Comment: Proud to partner with Pigly. Story and opinions are 100% my own
14 years ago my husband and I had started a family together. He has 2 boys and they were young then and we had his mortgage and both of us had debt for cars, student loans, credit cards. We would often talk about starting to consolidate as we tackle our debt with grand images of a debt free future. Then we added a third boy as we had our son together.
Then notices we didn’t recognize began arriving in the mail. Someone opened a checking account up in my husbands name and had written very large checks to several retailers. We felt so defeated.
As we began to repair the fraud (this was 2006 so it was done mainly by mail as the internet wasn’t as inclusive back then for banking), we learned a lot. We had been on the phone with claims and the bank and had been in to our branch enough that we started asking questions and they were noticing our debt. We realized that there is a way to get out of our debt and with time it looked promising. We did it all by ourselves. We did not hire anyone or pay for a service, we just busted out budget calculators (a lot) and bought a notebook and spent nights communicating and keeping on the same financial page as a couple.
Budget Calculators are the best tool
Today we have a mortgage and have been able to pay our middle son’s college expenses without loans and have begun saving for the youngest’s college. We own all of our cars and only keep 1 credit card for airline miles that we pay to a $0 balance each month to avoid interest. Credit companies actually hate us-lol. I have had friends approach asking advice and I can now send them to the websites hat did not exist for us but would have made things so much easier. Pigly is one of the best I have seen lately as a fantastic budgeting and savings tool. Pigly is a calculator portal where you can use their calculators for any planning or saving.
Whether you are starting a home buying or selling process or need to save for a child’s college you will find the budget calculators to help you plan. Best of all the site is free and ad free!
Pigly has a wide range of tools from budgeting, home loans, mortgages, savings, retirement planning and so on, so there is budget calculators relevant for just about everyone.
I can tell you for certain that if you are committed and patient you will also be debt free in time and when that time comes there will be no greater feeling. If someone would have told me 15 years ago we’d own 3 cars, an RV, a home with only 11 years left on the mortgage and enough savings to retire (not ready yet) and put 2 children through college loan-free. If you were to tell me we’d have all that without credit card or loan debt, I would have chocked on laughter. But, here we are!
Start by gathering information and low interest, no balance transfer fee cards to consolidate onto. Pay off the lowest debts first to knock the amount of debt items down (I started in 2006 with my 8% student loan at 6K by taking our tax return to pay it off rather than a fancy trip with that money). Then meet weekly if you are a couple or take time by yourself if single with tools like a notebook and budget calculators and log into Pigly as you change/update your plan if anything new has hit or to discuss and plan for holidays and big events. Good luck!