Taking Daily Paycheck Advances Just To Survive

0:00Brought to you by the EveryDollar app. Start budgeting for free today. To me and my husband were about $120,000 in debt. We're 28 and about to be 29. I'm finishing college. So that's a lot of it is student loans, some in collections, a car. And right now we make enough money on paper. But we're stuck in this daily paint cycle that our job offers, where we're able to cash out our earnings every day. And so it's really detracting from our paychecks. And we're just stuck in this vicious cycle every day. You can take part of your day. Oh, wow. Yes. Do you get charged fee or entry? I mean, anything or is it just that's how you're getting paid? It's like $1.99 or $2.99 every time you can cash out. OK. You can cash out up to twice a day. What do you guys do for a living?

1:02So we worked for the same company. My husband works from home in a different department. And then I basically customer service. And then I work in the back office in office. What do you guys work? Where I'm sorry. What do you guys earn collectively? 85 to 95,000. He's on 32 to 40 hours flex weeks. So it can range between the 85 to 95 altogether. What do you guys have kids? I'm making 40. We have one, two year old daughter. Two year old. OK. And what are you going back to school for? I'm in school for psychology. And I plan on getting my master's degree. OK. After I'm done. I'm not going to pay for that. As of right now, no. Where we might stop and pause school to cash flow once we get into a better spot. But right now, we've been taken out loans. How much longer do you have to graduate?

2:03I have one semester left until I'm done with my bachelor's degree. And how much of the 120 is student loans? About 50. It'll be 60 after everything. OK. 60K. How much do you guys own the car? 24,000. OK. And what's in collections right now? Is it credit cards? A couple personal loans and some credit cards. What does that add up to? About $50,000. $50,000. And those are all in collections? Yeah, about $40,000 in collections. Most of it's on my husband's side. If you had some larger credit cards. OK. The larger personal loan. And then we have about $8,000 of active credit cards. We just decided that we were going to stop using them all together. Good. How long have those bills been in collections? How long has it been sitting there? Summer gets busy fast. Between vacations, camps, and travel plans. The last thing you need is another thing to manage. That is why I love delete me.

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4:0745. Got it. OK. So a little bit more than me, but he makes less hours. And I have the ability for overtime. Once you get the degree, you have one semester left. What's your income going to go up to? Hopefully for me alone, somewhere in the $90,000 to $100,000 range, once I have my masters. Yeah, no, no, no. With this degree, nothing. Because it doesn't. I don't think it adds value to your current job, right? No, not really. I can become like a case manager, something like that for about what I'm making now. Yeah. OK. All right. So the degree's a little bit of a wash. And we're not going to go deeper in debt to get the masters to hopefully make that a hundred. Yeah. So we are OK. So I mean, the number one goal would be to get you guys your head above water just in your current day-to-day

5:08bills. So you're not having to have this daily pay. Yes. Yeah, I want you on a rhythm. And so what this usually means is you kind of have to like shock the system, which is going to mean working weekends, working nights somewhere. And it's going to probably take, I would think, a good 60 days of another job. And I had to get some cash flow in so that you guys have enough in your account that you don't have to be waiting on that next paycheck, if that makes sense. But there's enough in there to pay what you guys need for the next one. And so I did something stupid too. I cashed out my 401k. There wasn't much in it. It was $1,300 before taxes. So I have that on the way to just give us a buffer of something so that we can get out of this cycle. So that was the only reason why I did it. Do you know, let's pretend today that you were current and you weren't behind on anything. Do you know what the amount of money that you bring in every month

6:11in your minimum payments? Are you in the red or are you in the green? Assuming making up money on paper. Yeah. So when you do your every dollar budget and you plug in the 90,000, how much is that per month for you guys? So it's about, I think after everything that gives us a surplus of like, no, no, just the amount of your paychecks. Like 6,000 ish probably hit your account, would you say? Should be. I get paid by weekly or 1200 per check. I get paid by weekly and then he gets paid around 900. Okay. And nobody's investing, right? No. Okay. So here's what I would say. Do the budget and do it with, I want to know exactly what that margin is going to be. And then the other number I want to know is exactly how much you are behind on today. Like what's the deficit for this month? Right now we're in August.

7:11So we're not even midway through yet. So are you already operating at a deficit or tell me how this current month looks? Well, when I did the every dollar budget, it said that we have about 400 dollars extra at the end of the month. But I think it's more of a timing issue. We have heavier bills in the second half of the month. Okay. Good to know. So let's do this on every dollar. There's a paycheck planning feature because what you're highlighting, Lenay is really important. It's the first step to budgeting is deciding how much we're going to spend, right? And assigning the line items. But the second part of budgeting that a lot of people miss is now we have to decide when we can spend it. And sometimes it's as simple, Lenay, as calling in and saying, my mortgage is due on the, on the first, it might be easier if it's due on the 15th. And you can call in and make those changes a lot of times there's flexibility as long as you're paying it that month, right? And moving things around so that you know, when I get the first check, on the 30th, that's when I pill, that's when I pay, you know, bills one through three. And then on the set, the 15th check, that's when I pay the majority of the

8:14other bills, right? I pay the three biggest ones with the first check. And then I pay all the little ankle biters with the second check. And so it's a little bit of a puzzle sometimes to figure out what bills you can pay with what check. But that, let that be your homework tonight because I actually think that that's the solution here is knowing, okay, when I get paid that first check on the 30th, even though my entire grocery budget might be $600, but I can only spend 250 of that grocery budget on the first check. And then when the second check comes, now I can spend the other 600. You see what I'm saying? And so that's the puzzle that you guys need to sit down and figure out because I think you're right. There is enough money there at least to hit the minimums. And then when you get on that rhythm, like Rachel said, now we can feel really confident about taking the $400 in margin and chucking it away at, you know, whatever credit card or the smallest that is. Lenin, do you know what you could sell your car for? Carvana says $19,000. That was my second part of my question is I'm having a hard time convincing my

9:15husband to let go of it. We just got it in January. It's a 2024 and he's really attached to it. Yeah. Well, I think if you guys can sell this, if you guys can do, if you guys can sell that, maybe get 12,000 for the collections and you start doing it. I think in three and a half years, your life looks different. Create your free every dollar budget today, the simplest way to budget for your life.