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I just had a couple questions about how to get out of credit card debt and kind of stay afloat with mine and my husband fluctuating income. All right. Bring it on. What's going on? So we have $2, $2, $3, $100 worth of credit card debt, which is a big hurdle that we have right now. However, it's super hard to pay it off considering that our incomes fluctuate so much. He could bring home anywhere from $1,600 to $4,000 a month, and I can bring home anywhere from $1,400 to $1,600 a month. What do you all do? He works for a warehouse here in town, but the pay is competitive and it's based off of work and the attendance bonus can either double or cut your check in half depending on if you were there the entire time or if you had to miss a day for any reason, and I work for UPS. Okay. So if he shows up to work, he'll make $4,000. Yeah. So among others, it's like it's based off of hourly, so it starts at $15 an hour and the attendance bonus is an extra $5 an hour. So why wouldn't, I don't understand why it's not like school. I mean, just stay there. Why would you lose that? Yeah. Well, I mean, for instance, he missed a day a month ago because I had to call 911 for our spend. Well, that's different. So we have to leave work to come pump out. Yeah. That's not the everyday occurrence, but that's a once in a year or two or five. That would, that would happen. Yes, but it still affects the attendance bonus. Okay. So if you miss one day, you lose the whole month for the attendance bonus? You've paid every two weeks, but yes, it can cut your check-in half or it can double it depending on your attendance. Okay. Are you working full time? I work part time at UTS and we have it set that way. I work in the mornings and he works in the afternoon to late at night so that we can avoid having to pay for childcare. Okay. How many kids do you have? We have two. All right. And outside of the 2300 and credit card debt, what other debt do you have? He has, he had to get a truck and I say had to because his car before was just breaking on us constantly. We ended up spending like $2,000 to fix it in January and that would have paid for three months worth of a truck payment. He wasn't reliable, wasn't really. What's left on the truck loan? It's 23,000. So he chose to get a $23,000 truck loan. Okay. What else? Mm-hmm. And then I have $2,000 worth of student loan debt. Okay. Is everything? Yes. That's everything. All right. So all in all, we're about, we'll call it $27,000 in debt. Yes. What's your household income for the year? If you added it all up. I think when we filed our taxes, it was $67,000 last year. Okay. All right. So we're trying to get out of $27,000 worth of debt. We make $67,000. How much margin could you guys have if you got on a every dollar budget and you said, okay, anything that's not food, shelter, utilities, transportation, insurance, we're not going to spend money on it. How much money could you have to throw at the debt? I mean, on a good month, where he makes $4,000, probably $1,000 a month. Okay. So $1,000 a month times $27 a month means your debt free in a little over two years. If you can throw a thousand, right? Yeah. Now, what if we could find a way where we could spend less and make more in where we could put $2,000 a month, then we could pay it off in about a year, right? Yeah. Now we're talking. That sounds a whole lot better to me if we're going to sacrifice, right? So that's where the budget comes into play. We look at the budget and we say, here's how much we're going to bring in this month. Here's what our expenses are. Every other penny is going to go toward our smallest balanced debt. Have you tried that yet? We have. I did Financial Peace University when I was 14 and every two years since. And so we're still on baby step number one, like we're just trying to get a savings account. And every time we get something put back, we get a flat tire or, you know, the catalytic converter goes out in the car or our room floods from the bathroom like, it's just one thing after another and we cannot get past baby step number one. I know, but Kelly, you were not bought a 20 something thousand or truck. So you have enough to cover a car payment. No, y'all did. Y'all did. Unless, unless he has just gone rogue and that's a whole other issue. You got to, you got to drive, did he do this behind your back? No, I advise not to. I advise if he was going to get a car, it could be something more affordable. George, I don't want to put you on blast, but your, your Tesla didn't cost. No, I'd. George is a millionaire and he hasn't drive a car that expensive, but again, my truck isn't near that expensive. I, I, I want you to hear a say like. Anytime a guy says I had to buy a truck, he is lying unless he is like a lineman, anytime he convinces his wife that he had to buy a truck, he's an amazing salesman. But here's the thing, like at some point, we have to decide that life's not going to just happen to us anymore and it does take a while to get out of the cycle, Kelly, cause I'm telling you, like I remember when I was broke, it was like Murphy wants to just live with me and go like, Hey buddy, I know you're trying to get out of debt, but here's a little emergency. Have fun with this. And at some point we have to go no longer are we going to let life control us. We're going to have agency and autonomy over what happens next. And that might mean we sell the truck. And here's a deeper issue. I am not going to work at a place that if I have to go take my son to a hospital that I lose half of my, my income for the month. I refuse. I'm not going to be held hostage like that. We're living a really small town. It's one of the best jobs that are here, but he is still applying for other jobs. Okay. Good. Cause I don't want to be held hostage that way. I'd rather work at Walmart throwing boxes for 20 bucks an hour stable and it's stable. It will always be there and it's, you might not want to say I work at Walmart, but I tell you what, the job is going to keep being there and they're going to keep paying you 20 bucks and they're going to pay you overtime if you keep working hard and you can always count on that. But your original call is how do we even get out of debt when our, our income fluctuates by 50% in certain, in certain weeks or certain months? Yeah. And you need stability as much as you need more money. Do you have, you live in a small town, do you have anybody that can watch your kids for a few hours a day? My friend from Missouri just moved in and she's helped out a little bit. So we also do like Walmart delivery. We do DoorDash. Okay. I bake on the side for extra income, but here lately it's only making up from what he's lost in attendance bonuses. Okay. Well, the deal with a regular income is in that budget, if you have a regular income for anyone listening, you're going to start with the four walls, food, utility, shelter transportation. That gets paid first. If you make more than that, then we're going to cover the rest of the bills that need to get paid. But luxuries are out until this debt is gone. And I think he needs to strongly consider selling this truck and driving a beater truck for now, because we got to swallow our pride while we're getting our family to stability. That's going to hurt. He's not going to like it. I hope he doesn't come fight me because I'm sure he could take me in a fight. So if he asked, John said it, I'll set sell the truck, ban your family's stability. It's way more important than looking fancy driving down the road, create your free every dollar budget today, the simplest way to budget for your life.
