Erasing Our Debt

With the addition of baby coming in October, I've been trying to decide what to do with my debt snowball. Should I continue to knock out as much debt as possible over the next 5-6 months or should I save up as much as possible for baby expenses? Let me see if I can't discuss some pros and cons of each and then hopefully get some input from the readers.

Debt Snowball
If I continue to put as much towards this as possible, my minimum payments will be less when baby gets here. This would almost force me to do a reverse snowball. Putting all I could towards my largest debt would help tremendously with reducing my largest minimum payment which is currently about $130.
If I didn't continue to put as much toward my debt, I may get behind on payments later down the road and it would take a lot longer to get rid of my debt.

Save up for Baby
If I save up for all the baby expenses that are due to come, I will not be pressured to use credit for anything later.
If I have too much saved up (is that possible?) I can then use the excess towards the credit cards.

Anyone else got any thoughts?

Labels: baby, debt, saving money

Been quite awhile since I've blogged so I figure I better hop on here to appease the masses.

Well I quit the second job after only a week due to:

• a lack of training-first hour on the job, I am stuck out there attempting to assist customers when I know absolutely nothing. It continued to be that way after 3 days.
• a lack of accountability - I strongly believe that if you know something is wrong and you have the ability to right the wrong, then you do it. This place was lacking in employees in that department. Should I ever own my own business or become a manager, I would recommend/require people to read The Question Behind the Question
• a lack of teamwork - last night on the job, I worked 7 hours w/o a break. Always doing something. 3 of those 7 hrs were after the store was closed and we were doing cleanup, I was feverishly working to get out of there asap, whereas other employees were chit-chatting and sitting down doing nothing

Enough of that, $7 an hour isn't that appealing to me when you take into consideration of the above. I can work 2 hours of overtime and make just as much as I can make in a day there. My boss said my overtime can continue as long as it's not exorbitant. I figure I will probably get about 15 hours of overtime a week. Which will be needed with the next item.

Early last week, the fiance and I found out we are expecting parents. The baby is expected late September or early October. With this news, I am at a crossroads on what to do. I still want to continue to knock out as much debt as possible, but I also know I need to save up extensively for the new addition. Thank goodness for my medical insurance. We had to go ahead and pay for the delivery and stuff and it only cost $200. And thank goodness for my health care spending account!

Labels: baby, job, News