have spent over $650 so far, the vet office keeps waving fees and we’ve paid less than $200.   This is, with a few edits, a post I put up over on a financial message board I’m part of earlier this week. One of theread more…

Date: 23/08/2012 Author: Tags: , , , , Category: Debt, HealthCare, Money Mistakes Bookmark: Permalink
Article

Money and Emotion

I want to tell you about the day I cried after paying off a debt. These were not tears of joy or relief. I was not looking forward to what having that money freed up could do for my budget. I was crying, tears of loss and grief, as one final connection was broken. I’ve said a number of times during the adoption process that logically understanding something is not the same as emotionally accepting it.read more…

Date: 07/06/2012 Author: Tags: Category: Debt, Pet Finances Bookmark: Permalink
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