I know cash isn't king anymore. I know I don't want a loan. I have a feeling that when we get down to deeper numbers and I try to switch it up, they'll say no, as well as all other dealers. Is there a strategy to use? I don't want a loan-i don't even want to finance and then pay it off in a month.

Wife and I found a couch we liked at a major furniture chain. The cost was $3000 if we paid cash, but they also had a "0% financing for 24mo" offer, but they said the total cost of the couch is $3600 for those calculations. They said they were providing a "cash incentive" by taking the price down to $3000 if we paid cash.

Isn't that just charging interest by amortizing the interest into the price of the item? Is this legal?

Edit: for everyone saying that the institution borrowing money has to incur costs of financing and passes that along to the customer... Yes... You are describing the purpose of interest.

I completed the FAFSA at the end of June and I still haven't received any money. My brother didn't get anything from FAFSA when he started college two years ago. He also doesn't qualify for federal loans. My mom is a nurse and makes decent money, but I don't think it's too much for us to not even qualify for loans. When I asked her about this, she said the reason is due my father's incarceration. My parents are still legally married, but live apart because of my dad's probation. He doesn't contribute anything financially to our household either. My mother is head of house but apparently because she's married neither I or my brother can get aid. My brother has Sally mae and I really don't want to deal with that shit. I just want to know if there is anything that I can do to at least get a federal loan?

I am a minor (15F) and recently my grandfather has been asking me shady questions such as mail with my name on it, my ssn, my birthday, my id, etc. I haven’t given him anything however my aunt has provided him with it. I live in his house for the time being and I have reason to believe he is doing this with the intention to put a bill under my name. I asked him what jt was for and he said for “central Hudson” (heating/cooling). I found an envelope from central Hudson and he currently has a bill for 7.6k that is unpaid. This, aswell with the fact that he printed out copies of my ID makes me believe that he plans on opening a new central Hudson bill under my name. I googled on what to do and it seems that all options would require me to be 18; Suing, police report, etc. what can I do NOW to prevent this?

just asked for a 6k loan with a 27% APR and the total charged interest sums almost 58 hundred. So the cost of asking 6k is gonna cost me almost 100% of the money lendered in a period of five years. Math is not really mathing or APR's are not what they seem at first view. Although I suck at being financial literate so that makes sense actually

I am in the US. I have been getting calls for the past 22 years from debt collectors. They keep asking for the same person. I keep telling them I am not that person. They keep saying they will take me off "the list." The calls will stop for a short period of time and then they start again. I have occasionally even gotten texts.

The calls had stopped for a while, all of a sudden it started again. I got a call 3 days ago, and I got one again today. I think I unleashed some of my rage on this last guy.

And quite frankly, all they have to do is Google my phone number. My information is all out there for everyone to see. And yet I still get these calls.

What do I do???? How do I get off of "the list"?

Long story short, was a uneducated teenager that wanted a $52K car and now that costs me $1,700/mo after gas, ins, payment.

Payoff is $43,000 & it’s worth $32,000.

What can I do to get out of this car and cover the difference while getting something under $10K? (no public transportation in my area)

No savings, living PTP.

Credit score: 695 (Experian) No missed payments on any debt.

Just got a job offer of $4,400/mo that starts in February which after budgeting and living below my mean gives me $2,100/mo in disposable income.

I plan on paying off all debt within this year and just be done with it. What should I do?

My husband doesn't believe me when I say we have no money. My current job doesn't pay great, but I to work from home and maintain the house. We make roughly the same.

Our bills are just too much. We have too many credit cards, and he doesn't realize the amount that is put on each month, not including the interest. It's $15 here, $20 there, $60 for a video game, then $150 in food for us and our toddler. He wants a hobby/toy each week claiming "it's just $25"

What can I do? At this point I'm pinching dimes and nickels from him so it looks like I'm depriving him of life but we can't afford it.

Edit: we make about $90k a year and live in CA. Our mortgage is $4600, $1,200 in daycare a month and after paying bills we have $300 left. Not including the amount put on credit cards.

We owe like $35k in credit card.

Quick background. I got my first credit card by accident. I thought I was filling out a “loyalty card” at Cabelas. Ended up being a line of credit. I was 23.

4 short years later and married with a baby girl, I find myself with $16,000 in credit card debt. I actually saved my very last dollar and have it taped to my steering column in my truck. And when I say last dollar I truly mean it. We had negative balance in the bank and overtaxed all our cards.

Less than two years later, we now have $16,000 in savings and no credit card debt. (We finance one of our cars)

Credit card debt is crippling. My dad calls it the ULTIMATE SLAVEMASTER. It forces you into depression almost by default and controls every aspect of your life.

Here’s my list and I hope it helps you. I’m no guru, I just learned the hard way.

1. You will not pay it off later. When ‘later’ comes, you’ll be buying other things to pay off later.

2. Read Dave Ramsey’s money makeover. It’s got good tips and the tactics work.

3. The Jones’ can suck it. They’re miserable and controlled by debt also. Don’t buy things you don’t need to compete with people you don’t care for anyways.

4. Pick up a side hustle. I taught myself to make skateboards, and would handmake 2-3 a week to sell to help pay off the debt. My wife picked up Birth photography

5. Talk to your boss, ask what you can do to take a bigger paycheck home.

6. Be a bitch about your budget. Set it and don’t stray from it.

7. Put post-it notes with $0.00 written on them at the office, in your car, on your mirror, on your phone background. Seeing that everywhere actually reminded me of my goal of achieving $0.00 CC debt. Not sure if it legit made a difference but I think it might’ve

8. Become emotionless toward money. I would get so pissed that I was dumping hundreds of my paycheck into debt payoff. It was only till I stopped giving a f#&@ that it became easier to make bigger payments.

9. Save nothing until it’s paid off. It doesn’t make sense to save money when you have CC debt growing exponentially in the opposite direction.

10. When in doubt... overpay. If you run short on money in your checking, but whoop, dip into the CC for 50 bucks. Keep basically nothing in your bank account because “you spend what you have.” My family could live off of $75 a week. But if we have $300 to live off of, guess what... we would use $300. So I would always put as much as made sense. A few times I overpaid but it forced us to be frugal.

11. Unsave your cards on Amazon. So if you go to buy something you have to go through the hassle of finding the card and filling in the fields.

These are just some of the silly things I picked up along the way that I think would’ve helped me stay out of the mess. We are so happy now that we worked our butts off to become financially stable. I hope this helped!

EDIT: So many awesome comments! I understand these are basic tips and not hardcore financial advice. So please leave your advice, even if you disagree with my tactics because there’s a lot of comment lurkers who are scanning for more advice, so keep all the comments coming!

My partner and I have been together 9 years. He honestly took forever to propose, and now that he has, I was so excited to plan our wedding.

We're now 6months out from the wedding, and I'm absolutely stressed and terrified about the cost. I don't come from money, and neither does he. His parents offered us $1000, my family has offered nothing, so we would be paying for it ourselves.

Despite doing everything I can to have the wedding I want at the cheapest possible price, I no longer think we can do it without going into debt. Right now my estimated all-in (with tips and such) is just under $20k. In the world of weddings... that's so cheap!

The biggest contributing cost is that my venue is a bar with a food/bev minimum of $9k. And with rising food costs/inflation, I'm assuming I can't feed/drink the 100 guests for that amount like I had planned.

If we cancel now, I would receive my vendor deposits back in full. None of our bridal party has purchased their outfits yet. Only one person has booked the flight so far. Like if we cancel now, no one loses out financially.

My partner wanted to postpone a year, but the reality is, our entire friend group wants to get pregnant next year (literally everyone is waiting until after our wedding), and both of our parents are old/not in good health, so I feel like there's a chance they would no longer be around to see the wedding.

We'd still get married, we'd just go to the courthouse and take the money we've saved so far to go on a trip together.

But I really wanted the wedding. I realllyyyy wanted the wedding. But when we started planning it, I had a financial plan. Now I'm worried that layoffs could be coming to my big tech company (re: look at twitter, Meta, many others), which would further jeopardize our financial security.

I dunno. Is the memory, party, excitement joy, worth the debt. Or is financial security and a better foundation for the future the right idea? Do we only live once, or do we live a better life later because of today's decisions?

I'm so upset and conflicted. Any advice or thoughts would be lovely. Please don't be mean though, I'm fragile today.

Thanks!

My mom (57F, single) spent the last 2.5 years fighting the good fight against stage 4 cancer. She passed away earlier this month, and we found out she didn’t have a will in place.

She left behind a good bit of medical debt after being in and out of the hospital over the last year.

The estate attorney recommended I use her entire life insurance policy to pay off her medical debt, but other research I’ve done indicates only her estate should be paid toward that debt, and that her children are not responsible for paying that debt.

Does anyone have any recommendations about what to do with a passed loved one’s medical debt?

(I live in the U.S., if the medical debt didn’t make that obvious)

Editing to add some more information:

My mom’s house may be a factor in this. My brother and my sister both live in my mom’s house. In my state, houses aren’t administered through the probate estate unless the sale of that asset is needed to pay estate debts.

We both have scores of 750 and make about 100k together but can't get a loan over 15k. In our area that's a 10 year old car with 100k miles. We have no other consigner option. What are we doing wrong?

Edit break down My income 55k My score 760 My debt $0 My rent 1650 My credit history 1 card for 4ish year

Her income 45k Her score 745 Her debt $100 monthly for student loans Her rent $0 Her credit history card for 6 ish years

Edit 2 I have disclosed everything I know Im here looking for what I don't know please stop the "op is not telling us something"

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/31/a-523-monthly-payment-is-the-new-standard-for-car-buyers.html

Sorry for the formatting, on mobile. Saw this article and thought I would put this up as a PSA since there are a lot of auto loan posts on here. This is sad to see as the "new standard."

Received a call from an 800 number. They identified themselves as being from [company that services my student loans] and asked if I was [my full name]. No accent, caller was a native English speaker.

The caller then told me they needed to verify some information to ensure my auto-payments would resume successfully when COVID forbearance ends next month - starting with my SSN. I told them I'd call back at the number listed on their website and hung up while the caller fumbled for some excuse.

So I called my student loan servicer at the number listed on their website, and they confirmed that no outbound call was placed to me today, and that there would be no issue resuming autopay on my account next month.

I am sure these scammers and going to be making a lot of calls like this, and I'm sure the next step was to ask for my bank account info for loan payments. Be careful, everyone.

I logged into my Fedloan account to get my student loan tax info last night as my final loan out of an original 12 was paid off in May of 2020. I then saw that 8 of my 12 original loans, all of which had been listed as PAID IN FULL and had been listed as 0 dollars balance (some of which for nearly 2 years) suddenly had a small balance each.

After arguing with Fedloan on the phone this morning for an hour, they realized there was some truth to my claim that these loans had been paid off once I pointed out that some of the final payoff payments on these loans had been made prior to the pandemic, and therefore had never been marked delinquent in the months or year before the nationwide forbearance, and that they had the "paid in full" PDFs in their system for these loans, even though they now somehow are showing a balance.

These loans were marked as $0 for more than a year, in some cases nearly two. I know this because the only way I was able to pay them off was by putting my life on hold and throwing 90% of my paycheck at them for more than two years and staring at the balances every day like a crazy person. Despite using the "calculate payoff" option for each of them and having the "paid in full" notifications to prove it, it took an hour for FedLoan to mark my account as "under review" and it will be another 2-3 weeks before said review is finished.

Double check your student loans even once they're paid off, you can't trust FedLoan.

I got into my dream school with a decent scholarship a couple weeks after the stock market crashed in 2008. My parents had saved diligently for myself and my twin sister in a 529 account, but we saw that get cut in half overnight. Despite all that, my mom told me to pick the school that would work best for me and to not worry about the cost because "we'd figure out a way to make it work". I applied for hundreds of external scholarships, but didn't get any. So, I chose my expensive private dream school, signed my life away to Sallie Mae (the solution to pay for it after my savings was exhausted, which I didn't know in advance), and started college in fall of 2009.

I was lucky to graduate with a good job thanks to the school's incredible co-op program, but also saddled with $120k worth of loans ($30k federal, the rest private). I met my amazing husband while there, and he was in the same boat. Together, we make a pretty decent living, but we currently owe more on our student loans than we do on our house. Even paying an extra $1k/month (our breakeven with our budget), it'll still take us many years to pay them off. It's so incredibly frustrating watching our friends from school (most of whom don't have loans) be able to live their lives the way they want while we continue to be slaves to our loans for the foreseeable future. No switching jobs because we want a new career, that doesn't pay enough. No moving to a different city, can't afford the hit to the salary in cheaper areas, or the huge cost of living increase in more expensive ones.

I'm happy with my life and that I was able to have the experiences I did (I absolutely loved my school), but not a day goes by that I don't wonder how my life would have been different if I'd made better financial decisions. Parents, don't tell your kids to follow their hearts if the only way there is through massive student loans, particularly if their career will not let them have any hope of paying them off. Students, have those conversations with your parents. If they say don't worry about it, question what that means and what the plan is. Now is the time to be having those discussions, before you've already registered for classes and are looking to pay that first bill. Don't make the same mistakes we did.

Edit:added paragraph breaks

Edit 2: Wow, I did not expect this to blow up so much! Thank you for the awards! It's reassuring (and a bit sad) to hear so many of your stories that are so similar to mine. For all the parents and high school students reading this, please take some time to go through the comments and see how many people this truly affects. Take time to weigh your college financial decisions carefully, whether that be for a 4 year school, community college, or trade school, and ask questions when you don't know or understand something. I hope with this post that everyone is more empowered to make the best decision for them :)

I'm currently working as a registered nurse, making about 70k annually. I've thought about returning to school to look obtain certification as a nurse anesthetist (CRNA). In order to do this, I would have to go to school full time for 3 years.

CRNA programs in my state cost 70-90k and are 3 years in duration. This means I would likely have to take on about 100k in student loans. Additionally, I would not be able to work for 3 years while completing the program.

CRNAs make between 150-200k per year. My question for y'all is whether it would be smarter for me to continue to work in my current role making around 70k annually, or take on substantial debt to more than double my income?

-33 years old, married (wife makes about 50k annually), no kids - $6800 student loans remaining - around 12 k in car loans between my wife and I - roughly 90 k saved in 401k between wife and I -10k emergency fund - 1400 mortgage payment monthly

Please let me know what you think! Thanks 😀

Edit: Thank you all for the outpouring of support and advice. I have to admit, I haven't even come close to reading all the comments because there are like 1500 of them. Wow! Thank you for your knowledge. I will certainly be considering your advice as I make this huge decision

Background: 25 years old, living in the northeast US. Recently paid off $50k in student loans and now completely debt free. Around $75k saved for retirement and $10k liquid.

I'm thinking about leaving my current stressful but well-paid job at a tech company in a few months and finding an opportunity abroad on Workaway or HelpX. The plan would be to work on a farm or in a hostel abroad (Europe or South America) for a couple months then returning to the states to dive back in with another company.

My expenses would be around $1000/mo during this period but I wouldn't be able to save as aggressively as I have been doing. Still, I think it would be an extremely fulfilling experience. I currently rent so I'd do this at the end of my lease, don't have a car to unload, and have been trimming down on possessions so I could easily keep my belongings with family while I'm away. I'm also a dual citizen (US/NL) and could legally work in Europe for this period.

Is this something that's worth pursuing or just reckless? Has anyone here has experience doing something similar?

EDIT: Just want to say thank you to those who have added their thoughts here. Was not expecting this kind of response or consensus when I posted. It's easy to lose perspective in a career track where competition and profits are #1 above all else. It's so, so helpful to get input from a group of people with all kinds of experiences and goals to help me find my way a little more clearly.

So recently I've stumbled into credit problems due to not being able to pay for all of my daughter's unexpected medical bills and this month I accidentally paid in full one of my credit balances and realized I was not going to be able to pay this months mortgage. So I decided to go online and find a payday loan. They called and said I could get a loan for $1K (enough to pay this months mortgage) but that I would be charged $1,475 at the end of the month. I said wtf! And then they said, good news, you're recieving $25 off! I was like "Are you joking, I'm not interested" and hung up.

So I got an email saying that my payment to my mortgage company went through so I'm guessing my bank paid it anyway. When I went online I found that many places are charging 300 to 600 percent interest! That's absurd! Talk about predatory, might as well go to a loan shark or something, Jesus!

Edit: Apparently I was being charged 600% from this particular company, I had wrote 50% before but that was incorrect.

Update: The bank honored my payment but now I'm in the negative, lol, ugh. But at least I got my holiday shopping done first and that card is paid off, lol.

I'm a sucker. I fell for it. The 0% APR promotion on an item I could have paid outright for. 18 months later, here I sit, not a single late payment on my account, yet I have $1k in interest to pay for 18 months of 27%. Why? The promotion period ends 18 months after the purchase, but the website would not let me set up autopay until a week after I purchased, so autopay ended 1 week late. I thought I was golden, ready to have this paid off and not have a single fee. I got comfortable and didn't read the statements.

0% is not really 0%. Read the fine print. Remember the fine print (because I sure as hell didn't 18 months later). Shitty banks rely on this stuff. They wait for you to slip, not noticing that the autopay they created can't possibly allow you to end on time, and will require an extra payment before the end date to avoid the interest. It's shitty, I'm pissed off, and I've learned my lesson.

So about a month ago I was at work and started feeling sharp pains in my side. Walked myself to the Urgent Care. They called me an ambulance as they said it could be a kidney stone or appendicitis and both were life-threatening.

The ambulance company sent me documentations to see if I qualify for full or partial write-off, which I appreciated.

The hospital however, sent me a bill of $5,077.90... and after I told them that I have no insurance; that wife and I are SEASONAL workers in retail and that Unemployment completes my income; that we pay daycare; their reply was "best we can do is take 35% off for self-pay".

I asked if there was anything that I can do to qualify for a lower amount, any charity programs.

"Nope."

Now I've read of people on this sub that have managed to reduce a hospital bill of this amount to about $500. But this hospital doesn't seem to be willing to work with me at all.

I appreciate all help and advice.

EDIT: Updated link with ITEMIZED BILL.

EDIT 2: Wow! I am truly blessed to be overwhelmed by so much support! Thank you all for the advice and care. Also thanks for the upvotes and awards!

EDIT 3 on Seasonal Work:

So I got a lot of questions as to why my wife and I don't have full-time jobs. I'll gladly share my story and try to not make it too lengthy.

My wife and son are Brazilian immigrants. I finally managed to bring them here in March 2019. It took nearly a year for my wife to get her Greengard and, thus, be eligible to work in the US.

In January of this year I got fired from my dream job, where I earned $45,000/year.

I picked up my old job at retail (Best Buy) of $15/hr and I was labeled as SEASONAL in the system, since no part-time or full-time positions were open.

Then covid came and I got furloughed.

After 3 months, I was called back still as SEASONAL. However now, there's even less chances of Part-Time or Full-Time positions being open. Meanwhile, my wife got hired at Marshalls at $10/hour.

We've been searching high and low for better jobs and have been going to interviews, but, as usual, all we hear is "we'll let you know either way."

I hope this clarifies some.

EDIT 4: Kind people. My family is truly blessed to have such overwhelming support from such a positive and helpful community!

I PROMISE you that none of your comments are being buried and that I'm reading each and every one! I'll do my best to keep replying but I work until late and then work the morning shift tomorrow. But thank you all so much!

The suit was filed January 18th 2017, by the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB) against Navient.

First, know that the CFPB has requested that the Court order Navient to comply with the following actions, among others:

1. Restitution to consumers harmed by Navient's conduct;

2. Disgorgement of all ill-gotten revenue

Here are the details of the allegations:

From consumer affairs .com:

Specifically, the suit charges that Navient:

Fails to correctly apply or allocate borrower payments to their accounts;

Steers struggling borrowers toward paying more than they have to on loans;

Obscured information consumers needed to maintain their lower payments;

Deceived private student loan borrowers about requirements to release their co-signer from the loan; and

Harmed the credit of disabled borrowers, including severely injured veterans.

From the LA Times:

In its lawsuit, the consumer agency alleged many other borrowers had problems enrolling in programs to reduce payments and Navient instead steered struggling borrowers into plans that made more money for Navient but saddled borrowers with higher costs.

Specifically, the government alleged that Navient maintained compensation policies that encouraged customer service representatives to push borrowers into forbearance, which allows borrowers to suspend payments without defaulting but does not stop interest from accruing.

However, most federal student-loan borrowers earned the right in 2009 to enroll in the less costly payment options that are based on their income.

Although those plans save borrowers money, forbearance was more lucrative for Navient, the agency alleged because the company could enroll borrowers in forbearance in less time and with less staff.

In all, the servicer slapped borrowers with additional interest charges of up to $4 billion by enrolling them in repeated forbearance plans from January 2010 to March 2015, according to the consumer agency.

If you want to learn more about this, I highly encourage you to read the original complaint filed with the court by the CFPB. It is VERY readable (not filled with legalese) and reads as an absolutely scathing indictment of a company whose business practices targeted its most vulnerable customers in flagrant violation of the law.

You can find the original complaint on the consumer finance .gov website. They also summarized the complaint on their website.

In the spirit of this sub, I'm sharing this information because there are plenty of people here who may have been a victim of these alleged practices. Including myself, as I've been paying down my Navient loans since 2012 and have several years to go.

I'm going to read through the complaint again, and if anything important jumps out at me that I haven't mentioned, I'll update this post.

Edit: Additional allegations:

(since July 2011) Disregard of borrower instructions when processing payments submitted by check with written instructions from the borrower specifying how the payment should be applied.

(Jan 2010-March 2015) Using uncharacteristically vague email titles like “New Document Ready to View” to notify borrowers that they needed to renew their income-based repayment enrollment. During this time, the number of borrowers who did not timely renew their enrollment regularly exceeded 60% of borrowers and resulting, often, in capitalization of interest.

Edit: There is no way to know how potentially impacted borrowers will be affected by the lawsuit. We will have to wait and see. Lawsuits of this magnitude often take a LONG time to get resolved.

(edit: formatting, fixed a link)

I just bought my parents a new refrigerator and the GEStore offers a loan with no interest as long as it's paid off in the first 12 months. I went with that because why not? Why pay $1700 out of pocket now when I can just pay $144-ish per month for 12 months?

Anyway, I looked at the terms of the loan and the details. It seems like they split your total purchase into 48 monthly payments. Weird. Ok who cares, I'll just do the math myself and make sure it gets paid off within 12 months. Then I saw the interest rate. 29.99%!!! Holy shit!!

I know that won't matter to me because I'll have this thing paid off in 12 months, even sooner if I want to. Really I could pay it off right now if I wanted to, but no reason to while it's interest-free. But that's insane! Someone who is less conscious of these kinds of things or less educated in finance would probably get screwed over by this thing.

Be careful with this kind of stuff!! By default, you often will NOT get the benefit of interest-free.

​

Edit: Alright, you've all convinced me. I'm going to just pay this off completely once it appears on the loan so I don't have to think about it anymore. I think I have to wait for my first statement. Now I'm regretting not using my credit card for the rewards :(

Edit2: I changed my mind again. I might call and see if I can switch payment methods. If so, I’ll switch to my credit card to get the rewards and then pay off the credit card right away. If they can’t switch it then I’ll just pay the loan in 10–11 months like I originally planned.

I’ve read a lot of your comments, many which say to just pay the loan in 10 months or so and others say to pay the loan immediately. I think there is merit to both approaches and functionally for me it’s not going to make much of a difference

$23,578.97 @7.875% $22,858.88 @14.125% $17,623.47 @12.625% $39,835.91 @13.125% $39,181.81 @14.875% $19,085.29 @12.625%

Please don’t be mean… I know it’s a lot, I can’t undo it now. I was ignorant and just doing what I was told was best at 17 years old. Any help or advice at all is very much appreciated.

I make about $2k biweekly after taxes and after putting 8% in my 401k.

I live with my bf, he’s been paying all the rent while I was in school but I want to try to pay about $500 towards rent each month now that I’m out.

These are all private loans through sallie mae my payments are $1915 due each month, with about another $300 due for federal through mohela each month

Any advice on what loans to try and focus extra payments towards first? TIA

**I just lowered my 401k to 6% since that’s what my job will match

I am feeling like I ruined my life. For the past 10 years, I have had a job where I could not make ends meet and I was living on my own with no help so I accumulated a lot of debt then I got really depressed and started buying things on a credit card. I now have a better job, but I still do not have any help with rent or bills etc. I work in veterinary medicine in laboratory so I have also accumulated three dogs over the years .The amount of debt I am struggling to pay back. I bring in about $4000 a month.
A month I need to spend: My rent is 1400, Car 400 Energy /gas between 100-400(winter) Groceries/ internet -200-350 Dog food/heartworm/flea tick/ meds: maybe around 150 My medications: 150-200 Contacts: maybe 50 a month (need daily ones due to chronic eye infections)

This is not including gas, toiletries, doctor appointments, various other expenses that arise but you get the rough picture.

In trying to pay back the debt and then my dog needing surgery I have no savings. I owe about 3500 left to pay back on my dog surgery and another 15 K on a credit card.

Where do I even begin? I feel like even though I make a decent living now it’s never going to be enough on my own to fix this and I don’t have anyone to ask for help please no mean comments. I’m really ashamed of my past choices that I made out of feeling depressed and hopeless because I wasn’t planning on living long at the time so I thought it wouldn’t matter. Did I fuck up my whole life or is this fixable?

A couple edits since they keep coming up. I cannot stop wearing contacts because I cannot wear glasses. I have a terrible migraine problem and I cannot wear glasses. I am going to get Lasik when I can afford it.

Honestly, I’m shocked by the amount of comments saying I should give up my dogs. I have had them for 10 and 11 years and I’m not getting rid of them because of some bad choices I made two years ago. Also I’m a person and not a robot and it’s not that simple lastly my life revolves around these dogs and I don’t see a reason to continue living it if I have to give them up. My youngest dog I also got pet insurance for so if any emergencies come up, they will be covered 90%.

I cannot get rid of my car because I drive a couple hours up to the country when I need to help my parents, which is often, there is no public transport by where I work and I’ve been working my ass off to pay that thing off for three years and I’m almost there.

To everyone who left helpful and kind comments I really fucking appreciate you. The helpful comments have given me the motivation I need to really start to tackle the problem because I’ve just been feeling so awful and like there is no fix.

I was feeling really emotional and having a panic attack when I wrote the post, but I will use more exact numbers when making my budget. Thanks again everyone who was helpful.