Debt Dumpers - 2017

Jen and Ashwin said:
Generally, you need to use the AU card within the first 3 months in order to get the bonus. Offering bonus points for adding an AU is pretty common for lots of cards, so I imagine that offer will continue.
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When Chase was offering 60,000 pts for their SWA cards, dh and I each signed up for 2 cards so that we'd both get companion passes and our kids can fly free for every trip. I wonder if they offer bonus points for adding an AU. We just got them a few weeks ago. Should I just SM to Chase and ask?
 
Well had my first unfortunate experience with Airbnb. A couple weeks ago I booked a two night stay beginning tonight for one of my horse shows. The host has been unresponsive through the website, so I used his phone number to both text and call him and it appears his phone is off. I contacted Airbnb just now and they looked him up and apparently he hasn't been responding to any messages, despite having really good reviews from people as recently as last month. Airbnb agreed that it was suspicious and said they would refund me all of my money. Of course, now I've had to book a hotel that's $70 more because airbnbs are slim in that area, but oh well. We'll be splitting a room with my in-laws at our horse show next weekend, so we will save money there, but I hate having to pay more unexpectedly. I'll have a fridge and a microwave at my hotel room though, so I think I'll try to stop in a grocery store and pick up some lunch meat and bread and some things to eat so I'm not spending a bunch of money eating out while I'm there.
 
ruadisneyfan2 said:
When Chase was offering 60,000 pts for their SWA cards, dh and I each signed up for 2 cards so that we'd both get companion passes and our kids can fly free for every trip. I wonder if they offer bonus points for adding an AU. We just got them a few weeks ago. Should I just SM to Chase and ask?
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I just searched on a few sites about the recent SW offers, but I don't see anything about an AU bonus. I would contact Chase and inquire though, since it doesn't hurt to ask.
 
DisneyMandC said:
Well had my first unfortunate experience with Airbnb. A couple weeks ago I booked a two night stay beginning tonight for one of my horse shows. The host has been unresponsive through the website, so I used his phone number to both text and call him and it appears his phone is off. I contacted Airbnb just now and they looked him up and apparently he hasn't been responding to any messages, despite having really good reviews from people as recently as last month. Airbnb agreed that it was suspicious and said they would refund me all of my money. Of course, now I've had to book a hotel that's $70 more because airbnbs are slim in that area, but oh well. We'll be splitting a room with my in-laws at our horse show next weekend, so we will save money there, but I hate having to pay more unexpectedly. I'll have a fridge and a microwave at my hotel room though, so I think I'll try to stop in a grocery store and pick up some lunch meat and bread and some things to eat so I'm not spending a bunch of money eating out while I'm there.
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Sorry this didn't work out. At least you got a refund and were still able to find a hotel. This is always my fear with AirBnB and other such services. Staying in hotels, I have only ever had my room be unavailable once and that was when I was scheduled to stay at the W in Washington D.C. But Starwood stepped up and got me a room at the St. Regis, which is an even more expensive hotel, and they covered the cost for my entire 4 night stay. And on top of that, they gave me a bunch of other nice perks, including free SPG points and dining credits. Such amazing service.
 


Jen and Ashwin said:
Sorry this didn't work out. At least you got a refund and were still able to find a hotel. This is always my fear with AirBnB and other such services. Staying in hotels, I have only ever had my room be unavailable once and that was when I was scheduled to stay at the W in Washington D.C. But Starwood stepped up and got me a room at the St. Regis, which is an even more expensive hotel, and they covered the cost for my entire 4 night stay. And on top of that, they gave me a bunch of other nice perks, including free SPG points and dining credits. Such amazing service.
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Yes, I'm disappointed, but I know it's the risk I run using an Airbnb. From now on, I'll be sure to always message my host in advance of booking to make sure they respond. I'm just glad Airbnb gave me my money back. They were very understanding that I was not going to walk up to some stranger's house who was uncommunicative. We have saved a lot of money using them this year though. We probably won't have many opportunities to for the rest of the year, just because of the areas we're traveling to since often our horse shows are in fairly small towns, but I'll use them again in the future since I did receive good customer service.

Also, thanks to everyone for the tips on the credit card. DH and I talked about it a little more last night and I think we are going to go with one of the Chase cards. We'll probably get one of them here soon so we can time the three month spending period over our weeklong horse show in October, where we usually buy the bulk of our horse show clothing and supplies for the year. I mean, or we could just book another Disney vacation to hit the $3000 spend... :rolleyes1:rotfl2:
 


Quick update on us. Our lawn mower was fixed at a cost of $60. Instead of buying new we are saving lots of money by repairing it. I did spend extra money on ski gear for our trip to Banff next year. Man, nobody told me how pricey ski clothing was! I think I did great though. I spent around $100 for 12 things including snow bibs for the kids and snow pants for me and DH. Bought gloves, fleece hats and other warm weather gear. Of course the items aren't top notch (Helly Hansen, Arcteryx) but they will do for 2 days of skiing, as we plan to do other things in Alberta such as the Telus Spark science museum! I bought everything at Walmart.com because most winter gear is marked down to like 70 percent off.

In terms of credit cards, I am lol/24 as I have so many cards that I can't even count them. But, they are allowing us to travel at a greatly reduced rate. Infact I have no out of pocket costs for a 6 night/7 day trip next Easter for my family of 4. We paid for our flights from EWR to YCC by transferring American Express MR points to Aeroplan. I signed up for the Platinum card and got 100,000 MR for spending 3k in 3 months. I signed up for 2 other cards (Green and PRG) to get an additional 75,000 points which I cashed out for Fairmont gift cards which will cover food. Our hotel nights (fairmont lake louise and fairmont palliser) are free because I opened the Chase Fairmont card which gave me free night certificates. The rooms at Lake Louise go for around $600 a night, so such a good deal. I also used my Chase CSR travel credit to cover the airport shuttle to Lake Louise. Credit card hacking is amazing and I wish I had gotten into it sooner.

I have so many more examples of awesome trips that have been made free/nearly free because of points!

Here are the cards I have so far:
I have Amex: Platinum, PRG, Green, Blue Cash,(closed the personal spg)
Chase: Freedom, CSR, Fairmont (converting to CSP in August) and Hyatt. I had Disney but closed it.
Capital One: Quicksilver
Barclays: Arrival Plus
Discover: It
Bank of America: Amtrak
DH also has Freedom, Amtrak and Chase IHG.

My credit score is 815 despite having 12 cards opened since November 2014. The key is to pay your balance off in full each month and have a great credit score to obtain approvals.
 
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Ngwira said:
Quick update on us. Our lawn mower was fixed at a cost of $60. Instead of buying new we are saving lots of money by repairing it. I did spend extra money on ski gear for our trip to Banff next year. Man, nobody told me how pricey ski equipment was! I think I did great though. I spent around $100 for 12 things including snow bibs for the kids and snow pants for me and DH. Bought gloves, fleece hats and other warm weather gear. Of course the items aren't top notch, but they will do for 2 days of skiing, as we plan to do other things in Alberta such as the Telus Spark science museum! I bought everything at Walmart because most winter gear is marked down to like 70 percent off.

In terms of credit cards, I am lol/24 as I have so many cards that I can't count. But, they are allowing us to travel at a greatly reduced rate. Infact I have no out of pocket costs for a 6 night/7 day trip next Easter for my family of 4. We paid for our flights from EWR to YCC by transferring American Express MR points to Aeroplan. I signed up for the Platinum card and got 100,000 MR for spending 3k in 3 months. I signed up for 2 other cards (Green and PRG) to get an additional 75,000 points which I cashed out for Fairmont gift cards which will cover food. Our hotel nights (fairmont lake louise and fairmont palliser) are free because I opened the Chase Fairmont card which gave me free night certificates. The rooms at Lake Louise go for around $600 a night, so such a good deal. I also used my Chase CSR travel credit to cover the airport shuttle to Lake Louise. Credit card hacking is amazing and I wish I had gotten into it sooner.

I have so many more examples of awesome trips that have been made free/nearly free because of points!

Here are the cards I have so far:
I have Amex: Platinum, PRG, Green, Blue Cash
Chase: Freedom, CSR, Fairmont (converting to CSP in August) and Hyatt. I had Disney but closed it.
Capital One: Quicksilver
Barclays: Arrival Plus
Discover: It
Bank of America: Amtrak
DH also has Freedom, Amtrak and Chase IHG.

My credit score is 815 despite having 12 cards opened since November 2014. The key is to pay your balance off in full each month and have a great credit score to obtain approvals.
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Thanks for that info!! That's great to know, especially about your credit score too. Ours are both around 800 and I would like to keep them that way. If they dipped some from taking our credit cards that would be fine as we have no major purchases planned (already own house and cars), but I don't want them to suffer too much.
 
DisneyMandC said:
Thanks for that info!! That's great to know, especially about your credit score too. Ours are both around 800 and I would like to keep them that way. If they dipped some from taking our credit cards that would be fine as we have no major purchases planned (already own house and cars), but I don't want them to suffer too much.
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Your score will dip a bit because when you open a new card, your score takes a hit based on the number of "inquiries" that you have. But, once the card starts reporting as open and paid on time/in full, your score will rise. It's so worth it. You can even play in 2 player mode (you and a partner) or MS (manufacture spend) to obtain even more points.
 
You guys and your awesome credit scores are my idols.
-sincelrely, the girl who can't even get a credit card because my credit is in the toilet.
 
Anyone good with state taxes? I'm trying to get a round about guess for what I'll get back next year. I know I could change it to where I don't get as much taken out each check, but I like getting the chunk in Feb.

Anyway, last year I made about $16k and paid just over $100 in state taxes. I got $197 back. This year, I've only made $11k (with an expected $11k more by end of year) and have paid over $250 to state taxes. Since I've made less and paid more so far this year, and will make a little more and pay more by the end of the year, is it fairly safe to assume I'll get more back in state taxes next year? We have also added a child this year and I'm technically a single mother claiming head of house and both girls.

I'm trying to guesstimate about how much I should get back because my entire return is going to paying off all our loans, leases, and car loan.
 
Three words: Nordstrom Anniversary sale! I managed to only spend $50.00, so not too bad. I needed to stock up on Spanx shapewear and buying it full price is expensive. I bought two pair for $50.00 which is a deal. I tried to get away with the Target version of it and it's definitely not the same.
 
Back from my horse show. Despite the increased hotel costs, I did pretty well budget-wise. A generous member of our barn picked up the tab for dinner our first night, and I had a lot of leftover pizza from that dinner that I was able to eat for lunch the next day. My trainer was nice enough to cook burgers for us all my second night, so nothing spent for that meal other than the bag of chips I picked up to go along with the meal. I'm glad I went since I feel like I made a lot of personal progress with my horse, so it was a great weekend!

DH will be out of town most of the week, home only for dinner Wednesday night. I'm going to try to eat things out of the freezer and not pick up a lot more in groceries since he won't be here and we'll be out of town this weekend again. And then next week is vacation! Down to the single digits for our trip!
 
Well we spent some money this week but it's been planned for ages, we easily had the cash saved and got some good deals- our mattress is awful- we aren't even sure how old it is and we have been waking up with sore backs for months...did some price matching and are really happy with what we got. We also bought a new fridge- I feel extravagant but I never spend money so I'm getting over it- our current fridge has such limited shelf space and drives me crazy- with our baby being 10 months and another jug of milk looking soon, there is no way we can manage, and I like to do a lot of food prep which we haven't had room for..one of the big department stores is closing so we bought a new one- listed the old one on FB and could have sold it a dozen times instantly so I guess we priced it too cheap, but such is...can't wait for both of these to arrive.
I'm just now starting to figure out our plans for the Alaskan cruise next month..life is just so busy with me starting back at work, but with the babies we aren't doing any crazy excursions but do want to have some plans...one of ports will have the Wonder in port also :sad: but my mom is taking us on this cruise and it would have been many many thousands more :sigh: to go on the Wonder and she really wants to go to Glacier Bay...we will have an awesome time though no matter what. I'm hoping my Mom and sister will love cruising - I mean how can they not ;)
 
Well, after making little progress on my cc debt this year and just being tired of feeling so anxious about it and like I was drowning with no light at the end of the tunnel... I made a decision yesterday. It's not something I would recommend to everyone, but it is the best decision for me. I took a loan from my 401k that I will be paying back automatically from each paycheck for the next 3 years. The interest rate is less than half that of the two credit cards I will be paying off with the money I get from the loan. These were my two biggest cc balances and one had just jumped to over 18% interest while the other jumped to over 12%. My loan rate is 6.25%.

The other perk of this is that it won't affect my debt to income ratio, so that will actually improve along with my credit score. I should be in good shape to replace my car early next year, which is over 16 years old and having more and more issues in the past year or so.

The downside - a loss of compounding interest from the funds temporarily taken from my 401k.

Again, this wouldn't be my first recommendation to everyone, but with my situation living on a single income in an expensive city and with some high balance, high interest rate cc's - this was the best choice for me. I looked into getting a personal loan, but the interest rates I qualified for were just about as high as my cc interest rates. I also wasn't getting anymore 0% cc offers to transfer balances to.

Anyway, I am feeling relieved about this and like there is finally hope for digging myself out of this hole I got myself into. I really like that my payments will be automatically deducted from each paycheck, so it will be gone before I have a chance to use it on something else. I also like that the interest I'm paying will go back into my 401k. With this current plan, my cc debt will be gone in less than two years and the 401k loan will be paid off in 3 years. Woohoo!
 
DnA2010 said:
Well we spent some money this week but it's been planned for ages, we easily had the cash saved and got some good deals- our mattress is awful- we aren't even sure how old it is and we have been waking up with sore backs for months...did some price matching and are really happy with what we got. We also bought a new fridge- I feel extravagant but I never spend money so I'm getting over it- our current fridge has such limited shelf space and drives me crazy- with our baby being 10 months and another jug of milk looking soon, there is no way we can manage, and I like to do a lot of food prep which we haven't had room for..one of the big department stores is closing so we bought a new one- listed the old one on FB and could have sold it a dozen times instantly so I guess we priced it too cheap, but such is...can't wait for both of these to arrive.
I'm just now starting to figure out our plans for the Alaskan cruise next month..life is just so busy with me starting back at work, but with the babies we aren't doing any crazy excursions but do want to have some plans...one of ports will have the Wonder in port also :sad: but my mom is taking us on this cruise and it would have been many many thousands more :sigh: to go on the Wonder and she really wants to go to Glacier Bay...we will have an awesome time though no matter what. I'm hoping my Mom and sister will love cruising - I mean how can they not ;)
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We have a side by side fridge and I HATE it! Technically there is nothing wrong with it so I need to 'live' with it til something major breaks on it (we've had one tiny repair done to it so....). I'm assuming you bought it from Sears as you alluded to the store closing...I should head down to our local location and see what bargains there are to be had!

When is your Alaskan cruise next month? Wouldn't that be funny if we were in the same port at the same time?!
 
bcwife76 said:
We have a side by side fridge and I HATE it! Technically there is nothing wrong with it so I need to 'live' with it til something major breaks on it (we've had one tiny repair done to it so....). I'm assuming you bought it from Sears as you alluded to the store closing...I should head down to our local location and see what bargains there are to be had!

When is your Alaskan cruise next month? Wouldn't that be funny if we were in the same port at the same time?!
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We have a side by side as well and hate it. DH actually mentioned to me the other day that he would like to use part of his bonus next spring to buy a new refrigerator. They had great deals on french door fridges at our Sears Outlet when we bought our stove there earlier in the year, so we may spring for that. Hopefully we can sell our current one since it's also fine, just a pain to actually fit anything in.
 
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