Ask the Readers: What is Your Toughest Financial Challenge?
Editor's Note: Congratulations to Ryan, Carmen, and Addrienne Mertens for winning this week's contest!
Everyone always has a financial obstacle to overcome. Whether it's saving for retirement, paying for college, or purchasing a new car, people consistently seem to be striving to conquer some sort of financial problem.
What is the biggest financial problem in your life right now? Is it balancing your budget? Finding a job? Refinancing your house? Paying off your debt?
Tell us about your biggest financial problem we'll enter you in a drawing to win a $20 Amazon Gift Card!
Win 1 of 3 $20 Amazon Gift Cards
We're doing three giveaways — one for random comments, one for random Facebook "Likes", and another one for random tweets.
Mandatory Entry:
- Post your answer in the comments below
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Impending student loan payments, for sure.
Ours is staying focused on our goals when those goals are years in the future. When you want/need something today versus paying off a debt years down the road or saving for a re-model that's 10 years away, it's tempting to go for the quick prize.
My toughest financial challenge is, hands down, paying off my crazy student loans. There is a lot of information out there for students who are getting ready to borrow loans or graduates who only have Federal Loans, but my husband and I have ridiculously high intrest-rate private loans. We literally pay double our rent every month in loans alone. It's sad to think how well-off we would be if it weren't for them.
Right now, our biggest financial woe is that both of us are working summer internships. So we have no income. And that's definitely a problem, because living isn't free.
My biggest financial challenge right now is the time it takes to accumulate capital. The business we are building (investment property portfolio) is capital intensive. It takes us quite a bit of time to stack enough money from our paychecks for another property.
While the time will decrease as salaries rise and properties earn their own profits, this has turned into a longer term project than I would like. I am really not a fan of trading time for a fixed amount of money for someone else. I just haven't come up with something I can do day in and day out for myself yet. Frustrating is an understatement, I am a pretty typical Type A person.
My biggest financial challenge is to save for the future. We do save some, but I would love to save more. I would also like a vacation more than once every 3 years, but since we don't want to go into debt, I enjoy them when I get them!
My biggest challenge is saving. I have always had a problem keeping up a savings account and its something I intend to continue to work on.
Biggest financial challenge is paying off credit card bills!
My biggest financial challenge is making the money to be able to save! We live paycheck to paycheck and just don't have the opportunity or means to save anything! It's scary to think of what we're going to do later on in life!
Re-payment of debt. Seems unsermountable at times.
my tweet http://twitter.com/#!/textiff/status/73021678191509504
1. Paying off mortgage
2. Paying off husband's student loan
3. Trimming the budget to find more money to invest at same time
My biggest financial challenge is paying off debt...credit card bills!
@textiff
follow as Sheryl Edwards on Facebook
I clicked Like on the Wisebread Facebook page.
I tweeted as well: http://twitter.com/#!/hillarief/status/73023504999649280
paying off school loans!
my tweet http://twitter.com/#!/textiff/status/73021678191509504
Keeping within our budget is our biggest financial issue right now. My husband stays at home with our three year old twins, and I work full time. Having him at home has been priceless but living on one income has been a struggle. We have tried to be as frugal as possible, but it is frustrating when we can't afford to do special activities with the boys, like the zoo, a baseball game, etc. I'm doing my best to be creative with inexpensive activities for them.
My biggest financial is just paying all the bills. On a fixed income and by end of the month less money. Everything is going up but not the income.
Toughest financial challenge? That's an easy one. My husband and two kids all have chronic medical issues. Sometimes our medical bills for the year are only $10,000, but some years it's been over $20,000. Tough to plan for catastrophic level medical bills, especially when medical is already a huge chunk of our monthly outlay!
Our biggest financial obstacle is losing an income when my husband lost his job last year. It's been a tough road finding a new job!
Liked Wise Bread on Fb
http://twitter.com/#!/AngelMom037/status/73026903203786755
@wisebread #WBAsk My biggest financial challenge is saving larger sums of money like money for a vacation or save for a house down payment.
http://twitter.com/#!/jenesparza
Right now the biggest financial problem for my husband and I is building up our emergency fund on top of trying to max out our individual Roth IRAs for the year.
Our only debt is a small amount remaining on my husband's student loans. We don't live extravagantly by any means (we rent a 1br apartment and rarely go out other than for dinner 1x/week. no movies, no bars, etc), but the savings is going very slow.
It just leaves us wondering how people with much smaller salaries are getting by if it's tight for us to do without going into debt.
My biggest financial challenge is trying to find a place to put my savings. Savings rates have been really low for a while that it doesn't seem worth it.
Re-payment of debt - seems almost insurmountable at times. @SarahVarga
My husband. I have converted him from being a spendthrift, so now he does consider what he wants, and why he wants it, but he still does not care abotu the work that goes into personal finance. Turning in recieps for reimbursement is not important to him. He does it becaseu it is important to me and I often ask him if he's done it yet.
He intellectually understands the importance of having a plan, savings account, insurance.etc, but he knows he can also worry himself to death abotu these things, so he avoids thinking about them.
My Toughest Financial Challenge is trying to determine what takes priority: saving more money for my emergency fund, paying my principal down on my mortgage, saving for a different car, starting a Roth IRA (I already have a 401(k) with employer match)...it never ends and I wish I knew which one I should do first! At least I don't have any debt other than my mortgage.
This is exactly where I am. I want to pay off my car and student loan. I want to save a down payment and buy a house. I want to increase retirement savings. I want to increase my emergency fund. I want to donate to charity and help out my grandparents. I want to go on some sort of vacation at least every other year.
The finances and costs/benefits are black and white. The benefit of now vs. later is a bit more difficult to balance. And once you throw in personal priorities and the more nebulous emotional costs/benefits, everything turns into a murky mess of indecision.
It sounds silly, but mine is increasing my income. I live in an expensive city and work in a low-paying (but salaried) industry. I make a point of contributing to both a retirement account and a savings account every month, but I would be in much better financial shape if I made more money!
My biggest financial problem right now is trying to find a job!
I "like" you on facebook
I tweeted my answer. http://twitter.com/echotides/status/73038874468818944
Saving is our toughest financial challenge. When there isn't a specific goal in mind, it's hard to stay motivated. When there's nothing tangible to show for the hard work, it's hard to stay motivated. We know, in the end, that saving will pay off. It's just hard to stay motivated.
Like on facebook
tweeted http://twitter.com/#!/Mama2Goosie/status/73043317872533504
Saving enough for retirement
My dad recently passed away and I'm a college student and have been unable to work because of how busy I am. It's been hard to pay all the bills every month, especially since I had nothing to begin with.
I'm having trouble sticking to my "gift" budget right now. Too many birthdays, graduations, weddings and babies all coming at once. My stock of gifts bought on clearance throughout the year is depleted and I didn't put enough in my "gift" budget for all of this.
My biggest financial challenge is coming up soon. I'll be moving to a new state and will need to find a job and a place to live - two vital necessities!
My biggest financial challenge is paying for health care costs. my son was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes the same year that our company switched to a high-deductible health plan. now i have to deal with monthly payments for the premiums plus an additional $6,000 family deductible every year.
My challenge is knowing where to focus my energy and money- should I take out loans to pay for school, how should I go about paying them off? Should I put money towards investments, either in my business or my education? Will my efforts pay off or will I be stuck in debt?
Of course, all of this comes with the challenge of not spending beyond my means, which on a limited student budget is challenging.
Saving for retirement - it is all a crap shoot. How much will I need? Is long term care insurance a good deal or a bad thing? If/when should I sell my home and plan to move to some sort of retirement/care community, and will I even be able to afford that choice? No one has an understandable, let alone simple answer to these questions.
It's not a horrible problem, but so far I'm making enough to pay bills, enjoy life, but not really to save any money towards the future and retirement. So working on that, with budgeting and extra income.
I find myself in a defeating cycle over credit card debt. Do I pay off more on my credit card which charges an outrageous interest rate and keep my fingers crossed that no emergencies come up that month, or do I eat the outrageous finance charges/interest rate and put money each month into an emergency fund which, in the short term, would probably not build up very quickly? Because we try to pay more than the minimum on each of our credit cards each month, there is little money left over to put into an emergency fund. So we may save on interest/finance charges a little bit each month, but if any unforeseen costs hit, we end up having to pay for it on our credit card. It is nearly impossible to pay down debt this way and I can't find any useful advice about it anywhere. Gah!
It sounds like you're diluting your efforts. Stop paying a little extra toward everything and concentrate on one thing. Either pay the minimums on your cards and build up something of an emergency fund (my preference) OR pay the minimums on all but ONE card. Most people recommend either your smallest balance or highest interest.
I've recently switched to "cash only," putting away my credit card. I had no problem paying the card in full each month, but felt I was spending too much money. Now on payday, I leave myself X amount of dollars for a two week period. It seems by week two, I'm walking around with $7 in my pocketbook!
Tweeted a comment.
http://twitter.com/#!/1bets1/status/73073485764771840
Liked on Facebook.
Paying of a rather large debt to the IRA
My biggest challenge has been a frozen salary for the past 3 years. As the price of everything continues to rise, all the salaries at work have been frozen for three years. Four years ago, my budget balanced. Now, my budget is barely breaking even.
My biggest financial problem right now is too little income paired with too much debt. I'm handling it in the same way that I would eat an elephant...one tiny bite at a time.
Our biggest challenges right now are paying off debt and adjusting to living off one income in this economy.
Building up equity on my mortgage. Bought a house in 2007, when prices seemed low, only to have them plummet in the years following. I still owe way more on my house than it is worth today.
My toughest financial challenge is my wants and impatientness. I know what I need to do and I know the value of it down to the penny. I still struggle with desires that I know cost me money. 5 years from now I can have all I want today as long as I do not let my desires derail my plan.
Lately I've been having trouble finding extra income during the summer months.
My biggest financial problem now is retirement. With alot benefit cutbacks here I'm worried how I'll be able to make it when I'm at retired in later life I'm worried about it now because a good retirement can't be planned in my opinion within the last 10-12 before retirement age In the 10 years I'll be middle aged and don't want lack of money I'm not able to set aside now, to hurt my future.
i'm pretty frugal so i think my toughest financial challenge is to walk the thin line between being frugal and cheap, being frugal and not depriving myself of occasional fun.
i'm not sure where to leave the "i like you on facebook!" comment so here goes!
i tweeted http://twitter.com/#!/oshkoshbgosh123/status/73125260643409920
Credit card debt that just doesn't seem to go away. *le sigh*
My toughest challenge right now is paying for graduate school since I haven't received a pay raise at my state teaching position in the last three years.
Just trying to buy food, pay for my apartment and car loan, electric. Be sure you young earners put something away for later. I was not able to. Now, I live on a $620 Social Security check and work 20 hours a week for another $600. Anytime the cost of an item(s) goes up, I sink deeper.
Our biggest financial challenge right now is an impending baby in 2 months! We have many important decisions to make. Will we choose $14,000/year excellent work daycare where I can walk across the street to visit or will we choose $8,000/year home daycare where a part of me will wonder if care giver is watching soaps all day? Should we eliminate emergency savings to help pay for daycare or should one of us pick up a job on the weekends? We've already cut our phone to $50/month for both cells, reduced cost of insurance by $50/month, are getting rid of satellite, started using coupons (saving us about $15/week, cut back on driving, are stocking up on diapers. Looks like we'll have to reduce credit card payments (pay $300/month with 0% APR for 15 months), student loan payment (now pay $1050/month w/ minimum of $500/month) car payment too. So hard to decide where to cut back, and how to balance paying of debt vs care of child!
Biggest challenge is to pay off my mortgage
tweeted: http://twitter.com/#!/drmomoftwo/status/73189187502866433
No matter how frugal we are, our biggest challenge is saving enough for retirement. Discouragement is setting in as prices increase, and we feel like we're being sucked down as the timeline comes closer.
dang credit card..had it since 1994..been passed around to different banks over the years..i would love it to be gone.
@zippy573
My toughest challenge is getting life insurance. My wife and I got 10-year term life policies shortly after our marriage. These policies just expired. I'm a 7-year cancer survivor and I also have two masses in my pancreas. (The masses appear to be benign after two biopsies and numerous CT, PET and MRI studies and are unchanged in size over the last 7 years. If it were pancreatic cancer, I'd be dead already.) The insurance agent assured me this wouldn't be a problem. Guess what? The insurance company turned me down for coverage because of it. So now I'm underinsured. Unlike health insurance, there's no credit for prior continuous coverage, no high risk pools, nothing.
Planning a wedding that includes our many loved ones in a meaningful way, while also making sure that it doesn't drive us into debt. My fiance and I have made many adjustments to our variable expenses to ensure that we can pay cash for everything.
Biggest financial challenge would have to be understanding the need to save for a future purchase or need. In other words, long term saving.
My toughest financial challenge is the amount of time it takes to accumulate a decent amount of saved income. Because of (what I believe is) inflated cost of living in my state of residence and increased gas prices, it's become increasingly more difficult to set aside extra funds...especially since my income hasn't risen at all. It just means that I have to make more sacrifices in my personal life, but I don't really want to continue making those kinds of sacrifices forever.
I don't have any financial "problems" since I don't have any debt, have a good job, etc. But I have a financial goal, which is to buy a house entirely with cash and forgo the traditional mortgage.
I always have a hard time staying within my "eating out" budget!
I "like" your FB-Elisabeth G
I have very little willpower when it comes to cutting down certain costs - the big one being eating out and happy hours. My boyfriend and I live in the city and literally could go someone new every night if we wanted. Right now we average 3-4 times per week! If we cut back even one of those nights, it would save us at least a couple hundred a month!
I liked you on Facebook and tweeted my answer!
My toughest financial challenge right now is being unemployed since April 2009. I didn't have much in savings, which didn't help. I've managed to be temporarily employed most of the time, but it hasn't been easy. I do a lot of side jobs - house sitting, pet sitting, yard work, general unskilled laborer, clerical work. And I'm still looking for a job on top of all that. I remain hopeful, but that's a challenge too.
The constant battle of medical debt!! It is literally driving me crazy. We have a bit of a higher deductible (2500.- per person) in order to afford the monthly premium. All it takes is one person to have a minor surgery and *poof* 2500.- in the hole! On top of that throw in some braces and oral surgery, again for something minor, and *bam* the next thing you know you are staring at close to 10k in medical debt. I try to look at the bright side and be thankful that it is only minor medical issues, but - man it still hurts the pocket book.
Figuring out what to do about our condo and huge mortgage. We were denied a refinance as we owe too much, and it's unlikely that we could sell. I recently met with a realtor who told us there have been so many foreclosures/short sales in our neighborhood, we've lost lots of value and would most likely have to bring twice as much cash to closing as I have in my (6-months' take home pay) emergency fund. Ugh.
We have cut our overhead as much as we can in every other area and live very frugally, except for our mortgage, which is just too big for us. I can't figure out how we can cut our housing expenses, short of selling the damn thing and emptying out our e-fund/raiding our retirement funds in the process. Which doesn't seem smart.
Balancing our competing savings priorities: retirement, college funds for the offspring, and making available some fun money!
We are concentrating on paying our mortgage off. We quit using credit cards over 15 years ago. It took us so long to get them paid off but we did. Now our goal is to just pay our home off so we can have less stress in our home. The economy is not looking good and we are deeply concerned about our income. If the house was paid for, we could survive but without a home, we would be in more strss.
I am following you on Twitter and I like you on Facebook
My biggest financial problem in life right now is enormous student loans...
Saving for a down payment for a house when we will be needing new cards soon as well.
I liked you on facebook:)
My biggest financial problem is getting my husband to be on the same page with me. Yes, there's always room for compromise, but we grew up very differently. I try very hard to do things as frugally as makes sense, while he'll have no problem buying frivolous things whenever he gets a chance. It's frustrating.
Thankfully, he's seeing how being frugal, and financially-savey, can bring peace of mind. :)
Our biggest financial challenge is being working parents with two young kids. By the end of the day, cooking, cleaning or "planning for pennies" is the last thing on your mind, you are tired, worn out and simply want to get it all done, regardless of cost. That being said, we are trying to pay down debt and teach our children the real value of a dollar (which is another challenge and hard to do in today's environment).
Mine is trying to find a reasonably priced house so I can start putting my money into the equity of a house I own rather than into a some other person's place that I rent.
Paying for my daughter's college education.
Building an emergency fund. I'm currently paying off my last CC balance, so every extra penny goes to that. It seems like every time I get "extra" money (raise, rebate, etc.), then something comes up like a home or car repair, medical necessity, etc. I'd like an emergency fund for those situations so I don't use my CC.
Right now we are trying to pay off debt. We are close to a big windfall which is some encouragement that we need after climbing this uphill battle through two layoffs in 18 months.
Paying for healthcare, deductible is $3,000.00 then 15% co-pay in network up to $9,000.00 out of pocket each year, prescriptions vary I pay 30, 40 or 50% after meeting 3K deductible plus I pay over $123.00 every two weeks for the hubby and me, dental coverage is additional and no vision coverage. Saving for retirement and trying to take care of home that is 33 years old. Last but not least paying our property taxes each year.
My biggest challenge deals with my sporadic income. I work as an independent contractor and have a contract that comes around once a quarter. It pays really well, but I only work 1-2 months and have the intervening time with no income. So it's a matter of saving when the checks come in to cover the non-work times.
Our greatest financial challenge is paying our student loans ($65,000)--my husband has a master's degree and is working a job that requires only a high school diploma, and I have a BA and I'm not working right now.
Paying off student loan, pursuing infertility treatments.
My biggest financial challenge is figuring out how to get my husband to have the same financial perspective as myself and where to invest our money wisely on with ridiculous low interest rates. I am a stay-at-home mom with 2 young children, so being financially cautious is important. We don't carry credit card debt, but have trouble prioritizing where we should invest or maximizing and consolidating our interest/divident earnings.
My toughest financial challenge right now is deciding to file bankruptcy before things get out of hand. It's not easy realizing there will come a point when all the bills I am juggling will slip out of my hands. Coming to this place was a combination of factors, but laying down my pride and asking for help with this has been a huge challenge for me.
My Biggest challenge was getting married without having a huge credit card debt to have to pay off!