How do i get out of debt?

ok, we do not have any credit cards bc my hubby has never paid his off, the bills we have: $326/mo jeep, $229/mo. truck, $173/mo insurance, 2 cell phones, water bill, gas, electric, rent, washer/dryer,and cable. does not seem like alot but it adda up. and we never seem to have extra money. thank god we got $2500 back on taxes to catch up. and my hubby has been working over 100 hours/week and i work almost 40 hours/week. plus, we pay a baby sitter $5/hour a few times a week when our parents can not watch our son. so, how do i save money when we have all of these bills. my hubby has alot of debt from before we were married
Additional Details
we DO NOT HAVE CREDIT CARDS> he has one for $800 that he never paid . but, dont have credit cards now

How much are you spending on groceries? I would also hit the Dave Rasmey site..I bought his book on ebay though...Good stuff...100 hours a week does not tell us anything, since you are not saying how much you all get paid..I guess what do you spend on food?

www.daveramsey.com! Go to this and it will change your life and the way you view things - money wise. The order he says to spendy your check:

Give (tithe)
Save
Pay Bills

He explains the reasoning behind this as well as helps you talk and deal to creditors. Good luck.

Get rid of the cell phones or go with a plan like Tracphone. That costs me less than 10 dollars a month. Eliminate cable or some parts of it. Are two cars necessary., most likely.
I suggest you and your husband both start carrying a small notebook. Write down every penny spent throughout the day.
Drinks, lunches, newspapers, you might be surprised how many of those dollars slipping away could be saved.

Times are definitely hard now days.I would suggest categorizing all your items such as:
1.Rent (this comes first)
2.Electric & Gas utilities (I would suggest dropping cable it is not a necessity during hard times.)
3.Set back cash for the automobile expenses including gas,upkeep,insur.,etc.
Watch your electric and water bills by conserving as much as possible.As far as your husbands debt, the worst thing you can do is ignore your debtors'.If he will talk to them maybe make arrangements to pay every month a certain amount then you have to factor in that to your budget as well.STICK TO A BUDGET!!!!That's most important ....remember: numbers don't lie!

I spend a lot of time cutting corners and deal hunting. I actually just wrote an article about easy ways to save money. I use them because you don't really miss anything.

http://www.ehow.com/how_2275426_save-mon...

Good luck!

Hi. I have been there and I know what stress it can be by being in debt. I recently started with a home based business. This is my third one actually. The other two were decent but not nearly as good as this third one I just landed. I have only been with this new company for two months and I have seen some serious money. This is not an MLM or a sales type, no physical work required. Under thirty dollars for a membership fee. You can do this job while you are at your day job or whenever. It is a total compliment to whatever you are already doing. I don't want to give you a link on here but you can email me. I really think that this will benefit anybody and everybody as well as it has me. A friend of mine is making over $8,000 a month and he has only been with them for 14 months and 6 of those months he wasn't giving it but a couple of hours on the weekends. Now he has quit his job and he is supporting a wife and 5 boys. Good luck to you with whatever you decide to do.

i am no expert but what you should do is when you are shopping for food buy great value brand(walmart).
And you should limit on eatting out.If you have the cell phone contract with a contact i would get rid of those and if they are nessisary in your life buy the pay as u go plan.You should start saveing money now! only buy your needs and save your wants for a treat.the last but not least get rid of the cable. For 11 years i lived without cable u you would be just fine and for your kid he/she can watch DVD's.good luck.

You don't say how much these credit cards are that your hubby didn't pay off...

It is sometimes cheaper to pay insurance twice a year instead of each month. Try paying it for 6 months. You Insurance (I'm assuming just cars?) seems like a lot. Call around to AAA and Shelter Insurance to see how much they would charge. State Farm wanted $2000 per year than Shelter Insurance when I did quotes.

If your hubby does of credit cards, pay those off pronto and call to see if they can lower the rates! You might be pleasantly surprised.

Drop the cell phones. We did and I've never gone back. You may think you can live without it, but you can.

Sell either the Jeep or the truck and get a car that you can afford and have paid off completely. A sedan would probably work better with a child anyway. Reduce your family to ONE car payment max.

Drop cable. You don't need it either. You have to have your priorities when trying to save money. You can not have any money and live paycheck to paycheck - or change your attitude and live without things you don't really need.
Many apartment places will give you cable without even telling you. I plugged in my TV one day and I could get all the local networks and ABC Family. They didn't even tell us! So we watched local and didn't pay the $50/month for other channels we don't need. Your son can watch PBS - or buy some DVD's or rent from the library for him to watch if he's old enough.

I would work hard to pay off those auto loans. Or sell them both and get cheaper, used cars paid for in cash. Without those car payments you would have an extra $555 per month in your hand. With that extra $555 dollars you could put a dent in your husband's debt. You might also try to search around for better car insurance rates if possible. I was able to configure a policy on State Farm's web site that was a third of what you are paying, and for two cars.

You might also think about (temporarily) suspending the cable to further increase your take home pay. Whatever extra you can cut out to bring in more money is recommended until you can knock out this debt. Also, making sure you are using a budget helps a lot too.

I would suggest you do it on your own and follow the ideas of Dave Ramsey. I have listed them here for you. Visit my blog for more info on Dave Ramsey. http://personal-financial-advising.blogspot.com/2008/05/dave-ramseys-debt-snowball-debt.html

Dave Ramsey's Debt Snowball Method for paying off debts

In the last few posts I have been writing about Dave Ramsey and all of the incredible personal finance information he has to offer. Their are most certainly Dave Ramsey critics out there but for the most part everyone thinks that the information he offers is extremely helpful. The only complaints come from those that argue that Dave Ramsey's plan for financial freedom and financial peace is to conservative. I could agree with this if it was not for the debt epidemic among Americans. Unfortunately the criticism from these Dave Ramsey Critics does not factor in the fact that a lot of Americans do not have the discipline to pay off their credit cards in full every month or keep a handle on their debt.

Today I wanted to talk in detail about Dave Ramsey's Debt Snowball reduction plan for paying off debts. The Debt Snowball reduction plan is the second step in Dave Ramsey's 7 Baby Steps to Financial Peace training course and is probably the most important step in a persons quest for financial freedom and financial peace.

The ideology behind Dave Ramsey's Debt Snowball reduction plan is to organize all of your debts and setup an easy, manageable, and results oriented plan for paying these debts off. These debts can include credit cards, car loans, student loans, payday loans or personal loans. It basically includes any debt that you have excluding your home mortgage.

The first step in the Dave Ramsey debt snowball debt reduction plan is to make a excel spreadsheet list of all of your debts with the lowest balance at the top of the list. After you make this list you then need to allocate as much of your monthly budget as you possibly can to debt elimination. After you have listed your debts in order from lowest to highest and decided how much you can put toward debt each month you need to determine what your payments for each account should be. This step is very simple. In the debt snowball debt reduction plan you pay only the minimum payment toward each debt you have except for the one at the top of the list (one with the lowest balance).

The plan is to pay off the smallest debt as quickly as possible and then once it is paid off you move on to the next smallest debt you have. When you move on to the second debt on your excel spreadsheet you then allocate the whole amount that was originally going to your smallest debt (the debt that is now paid off). These means that you will continue with the minimum you were paying on the now smallest debt and add the total amount that was going to your debt that is now paid off. After paying of the second smallest debt on your debt snowball excel spreadsheet you will move on to the third smallest.

The idea with the debt snowball reduction plan is to continue doing this until you have paid off all of your debts (excluding your house payment). Dave Ramsey's rational with the debt snowball method is to gain steam and see results by paying off the smallest debts first. The Debt Snowball method will help you to see real results and help motivate you to continue. For most people they need to see results and feel like they are making progress or they will quite within 6 months of starting a plan to pay off their debt.

Below I have included an example of the Dave Ramsey debt snowball debt reduction plan for my readers. I have also included several links to Debt Snowball Calculators. The debt snowball calculator should help give you an idea of how long it will take to pay off each debt.

Example of the debt snowball method (Courtesy of Wikipedia)

Ignoring interest rates, let's pretend you have the following debt and minimum payments:

Car Payment - $2500 balance - $150/month minimum
Credit Card A - $250 balance - $25/month minimum
Loan - $5000 balance - $200/month minimum
Credit Card B - $500 balance - $26/month minimum

Your minimum payments for all debt would be $401 per month. You would order your debts in the following order (lowest to highest):

Credit Card A - $250 balance - $25/month minimum
Credit Card B - $500 balance - $26/month minimum
Car Payment - $2500 balance - $150/month minimum
Loan - $5000 balance - $200/month minimum

Now, assuming you had $100 extra per month to send in, you would apply that $100 to the Credit Card A so that the payment for it would be $125 per month and the other debt would receive the minimums.

After Credit Card A is paid off (in two months), you would apply the extra $100 to Credit Card B PLUS the $25 you were sending in to Credit Card A. So now your payment to Credit Card B would be: $26 normal minimum + $25 that you normally sent in to Credit Card A + $100 that you are able to send extra.

Your payment to Credit Card B would be $151 instead of $26. Therefore, you would pay it off much faster. Then, when Credit Card B is paid off, you would now send in the following to the Car Payment: $150 normal minimum + $25 that you normally sent in to Credit Card A + $26 that you normally sent in to Credit Card B + $100 that you are able to send extra. Your payment to Car Payment would now be $301 instead of $150.

To follow the debt snowball debt reduction plan you would simply continue to follow this plan until all debts were paid off.

The debt snowball debt reduction plan is one of the best plans available for paying off debt. It helps people to see immediate results and gain momentum in their plan to be debt free. Go ahead and start your own debt snowball reduction plan and begin your journey toward financial freedom and financial peace.

Dave Ramsey is personal finance expert who specializes in giving out information to help people get out of debt and achieve financial peace. His radio show The Dave Ramsey Show is aired on over 300 different radio stations each day and heard by over 3 million listeners. Dave Ramsey is also the author of many great books including The Total Money Makeover, Financial Peace, and More Than Enough.

Get a debt workout, and they will negotiate to lower your payments and forgive some interest charges.

For more help, http://www.helpglobe.com/Answers.aspx?qid=617

Well, increasing his income probably isn't an option since he's already working 100 hrs/week.

So, file for bankruptcy. It's the only way you're going to get relief, and it's a temporary blip on your credit for 7 years, i think. Since i don't know the extent of the entire situation, it's a little hard to give you fully informed advice, but from what you have here, it seems like a viable solution. The first thing you do if you're interested in filing for bankruptcy is to quit paying your credit cards and other UNsecured debt (imagine the extra cash you'll have when you aren't paying those). Once they reach a certain delinquency, you can then file and be done with it if you do Chapter 7. In Texas, you're entitled to one car, one house (your homestead), two mules and a plow. You'll be surprised after you file how soon you can start rebuilding your credit, and be smart about it.

Then, live within your means, and don't incur any new debt. There's no reason why you can't live within your means when you have 2 people in a household working a total of 140 hours a week.

And if you sell your cars and pay cash for older, less expensive cars, you'll need to save every month for repairs. I have an older car i paid cash for and i've only spent $1,400 on maintenance/repairs in over 2 years i've had the car. And, my insurance is lower because i'm not required to have full coverage. I've saved a TON!

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