New Replies: (Very Long)
OneCoolCat – My wife is paying my step-daughter’s interest payment of $300/month while her daughter tries to finish school and get in the real work force since all she qualifies to do now is be a cashier and make minimum wage.
Ihamo – My wife is actually a nanny and makes a little over $3k/month now. I neglected to give all the information when I first submitted my post. I was trying to be brief in the post as it is not conducive to brevity and I’m not the best at summarizing.
I end up putting close to 10k miles/year on my car because my travel is not out of the country, but to other states. That saves on airfare travel which would end up costing more. Not going on any vacation would be the same as putting me in a mental institution. I only have 3 deep urges in my life, travel, video entertainment (which I get free on the Internet, but not without at least 10mbs speed to do so), and books(which I get for free or at most .99/per on occasion).
Skype only works if the other person has a good internet connection and a relatively third world country like the Philippines does not qualify for that in the region my wife’s family is in. She actually recently worked something else out so we don’t need the international plan but there are some other issues preventing us from having a pay as you go plan.
When I said I work in finance, that was my brevity coming into play once again. I work in Citibank, thus the finance reference, but my qualifications would not match up with the finance manager position you so kindly referred to, but I thank you nonetheless.
Spondulix – More car facts. My car is a lease so getting out of the lease early would cost me dearly, so that’s not an option. Using one of those services to pass on the lease to someone else is not really an option after I read up on all the horror stories of what happens to screw up those transactions on too many occasions. The only reason I got into a lease was because I was tired of used cars costing me tons of money. Mind you, I did what all the articles on MMM and elsewhere suggest; doing a lot of the maintenance myself, being diligent with tune ups, all the cars bought were vetted by a master mechanic who is the head mechanic of a local dealership’s pit crew, etc. In all cases I ended up with major issues that had the master mechanic and scores of other mechanics shaking their head saying, “I’ve never seen that before!” or some such other similar statement. I’m not saying I’m jinxed but I have never had a car that did not cost me a ton of money in repairs after everything I did to make sure I was babying the car and proactively ensuring I wasn’t supposed to end up with those problems. And every one of those cars were the ones that “never” had major problems, such as Toyotas or Hondas in the years when they were considered the best at reliability.
Cerebus - Income after taxes: 3600.00 + 700.00(wife) = 4,300.00
(why is your wife only listed as contributing 700 of income? I thought she earned what you do). See above response to Ihamo.
mortgage 1334.22
(what's the ETA until you pay that off? Just a thought, what could you get on it in rental if you moved out to a cheaper place?) Mortgage will end 28 years from now because I did a mortgage adjustment HARP 2 years ago to lower my payments by $300/month and that starts the amortization cycle from scratch. If I were to rent I would not be able to get more than $1200/month because that is the going average rate for my size apartment in my city. I would be losing by moving. I can’t short sell because New Jersey is one of those states that allows lenders to go after the balance of a short sale and I don’t want to gamble that I would be that extremely small percentage of people that gets off scott free. (Just based on historical empirical evidence of my luck with those sorts of things.)
internet 95.00 (Only one provider in my area so no choice) ---- can you not get a slower line or a capped account? There must be some way to lower this. The next lower level would not allow more than one computer working at the same time to do more than just surf the internet and send emails. My step daughter is a graphic design student and I LOVE downloading video content. If I’m not going to enjoy anything else in my life, I need to continue to do what I have available to me. I beat cancer two years ago but that experience puts me in a frame of mind of thinking more short term as statistics show cancer can rear its head once more very easily.
Gasoline / tolls / parking 220.00 (Drive about 10K miles a year. I live in Jersey City, right over the river from New York) ---- non-negotiable? That's nearly 30miles a day, where are you going? Those miles usually end up being less than 10k per year but just include weekend trips as explained in my response to Ihamo above.
mass transit 143.00 (To and from work. No option, not easy finding work. Last time I lost a job it took 9 months to find work again.) --- So where are those 10k annual driving miles going? See above.
groceries 400.00 (3 adults in the household, one going to college full time) -- not bad at all.
My college loan 200.00 (Still owe $16K) --- this sounds like a very low repayment. When will that be gone? 2022 at the rate I’m paying. Actually I guessed at the amount before, it’s really $12,672 as of May 19th at 6.75% interest.
Christine College loan 300.00 (Step daughter still in college. $300 is the interest payment so that the payment plan I'm on will be lower by the time she graduates in 2018) --- as everyone says, this needs to become her debt. Not, let's negotiate and see if we can find a solution - you NEED to get rid of it. She has her lifetime to repay it, you have 9 years till mandatory, non-FIRE retirement. You cannot afford to pay for anyone's anything but yourself. My wife is paying this loan. See more info in above responses.
Capacity for extra work: I couldn’t have said it better myself. I wake up at 5AM, start work at 7AM, and generally work until 7PM, get home around 8PM, go to sleep at 10PM. Without either a superhuman or bi-polar manic constitution, I could not physically handle extra work. All my weekend time is taken with just chores. My wife works most weekends.
Norabird: I know there are many people who live carless in Jersey City. In fact, my immediate neighbors are one of them. However, they also don’t have the type of life I do. They don’t visit friends and don’t seem to have visitors, they don’t travel to other states, they buy the crap food that’s in our neighborhood (bodegas). I try to make the most of what life I have by doing as much of the things I like to do as possible. That includes traveling to other states since I can’t afford to travel to other countries like my ULTIMATE dreams would have me do.
After looking at all the helpful and constructive comments from everyone who has contributed, I’ve come to some conclusions.
• My biggest problems are the car and my mortgage. My car’s lease will end next year and I plan to get a smaller car with smaller monthly lease payments, but I will still get a leased car. My past history of lemons after doing all I can still haunts me, and I can’t seem to do without a car. Just the one thing of visiting my grandson in Staten Island without a car would take about 4 hours of round trip travel, which basically leaves me with one day to do all the chores and “enjoy” my weekends. Riding a bike for someone like me who can’t even figure out how to stand up in a bike for handling hills, makes it totally impractical. I’ve been trying to get the hang of a bike since 1998, but either it’s because I never rode a bike while a kid or I’m just not coordinated for bike riding; I don’t know. My mortgage is extremely hard to get out of as explained before with the laws in New Jersey for short sellers, and the fact that my mortgage was sold to a collection agency even though I’ve never missed or been late with payments, and because I could not get a renter to pay the cost of the mortgage + maintenance to make it worth it. I do plan on doing a bi-weekly payment to at least shorten the length of my loan.
• I’ve decided that when I retire, my choice is limited to moving to the Philippines with my wife. She has property we can live in rent free with enough land to grow some food. If I’ve shortened my loan in enough time to lower my mortgage obligations enough to sell my apartment for a small profit, I can use that proceeds to build a small cottage type house on the property to rent out to tourists, Airbnb style, for supplementary income in addition to my social security. I’m from the Virgin Islands so the lifestyle and climate would be very similar to how I grew up.
• I wished that when I was younger there was an internet and MMM information out there for me to take into account, or people I knew with this knowledge. I made a lot of mistakes in my life and they are all coming to fruition now. Kudos to everyone on this site who is on the right path. Consider yourselves blessed to be on the path you are on now.
Thank you to all contributors to my post. I will take as much information to heart as possible and try to amend as many of the money drainers as I feel comfortable doing.