$1000 LOAN PAID OFF

Excellent job sir. Stay focused!

Beer wrote:

And once you get that s~~~ paid off…keep making those payments, only make them to your brokerage account, 401k, or IRA instead.

Congrats and yes invest and only have one credit card,cash back one is the way to go,just make sure to
pay your balance in full BEFORE the statement date each month,then every year the bank sends YOU money for using it and they make 0 off you – only the merchants you deal with!

Congratulations, keep going!

FunInTheSun wrote:

Last year I got a bank loan for $1000 so I could move into a one bedroom apartment. I was really broke then and I’m still broke now…but I no longer have to make $100 a month payments for this loan! This is a small step toward my financial stability. My next goal is to pay off my credit cards before Christmas.

Holy s~~~ 100$ monthly for 1000$ loan? 10% per month, or 120% per year just for interest rate? or this includes payback too? Or You have chosen the worst offer or what? or every bank loan is so expensive in US? When I was in need for some money for a good deal, I took a bank loan of ~600$ to my account and it did cost only approximately 6$ (1%) interest rate per month, and the loan was automatically “filled up” when salary arrived by bank transfer, and then I could have used the loan again for the next month if I wanted, used it for half year or so.

FunInTheSun wrote:

The last time I was debt free was in the year 2000. I paid off a car loan and it was really easy for me to save money after that. I want to experience that again: money piling up in my bank account. Since I don’t have a life, and I’m not dating women, I could be debt free in 5 years.

Once you get there just keep stacking it. I have a couple friends who were talking about Dave Ramsey the other day, saying how he says a lot of good stuff but its going to take them way too long to actually get rich. I don’t know if you are familiar with the guy but he basically says pay off all debt aggressively, save a few grand for an emergency fund, then invest invest invest.

What my buddies fail to grasp is the concept that scaling down your lifestyle right now means you will have much more in the future. They think I’m cheap for living so far below my means, but what they don’t get is that rather than having debt like they have, I’m raking in dividends. If they throw 1000 a month at their debt for the next 10 years to break even at 40, then start saving 1000 dollars a month until they retire at 60, and I throw 1000 a month into the market for the next 10 years until I’m 40, then stop saving entirely…by the time we are 60 I’d have “spent” 120k over 10 years and have more money then them even though they “spent” 360k over 30 years. If they want to call me cheap, I’ll just continue to laugh all the way to the bank. I’ll gladly hold off on any lifestyle inflation for a few years if it means over the course of my life time I’ll end up with a lot more resources for a lot less effort.

Just some numbers for hahas…but assumed saving 1000 per month (12k per year) @ 7% average gains

1. save for 10 years(120k), let it compound for 20 more = 775k
2. pay off debt for 10 years(120k), save for 20 years(240k) = 575k
3. save for 30 years(360k) = 1.7m

Get rid of that debt and start stacking the savings!

Congratulations .. and great list of ideas!

RoyDal wrote:

Ditto again! A very astute friend of mind told me his secret. He set aside the amount of a car payment every month. When he had the money necessary to pay cash he started shopping for a new car — but not one day before then.

My grandmother gave this same advice to a family member of mine recently when they paid off their car. It still was in great shape and ran perfectly fine. They went out a week later and traded it in for something new and now have a fat payment again. They financed every car they ever owned, and apparently plan to continue doing that…they must like paying 36,000 dollars for a 30,000 dollar car because they have to have something new right now. Paying an extra 6,000 dollars(probably more though because they have s~~~ credit) every 5 years or so when they upgrade cars because they have to finance instead of pay cash, over the course of a lifetime, is like buying 2 extra cars they never actually got and they are too short sighted to see it. I totally get life happens and not everyone has enough to buy a reliable car sitting in the bank at all times, but upgrading on financing when you already have a perfectly good car is just moronic!

Use your friends method, invest the money til you need it, and you may just find you end up “saving” 25,000 that grows into 30,000 by the time you need a new car…its like getting a 10,000+ dollar discount over the person who has to finance every time. What kills me is how do you get to this position? Soon as you get a paid off car that still runs good you run it for a few years more than you might want to as long as its still reliable, bank that money, and you’ve got yourself ahead for life. Literally a few years of holding off on an upgrade could very easily save you tens of thousands of dollars over the course of your life time and some people just refuse to do it. They’ll literally throw away an entire years gross pay over a life time just financing cars, its insane!

I have a friend who wants to buy his partner a 10k engagement ring just to p~~~ off her older brother! That calculates to around 33 solid days of work at least and not including taxes. F~~~ that s~~~, if I think about buying something I consider how long it will take me to earn the money to pay for it. I also consider if I’ve been spending money on stuff recently buy looking at my bank account regularly.

Awareness is power.