re: I Need Help - Any Advice is Needed

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Forget the house....chalk that up to a life lesson with the agent: trust but verify when someone selling something to you doesn't provide a detailed quote.

The credit card debt is a bigger problem IMHO. Get rid of it ASAP. Have a garage sale, list all the crap you don't use on eBay, send the outgrown kids clothes to a consignment store....liquidate your personal property. Take books to the used bookstore. Generate as much cash as you can to pay off that interest gathering CC. Then spend some serious time figuring out what you bought to run up that debt. It's not all groceries...I'll bet. If it was, do some serious meal planning and food budgeting.

Cancel the cable and high speed internet, get a cheaper cell phone or go prepaid.

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Kinda hard to forget the house when it's my #1 budget killer. At least my minimum payment on the CC is $18/month if I need it to be.

Honestly, we've tried to be smart about our budget. My parents wanted us to keep our smartphones (which we were going to give up) because they wanted to be able to face-time with our son. They're paying our cell phone bill.

I have a $58/month bill with DirecTV that is every channel possible except for movie channels. I've run roughshod over them in terms of negotiating. I WOULD get rid of it. But I have 18 months left on the contract. That would be a $360 bill to cancel. Can't do it.

Internet is $39/month.

And you're right. It wasn't all groceries. It was Christmas. Not $900 worth of Christmas, but Christmas was just enough to really put a hurting on our budget.

We're spending $900/month on groceries. I know we can get that down. I know we can. But when I start thinking about us getting it down to $600 or $700, I just see that as us breaking even. It's not going to cover the excess expenses. It's just going to meet our new budget.

Not to mention, my fellowship doesn't cover fees and books. I got 2/3 of this semester's books at the library for free. The 1/3 leftover? $145. Textbooks are out of control. It wasn't hurting us because the revenue from the rental property was adding up to pay for it all. But I need about $600 per semester.

There's also a big ugly gorilla staring me in the face. My stipend doesn't pay in June, July, or half of August. That's going to be a $1200/month pay cut over the summer.