I want money advice .

Dave Ramsey will get you where you want to be if you 100% follow his plan and don't pick and choose the parts you like. Pay off the card and get rid of the car payment. Sell it and buy a beater. Why do you need a $300 a month car if you are on the road driving all the time?

I have been blessed with a good income for many years but up until about 2006 I borrowed money for everything. Cars, boats, motorcycles you name it. I made enough to pay each month but I was getting no where. My net worth was pathetic because I bought a bunch of crap that went down in value and all my money was going out as fast as it came in.

Then I found Dave Ramsey. It truly turned my life around. It was hard and not fun. Your friends and family look at you funny when you make over 100k a year and are driving a $2000 car. Just ten years later and now I am reaping the rewards. I now have four paid for houses. The one I live in and three I rent out. I have a 2016 pickup I paid cash for and the wife has a 2015 car we paid cash for. My 379 is paid for. Our retirement savings are healthy. Zero debt enables you to use all your pay every month for whatever you want. You hear Dave talk about the debt snowball and it works but now I am working on my wealth snowball. It seems every month my earnings grow be it from rental income, stock market investments, etc.

While I do my investing different than Dave recommends I follow his principles as they are proven and they work. I invest in vanguard index funds instead of his recommend funds but that is about the only difference. I do agree with his advice that it is dumb to try and invest when you are buried in debt. Get rid of the debt then invest.

 

been doing a small weekly percentage in the form of direct deposit,: the amounts change as net is never the same, if it's forgotten it works, pay yourself a little less to work with in those other areas.

 

What kind of car/ how long to pay it off?

What kind of work do you do -- are you even home enough to drive it?

What other bills besides utilities & rent? TV? Internet? Cell?

DON'T pay off the credit card 1st, save up ~$10,000 first, then buy a house -- stop throwing away $500/month in rent!!! Google "house hacking" -- the gist is you use a 1st-time homebuyer program to buy a duplex, triplex, or fourplex with only 3.5% down. The rents from the other units pay for your mortgage -- you live for free. Get a good deal on the purchase, and you may even make some money each month. Some examples:

http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/6505-N-65th-St_Omaha_NE_68152_M81320-71472
http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/2605-S-30th-St_Omaha_NE_68105_M85429-93907
http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/4240-Lake-St_Omaha_NE_68111_M86149-26289#photo15
etc

 

Why did you over spend? Maybe a written budget would be of good use for you.

 

If I followed Ramsey, I would never have gotten into fleet ownership, he is off on a lot of things that include debt.

There is good debt and bad debt. I use credit cards to do immediate things like emergency repairs where I can't get to another source and use loans for things like purchasing trucks. The business end of the fleet is setup where downtime has a dollar figure and we try to avoid downtime through proper maintaince. I have had to use my discover or Visa card twice in the last four years, which is a good thing but I haven't spent money on interest on those cards.

Get rid of bad debt first, credit cards are bad debt, they costs more money than you would save.

I also know how to balanace my budget, save (by compartmentalizations) and expand. Right now I am at the level I want to be between my pay the bills job, my fleet and my retirement. I have reserves and use them all the time.

The real issue is what do you want as goals and making money is not a goal. Making money is really easy to do, it can be done with a little effort or a lot of effort the choice is yours but what you do with it is the hard part, knowing what to save, when to spend and so is hard. Paying yourself first is a bad habit, taking the money and saying I am going to buy a new toy because I deserve it gets people into trouble. When you or if you want a fleet, those drivers come first, then the tools (trucks) and then anything else before you.

People speak of Ramsey as some god send, some guru that will get you out of debt, which for many who never had parents teach them about money - the best parents lived through the depression as teenagers or older - and how to respect the dollar. I have all of Ramsey's stuff, accumulated through different sources, like garage sales and so on. He has some good points and a lot of bad points. But if it works, great for you.

My advice?

Learn how to budget.

Learn how to read a credit card statement and understand the interest system that they have in place.

Find ways to leverage your money to get out of the bad debt.

As I said pay off the bad debt.

Learn what good debt is and how to use it.

Credit scores are not goals.

Goals are what you want out of life.

 

I list all my bills by due date. Budget such things as what I spend out here on the road. I then pay my fixed monthly bills within or B4 the pay week that they are due. On my credit cards I use them to make small purchases maybe at best between the two that I have $300 a month I pay them completely off within one weeks of using them and well before the due date. On my pickup payment I Pay well more then the minimum. In fact my payment is only $300 a month. This month I have already paid $900 on it I made the $300 regular payment and I paid 600 on it yesterday. Anytime I have extra money I pay it on a debt. What this has done for me is I only owe $1,500 left on my pickup and I have zero balance on all my credit cards. But what I do is pay my bills that are due on that pay week whatever is left that week is what I put in savings. Accept what I budged for the road. I manage to put 3 to $400 a week in savings doing it this way. I stock the fridge here in the truck. And I only eat maybe two meals a week out of the truck. What's that Dave says rice and beans beans and rice. Believe me it works for myself anyway.

 

Can you explain what good debt is? I've heard people mention it but they never offer what it is.
For reference I don't need money advice, But nothing wrong with learning something new!

 

here's what i do (but i am not an o/o)

all my check goes into my savings account. then i transfer what is needed into my checking account (also an interest bearing account) when i need to pay a bill. this way, in a simple savings account, it'll get "some interest". however there are savings accounts, that if you maintain x amount daily, you get a higher percentage rate.

now, when i had more than one credit card, i'd pay the minimum on all of them, then pay down more money on one. in time, that one gets paid off faster. then i chose another card, paid more on that one. i only have one credit card now. but i had 4 at one time.

on my car loan, i always throw in an extra, $10, or $25, or $50, or $100 per month, on top of the normal payment, this really gets down that balance fast(er)

i do have a home, and i have a first and second mortgage.

i throw down another $100 each on top of the normal payments each month, towards the principle, and at the end of the year, this extra money thrown down, equals to just over ONE (actually now TWO) monthly payments per year, really knocking down my mortgage time frame. i can nearly knock off (i was told) 5 years off my mortgage. (it may be more however)

so in the end, concentrate on ONE bill perhaps a credit card, pay it off in full, leave it at home, then the next and so on.

i have a second bank i do business with, in that account, my spare money and i do have spare money, goes into that each month, and i just don;t touch it.

oh yeah, i don't listen to any financial experts. when i was young, i learned the hard way, and for me, it has worked out very well.

 

good debt, is usually a home mortgage as a home appreciates in value over time, giving you equity. and it is a secured loan. and the bank can foreclose, and recover thier loses.

anything like a car loan, is both good and bad as that depreciates. credit cards, as they are something that the consumer gets to keep the purchase, and the stores cannot take them back. at least a car loan, they can repo that, and recover some costs.

 

Single man living in a truck doesn't need a new car. If you had a wife and kids, I can see wanting something nice and reliable...but if you're hardly ever home to drive it; why pay for it?
Sell it, pay it off, and pay cash for something used to drive for when you are home.